#and there is a page that talks about how private Elvis is because he was a capricorn | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mystewion · 3 years

Note

are gay people real

in short:

South Park Elementary School Cafeteria, day. The kids are seated for lunch. At the center table are Stan, Kyle, Kenny, Token, Clyde and Craig. Cartman runs in from the hallwayCartmanFELLAS! Fellas!StanWhat?CartmanYou'll never guess what happened. Butters just beat up Scott Malkinson!KyleButters? [He and Stan look puzzled] Why?CartmanIt was crazy! Scott was just talking about how he needed to take his insulin shot, and out of nowhere Butters said he's sick of people with diabetes feeling sorry for themselves. Scott told Butters to shut up and Butters just started whaling on him!StanYou're talking about Butters.CartmanDude, I'm telling you! Butters beat the crap out of Scott, and then he locked himself in the bathroom! [The other boys get concerned and leave their tables to go to the restroom]The restroom around the corner from the cafeteria. Jimmy has joined the boys. Stan bangs on the doorStanButters?ButtersLeave me alone!StanButters, come out here.ButtersGet out of here, all of ya! [Stan turns to the other boys and shrugs]KyleButters, people can't just go around beating up people who have diabetes! Now whatever your problem is, you just-Butters[Runs out of the restroom up to Kyle and points at him] You just think you know everything, don't you Kyle?! Every little thing you gotta shoot your mouth off like you're the frickin' expert! Well you don't know everything because [walks to Stan and points him out] your best friend is a kid who thinks the entire planet revolves around him and he only cares about HIS image! [runs back inside the boys room, then turns around and runs to Cartman] You guys think Cartman is the only selfish piece of crap in this school? You're all fake and stuck up [moves over to Jimmy], and none of you have the courage to tell Jimmy that his jokes aren't funny! [moves over to Kenny] The only kid here with any sense of dignity is Kenny, and the rest of you have your heads up your butts! [Runs back into the restroom and locks himself in. The other boys are stunned and silent]CartmanWell. Apparently Kenny is Butters' best friend. You guys gonna make out, Kenny? [Kenny flashes an angry look]Butters[Runs out of the restroom again and storms up to Cartman] And that's another thing! You're always trivializing everything I say by gettin' the last word! [Cartman looks stunned]Well you're not gettin' the last word this time! [Runs back into the boys restroom and locks himself in]Cartman...Wow.Butters[Opens the door and peeks out] Double wow! [Closes the door and locks it]The principal's office, Day. Principal Victoria is talking to Butters and his parents.Principal VictoriaI'm sorry, but your son is distracting the other students and his attitude is just getting worse.StephenButters, what on earth has gotten into you?!Butters[In a gruff voice] I don't know, Dad, ah I was just pissed off, I guess!LindaDo you think this behavior is fair to your teacher and classmates?!ButtersI don't suppose it is, but I don't give a darn!StephenDo you have any idea how grounded you are about to be, mister?!ButtersWhy don't you shut up, Dad, and stick it in your ear, for cryin' out loud! [Both parents look taken aback as a moment of silence follows]Linda[looks at Stephen] Stephen, are you thinking what I'm thinking?StephenYes. Our little Butters is flowering. He has reached the age of panua.Principal VictoriaEh-excuse me?StephenPrincipal Victoria, this isn't Butters' fault.ButtersIt's not?!StephenIt has to do with... biology. [turns right and walks off a bit] You've... maybe noticed that Butters isn't... exactly like other kids.ButtersYeah?StephenYou probably think Butters seems somehow... different.Butters[normal voice] Hey yeah, all the time.StephenIt's because he is. [Turns around and faces Principal Victoria] His mother and I... his whole family were... we're not of this place.Principal VictoriaAh I'm sorry, I really don't understand.StephenPlease, just try to understand that for our people it's a very private matter. He can't be helped by your discipline; this must be dealt with by his own kind. If it's all right with you, we'd like an extended leave for our boy. Please. It's a cultural thing.The Stotch house, day. Stephen and Linda argue as Butters sits on the couchLindaI don't want him to go, Stephen, he's too young!StephenIt's our people's way, Linda, you know that better than I do!LindaThen we can go with him.StephenYou know that's not allowed!ButtersWill somebody tell me what the frickity fookshmere is goin' on?!StephenButters, you've reached the age where you must journey to your birthplace for the ceremony of hapa noa.ButtersUhbu-but I'm from here.StephenNo. We moved here just before you started pre-school. You were born in our native land, Butters. [Walks to a bookshelf and grabs a scrapbook] A distant and very secluded island world called... Hava'i.ButtersWe're from Hawaii?Stephen[Sits on the sofa next to Butters. Linda sits to his left] Only haoles pronounce it Hawaii, Butters, but those of us from Hava'i are a very special people. We have many customs and traditions to keep our culture alive. [Opens the book and points some pictures out to him] We drink chi-chi's from the coconut. We eat poke that the Safeway provides. And when we've chosen a mate, we marry at the fern grotto, as your mother and I did so... very long ago. As a Stotch, Butters, you are actually Hawaiian royalty. Your grandma and grandpa were there at the time of the King. [Flips backwards a few pages and shows him a picture of Elvis Presley playing a ukulele with a picture of Diamondhead in the background.]ButtersBut what does being Hawaiian have to do with me acting like an emo chick on her period?StephenNot an emo chick on her period, Butters. Like a salmon needing to swim back upriver. All Hawaiians feel it. It is called "hapahui apahoha", and it means it's now your time to make your trip to our island home. You must do your walkabout to your homeland, Butters. And you must do it alone. [Linda stands up and starts crying. Stephen stands up and takes out his wallet] Take this, son. It is our Mahalo Rewards card. It will provide you with all you need. And now I must turn my back on you. [He turns his back to Butters. Linda weeps silently. Butters is speechless]The neighborhood park, day. The boys from the table are playing basketball, and Jimmy joins in. Kenny tosses the basketball at Kyle, who makes a shot, and Cartman runs up to them from the sidewalk. Stan catches the ballCartmanHoly shit balls! Holy shit balls! Guess what, you guys? Holy shit balls. [The other boys gather around him]KyleWhat?CartmanButters just got on a bus with his backpack and said he's going to Hawaii.StanHawaii?CartmanHe said he had to go back to his homeland, and then told me it was none of my business and to keep my fat mouth shut.KyleDude, what the hell? Somebody's gotta stop him.Stan[Turns to the basket] After all the things he said to us, he can go ahead. [Makes a shot at close range]KyleKenny, you're clearly his best friend. Go stop him.Kenny(I'm not his best friend.)CartmanYeah, Mr. Perfect, go rescue Butters so he can lick your balls some more. [Kenny sighs and walks away with his head down.]The airport, day. Kenny arrives and walks into the Alpha Air terminal. He sees Butters seated on a seat in an empty row, with two suitcases at his feet. He's sobbing. Kenny walks overKenny(Butters, come on.)ButtersThey won't let me on the plane. Why, I can't do anything right! [Kenny takes one suitcase and Butters' right hand, Butters takes the other suitcase, and they walk. Suddenly Butters stops and pulls his hand away] No, no! I have to go to Hawaii, Kenny! I have no idea what's waiting there for me, but I guh, I can't go on like this! [Kenny sighs, then takes Butters to the teller]Kenny(Excuse me, he needs to go to Hawaii.)TellerI already told him, I can't allow anyone on the aircraft who appears to be intoxicated.ButtersI'm not intoxicated, you skank! I'm just "deligerent" because of my hapanuanalua!Kenny(Please, could you just let him on the plane? It's really important. Please?)TellerTell you what: there's plenty of points on his Mahalo Rewards card. If you wanna fly with him, I can let him go.Kenny(Me?)ButtersCan't you see I'm in horrible pain?! Do you have any idea what-?!Kenny[Puts his hand over Butters mouth to shut him up] (Okay, okay! I'll go.) [Scene cuts to the plane flying towards Hawaii]Lihu'e Airport, Kaua'i, Runway B-5. The plane lands and Butters and Kenny enter the terminal. Butters has picked up his bagsButters[Slowly, as he looks around] Well, we're here, now what do I do? [Kenny points to the information officer nearby, and they walk to him]OfficerCan I help you with anything?ButtersUh yeah, I uh, I'm not sure where I'm supposed to go?OfficerOkay, were you with a cruise ship or land tour group?ButtersOh, ah, I'm not a tourist. I'm a native Hawaiian. [The officer just looks at him. A group of Americans approaches him]Blond ManButters Stotch?ButtersYeah?Blond ManWelcome home, young keiki. Your parents said you would be coming for your ceremony. [Notices Kenny] Ah- uh, who's this?ButtersOh thi-this is my friend, Kenny.Older WomanButters, native Hawaiians don't really approve of haoles coming to their ceremonies.ButtersOh please, i-if it weren't for him I couldn't have come.Blond ManVery well, we shall speak with the chief of our island and see. Come now. [Everyone leaves]En route to the chief, day. They go down the road, all packed into an SUV.ButtersYou folks are all native Hawaiians too?Older Man[Driving] Yes. My wife Patty and I have been coming to Kaua'i for almost five years, and Bill and Donna actually own a time share in Poipu.DonnaYes, but Poipu is getting pretty overrun with tourists, I'm afraid.Blond Man[Leans to the right, behind the older man] Let us eat.Older ManOh yea, let us eat. [They stop at Kuwahara Saimin's drive-through] Aloha, five order of saimin, please.ButtersWhat's "saimin"?PattyIt's one of the foods of our people.Older ManOh, I get 20% off, I'm a native. Here's my Mahalo Rewards card. [The cashier notes the card and takes the cash, the older man takes the food, and they're off.] Mahalo. [They soon find themselves behind a slow car with the passenger taking pictures of the scenery. The older man honks.] Come on, you frickin' tourist! Jesus, buy a post card! [Stops and points out a building] These are the ancient ruins of our ancestors. [It's the Coco Palms, long abandoned.] They say the spirit of the king is still in there.Blond ManYou must stay away from this place. It is kapu.Brunet ManKapu. that means "taboo", [points to Kenny] especially to haoles! [they drive off]Older ManUh that there is Bubba's Burgers. [Scene shows Bubba's Burgers] In Havai'i us natives say "Bubba's Bruk". [they pass by a big hotel] Here's the Sheraton, just another megahotel for the throngs of tourists. Here's where many of us natives live. The Sheraton Residences. [A gated community is shown. The Older Man flashes his Mahalo Rewards card to the guard] It's all right, we're natives. [The guard opens the gate and lets them in. They arrive at the chief's residence and step out to talk to him] Protector and Chief, I present to you the keiki, Butters Stotch.ChiefAh, Stephen and Linda's child. Last time I saw you, you were the size of a coconut. Who's the haole?Kenny's room at the Residences, night. He sits by the open window with a lit candle, a pencil and a sheet of paper. He begins to write.KennyMy dearest friends,:I am living amongst the natives in the remote and tiny island of Kava'i. What can I tell you of this mysterious island and its people? It is a place of wonder, and yet to the outsider like me, a place of odd tradition. The people here are peaceful and joyous, and seem to care little for the rush and worry of the outside world. Their diet is mostly an odd mixture of coconut milk, pineapple juice, and vodka, which they call the chi-chi. As for Butters, he is quickly learning the ways of his ancestors, and seems to be feeling better with every passing day. He still seems quite angry at times, but luckily his ceremony will finally take place on the morrow.As he writes, the following scenes are shown: First, the Safeway supermarket. The people greet each other with a fist, with pinky and thumb extended. Next, three kids are playing in a pool while Donna enjoys her chi-chi and the older couple sit on chaise longues in the background. Next, Kenny is at the bar order a chi-chi. Next, Butters learns how to play bocce ball. Next, Stan reads the letter to Cartman and KyleStan[reading the letter] "On the morrow"? What the fuck is wrong with Kenny?KennyTo wit, I have found nothing wrong with this remote place, and I must admit it will be with some melancholy that I will leave this island and return home.

I saw this chick in a bikini on the beach too. She had the nicest boobs ever. Humbly yours, Kenneth.

A luau, day. All the natives are in line for lunch before the ceremony begins. Butters stands on a platform before the chief while Kenny watches onChiefIn the time-honored traditions of our ancestors, we honor the native Hawaiian Butters Stotch with his hapa noa. [everyone cheers and and woman slips a necklace onto his neck] The shark-tooth necklace represents your connection to our island. [a horn blower comes in with a conch shell and blows into it... badly] Now drink the chi-chi! [Patty walks over with a glass of it and gives it to Butters, who begins to drink it through a straw.]Butters[turns right and coughs, then] Whoa, it's like gasoline!ChiefDrink, young keiki, and you will feel the last of your aggression melt away.Butters[Finishes the rest of the drink, then stumbles just a little bit and smiles] Hey, uh now I do feel butter, uh better.ChiefO spirits of ancestors, we ask that you bless this native Hawaiian with his hapa noa! We ask that you-Blond Man[runs in] Listen! [climbs onto a table] Listen everyone! I have terrible, horrible news!ChiefDo you realize that you are interrupting a hapa noa?Blond ManI've just come from the front office! The Mahalo Rewards card is... [chokes]ChiefWhat?! What has happened? Speak!Blond ManThe Mahalo Rewards card is being eliminated! They're trying to say our points are... are... no longer going to be accepted.Chief[Rises from his chair and walks to his left] I knew one day it would come to this.PattyTo what? What does this mean?ChiefThe haoles are trying to do away with us.Resident 1With no rewards program, there will be no distinction between who's a native to this island and who isn't!Resident 2Why can't you people respect our island? Why do you always want nore?!ChiefI'm sorry keiki, your hapa noa will have to wait! For we must unite together as never before! It is time to show the haoles that this is our island! [this draws cheers from everyone]A seaside golf course, day. A cruise ship is some distance from the shore when it blows its horn. A group of natives stand by their golf ballsChief[Yelling at the ship] Stop ruining our island, haoles! FIRE! [The natives fire away into the ocean. Some of the golf balls land in the water, some of them reach the ship]First MateWhat are they doing? [The passengers are being pelted with golf balls.]Chief[Walks over to Butters and gives him a club] Take a swing! Let them know they are not welcome!ButtersI've never done this before. [Gets into position]ChiefIt's all right. Just try to tap into that anger that's inside you.ButtersAim... my anger! Stupid [Swings successfully] Ben Affleck! [The golf ball sails through the air and enters the bridge, smashing through the window and the captain's binoculars. The first mate shrieks] Waaah! [The captain stumbles onto a controller and breaks it with sheer momentum. The ship begins to pitch back and sink. Passengers begin to tumble towards the water. Butters is dumbfounded. The ship breaks in two]ManHold on! [The golf club just falls out of Butters' left hand] Hold on!WomanOh I can't! I can't! I can't hold on!ManI love you! I love you!WomanNo! I love you! I love you back! [The ship vanishes below the water]Breaking NewsAnnouncerThis is breaking news!AnchorAn insurrection in the Hawaiian Islands has escalated to war! After sinking a cruise ship, the natives of Kauai continue to go berserk, forcing all tourists off their island.Man 1They just pushed us onto airplanes and said we weren't welcome anymore!Woman 1Then a little boy called me a skank.Anchor[A picture of Barack Obama appears over his shoulder] The President says he will send the Coast Guard to take the island back, though he sympathizes, being a native Hawaiian himself. [Thinks about it for a second] Hm.The ceremonial plaza, day.ChiefAre all the tourists gone from our island?Resident 3All but a few who are hiding out at Duke's Restaurant. We sent Bob and Trisha Turner to smoke them out.Resident 4What about him?Kenny(What about me?)Resident 4He's a tourist and he knows everything! We have to kill him!Butters[Jumps in front of Kenny to shield him] No! Kenny's my friend! He's the only kid at school I actually like, you buncha jerks!ChiefBe careful young keiki, your anger still controls you because we were not able to finish the ceremony. Perhaps we should finish it now.Resident 4Finish his ceremony?! We are at war, David! I have lived on this island for ten years. Ten years! Every July and part of August! And I can tell you all that what we are about to face from the haoles is nothing short of genocide!Resident 5He's right, David. We can't trust any tourists.ButtersHe won't betray us! Will you, Kenny?!Kenny(No, I'm not going to fucking betray anybody!)Resident 6Then let him prove himself! Trial by opahika'a!Chief DavidHe's only a child!Resident 4If he wants to be one of us, then he must face the challenge!Chief DavidVery well. [The horn blower, Resident 5, returns to blow the conch shell]On the bank of a river flowing by the Residences, day. David and Butters are there with the rest of the residents in the background, and Kenny is...Blond ManThis isn't right! He's not a native! He's gonna get killed!ButtersKenny, be careful!Chief DavidQuiet. He must face this challenge alone. [Kenny is on a surfboard on the river using a small paddle to get somewhere]Resident 1By the gods! Perhaps he has the heart of a native after all!Resident 4He still has yet to make the turn! [Kenny reaches a buoy in the middle of the river and paddles around it, then makes his way back to the riverbank.]ResidentsHohhh!Resident 7[A little tipsy from his drink] That's pretty good. [Kenny slows down, then loses his balance and falls into the river]Kenny(Whoops!)ButtersKenny!ResidentsAwwwww. [A second later they all turn away and leave. Butters stays at the riverbank.]Resident 4[To another Resident] I told you a haole couldn't do it!Chief DavidDid you make the turn your first try? Did any of us? [Kenny pops up behind them and floats down the river]Resident 8[A woman, walks up to Butters] Don't worry, Butters, your friend will find a way back to his kind. The gods will protect him. [She extends her left hand and guides him away]Kenny looks downriver and sees a waterfall. He panics and quickly dog paddles away from it, but the current overwhelms him and he goes over. He bumps into several rocks, each bigger than the last, on his way down, head firstSmith's Tropical Paradise, day. David has assembled the residents into this building and now talks to themChief DavidWe have called for this great meeting because if we are to survive this war, all the native Hawaiian tribes must join as one!Resident 9We're not joining the people of the Hyatt Grand Vacations! They have no rights to call themselves natives!Vacationer 1Oh and you do?! Your ancestors came on an airplane six months ago! Our ancestors sailed here! On a cruise ship! Nine months ago!Chief DavidLook, if we are to fight the haoles, we have to allow all natives to stay!CanyonerIt doesn't matter how many tribes we have, we can't win! We are but a few against the haole's military might! We may have passion, but passion does not win wars!Chief DavidOh no? Come up here, keiki. Come on. [Butters gets on stage with David] This child sunk a cruise ship by himself! Tell them keiki. [Hands the mic to Butters]ButtersWell I don't know about the rest of ya, but I'm sick and tired of bein' pushed around all the time! I came all the way down here for my hapa noa ceremony, and I can't even have it, 'cause the fucking haoles have to ruin everything!Resident 9Yeah!Vacationer 1Screw them!ButtersWell if you ask me, the only good haole is a dead haole! With a, with a stick up his butthole, and his wiener cut off! Rraahhhh!Chief DavidLet us make a pact with more chi-chis!Resident 10[goes to serve himself some more chi-chi from the barrels, but finds there isn't any] Um, we're... we're out of chi-chis.Resident 11Oh, right, we've closed off all the ports.Resident 12But they're still letting vodka through, right? Uh... they can't cut off our chi-chis.Chief David...Oh my God.Downriver, day. Kenny crawls onto the riverbank, coughs, and looks up. He's across the road from Coco Palms. He stands up and walks towards it. He looks around and heads in, but first waits for a bunch of bats to fly out of the cavernous entrance. Meanwhile, offshore, the U.S. Coast Guard shows up in force to deal with the nativesCaptainThis is the U.S. Coast Guard! We have instructions to take you by force, if necessary!Chief David[heading up a large group of natives] Ready? Fire! [the natives fire off their golf balls, but none of them have any effect on the Coast Guard]Captain[Lowers his binoculars, then flatly] Fire. [The ships' guns fire away and decimate many of the natives]Chief DavidArm the bocce balls! [Surviving natives arm bocce balls into slingshots stretched between palm trees. One of them lands on the main ship with a heavy thud]CaptainGod damn it.Chief DavidKeep fighting! Stand your ground!Resident 4We can't fight without chi-chis!Chief DavidYou can and you MUST!Butters[He has six golf balls in front of him and he hits each one towards the Coast Guard] Stupid! Greedy! Haoles! Kill! Them! All!Kenny walks through the Coco Palms, which is dark and spooky. A voice is soon heard, and Kenny stops in his tracks. He turns and runs away, but steps onto a patch covering a hole on the floor and falls in. He recovers and looks up to see the shining ghost of Elvis Presley. He beckons Kenny to follow him, mumbling just like Kenny does.The KingCome on, come on. [Mumbles a few more things as they walk towards a door. Elvis stops and pulls a lever, and a wall rises to reveal loads of absolute vodka, pineapple juice, coconut milk, and macadamia nut liqueur, all the ingredients needed for chi-chis. Elvis walks up to the doorway and motions to Kenny] You know what chi-chis are, right?The Residences, day, on the ceremonial plaza, Chief David admits defeatChief DavidListen everyone, we gave it all we had. It's over. We must go down to Nowiliwili Harbor, and surrender to the American government.Butters[Runs onto the plaza] Surrender?! No, the heck with that!Resident 4We can't hold out here any longer!ButtersWell I won't do it, you hear me?! I'm not licking anybody's... testes!Chief DavidYoung keiki, try to control your anger.ButtersNo! This is our home! And I'm sick of everyone who thinks they're better than me just 'cause they've got good looks, and just 'cause, even after massacring Daredevil, they happen to come back and hit a home run that everyone likes! You shouldn't be able to be good-looking and be with Jennifer Lopez and be a good director! [Turns around and walks away] All right all right fine! Argo is a good movie! There, I admitted it! I told people that it didn't hold up, but it holds up god darn it! Ben Affleck has everything, GRAGH!Resident 13Everyone! Look, I say! [Everyone comes to see, and it's Kenny coming back with a raft full of absolute vodka, pineapple juice, coconut milk, and macadamia nut liqueur. Everyone cheers him on]Resident 14The haole did it!KennyMy dear friends of the mainland,:What adventures I have found on the tiny island of Kava'i. I have truly become one with the natives, who found new courage to fight their oppressors.Chief DavidWe are not surrendering today! Go back and tell your leaders that we will fight them until the end! [Everyone cheers]CaptainYou people just don't give up, do ya?KennyThe American government finally gave in to the natives and had the Mahalo Rewards cards reinstated. Our two cultures, it appears, will once again live in peace.Everyone cheers, even the Coast Guard captainKennyWith the war at an end, our Butters is able to have his hapa noa ceremony. And with any help from the gods, become his old cheery self again.The hapa noa ceremony, day. Butters will finally become a full-fledged member of his tribeChief DavidAnd so it is with great honor that we recognize these two natives with their hapa noa. Take your cards, boys. [Two women come up and give them their cards] Apuiloa hapnanoaha! Hapa'a'a hohaaa! [Resident 5 returns to blow the conch shell a third time.] It's finally over, young keiki. Is your anger at rest?Butters[He thinks for a moment] Yeah, I guess so. Except it still doesn't change the fact that Ben Affleck gets to be handsome, talented, and then gets to go home and kiss Jennifer Lopez.Resident 15Ben Affleck isn't with Jennifer Lopez anymore, he's married to Jennifer Gardner.ResidentsYeah, it's true, uh huh.ButtersWhat? Really? But I thought I was totally jealous of him. He's just married to Jennifer Gardner? Oh my God, I feel so much better. [smiles with relief]Kenny(You do?)ButtersYeah, ogh, I like that Ben Affleck guy. He's a good filmmaker. Come on, Kenny, I guess I owe the kids at school an apology. [He and Kenny walk off into the sunset] Did you see Argo, Kenny? It's a pretty good movie. Ben Affleck has a lot goin' for him. Not everything, but a lot. Whoopie!

#long post

10 notes · View notes

buginateacup · 4 years

Text

@dalniente I’m making a new post for this

So based off our previous conversation I’m reposting this thing separately because I went for a walk and words started percolating and now I have three pages written already and there would be SO MUCH PINING. Because of course they cant be married they just need to get an annulment there’s no way this could ever, would ever work between them...right?

Original idea below based on the idea that Roxanne bills Megamind for destroyed shoes and clothing for the last seven years

Just Megamind looking over this list Roxanne’s presented him with and just going “Minion fetch the piggy bank!” and just smashing it open to hand her a diamond or something! And then being like, “Wait no that ones flawed you need something better...aha!” and hands her a better diamond on a ring instead (my brain escalates these things. Its what it does) and Roxanne just boggles and throws it back at him shouting “I wanted to get my shoes replaced not for you to ask me to marry you!”

“I wasn’t asking you to marry me!” Megamind did not think this through he’s panicking and Roxanne is looking furious and elsewhere in Metro Wayne Scott’s superhearing just heard the words “Marry me” and yes finally things are happening its about time.

“Well good!” Roxanne should not open her big mouth when she’s angry this is utterly humiliating why did she even mention marriage of course he wasn't proposing he doesn't even like her. This was the worst idea ever she just wanted to not have to worry about the blisters from breaking in another pair of shoes when she’d rather pay attention to the giant spiderbot or talk to him about how the brain-bots AI works.

“No. Not good! Not good at all!” You handed her a ring you mega-idiot what else would she think! This is nothing like the occasional hours weeks years of daydreams he’s absolutely never had ever in his life that she would say yes. That she would ever want to marry him. This is the worst this is the absolute worst “As if that’s the kind of ring I’d ever propose to you with!”

“EXACTL- wait what?” He’s thought about a ring? He’s thought about a ring specifically for her? That is not a normal thing. That is something people only consider when things get really serious. Why has he thought about a ring for her?

“What?” You just...keep making it worse for yourself don’t you Megamind. “Of course I wouldn’t propose to you with some possibly cursed ring! You deserve sapphires as blue as your eyes!”

“And you deserve emeralds to match yours!” Oh my god Roxanne shut up shut up shut up, “ Why are you giving me a cursed ring!”

“Possibly! Possibly cursed!” Ahahahahaha help oh evil gods help, “Any ring I did propose to you with would be 100% not cursed! Emerald cut sapphire in a platinum band framed by baguette cut diamonds!”

“See now that sounds like a ring I would be happy to accept!” Stop talking Roxanne please, please try and get out of this with some shred of dignity left.

“Fantastic! I’ll make it for you tonight!” Oh no.

“Wonderful! I cant wait to wear it!” Oh fuck.

“Brilliant! Are we engaged now?” Of all the ways Megamind’s plans have backfired over the years he never imagined an outcome like this...

“Yes! I don’t know!...I guess? Sure! Fine!” Roxanne wonders if this is what it feels like when one of his plans goes awry...

And then we have two options, the first where the shouting continues...

“Thank the evil gods because I have been in love with you for years!” and Megamind storms towards Roxanne and pulls her into his arms

“Well good because I love you too!” and she wraps her arms around him and...

well...

turns out billing your supervillain for damages is a great idea after all.

And the Second which is much funnier...

They are not engaged. Definitely not. Today has just been a shared hallucination and they are going to go home and never speak of this again.

And this is about to get really funny or really terrible but they’ve finally stopped shouting at each other and they’re just looking at one another and Roxanne sort of sways and Megamind sort of sways and...

And Minion is suddenly there hugging them both and is just so ecstatic that neither of them have the heart to tell him that its all a big misunderstanding (is it?) and they’re not really engaged (are they?) but sure he can make Roxanne’s dress so they can get him out of the room for ten minutes while they actually work out how to tell him this was a mistake....

And then Metro Man flies in like “I’m so happy you two crazy kids finally worked this out!” And Megamind and Roxanne are both just...freaking and Wayne is going on and on about how much he wants to help plan the wedding and Roxanne says the first thing she can think of to not get roped into a Scott Family Event with a capital E and blurts out “We’re eloping!”

“We are? I mean yes! We are! Absolutely!“ Megamind agrees. They can get in the invisible car and just drive until they figure this out or until they run off a cliff whichever will be easier

(the cliff is currently winning)

“Oh great!” says the oblivious Wayne Scott who is just so, so happy for these two, “I’ll fly you down to Vegas right now!”

And he does. With Megamind and Roxanne in one arm and Minion in the other and Roxanne and Megamind have no way of communicating without the others catching on so they are just exchanging these panicked glances and then blushing because holy fuck why is this happening this was not the plan and before they know it they’re standing in front of an Elvis impersonator saying “I do” and Minion is throwing confetti shaped like brain-bots and Wayne is crying and Megamind and Roxanne managed to get a whole five minutes to themselves before the wedding to be like “Okay this is insane but we just get divorced later right? How hard can it be? We’re a damsel and super-villain no one will be surprised when it doesn't work out” (no matter how much they each privately might want it to).

That kiss though...that is really something.

They share a honeymoon suite with the works (courtesy of Wayne). Flowers, chocolate, champagne, his n hers bathrobes. It is extremely awkward. (except the bit I just wrote with body chocolate which, omg) There is only one bed and it is the size of a small continent and they still wind up accidentally tangled together the next morning.

But its fine. Its absolutely fine. There’s a divorce register in the hotel lobby exactly for these kind of situations. No one is even going to know.

Except Wayne flies back to Metro with Minion and they make a big delighted announcement so when Megamind and Roxanne do show back up (the Divorce register opens late on Sundays and they had to check out by ten. The universe really must have it in for them or something). The whole city knows.

And is actually pretty happy for them.

Apparently there had been a pool.

(Carlos, Roxanne’s doorman, won if you’re interested)

Okay fine, they can pretend for a while. Figure out some way for Megamind to go back to villainy and for Roxanne to go back to being kidnapped. This isn’t going to backfire at all.

Only Roxanne goes back to her apartment (alone) to have the panic attack she’s been pushing back for the last 36 hours, to find removalists on site and a representative from the city explaining seeing as she’s no longer the Metro City damsel she’s not entitled to remain in her lovely open living giant balcony apartment she’s been living in for the last seven years that the city has been subsidising her rent on.

Roxanne’s apartment is was very nice and extremely expensive. More than she can afford on her own. So she puts her stuff in storage, packs a bag and hunts down the Evil Lair. And she walks in like “Hi Husband. I live here now I guess.” (please don’t throw me out can I stay? Can I stay forever?)

And Megamind who has been contemplating cutting off his own finger rather than trying to remove the ring he’s still wearing, sees her walking in with a bag, still wearing that awful (possibly cursed) ring and just...

Right.

Okay then.

Hi wife, please stay and never leave but of course we cant be married what were we thinking and now we have to keep this a secret from Minion except we live with Minion and he’s going to be very concerned if you ask for a separate bedroom and I guess I’m a superhero now which means you’ll be getting kidnapped by other villains and that is NOT OKAY AT ALL and there will definitely be a “That’s my wife!” moment and no one understands why I look so absolutely gobsmacked when you kiss me on live tv after I rescue you and you tell me you love me but oh of course it was for the cameras it wasn't real

SO MUCH ANGST AND PINING

...

This is a problem they can solve...somehow

Except now they’re stuck married and living together and all of Megamind’s uncles are asking when he’s going to bring their new niece in law to visit. and there is so much PINING because they each think the other doesn't want to be married except they sorta want to and ugh...

---------------

Roxanne woke up in the middle of the bed, one leg twisted around someone else’s and the taste of chocolate still in her mouth.

This is not her bed.

Did she hook up with someone?

There is someone snuggled close behind her breathing softly. She can feel a lean chest bare against her back and is that a goatee pressed against her shoulder?

Roxanne opened her eyes and looked down blearily. there was an arm around her waist, pulling her back against the body behind her. She has her fingers tangled in the other persons hand. There's something about the arm. She squinted in the early morning light.

Its blue

Well

That’s okay that’s just Megamind then. Roxanne closed her eyes and snuggled backwards a little. The arm around her waist tightened and the lips on her shoulder pressed a sleepy kiss against her skin.

...Wait

That's Megamind.

Roxanne's eyes shot open. She pulled her hand and the one she was holding up to the light. Definitely blue. Long fingers and square palms and definitely not human.

And there are rings

There is one ceramic zirconium band in dark grey and a large (possibly cursed) diamond ring on the ring fingers of each of their hands.

Why is she in bed with Megamind and why are there rings and oh god she just remembered everything.

Very carefully she laid their joined hands back over her waist and hoped desperately that she can just fall asleep again and not deal with this.

She can feel the moment Megamind wakes up. A whole body shudder goes through him from his feel up to his head and he shakes into full alertness.

"Oh evil gods"

She felt him roll onto his back and press his hands over his face. But her hand is still tangled in his so he winds up pulling her on top of him instead.

And Roxanne panics and flails and rolls over as well until she is lying on top of

...her husband

He's her husband.

He's her husband and he's awake and she's awake and he's looking up at her with brilliant green eyes the colour of emeralds and she sees the recognition dawning and she wants to kiss him, wants to say "hi", wants to say "want to stay married?", wants to say "what if this wasn't a mistake?" but what comes out is "We should get divorced."

#fake married #megamind #vegas wedding #dal is a fanfic #bug is writing a thing #help somebody please #rings #is a working title #I keep writing the same scenes as sweet and then as painful painful angst

18 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 3 years

Text

Marvel’s Loki Episode 3: MCU Easter Eggs and References

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains Marvel’s Loki episode 3 spoilers.

Marvel’s Loki episode 3 is a big one. It’s the first episode of the series to spend the entirety of its runtime outside of the TVA offices, the first where we get to spend a substantial amount of time with the mysterious Sylvie, and the coolest visit to an extraterrestrial location we’ve had in the MCU since Avengers: Endgame.

It’s a big one, and there’s lots of cool MCU things you might have missed, or might not know about from the pages of Marvel Comics…and more!

Here’s what we found in Marvel’s Loki episode 3.

Lamentis

The planet Lamentis was introduced in the pages of Annihilation: Conquest Prologue (the very story that established the modern incarnation of the Guardians of the Galaxy). It exists on the outer rim of the Kree empire and is filled with scavengers trying to gather scarce resources via force. The Phyla-Vell version of Quasar and Moondragon were there to help keep the peace, mainly protecting a sect of pacifist priests from those who would take their stuff.

But to be clear, the events of Loki episode 3 take place on Lamentis-1, a moon of Lamentis, and it’s the planet itself that is breaking up and crashing into the moon, not the other way around.

Interestingly, while the lighting choices for this episode were most definitely a very specific story choice (more on that in a minute), it’s also in keeping with the way Lamentis was colored in its only comic book appearance.

Sylvie, Lady Loki, The Enchantress

We don’t get a TON of clarity on the nature of Sophia Di Martino’s Loki variant, but despite her “Sylvie” name, the balance is tipping further in the direction of her being a true “Lady Loki” and not strictly the Sylvie Lushton version of Enchantress from Marvel Comics (we wrote more about this confusing distinction here).

That being said, she’s not NOT Sylvie/Enchantress, either! It seems that Sylvie is indeed a variant Loki (recent merchandise reveals have officially shown that she is “Sylvie Laufeydottir” (as opposed to “Loki Laufeyson”) so that’s another sign that she’s truly a variant of our Loki. For some reason (probably a good one) she doesn’t want to be known as a Loki anymore, hence “Sylvie,” and she does use enchantments as a primary power, hence “Enchantress.”

So the answer here is still “yes” to any of these questions, but we’re leaning on the simplest explanation being the correct one: she’s a Loki variant, and in true MCU fashion they’re just mashing up other elements of mythology from the comics to make a cool new character.

There’s also some serious Moonlighting energy between the hedonistic Loki and the more serious and on-mission Sylvie all through this episode, but we’re wondering how many of you are even old enough to remember Moonlighting, and that is depressing.

The Loki/Enchantress-appropriate green tie-dye that Sylvie is rocking in the bar “flashback” is pretty cool, but not an Easter egg. But maybe we should bring tie-dye back this summer.

Loki is Bisexual

The “bisexual lighting” that Lamentis is bathed in throughout the entirety of the episode is no accident, as it’s revealed that both Loki and Sylvie are bisexual. Loki director Kate Herron spoke briefly about this reveal on Twitter, as well:

From the moment I joined @LokiOfficial it was very important to me, and my goal, to acknowledge Loki was bisexual. It is a part of who he is and who I am too. I know this is a small step but I’m happy, and heart is so full, to say that this is now Canon in #mcu #Loki 💗💜💙 pic.twitter.com/lz3KJbewx8

— Kate Herron (@iamkateherron) June 23, 2021

As far as we can tell, in terms of the comics, Loki’s bisexuality first came up in Young Avengers #15. After saving the world and getting a bit of a pep talk from Prodigy, a late-teen incarnation of Loki hit on his teammate for the sake of celebration, but was ultimately turned down.

“My culture doesn’t really share your concept of sexual identity,” Loki said in that issue. “There are sexual acts, that’s it. I’m actually the patron god of certain popular ones, believe it or not.” (some very cursory research fails to confirm that last point, which would really be perfectly in keeping for Loki to lie about)

“Another!”

When partying up on the train, Loki smashes his empty glass and excitedly asks for another. This is exactly what his brother does in the first Thor movie after enjoying a cup of coffee at a diner. It’s an Asgardian custom!

The Songs

The song that opens the episode is “Demons” by Hayley Kiyoko, which also includes some potentially Loki-specific lines as “Please forgive me, I’ve got demons in my head, tryin’ to eat me, tryin’ to feed me lies until I’m dead.”

The song that closes the episode is “Dark Moon,” a 1957 country hit by Bonnie Guitar (there are other versions, including a rare one by Elvis Presley and a really cool one by Chris Isaak for the soundtrack of the very cool and underrated A Perfect World, but the version here is Bonnie’s). It’s a little on-the-nose with the events happening on Lamentis, but also features haunting lyrics that may hint at something more: “Mortals have dreams of love’s perfect schemes, but they don’t realize that love will sometimes bring a…Dark Moon.”

Does anyone know the name of the song that Loki sings while he’s “full?” If so, please let us know in the comments!

The TVA

The mobile devices that TVA agents use to navigate through timelines are given a name in this episode: TemPads.

We get a couple more bits of important TVA context this episode. The first is that apparently the Time Keepers reside at the top floor accessible by a golden elevator in the TVA offices. When Hunter C-20 said she “gave up the location” of the Time Keepers last week, who could have expected the answer to be so simple?

Additionally, Sylvie reveals at episode’s end that all TVA employees had a life prior to joining the TVA. In fact, every TVA worker was at some point a Variant just like Loki and Sylvie. This directly contradicts Miss Minutes’ claim that the TVA employees were created by the Time Keepers to police the Sacred Timeline. This may mean that Mobius was also lying to Loki about the nature of TVA agents…UNLESS…in the comics, Mobius was one of many Mobiuses, because the TVA engaged in “managerial cloning” for their best representatives, while employing “freelancers” for other work. Perhaps Mobius was telling Loki his truth, while Sylvie’s theory about the Variants being conscripted into service as Minutemen is ALSO true.

During the end credits, there’s a collection of TVA file photos on a desk, showing Loki and Sylvie together. Apparently, they’re getting their images from their exploits from Lamentis-1, as one photo is specifically Loki as a train guard. Looks like these two aren’t as hidden from the authorities as they realized.

Miscellaneous Time Variants

Funny enough, the shot of Loki landing after being thrown out of the train is framed to look exactly like when Loki fell out of Doctor Strange’s portal in Thor: Ragnarok.

The two soldiers at the entrance to the train are called Corporal Hicks and Private Hudson which is a neat nod to Michael Biehn and Bill Paxton’s characters in Aliens!

The guards on Lamentis look kind of like they’re wearing Cobra uniforms, don’t they?

There’s a serious Snowpiercer vibe to that “rich folks getting on a train to escape a natural disaster/apocalypse while the poor are left to suffer and die.” Wait, that is actually a real life vibe, too.

If episode 2 was a police procedural, this episode is very much “peak TV,” right down to its use of an obscure needledrop to end the episode coming out of an elaborate “one take” action sequence. Daredevil no longer has a monopoly on those in Marvel TV, it would seem.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Spot something we missed? Let us know in the comments!

The post Marvel’s Loki Episode 3: MCU Easter Eggs and References appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3xLb0W9

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

1 note · View note

flowerpowell · 5 years

Text

Meet-Cute (Drake x MC)

PART SIX

A/N: Part six is here! Thank you so much for your patience! I hope you’ll like it (and you’ll like the addition of certain characters...). I’d love to hear your feedback! As always, the chracters belong to Pixelberry.

Rating: PG-16

Word count: 1552

Tagging: @agent-bossypants @mysteli @gardeningourmet @annekebbphotography @mymandrake @butindeed @walkerduchess @brightpinkpeppercorn @choicessa @violinist3212 @blackcatkita @jlouise88 @innerpostmentality @tmarie82 @darley1101 @littleeeepeach @ooo-barff-ooo @sleepwalkingelite @traeumerinwitzhelden @jovialyouthmusic @nikkis1983 @notoriouscs @melodyofgraves @zaffrenotes @fluffy-marshmallow-heart @rhymesmenagerie @emichelle @drakesroyalromance @drakewalkerisreal @mrsnazariowritesagain @furiousherringoperatortoad @lynne1993 @drakesensworld @iplaydrake @thequeenofcronuts @confessionsofabrokegirl @carabeth @ao719 @gibbles82 @be-still-my-aching-heart @symonde @lovedrakewalker @choices97 @fromthedeskofpaisleybleakmore @ladyangel70 @dcbbw ♥

Riley had been pacing back and forth in front of Drake’s office for over ten minutes. She knew he wouldn’t like the idea, he would definitely hate it. She knew it and she didn’t even want to tell him anything. But the day had finally come and he would find out sooner or later. Taking one last deep breath, she knocked on the door and heard “come in,” from inside.

“Hey,” Drake smiled seeing her in the doorway. She closed the door and in a second he was right next to her, planting a kiss on her lips.

“Whoaa, getting bold I see. Not afraid someone will catch us?” she teased and he laughed.

“No, my office is completely safe from prying eyes.”

She wanted to say something back, tease him more but the realization of what she had to tell him ruined the mood. He noticed the change on her face and looked so tenderly into her eyes that she almost broke down right in front of him.

“Hey... is something wrong?” Drake asked concerned, gently rubbing her cheek with his thumb.

“I might have done something stupid. No... not stupid, but you will think it’s stupid...”

“I’m getting nervous, what did you do?”

“I...asked a private detective to come here and help us with this whole Cordonia situation. To help us uncover Justin’s scheme and prove you innocent.”

His jaw dropped. Without looking at her, he went back to his desk and sat on his chair, his back facing Riley.

“And umm... he’s coming today. Actually, I just got a message from Nadia that they’re almost here but they made a pit stop because Amy, Nadia’s cousin wanted some fries.”

He turned to her immediately, confusion and anger written on his face. “Nadia is coming? And her cousin? With the detective? What the--”

“Damien is a really good friend of Nadia and Amy. And we haven’t seen each other in so long so she wanted to come too,” she explained sheepishly.

Drake stood up and straightened himself. “So let me get this straight. You contacted a detective, without consulting me, told him my story, without my permission, and let him solve a case that is none of your damn business?”

“I--” she stuttered in surpirse. She knew Drake wouldn’t like it but she didn’t expect him to be so mad.

“I think you should go now, Brooks.”

“Drake...”

“Do I need to call security?”

“If it as effective as in Cordonia then I’m not really afraid,” she shrugged but quickly recomposed herself. “Drake, please, talk to him. They can help us!”

“Go. Away.”

“Drake... I’m sorry I did it without talking to you first but I knew you would’ve said no and I think that’s our chance to--”

“Our chance to what? To get killed? And kill your friends in the process? You know nothing, Riley. Nothing. You left everything and you never cared so stop pretending you do now!”

Feeling that the tears started welling up in her eyes, she quickly ran out of the office, staight to her room, where she waited for her friends to come.

~~~~

“SPENCER!!!” Nadia threw herself on Riley the second she opened the door. They almost fell on the floor but luckily, Riley managed to balance them.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m just so excited to see you!!” Nadia squealed with joy as she pulled her friend into yet another hug. Behind her, Riley saw a man and a woman looking at each other and shrugging at the sight in front of them.

“Okay, so everyone, this is Spencer, errr, Riley, err, I mean, what do you want us to call you?”

“Whatever you prefer but Riley is fine,” Riley smiled nervously.

“Okay, so this is Ri, Ri, this is Amy, my cousin,” she gestured a tall woman with a beautiful purple ombre hair. Riley wanted to shake her hand but Amy pulled in a hug too.

“And this is Damien Elvis Nazario, the greatest PI known to the humanity, a gentle soul with some grumpiness inside, fantastic friend and--”

“Okay Nadia, that’s enough,” the man in brown jacket interrupted her, “I’m Damien, the detective.” He extended his hand to her and she shook it.

“It’s so nice to meet you all, take a seat,” she let them in and closed the door. While Amy and Damien took their seats, Nadia stayed behind.

“Where’s Drake? Aren’t we investigating his case?” she asked making sure no one could hear them. Riley sighed.

“We got into a fight when I told him you guys were coming. He thought it was too dangerous and it was a stupid idea.”

“What? Do you want me to talk to him?”

“No,” Riley chuckled, “I will later. We have a case to solve now.”

When they joined the rest, Damien took out his laptop and notebook.

“Okay, so from what I’ve gathered, Drake is assumed to have killed Liam, the King, right? And Drake would never do that, correct?”

“Of course he wouldn’t!” Riley raised her voice.

“I just needed to ask. I believe in facts, not in what people say. Drake left a day after Liam’s assasination because Liam’s bodyguard told him he is suspected, right? How are we sure it wasn’t a suicide?”

“Liam would never! He was a mess at that time but he loved that country! He would do everything to protect it!” Riley started having doubts. Maybe Drake was right after all...

“We can’t cross this possibily off yet. But back to Cordonia. After Drake left, Justin turned out to be Anton and a decree that in case of King’s death, he becomes a King, was found? Why did Anton changed his name then?”

“Apparently because he didn’t care about the crown and wanted to find a regular job. And after the decree was found he decided he’ll sacrifice his freedom and will become the King to all Cordonians.” Riley shrugged. “But I don’t believe that. I know he did all of this.”

“And who found Liam dead?”

“I don’t know that. I think a guard that informed Bastien straight away.”

“And Liam’s funeral?”

“Was a private ceremony, however, the television was there when they put the coffin in the crypt. Justin told then he was after Drake for killing the King.”

“Hmm, okay. And everyone willingly believed that King’s best friend would do that?”

She shrugged, “I don’t know, probably not but Justin was my press secretary, he can manipulate everyone into thinking what he wants them to think.”

“So, Drake has fled. Liam was killed. Olivia is missing. How convinient. Where’s Hana and Maxwell though?”

“I think they’re hiding. Drake never called them cause it would be to dangerous so we don’t know for sure.”

“I tried to do some googling,” Amy interjected, “but Cordonia seems like a paradise and everyone loves the King. I once found a negative comment but it was deleted within a day.”

“Of course. Anton controls the Internet in Cordonia as well. Which is weird considering he claims he became a King fairly.” Damien noted something in the file.

“Cause he didn’t. And everyone knows that but they’re probably too afraid to say anything.”

“Give a me second to go through everything again and we’ll figure our next move,” Damien said while flipping through the pages of his notebook and comparing something on his laptop.

“I love it when you’re in your detective mode,” Amy teased him and Riley could see Damien’s blushed cheeks. Ah these two are so clearly in love... Makes me miss Drake even more. I wish he--

A sudden knock on the door startled her as she walked to the door and opened it.

“I thought about what you said,” Drake started slowly, “and I think we might give it a try. If we’re careful.”

In response, Riley quickly pulled in a hug and kissed him passionately. When they parted, Drake broke into a grin and Riley finally felt she could breathe again.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you, Riley. I was shocked but I’m glad you still care. Forgive me?”

“I already did, Drake,” she kissed him again and took his hand, leading him into the living room.

“Everyone, this is Drake, Drake this is Nadia, Amy and Damien.”

Drake shook everyone’s hand, dodging Nadia’s hug.

“Nice to meet you, Drake. I’ve heard a lot about you and I hope together we can solve that mystery,” Damien smiled lighly but Drake only rolled his eyes.

“I would say likewise but I’m not a liar.”

“Drake!” Riley nudged him, suddenly embarassed by his bluntness.

“It’s okay, I’m used to diffucult cliens thinking they know it all.”

“Damien!” This time Amy scolded Damien.

“Okaaay, let’s sit down and see what we’ve got. D? Did you figure out our next step?” Nadia asked, desperatly trying to lighten up the mood.

“I’ve gathered a lot of information thanks to Riley but we can’t do much by being here,” Damien sighed and Drake snorted.

“Well, that didn’t help. Don’t expect a tip.”

“Drake! Let him finish,” Riley turned to Damien. “So what do you suggest?”

“Well... I need to collect more evidence which means... we’re going to Cordonia.”

#the royal romance #the royal heir #drake walker #drake x mc #drake walker x mc #choices #playchoices #choices stories you play #playchoices fanfic #king liam #damien nazario #nadia park #perfect match #the royal romance x perfect match crossover #honestly at this point i give up this story lmao #i wanna finish it alreadyyy #it's not good anymore #and its only getting worse

80 notes · View notes

marimarxagui · 5 years

Text

Been down so long it looks like up to me

May 31, 1973 Mari drove to The Forum, backstage pass in her bag, only to be turned away at the doors by a white flyered sign: gig postponed. She could’ve cried right then, having kept a mental countdown in her head, each day passing in breathless anticipation of today. She steeled herself instead and picked up Elliott, taking him to rendez-vous at April’s. The three of them smoked reefer, spun the Stones, and talked about what a disappointment those Led Zep guys were.

June 3, 1973 After the agony of waiting; attempt number two. Marimar wears a silk shirt tied at the midriff and velvet bell bottoms, her favorite chrome blue t-bar heels too. There’s glitter in her hair and even some under her eyes, and she’s buoyed by her best friend Jack Daniels. By the end of the night, the glitter’s gone, sweated off in a whirlwind of a show. It was a gut punch of starry neon daze, her eyes following guitar to microphone to drum kit, the reverbs passing right through her chest. The crowd is deafening, chaos of the best kind, and Mari feels the earth move under her feet. This is it. The very epicenter of life, and she’s in it.

Once the show’s over she squeezes into a limo between Plant and Page (Jimmy and Percy as Peter calls them), ducking the the screaming hundreds outside. Two other girls sit beside them, each prettier than the other. She doesn’t know their names — yet.

At the Riot house, she watches Bonzo ride a motorbike up and down the corridors of the ninth floor, her laughter ringing off the high walls. Jimmy pulls her into his room in private. There’s laughter and sweet talk, but she’s distracted. Mari itches to return to the group festivities, but his wandering hands land in places and she’s melting. Her undivided attention is finally caught with a kiss. It tastes of whiskey and explodes like a cherry bomb on the tip of her tongue.

Later on in bed as dawn is breaking, he makes her a proposition: would she like to come along for a few of their tour dates? He’d just love to have her along.

Would she ever.

July 7, 1973 Boarding the Starship en route to Minnesota, Mari has found a new playground. It’s not a plane but a collection of cozily crafted rooms; there’s even a fireplace. This is as good as life will probably ever get, but she’ll think about that later, after she’s had her cherry cosmo thirty thousand feet up in the air.

July 9, 1973 “Robert was looking for you.” Her heart leaps out her chest. Down the corridor she takes off. She finds him crouched over a low coffee table, back turned to her and concealing the object. It’s a sparrow that flitted in from the window. “Look at you, mister Snow White,” Mari chuckles. Even birds creatures flock to him, probably wanting to nest in those golden blonde curls.

Oh, what she would give to nest in those curls herself. But it isn’t to be. The girl from the concert, Trixie, has come along with them and the two seem attached at the hip. Some days Mari wishes she’d go up in flames.

But she gets to watch him from side stage every night, electrifying the crowd, and sometimes, distant proximity is enough.

July 10, 1973 Milwaukee. Mari drops in to say hi to her parents, hugs her mother. Mrs. Aguilar looks disappointed at the news she’s working as secretary back in L.A. (a lie), but hounds her to call more often.

July 11, 1973 She’s curled up on the plane next to Jimmy and they’re whispering childish things, laughing. She can’t remember what they talked about now. It’s not important. Not really. She’s watching him sleep. Memorizing every etch and crease of his face. They are the same age, but he seems infinitely wiser, older, just more.

Was she being ungrateful? The question drifts in and out of her mind. Jimmy’s funny, intelligent, charming, great company— more than enough excitement for her between the sheets. But when her heart’s not truly in it, it’s a cracked glass, half empty. Sometimes she wonders if she even has a heart, to be this way. But she only has to catch sight of the screaming girls at every new venue as a reminder, all the dolled up, cute little teenage girls who faint when Jimmy so much as waves hello. No, she’s not ungrateful. She couldn’t possibly be. She is very, very grateful. (But her heart continues to wail like a petulant, newborn babe).

July 12, 1973 Mari slips out of the hotel to a nearby laundromat when she realizes she’s out of clean clothes. On her way out, she bumps into Bonzo. The two share smokes and coffee at a diner and talk about James Brown.

July 15, 1973 Buffalo. The end inches forward but Mari ignores it. Every moment spent in his presence is something she is committing to a forever memory. She cackles when boyfriends are mentioned — did she have one back home? Did she, squat. “I buy my own chocolates and flowers, thank you very much,” she jokes, twisting the phrase to sound Elvis-esque to the amusement of the group. It’s so very corny of her, but it gets a smile out of him.

July 16, 1973 Robert asks how her name goes in her native tongue. She sounds it out for him and he repeats. Mar-i-mar. It’s as close to a kiss they’ve ever come, her heart a silver slinky crashing down a staircase, his face, framed by those godly golden curls, as deep a poem she’ll ever read.

July 18, 1973 She hates goodbyes. They weren’t made for people like her. Mari knows full well that after today this is the last she’ll see of them, at least for the year. They’re outside the hotel and time is being a cruel bitch, sand running out of the hourglass. In a few hours, she’ll be in Los Angeles, and they’ll be on their way to Canada, as far as two places as she can imagine. In a last and wild attempt not to be forgotten — because anything is better than being forgotten— Mari runs up to their car. Moves past Peter, Jimmy, everyone; right up to him.

“It’s a good luck charm where I’m from,” she says, affixing the red string to his wrist.

“Thanks, babe.”

He waves goodbye. Day is breaking behind them on the boulevard, the sun lights up his hair, and for one shining second of a moment, she feels like a Van Gogh sunflower, lit up from the inside.

She’ll alternate laughing and crying on the flight home, but she swears when she gazes down at the Californian crests and valleys, that they spell out his name.

#in which mari is a Total Sap and a Romantic #this is what she's been doing up until now p much!!#a ~prelude if you will #and yes i matched up the dates with actual led zep tour dates #we love a bit of research #[ you pick the place and i'll choose the time ] —;; self para

11 notes · View notes

thedeaditeslayer · 5 years

Photo

[Exclusive Interview] Writer Scott Duvall talks Comic Horror Mash-up Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep.

There’s never been a better time to see your favorite comic book characters meet on the big screen than right now. However, if you’re a horror fan, now is also a great time to see some of your favorite big screen characters meet on the comic book page. I’m talking about Dynamite Comics’ groovy and gory mashup series, Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep, a horror adventure that brings two of Bruce Campbell’s greatest characters together for a high-stakes battle against the undead.

We got the chance to talk to Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep writer Scott Duvall about horror comics, cult films, and what makes both of franchises so resonant with horror fans. Check out what he had to say below, and once you do, check out the conclusion to Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep, out this Wednesday, June 5th!

Grant DeArmitt for Nightmare on Film Street: How did this comic come about? Whose idea was it to bring Ash and Elvis together and when are they getting their Nobel?

Scott Duvall: I admit, I came up with the idea so to see it become a reality is truly a crazy dream come true! I had approached Dynamite about doing this as a crossover a few years ago shortly after I noticed that two Bruce Campbell characters had crossed paths before in Dynamite’s Army of Darkness/Xena crossover series. That sparked the thought that Ash should meet Elvis from Bubba Ho-Tep and from there the concept was born and I was on a mission. Once IDW got into the Bubba Ho-Tep comics business, courtesy of creator/writer Joe R. Lansdale, it made the dream a little more within reach. I took another stab at it and, luckily, they went for it!

NOFS: What connects the two stories? Has Bubba Ho-Tep been a Deadite all along?

SD: To answer the second question, no, Bubba Ho-Tep, as he was dubbed by Elvis, was a mummy when we met him in the original Lansdale story and movie adaptation, and he died a mummy, so the original story we’re telling here changes nothing of what happened in previous events. But more on Bubba later… After hearing about Elvis supposedly taking down a mummy in Texas, he can’t resist hitting the road to see for himself if there’s any truth to the rumor. So while these two deal in the supernatural, there isn’t anything mystical about their worlds crossing over, they already exist on the same plane of reality.

NOFS: Can you cue us in on the dynamic between Ash and Elvis? What do our heroes think of each other?

SD: I think what connects these two characters and their worlds is the fact that Ash and Elvis encounter some crazy, inhuman, obstacles in their individual journeys, and so they can relate to each other on that level. At first they both question the others’ sanity and so there’s some personality conflicts to iron out, but once they realize they’re both on the same team, it doesn’t take long for them to find common ground, and by issue three they feel like old friends who have always known each other.

NOFS: As for our villain, how did he survive the events of Bubba Ho-Tep?

SD: He didn’t! However, Bubba has risen again, and this time he’s powered by the Evil Force that Ash is real familiar with, making Bubba a half-mummy/half-deadite hybrid, and twice as dangerous, sucking innocent souls left and right.

NOFS: These are two franchises with loyal cult followings. What goes through your mind as you approach writing them?

SD: As a fan myself, I strive to live up to fan expectations and not squander this opportunity we’ve been given to try and tell the best story imaginable of the first meeting of these two beloved franchises. I knew both of these worlds colliding could work, and that when you’re playing with properties that have built-in audiences, you absolutely must take into account the history of the characters and what makes them tick. Particularly when it comes to the way they talk and interact with each other, that was very important to me to get right. Making sure Ash and Elvis sounded like themselves was crucial to getting fans on board because as soon as you lose their voices, you lose the reader, so it had to have that level of authenticity. Listening to them talk on a loop as I viewed the movies back-to-back-to-back during the plotting phase really helped to get their established voices in my head as I dove into the script.

NOFS: As someone who gets to experience these franchises like no one else, what do you think makes a cult classic?

SD: For me, it really comes down to the characters and their enduring personalities. I’ve seen a lot of different fandoms in the time I’ve been involved in entertainment, and the passion these followings have is a pretty powerful thing to witness, especially when you’re near the epicenter of something that’s bigger than yourself. It’s powered by people in large numbers who revolve their lives around something and now conventions and social media are making it easier for these fans to find each other. But again, it comes down to creating characters that people care what happens to them and we never tire of. Ash and Elvis certainly fit that bill.

NOFS: The art in this book is by the fabulous Vincenzo Federici. What makes his art special, and where do you think we see that in this comic?

SD: I got so incredibly lucky with my art team on this book! I really think it’s one of the most distinct looking Army of Darkness crossover comics I’ve ever seen so I’m proud that it stands out, and that’s in part thanks to Vincenzo’s incredible skills. He was really egging me on to keep raising the stakes and try to incorporate some monsters for him to draw, and so I rose to the challenge and the series is so much better for it, which you can really see his influence on the direction we take in issue 3. He not only can draw some scary looking mummies, but also injects a lot of visual humor into the work, as well as dazzle with some of the most amazing fight choreography I’ve ever seen illustrated. Not only did I luck out with Vincenzo, but the colors by Michele Monte are a stand-out too. He brings a lot of intensity to the pages with his striking color palette and the perfect moodiness to each scene. I also am fortunate to be working alongside my friend Taylor Esposito who it’s been said before, is one of the best letterers in comics working today. He brings a lot of personality to the project, catering captions to the characters and giving the reader just a little something extra to add to their enjoyment. We’re all fans so we’re trying to bring our A-game and live up to the source material.

NOFS: The last issue of Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep comes out June 5th. Without spoiling the ending, can you give us a glimpse into the future of Ash & Elvis’s comic book adventures?

SD: The final showdown takes place in Graceland, except Elvis’ private jet just took a nosedive into the dining room and the mansion is now engulfed in flames. I will say for Bubba Ho-Tep fans that a familiar character will pop up during a crucial moment and it’s probably not who you’re thinking!

NOFS: And for the Scott Duvall fans that are born of this book, what other books of yours can Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep readers check out?

SD: The last series I wrote was a sci-fi mini called Narcopolis: Continuum published by Heavy Metal, and I’ll actually be re-teaming with the artist Ralf Singh on another story for Heavy Metal Magazine in the near future which is one of the craziest things I’ve ever written, but Ralf said he wanted to draw a T-Rex. I have a couple other projects in the pipeline, but nothing I can talk about just yet. Stay tuned!

NOFS: Finally, not everyone who wants to get into comics is into superheroes. What horror comics can you recommend, both past and present, to bring horror fans into comics?

SD: Great question! My #1 recommendation for horror comics is Locke & Key. If you haven’t yet checked that out, do yourself a favor and get it. I used to hand my copy of volume 1 to friends and co-workers in order to get them hooked just so I would have someone to talk to about L&K. That series is so well done on every level from the compelling narrative and cast of characters to the beautiful artwork on every page. Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodríguez created a true modern masterpiece!

As we mentioned earlier, the conclusion of Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep arrives in stores everywhere this Wednesday, June 5th. You won’t want to miss the conclusion of this epic horror mashup, so head to your local comic book store ASAP!

#Scott Duval #Army of Darkness #Bubba Hotep #comic #Dynamite Entertainment #Dynamite Comics

8 notes · View notes

mldrgrl · 6 years

Text

36 and Four Minutes

by: mldrgrl Rated: PG-13 Summary: Based off a psychological study I read about a husband and wife team who attempted to create love in a lab. This is set the night before The Unnatural and hopefully acts as a precursor for the season of secret sex ;)

It had been a rough year, to say the least. Mulder could not remember a time in his life where so many shitty things seemed to happen in such a short period of time. The worst of it was, he could feel Scully slipping away from him, little by little. It scared him, to be honest, and he did not behave well when he was scared, which pushed her even further away than she already was. He needed something to bring them back together, to get them on the same page before Skinner took action and tried to send them to another team building seminar. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was attend a team building seminar, and he was fairly certain he was not going to find another pair of mothmen to get them out of it a second time should they be forced to go.

He learned about the study from one of his chats with Karin Berquist, of all people. Though the reclusive and anti-social dog behaviorist put all her energy into canine studies, that was not how she began her career. She told him to look up Arthur Aron’s 36 questions, which he did, and the study of lab-generated intimacy seemed like it would be the perfect tool to strengthen the bonds of his partnership, but first he had to get Scully on board, and that would be no easy task. She wasn’t really talking to him all that much since Phillip Padgett wreaked his havoc on their lives.

Getting her out of the office was essential. He didn’t want to be interrupted by work and he needed her to have her guard down a little. He thought about surprising her at home, but she wasn’t too keen on surprises and treated him with suspicion when he showed up at her door. Of course, every time he had shown up at her door unannounced, he always brought work with him, so she had every right to be suspicious. On Friday night, he took a shot in the dark while she was shutting down her computer for the day.

“You wanna grab a beer with me?” Mulder asked. He had come around to the front of his desk and rocked forward and back against the chair there as he watched her pack up.

“Now?” she answered, zipping up her bag. “I’ve got some things I need to do.”

“Now?”

“Yes. I’ll see you Monday.”

“What kind of things?”

“Mulder.”

He let go of the chair and moved towards her to help her with her overcoat. “Things I could help with?”

“Laundry.”

“Scully, it’s Friday night. Don’t tell me you’re turning me down for dirty clothes.”

“There’s also soe cleaning I need to do and catching up on JAMA.”

“Now I’m hurt.”

“It’s not about you, Mulder.”

The fleeting glance up at him she gave said otherwise and it made him even more determined to get her to come out with him. He had done some asshole things over the years and left her behind at times, chosen other options because he thought they were more important in the moment, but never did he do it because he simply didn’t want to be in a room with her, like she was doing now. It stung.

“Dinner is included,” he said, careful to keep all traces of desperation out of his voice. “My treat of course.”

“Look, I just…”

“...have better things to do?” He swallowed and then nodded, unintentionally playing into her sympathies as he slowly trudged back to his desk. “Some other time then. Have a nice weekend.”

“Mulder…”

“Yeah?”

“One beer.”

Once he had her on the hook, he sweetened the deal ever further by taking her to a bar he’d dropped in on a few times that was by her apartment. It had a relaxed atmosphere, served food, and he’d never seen it busy. They both parked in front of her building and walked the few blocks over to the little hole in the wall. They hung their jackets on a rack by the door and Mulder rolled up his shirtsleeves as he straddled a barstool at the far end of the bar.

At the other end of the bar sat two older men, engrossed in conversation. Behind them, in the middle section of a row of three booths, a man and woman sat together, also engrossed in conversation. At the back near the restrooms, a jukebox played at a pleasant volume, only loud enough to keep the conversations private.

So few and far between were patrons, the bartender had been lounging at his station reading a paperback. He had hopped to attention when the door scraped closed behind them and approached their corner with coasters and napkins at the ready.

“Shiner Bock,” Mulder answered when the kid, probably only just barely able to legally drink himself asked what he would have.

“Same for me,” Scully added. “What are you reading?”

“Um, it’s called Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus,” the young man answered, opening their bottles. “My girlfriend is making me read it.”

Mulder snorted softly. “What was the fight about?”

“She says I don’t listen. Well, she says I listen, but I don’t hear.”

“Could be an epidemic,” Scully said, inspecting a freestanding plastic menu on the countertop in front of her.

Mulder glanced her way and then raised his brows at the bartender. The bartender raised his back as though he understood completely.

“Any advice?” the kid asked.

“She’d probably be the first to tell you that I’m the last person you should ask,” Mulder answered, tipping his head towards Scully as he took his first sip of his beer.

“Relationships are work,” Scully said. “And they take time to cultivate. Take your time and do the work.”

“How long have you guys been together?”

“Seven years,” Mulder answered, just as Scully also replied, “Oh, we’re just…”

“Then you must be doing something right.” The kid glanced between the two of them and then straightened again. “Would you like to order anything?”

“Chicken salad sandwich,” Scully answered.

“Burger, medium rare,” Mulder said. After the kid walked away, Scully gave Mulder a bit of a scowl and he shrugged. “What?” he asked. “You walked into my office March of ‘92. It is now March 26, 1999. Happy late anniversary, honey.” He held his beer out at a slight angle close to hers.

After a few moments, Scully actually picked up her bottle and tapped it against Mulder’s. “I hadn’t even realized it’s been…that long.”

Mulder felt like this was the opening he’d been wanting. He nodded a little and turned towards her on his stool. “It is a long time. And you know, if we go back to what you just said, relationships take time to cultivate.”

“Yes.”

“I read this study recently about an experiment a psychologist performed back in the ‘60s where he wanted to see if he could scientifically cultivate relationships within a lab.”

“That sounds absurd.”

“Well, it worked.”

Scully laughed lightly and took a pull from her beer. “Worked how?”

“Their subjects were married within six months.”

“That’s not really proof of anything though.”

“Aren’t you curious how he did it?”

“You haven’t even told me what he did.”

“He developed a series of questions that people answer together and it can instantly bring two strangers into an intimate relationship.”

“Give me an example.”

Mulder took a sip of his beer and then held up a finger. He backed off the barstool and went over to his jacket on the rack. He fished out the paper that was folded in his breast pocket and went back to the bar.

“You have them with you?” Scully asked, raising her brow.

“You want to run our own experiment?” he answered.

“Let me see.” She held out her hand for his paper, but he held it away.

“There are rules. You can’t read them first. We take turns doing the asking, but we both have to answer.”

“Where’s the experiment in it?”

“Either it’s cultivating, or it isn’t.”

“We’re not strangers, though.”

“No, but...how well do we really know each other?”

There was a look of both surprise and agreement in Scully’s eyes. She took a long drink from her bottle and then placed it on the counter with extra care. She wiped her knuckle across her bottom lip and the corner of her mouth.

“You don’t know what these questions are?” she asked.

“Nope. I only read about the study.”

“What if there’s one we don’t want to answer?”

“I’m willing to answer all of them, whether I want to or not.”

“I don’t know if I can promise that, but alright. I’ll play.”

Mulder smiled and unfolded the paper. He grabbed a napkin from the bar and covered the printed list of questions so that they would stay hidden and then he placed the paper between them on the bar.

“Should we flip a coin to see who goes first?” he asked.

“Just start,” she answered. “Before I change my mind.”

“Number one. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?”

“That’s easy,” she said, immediately after Mulder finished the question. “Eleanor Roosevelt.”

“Oh, come on.”

“What?”

“You said once that you’d try to live in her body as a day, she can’t also be your answer for dinner guest.”

“Last I checked, there were no rules in this questionnaire.”

“Well, there is one rule, complete honesty.”

“And that is my honest answer. Eleanor Roosevelt.”

“Why?”

“She was an amazing woman with an amazing life and I’d like to know more about her from her own mouth. I would love to know how she accomplished all she did. I think she’d be just about the most fascinating dinner guest I could ever hope for.”

“Okay, fine.”

“And what would be your answer?”

“The King, of course.”

“I guess I should’ve expected that. Why, though? Why Elvis and why not...why not George Hale?”

“George Hale? Because I’m having a dinner party, not an astronomy symposium.”

“He’s got to be a better conversationalist though.”

Mulder made a noise of disagreement with his beer at his lips and shook his head. “I beg to differ. Elvis would have stories. Why would I pick George Hale?”

“Wouldn’t you want someone more...intellectually stimulating?”

“I mean, it’s dinner, not a life partner.”

“Oh.” Scully ducked her head a little and hid a smile in her beer.

“What?”

“Nothing. That’s just...good to know.”

He passed the paper her way. “Your turn.”

“Two. Would you like to be famous? In what way?”

Mulder screwed up his face a little. “No. But, I think the better question is, if I had to be famous for something, what would it be?”

“What would it be then?”

“When I was a kid, I wanted to be a pro baseball player. I wanted to play for the Yankees and I wanted to hold records and be in the baseball hall of fame.”

“Did you ever try to pursue it?”

“Nah. It was just a dream. It sort of died on the vine before I was even out of Little League.”

“You played Little League?”

“West Tisbury Diamondback, second baseman, number 14.”

Scully smiled as though she was picturing it. “How old were you?”

“Six. Six, I think, when I started. I was nine when I quit.”

“Why? You seem to really love it. Even still.”

“Things were already kind of rocky at home by then. It was just better if I...you know.”

“Oh.”

“So what about you?”

“No aspirations for fame.”

“But, if you had to be famous for something, what would it be?”

Scully took a few moments to think. She started to answer, then hesitated, and started again after another few moments. “I’d like to discover something,” she said. “Be the first to...find a cure for something or...just something in that arena.”

Mulder got quiet and scratched at the label on his bottle. “Like a cure for cancer?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

“There’s still time.”

“No. I can’t imagine being locked in a lab somewhere running endless amounts of tests. No.”

He wanted to tell her that at least she’d be safe, but he knew she’d find it patronizing. Truthfully, he couldn’t imagine Scully spending her days in a lab any more than she could. But, really, he just didn’t want to imagine her anywhere but his side.

“Mulder?”

“What?”

“Your turn.”

“Right. Three. Before making a phone call, do you ever rehearse what you're going to say? Why?”

“Not now,” she answered. “I don’t have time to think when I make a call, usually.”

“You said not now, was there ever?”

A smile bloomed on Scully’s face and the apples of her cheeks turned a rosy hue. “There was one time, I was about twelve or so, and I kind of had my first crush.”

Mulder smiled as Scully was momentarily lost in the joy of her memory. She laughed to herself for a few moments and tucked her hair back over her ears. It was possibly the cutest thing he’d ever seen her do.

“I was sort of a tomboy growing up, you know?” she continued. “So, I really didn’t...I wanted him to see me as more than the girl he rode his bike to the beach with. And Melissa was the girliest girl I knew. Plus, she’d already had at least five or six boyfriends that I knew of, so I went to her for help.”

“What was this kid’s name?”

“Mikey.”

“I’m guessing you called Mikey in a Cyrano-like scenerio.”

“That is exactly what I did.”

“And what happened?”

“Crashed and burned. He kept asking me why I was being so weird and I was so mortified by the whole experience I cried into my pillow for the next week and refused to ride bikes with him again.”

“That is so sad.”

“It’s a good memory, though.” Scully flashed a smile at Mulder. “Missy felt terrible about it and it brought us closer.”

“I’m glad you have that.”

“Me too. So, do you rehearse your calls?”

“When I was with the VCU, sometimes I found it easier to work off a script if I had to make difficult calls. You know, if I had to question a grieving widow about her husband’s murder or a parent who just lost a child. I found that...it didn’t really work though. People are more responsive to authenticity.”

“I’ve always thought you were good with people.”

“You have?” He paused with his nearly empty beer close to his mouth, genuinely surprised.

“Yes.”

“Being good with people is not something I’ve ever been accused of.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

Mulder put his beer down and his brows came together. He knew his shortcomings. He had issues with authority. He had no patience for arrogance or incompetence. He was sometimes unduly antagonistic with suspects. He truly didn’t understand how Scully could sit there and say he was good with people.

“You should see the look on your face right now,” Scully said.

“I’m just a little...are you joking?”

“Are you really unaware of how compassionate you are?”

“I...um…”

A lull in the conversation followed. Mulder stared at Scully and she stared at her beer. They’d only made it through three questions and already she’d shocked him, and it was such an innocuous question at that. He suddenly wished he’d read through all the questions so he could see what else might be coming.

“Number four,” Scully said, turning the paper towards her with her fingertips and breaking the silence. “What would constitute a perfect day for you?”

Mulder blinked and cleared his head. “Uh. Um, I think, probably waking up to a sunny day, not too hot, maybe going for a nice run and finding a pick up game of basketball. Ordering a really good pizza and watching the Yankees win the world series. No, being at the game behind home plate. That would be the perfect day.”

“I think the same as you, I’d like to wake up with the sun shining and a nice breeze. I’d probably go to the beach and then have someone take me out in a sailboat for awhile. I want to eat some really good seafood, sit in front of a bonfire for a bit, then end the day with a bubble bath and a glass of wine.”

“That sounds really nice.”

Scully shrugged.

“You want another beer?” he asked, noticing she was running low as he finished his.

“Sure.”

Mulder held up his beer bottle to get the bartender’s attention and then flashed two fingers at him. The kid came back with two more beers and took their empty bottles away.

“Food should be ready in about five minutes or so,” the kid said.

“Do you have any chips or pretzels?” Scully asked.

“Sure.”

“Getting comfortable?” Mulder asked her.

“We’re only on question five and I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m not getting any laundry done tonight,” she answered, and then thanked the kid when he slid a bowl of pretzels onto the bar between them. “Besides, if you’re buying, I might as well take advantage.”

Mulder chuckled and slid the paper back in his direction as she munched on a pretzel. He then let out a full laugh when he read the next question and looked at her with a wide smile.

“When did you last sing to yourself?” he asked. “To someone else?”

“You already know the answer to that question.”

“Yeah, but I want to hear you answer anyway. And I don’t know when the last time you sang to yourself was.”

“I don’t sing. I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. The last time I was forced-”

“No one forced you. I made a very polite request which you were kind enough to comply with.”

“Shut up, Mulder. You answer.”

“I sang in the shower this morning. A very soulful rendition of Heartbreak Hotel that would make angels weep.”

Scully rolled her eyes. “I’m sure.”

“And I don’t remember the last time I sang to someone. But, if we’re ever lost in the woods again, I want you to know I’d happily sing you to sleep and I’ll even take requests.”

“That is exactly why we’re never going into the woods ever again. Question six. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you choose?”

“Hm. Hm.” While Mulder was thinking about the question, their food was brought out. They took a pause to arrange their plates and then he returned to his thoughts. “So the problem is, this question assumes that there will be a decline both physically and mentally. I’m not even actually really worried about either.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah, I plan to be as handsome and brilliant at 90 as I am today.”

Scully, about to take a bite of her sandwich, burst out laughing and had to put the sandwich back down. “That’s assuming you’re handsome and brilliant,” she said, wiping her greasy fingers with a napkin.

“Um, ouch.”

“You have to pick one.”

“Brains.”

“I think I would go with the body.”

“I don’t believe that for a second.”

“Don’t you remember that time on the Ardent? If that’s what it feels like to be physically old, I’m choosing the body.”

“Damn, I’d forgotten about that.”

“Looks like you’re losing the brains already.”

“Har har.” He gave her a fake glare before turning his attention to the next question. He pursed his lips and glanced at Scully as she finally took a bite of her dinner. “Um. Number seven. Do you...do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?”

“I don’t, remember?”

Mulder looked down at his burger. “You don’t have to answer this one.”

“I think we’ve both come too close to death not to think about it.”

“Yeah, but it’s not something I like to think about.”

“Facing your own mortality is-”

“You, dying,” he interrupted. “I don’t want to think about that.”

Scully wiped her fingers off with another napkin and then she turned herself towards Mulder and put a hand on his knee. “I plan on going in my sleep, peacefully, a long time from now.”

“You can’t plan on that.”

“Don’t get maudlin on me. Not when we’re having such a nice time.”

“You’re having a nice time?”

“I have free dinner, drinks, and good conversation. I’m having a nice time, so tell me how you think you’ll die.”

Mulder laughed and she squeezed his knee before returning to her sandwich. “I don’t know, but I’d like it to be the same as you.”

“You might want to think about that the next time you jump onto a moving train.”

“That’s why I need to keep my 30 year old brain intact to stop me from doing stupid things.”

“Hasn’t stopped you yet.”

“Touché.” He lifted his beer at her in salute and then took a drink.

“Number eight. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common. Oh, I like this one.”

“I certainly didn’t think we had anything in common when we first met.”

“Well, we were both FBI agents.” She smiled at him as she brought her sandwich up to her mouth.

“Let me think.” He ate his burger, chewing slowly and washing down each bite with a sip of beer. He watched Scully nibble on a slice of pickle that was laid out behind her sandwich.

“Tick tock, Mulder.”

“Okay, we are both FBI agents.”

“Cheater.”

“We both like the same beer. And we both prefer music over talk radio.”

“I don’t, actually.”

“Don’t what?”

“Prefer music.”

“Really? But…”

“I prefer that it keeps you occupied on long car rides. You get antsy when we listen to talk radio.”

“I didn’t know that. I thought that...I didn’t know you were being deferential.”

“It’s to save my sanity as much as yours.”

“We can listen to talk radio if you want.”

“Then I’d just miss out on your enthusiastic air guitar solos.”

Mulder actually felt himself blush at that. Scully never seemed to pay that close attention to him, whether she was driving or engrossed in a casefile.

“My turn,” she said. “We both prefer driving over flying. I think we are both good at what we do. And we have both lost loved ones because of it.”

“I wish we didn’t have that in common.”

“I do too.”

Mulder nodded softly before he moved to the next question. “Nine. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?”

“That’s difficult. I have a lot I’m grateful for.”

He left her to ponder while he ate his burger. He was already low on his second beer, but he didn’t want another quite yet. He didn’t intend to get drunk, and he didn’t want her to be either.

“That I’m here,” Scully blurted suddenly. “I am most grateful, above everything else, that I’m still here.”

“We can name that as another thing we have in common, because that’s my answer too.” He looked at her hand where it rested on the bar and wanted to cover it with his, but he didn’t.

“10,” she said. “If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?”

“I wish I’d had parents that talked more. To me and to each other. You know, when it wasn’t silent, it was loud. I never knew which was worse.”

“It was always loud at my house. I used to wish for silences. I wouldn’t trade that chaos now for anything, but I used to back then. I guess I would’ve liked to have had my dad around a little more, but sometimes it was confusing when he was home.”

“How so?”

“My mother was a fairly typical woman of her time. She was devoted to her church, her husband, and her children, in that order. Most of the time, we saw her as a very capable, strong woman, until Ahab came home, and it was like he was the king and we were all his subjects. It was easier adjusting to new schools and new neighborhoods than it was adjusting to a mom who suddenly answered all questions with ‘go ask your father.’ And while she was strict, she still never ran as tight of ship as Ahab. Rules changed, bedtimes changed, everything changed in the weeks he’d be there.

“At first, when he’d come home, we were all pretty reverent. Happy to see him, excited he was home, but the novelty wore off pretty quickly. The thing is, he was used to sailors who snapped to attention when all he had to do was walk by. He wasn’t accustomed to rowdy children who were different each time he returned. He loved us, of course, and we loved him, but I don’t know that we ever really knew each other.”

“That’s the most I’ve ever heard you talk about your father.”

“That’s probably the most I’ve ever really talked about it.”

“What would you change then?”

Scully tilted her head and squinted her eyes closed for a bit. “I think what I want, or what I would’ve wanted, is for my mother not to have made him so mythical. And I would’ve liked for Ahab to have acknowledged her more as an equal partner. Or even have acknowledged that she did more than he did.”

“They were happy though, weren’t they?”

“I think so.”

“Well, I think that counts for something.” Mulder paused and snorted when he read the next question. “Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.”

“This is a question that would probably be easier to answer if we were strangers.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I feel like I’d just be boring you with things you already know.”

“We could skip it, if you really wanted to.”

“It feels a little redundant, don’t you think?”

“Okay. Well, go ahead with the next one then.”

“12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained one quality or ability, what would it be?”

“Easy. I’ve always wanted to be able to be invisible at will so I can get into any place at any time.”

“I think they mean real ability though.”

“Why isn’t invisibility a real ability?”

“Because people can’t be invisible.”

“Oh, you really want to debate that?”

“Okay, okay. Then I want the ability to know all languages.”

“I guess that would be kind of cool. Not as cool as invisibility, but still.” He leaned over to bump his shoulder with hers and she rolled her eyes. “13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?”

“I wouldn’t want to know the future, I know that much.”

“Why not?”

“It may not be something I like or want to hear. I think I would like to know where…” She stopped suddenly and sucked in her breath. He put a hand on her back and leaned forward to look at her. “I would like to know the truth of where Emily came from.”

“I’d like to know the truth about what happened to my sister.”

“Then again, Mulder, we may not like what we hear.”

He rubbed her back for a moment in a circle and then dropped his hand. She gave him a small smile and looked at the paper.

“14,” she said. Is there something that you've dreamt of doing for a long time? Why haven't you done it?”

“I did the thing I dreamed of doing a few years back.”

“What was it?”

“Visiting Graceland.”

“When did you visit Graceland?”

“Uh…” He gave her a sheepish look. “You were in Philly.”

“Ah. Well, lately I’ve been thinking about taking a cooking class or dance lessons-”

“Dance lessons! What kind of dance lessons?”

“Any kind. Or a painting class. Something that would put me in the world of other people doing normal things. As to why I haven’t done it, who has the time?”

Mulder was already racking his brain. It was too bad she didn’t mention wanting to learn baseball. He could teach her how to hit and they’d probably both have a lot of fun with it. She deserved some fun in her life. He looked over at her and saw she had a smear of mayonnaise on her cheek. Without thinking, he reached over and thumbed it off. It brought back memories of eating ribs and barbecue sauce on the corner of her mouth. She looked at him then like she was looking at him now, like a mixture of amusement and shyness, but she hadn’t pulled away then and she didn’t pull away now. He thought again about how grateful he was that she was still there beside him.

“Have you had enough?” Scully asked.

“Hm?”

“It’s your turn to ask.”

“Oh. 15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?”

“Making it through the academy. In some ways, it was harder than med school.”

“Physically?”

“Mentally. Emotionally. I was one of only four women in my class. Two dropped out.”

“I never knew that.”

“Yeah, but I had the best shot out of all of them. That sure pissed some of those guys off.”

Mulder laughed and unconsciously rubbed the bullet wound in his shoulder.

“What’s your biggest accomplishment?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What about the monograph that put away Monte Propps? That had to be pretty satisfying, all that hard work and putting away a serial killer in the end?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“It wasn’t satisfying?”

“I’d feel better about it if he hadn’t murdered 13 people first.”

“But your work stopped him from murdering even more. And it brought closure to the victim’s families. That has to mean something.”

“Alright, then that’s my biggest accomplishment.”

“It’s not about what I think though, Mulder, you’re supposed to tell me.”

He couldn’t tell her, though. He couldn’t sit there and tell her that his greatest accomplishment was that he hadn’t succeeded in pushing her away. So he just shrugged and agreed that Monte Propps was his greatest accomplishment and had to look away because he could tell she didn’t believe him.

“16,” she said, quietly. “What do you value most in a friendship?”

“Loyalty,” he said.

“Honesty,” she countered, giving him a raised eyebrow, which he ignored.

“Number 17. What is your most treasured memory?”

For a moment or two, Scully looked like she was going to call him out on the change of subject, but she relaxed the tight expression on her face and her eyes moved up in thought. “My parents woke us up early one morning, before the sun was even up, put us in the station wagon and told us to just go back to sleep, we were going to visit a cousin of ours or something. Turns out they were surprising us with a day at Disneyland. Pulling into that parking lot I felt like I’d never been so excited for something in my life.”

“I guess a kid never forgets his first trip to Disneyland.”

“Did you ever go?”

“No. We didn’t really do the family vacation thing. Summer’s on the island, that was it. Not that I’m complaining. I had a lot of fun back then.” He paused for a second. “Actually, I’m going to say that my most treasured memory involved summer vacation. I had my first kiss and the first time I held hands with a girl on the same day.”

“What was her name?”

“Jenny. Jenny Johnson. Her family lived on the island year round. She had a sister Samantha’s age. Becky, I think. Or Betsy? That I can’t remember, but she and Sam used to play together. I had to watch Sam, Jenny had to watch her sister as well, so we ended up spending a lot of time together. We got permission to take the girls to a carnival that was in town one day and, I took my chances and kissed her when we were on this haunted house ride. Well, first I put my arm around her when she screamed, because I’m smooth like that.”

Scully laughed out loud against her beer bottle and stopped just before she took a drink. “A real Don Juan at--how old were you?”

“Twelve.”

“Twelve. Keep going, I want the full story.”

“Well, it was the kind of ride where things pop out at you and stuff and at first it was a lot of surprise, but then it was just kind of silly, so we were laughing and just before the ride ended, I could kind of see in the dark that we were headed for the doors, and I just...leaned in and kissed her.”

“And then?”

“And then we were temporarily blinded by the sun, but when she blinked at me, she looked like the happiest anyone had ever looked to me. She grabbed my hand when we got out of the ride and we pretty much spent the rest of the day like that.”

“That isn’t really what I expected you to say.”

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know, but not a sweet little summer romance.”

“Little is right. By the next day, all Sam could talk about was Fox and Jenny sittin’ in a tree, and I got pissed, and then Jenny got pissed that I was pissed and accused me of being embarrassed of dating an islander--I didn’t even know we were dating or what dating really was, and it that was pretty much the end of that. But, that day at the carnival. It was perfect.”

“I guess that’s a good segue into number 18. What is your most terrible memory?”

“Ah, well. I’m going to have to be predictable here and say the night Samantha...well…”

“Yeah. And I’ll say when I found out Melissa…”

“Kind of a shitty thing to have in common.”

“I’ll say.”

“You’re empty,” Mulder said, nodding at Scully’s beer as she tipped her head back and drained the rest. “Another round?”

“I’ll pass.”

“If you change your mind, say the word.”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

“19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?”

Scully went quiet, her thumb circling the lip of her empty beer bottle. Her gaze seemed to lack direction, like she was staring at nothing. The silence was so prolonged, Mulder became attuned to the jukebox again. Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams was playing.

“Bet you wish you had that third beer,” he said, uncomfortable with the stall in conversation.

A small smile lifted the corners of Scully’s lips, but she still didn’t say anything.

“You don’t have to answer this one if you don’t want to,” Mulder said.

“I’ll answer. I’m just forming my thoughts.”

“Take your time.”

Another bout of silence passed and finally Scully sighed. “When I thought that I was going to die, when the cancer...when I thought I wouldn’t make it out of the hospital, I tried to make peace with the things I would never do. I didn’t want to leave this world with regrets. So, I...I wrote letters. To my mother. To my brothers. To...you. And then I realized how unfair that was, how selfish it was to write the things down I could never say, but not let you do the same. So, I tore them all up.”

His curiosity was instantly piqued. “What did they say?”

“Maybe if there’s a question in there about things unsaid, I’ll tell you. But, to answer this question, when I found out I was in remission, that I was going to be fine, I told myself it was a second chance at some of those things I’d always wanted to do. It’s been, what, two years? I don’t think I’ve done any of them.”

“Let’s change that. Let’s do something on your list.”

“Maybe none of it was as important as I thought it was, if I haven’t done them yet. Or maybe I just didn’t learn the lesson. No, I don’t think I would change anything about the way I’m living now. I’m happy enough with...everything.”

It was the ‘happy enough’ that struck Mulder. He had a notion that there might be one or two things she would change that she was holding back on, but he wasn’t going to push. It was a difficult question to answer and he was struggling himself to come up with something to say.

“All that really matters is whether or not I was a good person,” Scully continued. “Right? To...to God, to those left behind. That’s what’s going to matter in the end. Not whether or not I...I don’t know, walked the great wall of China or something.”

“Is that on your list?”

“No.” Scully laughed. “I was trying to think of a common bucket list item for most people.”

“I feel like the most common bucket list item would be jumping out of an airplane.”

“Okay, then. Is that really going to matter down the line?”

“Probably not. But, you’ll have a good story for the grandkids.”

“Ah, well.”

As soon as he said it, Mulder felt like an ass. He meant it as a figure of speech, but he realized too late that it would bring up some unpleasant truths. Scully would never have grandkids - unless by some miracle. And she didn’t even know the whole story. He rubbed the back of his head uncomfortably.

“Uh, I think I’d do some things differently,” he said.

“Such as?”

“Get out of the office more. Do something fun on a Saturday night that doesn’t involve the gunmen starting arguments in internet chat rooms.”

“Is that what you guys do on the weekend?”

“Not every weekend.”

“Mulder, that’s just sad.”

“And what’re you doing on a Saturday night, Miss Scully? Laundry?”

“Alright, we both need lives.”

“I’d toast to that, but I’m out of beer, and I need to hit the head anyway.” He slid off the barstool and looked to the kid who was filling a drink order at the other end of the bar.

“You want me to order you another?”

“No, I’m good. Be right back.”

Mulder quickly used the restroom and stared at his reflection in the spotted, foggy mirror as he washed his hands. This was the most he’d ever really talked with Scully and he was enjoying himself. He wondered if he could find a way to make it a regular thing. Maybe then his Saturday nights wouldn’t feel so empty.

When he came back to the bar, he slowed his step. The remnants of their food had been taken away and there was a glass of iced tea in front of his seat. Scully looked like she was nursing a diet Coke.

“Didn’t want you to get parched,” she said, as he took a seat.

“Thanks.”

“So. Number 20. What does friendship mean to you?”

Mulder squeezed the wedge of lemon perched on the side of his glass into his tea. He thought about the gunmen, who he spent Saturday nights with or came to for help with technological problems, but didn’t confide all that much in. He thought about passing friendships he’d had in school or in the early days of work, people he went out for occasional beers with, but never saw outside the bullpen. And he thought about Scully, who he felt knew him inside and out and never held things he might have said in the heat of the moment against him, and ordered him iced tea because he might get thirsty.

“I guess it means everything to me,” he said. “I don’t know what I would do without…” He stopped short of specifying Scully by name, but by that point he was only thinking about his relationship with her. “Without someone to talk to,” he finished.

“Someone to rely on,” she said.

“Exactly. What about you?”

“That’s my answer. It means someone to rely on. I think everyone needs that in their life.”

“Agreed. 21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?”

Scully snorted and spoke into her glass. “Not nearly enough as I’d like.”

“Which part?”

“Both.” She sighed. “No, that’s not true. There is love in my life, though I’ll admit I could do better at it. And affection...is something I think I’ve always struggled with. I don’t dislike it, I’ve just never been very comfortable with it either.”

“So, you could use more love and try harder with affection?”

“Maybe. But, I think to answer the question I’d have to say, it probably doesn’t play as significant a role as it could, or even should.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Why is it interesting?”

“Because I feel like you have so many people in your life that love you.”

“Who, my mother? My brothers?”

“Hey, that’s three more than I’ve got.”

“Mulder, I lo...I think you’re wrong about that.”

“Name them.”

“We’re off track. You haven’t answered yet.”

“I’m a big fan of love and affection. When it’s in my life, I think it’s pretty great. I wish it didn’t come and go so easily, because it’s hard not to have it. Sometimes I think I need it as much as I want it.”

“Maybe you’ll find it once you start living it up on Saturday nights.”

“Maybe you will too.”

“22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.”

“You are unbelievably smart.”

“I like how gentle you are.”

“Gentle?”

“When you deal with people in difficult situations. We discussed it however many questions ago. You’re very gentle and I like that about you. I’ve appreciated it in my own difficult situations.”

“Oh.” Mulder blinked. It gave him a warm feeling to know he’d done something Scully appreciated. “Um. You are the most dependable person I know.”

“You are the most passionate person I know.”

“Is that just codeword for stubborn?”

“Maybe.”

Mulder grinned. “What are we at, three? You are more warm than I think you give yourself credit for.”

Scully scrunched her face as though she disagreed.

“See,” he said.

“I think you always do things with the best of intentions.”

“You don’t take shit from anyone, especially me.”

“You…” She closed her eyes and her brows came together.

“Uh oh, I only have three good qualities?”

“I just want to phrase this right. You have an ability to empathize at will.”

“I’ll have to ponder that one later. Last one? I don’t know if I would call it stamina, but for all that you’ve endured, you get back up, you keep fighting, you’re still here, and you’re stronger every time. Resilience, maybe, but it’s more than that. It’s...you’re just incredible, Scully, you really are.”

Scully’s eyes grew glassy and wet. “Dammit, Mulder,” she muttered, wiping her knuckles across her lashes.

“If the next question is what are negative qualities your partner possesses, I’ll start with unable to take a compliment, how about that?”

In response, Scully gave Mulder’s bicep a shove and he laughed as he pretended to slip off his barstool. She wiped her eyes again and then took a drink.

“I admire your ability to be free with your feelings,” she said. “Next question.”

Not that free, Mulder thought, looking at the paper. “Number 23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people's?”

“Close-ish. Not very warm, but warm enough. I don’t think my childhood was more or less happy than anyone else’s. It was sufficient for me, maybe not so much for Charlie or Melissa.”

“What about Bill Jr.?”

“He thrived on routine and order, as you can imagine.” She smiled and then laughed softly. “He would probably say it was idyllic.”

“I’m going to have to say my childhood was less than idyllic, not warm and not close. I don’t think that will come as a surprise to you.”

“Was it always like that though? Even before your sister was…”

“It was tumultuous. I didn’t really know it at the time, I just thought everyone had parents who yelled at each other when they were together, or dads who worked all the time and hit them when they weren’t home when the streetlights came on. It took me a long time to realize it wasn’t great.”

Scully reached over and covered Mulder’s hand with hers, giving it a squeeze. “I’m sorry that you went through that.”

“I made peace with that a long time ago.”

She nodded and withdrew her hand. “Oh, nice follow up question. 24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?”

Mulder sat back and sipped his iced tea. He pulled an ice cube into his mouth with his tongue and rolled it back and forth for a few moments before crunching down on it and shattering it into tiny pieces. When he was finished, he sucked in his bottom lip and scraped his teeth across it.

“It’s complicated,” he said. “I wish it weren’t. I think I’ve done a lot in my life to try to...to please her somehow, to make her proud, to protect her, to just...I don’t know. I’m not even sure she appreciates it, but I’ll do it anyway because she’s my mom. I don’t know if what I’ve done for her is out of love or obligation.”

“Sometimes it can feel like that same thing.”

“That’s for damn sure.” Mulder pulled another piece of ice into his mouth.

“I don’t think my mother and I understand each other very well. I know she wanted a different life for me, but also wanted me to forge my own path. I think she also thought at some point it would merge with her own ideals. She makes me feel guilty a lot for not being as present as she’d like me to be. I think our relationship is more about her than it is about me. I suppose that’s fine, but I’d also say she doesn’t know me as well as she thinks she does.”

“Would you like it to be better?”

“Does it sound awful to say that I don’t think I need it to be?”

“Not if that’s the truth.”

“I don’t need it to be.”

“Okay then. Make three true "we" statements each. For instance, "we are both in this room feeling..."

“That’s kind of a weird question. Okay, we are both FBI agents.”

“Oh, come on!”

“We eat together quite often, but it’s been a long time since we’ve had dinner together, if you know what I mean.”

“I do.”

“And, we haven’t talked like this in a long time.”

“Have we ever?”

“There were some times back in the early days of our partnership where we dug a little deeper. Never to this extent, but we’ve had some moments.”

“We should do this more often. That’s my first we statement, by the way, and a general comment. We should do this more often. We make a great team. And we both enjoy the same beer.”

“26. Complete this sentence, "I wish I had someone with whom I could share..."

“Huh. I don’t know that there’s a lot I don’t share with you.”

“Well, that isn’t the question.”

“I know, but what I’m saying is...I mean, I don’t really feel like I’m not sharing something. If there’s something I want to share, I share it with you.”

“There’s got to be something though.” She shook her head dismissively. “You share your slideshows and your theories and your strange depth of knowledge, but not…”

“Not what?”

“I don’t know, life things. What are life things that people share? Intimate things. Their...toothbrushes, their inner demons, their beds, their hopes for the future.”

“Is that your answer? Is that what you want to share with someone?”

“Of course I do, but at the same time, absolutely not.”

“I think we’ve shared some hopes with each other, and definitely demons. As for toothbrushes and beds, just say the word.”

“Are you telling me that you feel fulfilled right now?”

Mulder was momentarily tongue-tied and stuttered out an answer. “I don’t think I can say I feel unfulfilled Are there things I want? Sure. Intimate things? Yeah. I think that desiring emotional or even physical intimacy is a different question from what would I like to share with someone?”

“I think it’s the same.”

“And I would argue that saying I want someone to share a meal with at the end of every day is completely separate from saying I wish I had someone to hold me every night. Both answers imply a desire for intimacy, but a meal is a shared experience and the other is somewhat selfish. So, personally, I don’t interpret the question in that way, but if you want to qualify it and remove ‘share’ from the equation, I wish I had someone with whom I could spend a night with and would still be there in the morning. Absolutely.”

An extended silence followed, one in which Mulder could feel the tips of his ears burning with embarrassment. He never intended to lay the burden of his ache for intimacy at her feet. Not like that. And now it was out in the ether and he couldn’t take it back. Sure, he could make a self-deprecating joke about it, but then it might devalue the whole purpose of the questionnaire. He wished he could tell what she was thinking, but her face was shadowed, her expression hidden by the angle of her chin, down and away.

“Alright,” Scully finally said. “You make a valid point. But, I would like to add that I believe the examples you’ve given can also be a shared experience. You can want someone to share a night with, and then wake up and share the morning as well.”

“Then the most basic answer would always be that you want someone to share your life with.”

“That’s true, but...”

“And I also think in order to be shared, it has to be reciprocated as well. You have to give of yourself, but you have to be willing to receive as well.”

“I suppose if you’re not willing to open yourself up like that, it wouldn’t be a whole life, it would be half a life.”

“I didn’t say I was unwilling.”

“Well, I didn’t either.” She hesitated on her next breath and then laughed a little. “And I honestly don’t even know what the point is that we’re trying to make anymore.”

Mulder sighed silently in relief that the tension he felt was bubbling had burst with her laughter and then hesitantly turned the paper towards him. “Uh, number 27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.”

“I’m sure you already know this, but I don’t open up very often. And I don’t do need very well.”

“I know tonight is an anomaly. That we probably won’t discuss it in the morning, or ever again. It doesn’t have to be that way though.”

She shifted in her seat and tucked her hair back over her ear. “Just answer the question.”

“I’d need her to know that I can be a bit of a stubborn asshole. And that sometimes I am blinded by need and I don’t make the best decisions.”

“28. Tell your partner what you like about them: be honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you've just met.”

“That implies I wasn’t being honest the last time I answered the question.”

“Maybe for strangers they could only answer more superficially until they got to know each other.”

“What, things like, I like your eyes or your hair or the way the top of your nose moves when you speak?”

Scully reached up and touched the bridge of her nose between her brows almost self-consciously and then brought her hand down just as quickly and wrapped it around her glass. “I think we can skip this one, unless you feel like there’s something you left out.”

“I do like more than three things about you, Scully.” He smiled and leaned into her teasingly. “But, if your quota was met earlier we can move on.”

“I do happen to like that stubbornness of yours. Just so you know.”

“You do?” He leaned back and scrutinized her, genuinely surprised. “Why?”

“You don’t give up easily, whether it’s on cases or on people. It’s that steadfast determination that gets you results where others may not.”

“I might have to remind you of this the next time you tell me to let something go. 29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.”

“I was quite bookish in school.”

“No!”

Scully gave Mulder a flash of a scowl. “I won an award for a state science fair when I was in sixth grade, of which I was very proud of, but you know, other kids don’t really appreciate that kind of thing.”

“Kids are jerks.”

“No one would’ve ever had to know, but the principal read it over the PA in our morning announcements and well...it was bad enough that attention was called to it, but for the rest of the school year, this kid, Stevie, would salute me every time I walked into class and called me Dr. Nerd.”

“Uh, not to diminish your feelings, but Stevie’s the one who should be embarrassed. That’s the lamest nickname anyone has ever come up with in the history of nicknames.”

“Any nickname earned, however lame, can seem like the worst insult in the world when you’re ten.”

“True. I bet you can rest assured that Stevie hasn’t gone on to much success in life.”

“Who knows.”

“Well, contrary to what you might believe, I was not always as agile and suave as I am today.”

“Oh, is that what I believe?”

“I was also ten in my story and I was at a birthday party at a skating rink for arguably the prettiest girl in school, but I was a pretty lousy skater. I made it one round around the rink, mostly holding on to the side, and when I let go and tried to participate in the skate chain, I went ass over elbows in front of the entire class, but all I cared about was that I’d just ate shit in front of Cindy Palmer.”

Scully started laughing before he’d even made it to the punchline, like she might know what was coming. She made a sympathetic noise over her chuckles. “That’s terrible,” she stuttered and giggled at the same time. “I’m so sorry.”

“Childhood is rough. The smallest things seem like the end of the world.”

“That they do.”

“Lay the next one on me, Dr. Nerd.”

Scully gave Mulder a soft kick on the shin with the side of her foot. “When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?”

“Few weeks ago when you went to get cleaned up after…” He gestured to his chest. “Padgett.”

“That would be my answer for both parts of that question.”

“I don’t have a real hang-up about crying in front of people. I can’t really remember the last time, but I’m sure it was you.”

“Fair enough. 31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already. Oh come on, we’ve answered this about six times.”

“Skip it. Number 32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?”

“Death of a child.”

“I was gonna say nothing is too serious, but I’m going to agree with you there.”

“Number 33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven't you told them yet?”

“Wow. Um…”

“Yeah, this one might be a little…”

“I think I need a minute.”

“Take your time.”

The first thing that came to Mulder’s mind was that he would tell Scully how much she meant to him, but it conjured up memories from his hallway and really he’d already said what he’d needed her to hear. He could reiterate it right here, right now, but it didn’t feel like the right time, to say it only because he was being prompted by a silly questionnaire. If she were a stranger, he would answer honestly, that he had communicated those things one time, he just wished it wasn’t one of those things they didn’t talk about. He chose a different option instead, one that was still truthful, but felt less necessary for him.

“I would want to tell my mother that I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for her,” he said. “Couldn’t find my sister and couldn’t make her happy. As to why I haven’t already told her, well there’s a big part of me that knows it isn’t my fault and that I’ve done everything I could.”

“It isn’t your fault. You have done everything you could, more than enough, Mulder.”

“Logically, yes, I know that. And I shouldn’t have to apologize for it, but I still feel compelled.”

Scully curled her hand over Mulder’s forearm and let it rest there for a few quiet moments. He gave her an appreciative smile and then put his hand over hers. He expected her to pull away, but she didn’t. They stayed like that until the loud scrape of a barstool across the floor broke the solace. He reached for his iced tea and she leaned back on her stool.

“I can’t answer the question,” Scully said, her voice almost at a whisper. “There are reasons that...I just can’t.”

Mulder shrugged. “You don’t need to explain it. It’s just a silly questionnaire.”

She looked down and plucked at the skin next to her thumbnail. “It’s not silly and I should...I lack the courage to...it’s because I lack courage that I can’t answer.”

“You can have half a point for answering the second part of the question.”

She looked up at him and there was pain in her eyes. He couldn’t tell if her anguish was from not being able to answer, or what she would answer if she could. He reached over and swept his hand up and down her back a few times.

“You’re the most courageous person I know,” he said. “That won’t change.”

“Yet I can’t even answer a simple question.”

“It’s not that simple. Let’s just do the next one, we’re almost done. Number 34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be and why?”

“I want you to know that I want to answer it, Mulder. I do.”

“Answer it when it’s the right time, Scully. You’re gonna be around a long time.”

In the silence that followed the deep and uncertain breath Scully took, Mulder changed the format of the questionnaire and just answered.

“Well, since it says I’ve already gotten my fish to safety,” he said. “I think I’d have to rescue my lamp.”

Scully cleared her throat. “Your lamp?”

“My Saturn lamp. My grandfather - my mother’s father, the only grandparent I ever met - got it for me when I was about four or five. It was my nightlight when I was a kid.”

“That’s adorable, Mulder.”

“I mean, I think the couch is pretty unreasonable and I can get a basketball anywhere.”

“No, it’s a good choice. I’d take a photo album I have that was given to me by my grandmother.”

“Mom’s side or dad’s side?”

“Dad’s.”

“Also pretty irreplaceable.”

“Yeah.”

“We went out of order, so go ahead with the next one.”

Scully hesitated when she turned the paper closer and there was a slight hitch in her breath. “I think we’ve already answered this as well,” she answered, and then pushed the paper over to Mulder.

“35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why? I guess in my case missing might as well be dead and even if your sister hadn’t-”

“I wasn’t going to answer with Melissa,” she interrupted. “It was awful, yes. It’s one of the worst things I’ve been through. But, it’s not the worst thing.”

Mulder puzzled over her answer for a moment and almost had to ask if she was referring to her father or mother, but it dawned on him suddenly and he pressed his lips together in a tight line. The death of a child is a very serious thing. He never really knew the true extent of her feelings about Emily because she wouldn’t share them, but he knew she was mired in silent grief for some time. There had been a real lack of joy in her in the months that followed, one he thought had never really returned.

“It never occurred to me,” Mulder said. “To think that…”

“I didn’t think it would. Actually, it didn’t occur to me either until just now.”

“I don’t think I ever told you how sorry I was.”

“It isn’t you who should be sorry. And you were right, it was never meant to be.”

“I shouldn’t have-”

“No. You were right. It doesn’t mean I didn’t want her, wouldn’t have gladly taken her, quit the FBI, moved to a tiny town somewhere in the hopes that no one could get to her, but the circumstances were what they were. Even if there was a way to treat her, the price would have been too great, I think, and it would’ve just been buying a piece of time. I’ve been trying to accept that as fact. Some days I can, some days I can’t.”

“Grief doesn’t really follow a strict timeline.”

“Sometimes I’m not even sure what I’m grieving; if it’s for her or the idea of her. The loss of what I don’t have.”

“Maybe it’s both. Do you want…”

“A child? I’m not even sure. I know I’m angry that the choice was taken away from me, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to explore my options or if I’ll ever be. On the other hand, I can hear it ticking.”

“Are we talking about the proverbial biological clock here?”

“Tick. Tick. Tick. Sometimes faintly, sometimes loudly, reminding me that I’m not getting any younger.”

“Well, if you ever do decide to explore those options, I’ll help you in whatever way I can.”

Scully tipped her head and gazed at him sideways. “I’ll remember that,” she said. “If I ever reach a conclusion.”

Part of him felt this conversation was an opening to come clean about the full truth of her missing ova, but he wasn’t going to do that to her if she hadn’t even decided she wanted a child. He didn’t want to hurt her unnecessarily further if the verdict was still out. It was a burden he’d held for such a long time and he wasn’t keen on making it hers as well, even if it was technically her burden. He would rather carry that cross for her and never let her know he was carrying it if he didn’t have to.

“So,” she said, sitting up taller and shaking off the melancholy that had settled momentarily on her shoulders. “We went out of order again kind of. Go ahead with the last one.”

“Okay, final question. Share a personal problem and ask your partner's advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.”

“Well, I can’t seem to get my laundry done when I need it because my partner is always keeping me out nights.”

“Send it out to a service. That’s what I do.”

She smiled. “Just give me a minute, I’ll think of something.”

“Maybe you’re lucky enough to be problem-free. Laundry aside.”

“The only pressing issue I can really think of is how to tell my brother I’d rather not visit for the 4th of July. He’s been sort of pestering me to come out, but if I decide to take a vacation this summer, I’d rather do something relaxing.”

“Like going to Maine?”

“Not Maine.”

“It’s Stephen King territory, Scully, you should’ve known you’d find a possessed doll up there the minute you set foot in the state.”

“Does that mean I’d have better or worse chances of an x-file finding me on a tiny island somewhere in the Caribbean.”

“That probably depends on how close to the Bermuda Triangle you plan to be. But, a tropical island? Really?”

“Might be nice to lay in a hammock and read a book or two.”

“You mean highlight your latest edition of JAMA.”

“At least I’d be on a beach while I’m at it.”

“Blame it on me. Even if you didn’t, I’m sure Bill would do it for you, so just give him the satisfaction of being right as you let him down easy.”

“I’m not gonna blame you to spare his feelings. You don’t deserve that.”

“I guess you can go with the truth then. Just tell him you need a break. You’re using up your days off for some much needed alone time.”

“That’s probably all I can do, but I know he won’t understand.”

“Then that’s his problem.”

“And now I’m supposed to ask you how I feel about this dilemma?”

“Still on the fence, I’d say. You’re gonna want more time to mull it over and probably put it off a bit longer.”

“Correct.”

“Here’s my problem. I want to ask my partner if she’d entertain the idea of coming into the office tomorrow morning, not all day or anything, just for a little while. But, I know she has all that laundry to do that she could send out, and curling up in the titillating world of JAMA, and I certainly don’t want to take that away from her.”

Scully groaned.

“See, big problem,” he said.

“I need more information. Why do you want your partner to come in tomorrow? What could you possibly want to do in the office on a Saturday when we don’t have something taking us out of town?”

“I ordered some Roswell newspaper volumes from archives about a month ago and they finally came in.”

“Newspapers. From Roswell.”

“The 1940s. Wouldn’t it be fun to peruse old-timey articles about mysterious lights in the sky and government cover-ups?”

Scully groaned again.

“Any advice for this problem of mine?”

“Yes. Don’t ask.”

“I hear it’s going to rain tomorrow.”

“So.”

“So she won’t be missing anything by staying indoors. What if I offered to buy her lunch?”

“Not good enough.”

“Breakfast?”

“Not listening.”

“Snacks from the vending machine every hour?”

“Your problem is going to wear a hole in your pocket.”

“Is now a good time to reflect on how I’m feeling?”

“There’s an air of desperation about you. You’re still wondering how best to wear me down, and you know it’s only a matter of time before I say yes, but you’ll still be wondering if I’ll show up until I walk in tomorrow morning.”

“Does that mean my problem is solved?”

“It means you’ll have to wait to find out until tomorrow morning.”

“I guess that’s better than nothing.”

“There’s something else on this paper.” Scully furrowed her brow and pushed the paper towards Mulder while keeping her fingers on it. “Instructions.”

“You’ve reached the end of the questions. The final task is to stare silently into your partner’s eyes for four minutes. It’s important to finish with this step. Some people have described this step as thrilling and terrifying. Good luck.”

“You’ve got to me kidding me.”

“We don’t have to.”

“You know I’m not going to leave something half-assed.”

“I just thought it was fun questions.”

Scully sighed and then downed the rest of her watery Diet Coke. She dropped the glass down on the bar with more force than necessary and turned on the stool to face Mulder.

“Got a timer on your watch?” she asked.

“I do.”

“Set it.”

He did as she asked and then laid his arm down on the bar so she could see it. She grabbed his wrist and after a glance, let him go and rested her arm in front of his, glancing her fingers off of his as she pulled away.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Go.”

Mulder only glanced down to start the timer and then he met her gaze. It was awkward at first, with her looking so defiant and both unaccustomed to really looking that purposefully at each other when they weren’t debating a casefile. Her face finally softened a bit and she gave a small tilt of her head as though she was trying to read something off of him. He hoped she couldn’t read his thoughts in that moment, that was for sure.

Just before she tilted her head, her eyelids dropped in a half-blink and then opened again and he saw in her what he felt like he was on the verge of really seeing in his hallway two years ago, but had tamped down. He envisioned himself rising from his stool, kicking it out of the way, taking her face in his hands, pushing his fingers through her hair, and kissing her for all he was worth, once and for all. He felt his lips part in anticipation, licked them closed, and swallowed.

Suddenly, Scully’s eyes turned glassy and she looked away, pulling back from him with a slight slump, but he reached out and touched her arm, laying his hand down over hers and she blinked back up at him. She looked terrified, but he dipped his head a little and tried to tell her it was alright by widening his eyes just a little and nodding. He understood. This was not a game. He wanted her to know he was sincere and grateful that she did this with him. He cherished her answers. He cherished that she listened. Above all, he simply cherished all of her.

Four minutes could feel like a lifetime. By the time Mulder’s watch went off, Scully looked a little less afraid, but she quickly averted her eyes again at the sound of the beep and pulled her hand out from under his. He didn’t turn away though, and blindly silenced his watch. She stared at the rows of alcohol above the back of the bar until he cleared his throat and swiveled forward in his seat.

“So, we should do this more often,” he said.

“Yeah,” she answered, with a slight scoff. She turned her head towards him though, smiled softly, and then looked down at her lap. “I did have a nice time.”

“I’m glad. Let me get the check and we’ll get out of here.”

He helped her into her coat after he’d paid and then slung his own over his shoulder. Twilight had set in and the streets were quiet. They stopped under a street lamp in front of her apartment, near her car. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at her feet for a few moments.

“Thank you for dinner,” she said.

“Don’t forget, my offer for breakfast, snacks, and lunch still stands.”

“It’s possible I won’t turn it down. It’s also possible I will.”

“I know, you’re always trying to keep me guessing.”

“Keeps you on your toes, doesn’t it?”

“Always.”

Scully smiled and he realized he’d seen her smile more tonight than he had in years. It looked good on her. On impulse, he leaned down and brushed his lips against her cheek, nearly catching the corner of her smile. Her eyes followed his retreat and the slight upturn of her lips was still in place.

“What was that for?” she asked.

“Just because. I’ll see you tomorrow. Or Monday.”

“What if I were to want something from the deli on 13th and E?”

“Done.”

“I’ll add it to the things to consider.”

Mulder turned and took a few steps on his tip-toes towards his car. He heard Scully chuckle and he gave her one last glance over his shoulder. He made a promise to himself in that moment to surprise her with something fun, something she’d least expect. He didn’t know what it was yet, but he’d think of something.

The End

#i wrote this #xf fanfic #mulder #scully #msr #ust #friendship #The Unnatural #pre-ep #don't read the study first if you don't want spoilers

503 notes · View notes

thatwasthenightthingschanged · 6 years

Link

[translated] [page 1]

“When this album comes out, gossip blogs will scour the lyrics for the men they can attribute to each song, as if the inspiration for music is as simple and basic as a paternity test. There will be slideshows of photos backing up each incorrect theory, because it's 2017 and if you didn't see a picture of it, it couldn't have happened right?”

This text is written like an instruction in the booklet of the most successful album of the year (headline: “Here's something I've learned about people.“); it sold more than 1.2 million copies in the first week solely regarding the USA. It was written by the singer herself, Taylor Swift. The piece of art is titled “reputation” since that’s what it’s about, the reputation of someone being in the public eye. And the 28-year-old singer is the biggest superstar to exist at the moment, so she’s definitely someone being in the public eye. It’s impossible to escape form her music nowadays. And all that although she doesn’t do interviews at the moment and only a few pictures are released by her management.

You don’t become a superstar with your music, but with photos. Elvis made it through movies, the Beatles through a television transmission, Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna and following artists through music videos. Taylor Swift, born 1989 in Reading, Pennsylvania and raised in a small town in Wyoming as the daughter of a stock broker and a marketing employee, shows herself - as she’s a digital native - nearly solely through her social media pages with the advantage that she can determine what is written and said about her. She has - as I’m writing this - 74 million fans on facebook, 85,7 million fans on twitter and 104,6 million fans on instagram - no journal, no magazine, no tv show has a bigger influence than she does. Taylor Swift doesn’t need the traditional media anymore, she’s the media herself, shows herself on instagram with a clever mix of glamour and intimacy, shows herself posing for magazines, gives insight into her songs and her music videos as well as shows herself with her cats in - as it seems - private surroundings. And if you’re after all more conservative, you can buy not one but two magazines. Although there aren’t be any interviews or reports in there, you will find many photos, e.g. pictures taken by the fashion photographers Mert & Marcus, self-drawn paintings, handwritten poems and lyrics. All in all it’s like an instagram account to flip through.

Therefore, Taylor Swift is in control of everything. But it wasn’t always like this. When she was 19, she won the category “Best Female Video” with her music video for “You Belong With Me” at the MTV Video Music Awards. And during her acceptance speech, rapper Kanye West interrupted her by saying “I’m really happy for you Taylor and imma let you finish”, to loudly proclaim that the also nominated R&B singer Beyonce had produced one of the best videos of all time with her music video for “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)”. After that, he gave the girl in the silvery sparkly dress her microphone back and left the stage.

It’s a typical example of a powerful man humiliating a young woman. Happens even more lately. But West explained afterwards that the sole purpose of his interruption was that he found it to be unfair that black artists are always snobbed of their awards at shows like this. Of course he’s not wrong, but aside the fact that Beyonce eventually won the biggest award of the evening “Video Of The Year”, he did not have to intimidate a 19-year-old singer with a showcase of his power to prove his point, he could’ve also interrupted Eminem, who won the award in the category “Best HipHop Video” against Jay-Z and Kanye himself.

Of course what he did was nothing else than male power abuse to show superiority and it actually worked really well. All of a sudden, West was the nice knight in white armor and Swift like a stupid and not cool piece of bread with songs taken from a girl’s diary about first-world-problems representing the suppression of Afro-Americans in the US who are dealing with this issue for centuries now and she even wins an award for it. Hashtag #WhiteSupremacy.

Since that, talking about Taylor Swift meant also talking about feminism and racism. The young singer needed to accept her role as the international figurehead and most hated person. But she quickly learned and as the years passed by, there was always a subtle discussion of her songs and how she presented herself. On her next album, with the pragmatic title “Speak Now” which sold twice as many copies as her previous album “Fearless”, she addressed the situation with West (”It’s okay, life is a tough crowd / 32 and still growing up now / who you are is not what you did / you’re still an innocent”) and in her music video for the song “Mean”, she freed herself of the ties binding her to a train rail and switched from a country barn to Broadway.

On her album “Red”, which was released in 2012, she documents the transition from an innocent girl to a confident woman and to an autonomous artist, but the media as well as the user of social media did not want to grant her that role and assigned every song to a celebrity boyfriend and asked themselves what’s wrong with her as she cannot keep a man. Were the albums of Bob Dylan, John Lennon or even Ryan Adams also solely reduced to the aspect of privacy? No. But it was tried with Jony Mitchell, Fiona Apple or Carly Simon. The issue should be obvious (small hint: it has something to do with the gender of the artist).

#psa: sorry for the long-ass sentences #germans have a weird sentence structure i guess #and i didn't want to make full stops where there weren't any #also also this took like one hour wtf #taylor swift #rolling stone #words about taylor #reputation

55 notes · View notes

tealmist · 3 years

Text

Take My Hand Take My Whole Life Too Elvis Signature T Shirt From AllezyGo

That it depends on how long it’s taking Europe to heal Italy is starting to make a Take My Hand Take My Whole Life Too Elvis Signature T Shirt From AllezyGo comeback I’m very happy to see that with my friend the Prime Minister is its tragic what went on in Italy and Spain and France in Germany frankly in every every country over there it’s tragic but will be looking at what’s happening in Europe and certainly we want to do that and they want to do it to they wanted to very badly you say give you I can tell you exactly yes I do have a very good idea but I can talk about it I just wish him well I’ve had a very good relationship with conjunctivae word president you’d be in war you would’ve been in war with Korea you would’ve been a war with North Korea if I wasn’t president that I can tell you he expected that that I can tell you I I hope these and find I do know how he’s doing relatively speaking and we will lab seal probably be hearing in the not too distant future I wanted to mock at 20 election year might try the thought of changing the date of the what I did at November 3 good. That halted there was a holding our country together instead he’s issuing executive orders making promises that the end will defund the Social Security system by insisting that this virus will disappear the Joe Biden Harris administration by the conference a plan to meet the challenge of 19 and turned the corner on this pandemic masking Claire science based guidance dramatically scaling up testing getting states and local governments and resources they need to open his goals of business safely we can do this we just need a president and vice president willing to lead take responsibility this president says it’s not my fault the government the governor should thank me more as an old saying goes give me a break in an economic crisis more than 16 million Americans 16 million still out of work Donald Trump is on track to break another record on track to leave office of the worst jobs record of any American president in modern history but instead of doing the hard work of meeting face to face with congressional. For your community or for the American people broadly and as a president said especially important now that we look after senior citizens with chronic underlying health conditions last week the president directed the Center for Medicaid Medicare services to raise the standards that are nursing homes increase inspections that are nursing homes and today were offering very specific guidance which Seema Verma will articulate about visitations and nursing homes it’s important to remember that they were there for us when we were growing up Mr Pres that helped us with our homework they tucked us in at night cheered us on as we pursued education steered us on in our careers now it’s time for us to be there for them to recognize it seniors with chronic health conditions are the most vulnerable and Americans can make a difference so wash your hands use common sense look after the most vulnerable and Mr Pres I know I join you in saying that every American should be proud of this incredible public private partnership this

Click To Buy It: Take My Hand Take My Whole Life Too Elvis Signature T Shirt From AllezyGo

Take My Hand Take My Whole Life Too Elvis Signature T Shirt From AllezyGo, Hoodie, Sweater, Longsleeve T-Shirt For Men and Women

Take My Hand Take My Whole Life Too Elvis Signature T Shirt From AllezyGo

I Am A US Veteran I Would Put The Uniform Back On If America Needed Me American Flag Army T Shirt

Premium Trending This Christmas Season will Presents Who Love:

A large make choices between the job I my children have a Take My Hand Take My Whole Life Too Elvis Signature T Shirt From AllezyGo job and is is is is is that I view as shattering record for most holy cases in a single day and your level of concern is with and told her to be home indefinitely will be able to catch brown face that this is change this country on earth is never been more important than all the work they think is so proud to bring the perspective of a black one daughter of immigrants the wife and mother that he can’t just family are more vulnerable to police violence because of their color a proud nerd representative of the emerging American cable TV is great going full when you Carolyn he will look down from heaven and the door a little over a half hour away getting a good it made and given my limited month ago savanna that millions of voters already and then ultimately they’re talking to the undecided questions how many people truly understand an extreme persuaded one in line behind questions so we started lose your life as you for your degree for you to be a superexpensive. A mass of American disrupt the peaceful transfer of power masking of American citizens and should be a real problem why is it that the unmasking of Flynn somehow in that up in the pages of the Washington Post nothing about those who investigate Michael in the Obama administration was there they wanted to do everything they could undermine the incoming administration design going Washington Post on only one in we do well I’m on the Starship Enterprise are unionized on me and they went on great shrub regardless of the union of the human person appreciative of most of these guys are no really died in the wall I know what reason you went the good so so Obama Joe Biden flying on mantra and so now the VP must become president is under investigation cream listing on the documents of the prosecutor that prosecuted you know what is being like all of the circumstance about the income of Harrison went over to talk about a little bit in Tonight Show is you that the regular media something like suck on you know so they don’t. I fails meanwhile is like okay I got this circle around meand why is it so you can See Other Shirt: Artsakh Strong Armenia Flag T Shirt

#Take #My #Hand #Whole #Life #Too #Elvis #Signature

0 notes

highwiredazeken · 4 years

Text

B. J. THOMAS: CELEBRATING 50 EPIC YEARS OF RAINDROPS

B.J. Thomas is a legendary singer who has experienced a brilliant career recording hit records and performing live for several generations of fans. And now in this absolutely crazy and unpredicable year of 2020, one of his biggest hits Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head celebrates a 50 year anniversary since going straight up to Number One. Written by the esteemed songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head was the theme song from the movie Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. B.J. Thomas would even find himself performing Raindrops at the Academy Awards that year in a full Broadway style production, right before they all won the Oscar for Best Original Song!

Highwire Daze recently had the honor to interview B.J. Thomas to discuss this very special anniversary of Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head. We also spoke about Hooked On A Feeling and what he really thought about the Blue Swede version of the song that was recorded a few years later. Read on…

Before we talk about Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head, you had a hit song a year before called Hooked On A Feeling written by Mark James, who also wrote songs for Elvis. How did that song come about and what do you think of the Blue Swede version? Well, I had a few hit records from ‘66 and I had my first million seller then – and I was just not doing too much in ’67. Mark James, the writer, called me from Memphis and said, “Hey, what are you doing?” I said, “Man, I am just hanging.” He said, “Man, you need to come up to Memphis. We have got a bunch of writers up here. They’re making hit records on everybody.”

So, my brother and I, we drove up, and I started hanging out at the studio. And I got in there singing with the American Studio Band, and we just fit together so perfectly. That’s when Mark started writing songs for me. I had a song called The Eyes of a New York Woman, and then the next one I cut was Hooked On A Feeling with the sitar performer by Reggie Young.

Mark was trying to write me a kind of an up-tempo kind of a lively song. That’s where Hooked came from. Just one of those really simple, but really effective songs and probably one of the favorites that I’ve done. It’s like people who are coming to see me, they really respond to Hooked on a Feeling. “Hey, I love the song!”

Now, Blue Swede. I don’t know man. I think that the Blue Swede record is a great production. I think it ‘s a very well done record. And of course, it went Number One when my record only went to Number Five. So I cannot say anything negative about it. Although, I thought they kind of covered my song a little quick, but they did a great record and it is done quite well. So, it is appreciated.

Now, on to Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head, which is 50 years old. What was it like working with the legendary Burt Bacharach and Hal David team? And how did you wind up becoming the singer for that song? I was with Scepter Records in those days. Their mainstay artist was Dionne Warwick. Mr. Burt Bacharach and Hal David produced and wrote most of Dionne’s music. When they had the song they wrote for Butch Cassidy, it needed a male singer. It was not anything they could do with Dionne and they were kind of looking around for somebody to do it.

I had moved up to New York in ’68 and I had been working a little bit with Mr. Bacharach and we have been going over songs and trying to find the right song to record. So when Raindrops came up, it was just a great fit and they gave me the shot. So I flew out to California, I did the song. And by the way, it was awesome to work with them.

I was always in awe of Mr. Bacharach and Hal David. They are some of the best people I have ever known. They would great to me. I flew out and did the bicycle scene in California. And a few weeks later, we recorded it again for the version that became the Number One record. It is just awesome to work with them. They were fantastic.

Is it true you had laryngitis when you first recorded that song? Yeah. I did. I had just finished three weeks of one-nighters through the Midwest. When I got to California, Gloria and I got in and man, I cannot hardly talk. My throat was killing me. I went to a private doctor that would see me on a Saturday. I had rehearsal with Mr. Bacharach on that day, too, and I was really worried. I went and saw the doctor and he said he did not want me to even speak for two weeks and that I had to wait. He said I had the worst throat he had ever seen. I said, “Man, I’ve got a rehearsal and then a session tomorrow.”

It wasn’t like I was not going to show up. But I was really afraid that he would not say, “Hey, man.” That he would think it wasn’t going to work. But I showed up and he liked it. My voice was kind of rough and kind of hoarse sounding, and he liked it. He thought it was really effective for what he was going to put it in the bicycle scene.

As it turns out, I sang it five times for the bicycle scene. I’m glad I didn’t have to do it anymore because I am not sure I could have done more than I did. But he loved it, and obviously, it worked out really well. We re-recorded Raindrops about six weeks later for the version that became Number One. But it worked out.

You know, just about everything connected with Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head – it worked out perfectly. The experience, the movie was a great movie. The song sold over ten million copies. Everything with that song is a great memory.

You performed Raindrops at the Academy Awards with those bicycles riding all around you. Tell me what that experience was like, and were you scared? Oh, yeah. I was absolutely scared to death. But you know what, in rehearsal when the song was such a big production about 12-13 minutes long, and I thought, “Hey, man. We may win this thing because they’re really doing have big number on it.” As it turns out, they did win the Academy Award. I love doing it. I love wearing the Sundancer’s costume to do the song. The whole experience was really wonderful. It was great.

Did you get to meet Bob Hope who introduce you guys? Yeah. Subsequently, I didn’t know him then, but I did get to know Bob. Bob did certain personal appearances and did his comedy, and I did about six or eight of those shows with him over the years. I would go and sing before he came on and everything. He was a wonderful guy. His wife, Dolores, she was a great lady and he was just great guy. You know, a legend.

Your latest recording to date is The Living Room Sessions. What was it like working Lyle Lovett on that version of Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head? Lyle Lovett was really good. Lyle was appreciated and respected across the business. We were picking out people that we wanted to join us and add something to the record, and he did his vocal performance in New York. I wasn’t there for that. It’s the one thing I regret. I was not there when he sang, but he did a great job and that particular album was a lot of fun.

Just going back for a minute, did Jim Morrison or The Doors ever hear or comment on your version of Light My Fire? No. Cuz actually, my version was more connected to Jose Feliciano’s version. We were doing an album and it was going to be one of the songs— we picked it would be one of the songs on the album and that version we did was Jose Feliciano’s version. I have never heard from Jose either. (Laughs) But no, I have never heard from Jim Morrison. That would have been very cool!

Do you have any new recordings or projects on the horizon? Well, you know we’re obviously in a kind of a bad period and everything has been shut down for the most part, and especially the music industry. I had a session that was scheduled for the middle of this month of July that we’ve had to set back.

I’m going to record in Muscle Shoals with Dan Penn and Billy Lawson. We’re really excited about doing it, but as to when, we don’t know right now. We don’t know exactly how this thing is going to run out and when we can get the vaccine. If we can get the vaccine and we’re not in any danger of becoming ill, then we will go right in and do it. But we’re really so excited about doing it and kind of stressing through and getting through this period of time. We’ve got some great songs and we’re really looking forward to doing them.

Complete this sentence, if I have to sing Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head again live, I’ll…? I’ll thank God and feel honored that I have the chance to do it. I’m not one of those guys where a lot of my peers say, “I am tired of this song. I am tired of that song.” I have such a good memories and emotions tied to most of my music. I really don’t ever get tired of doing them, especially Raindrops. I love to do Raindrops.

Do you have any messages for your fans who are reading this right now? Well, I want to be sure and say thank you. I appreciate the fans for keeping me around all of these years and still wanting to hear my music, and helping me be successful with my appearances. I never imagined that things would work out so well for me in my career. So I thank the people, and I thank you for thinking about me. It has been wonderful and I hope to see everybody soon.

(Interview by Ken Morton)

B.J. Thomas Official Home Page

#bj thomas #raindrops keep fallin on my head #hooked on a feeling

0 notes

onlovestreetwithjimmorrison · 7 years

Text

Mary and Jim to the end

Before Jim Morrison became famous with the Doors, he and Mary Werbelow were soul mates. In the never-ending procession of Morrison biographies, she is mentioned briefly but never quoted. Google her, and not a single photo appears. She has never spoken publicly about their three years together - until now.

By ROBERT FARLEY Published September 25, 2005

[Courtesy of Mike Sanders]

WHERE THEY MET:

Clearwater Beach, Pier 60. Mary was in high school, Jim just finished a year at St. Pete Junior College. His second cousin, Gail Swift, who lived in Clearwater, says their relationship was intense: “I think they answered a lonely call inside each other.”

Go to photo gallery

BEAUTY CONTESTANT:

Mary, at 18, competed for the title of Miss Clearwater 1963. The Clearwater Pass Bridge is behind her.

[Courtesy of Clearwater Public Library]

Mary Werbelow is polite but firm: She doesn't do interviews. Ever.

Jim Morrison was her first love, before he got famous with the Doors. Friends from Clearwater say that for three years in the early 1960s, Jim and Mary were inseparable. He mourns their breakup in the Doors' ballad The End.

For nearly 40 years, all manner of people have tracked Mary down and asked for her story, including Oliver Stone, when he was making his movie starring Val Kilmer as Jim. Others waved money. Always she said thank you, no.

"I have spoken to no one."

She can't see what good could come of it; some things are just meant to be kept private. Besides, journalists always get it wrong. They focus on Jim Morrison as drunk, drug abuser, wild man. They don't know his sensitivity and intellect, his charm and humor.

"They take a part of him and sensationalize that. People don't really know Jim. They don't really have a clue."

Mary is afraid to share. Because nobody could ever fully understand him, or her, or them. Not to mention how painful it is, even 40 years later, to relive something she would rather forget. She still aches for love lost; her regret never relents.

She lives in California, alone, in an aging mobile home park. By phone she is told that back in Clearwater, to make way for condos they're tearing down the house on N Osceola Avenue, the place Jim lived in when they met. His room was in back, books stacked everywhere save for the path to his bed.

"That was a lovely home," Mary says. "It's a shame to knock it down."

Across a dozen conversations, she amplifies on stories the old Clearwater crowd tells, and adds some of her own. She says she's not sure why she's talking now. Maybe it's just time.

SUMMER 1962, CLEARWATER:

Nine years before Jim died

Mary and best friend Mary Wilkin spread their beach blanket near Pier 60. Our Mary was 17, wearing a black one-piece, cut all the way down the back, square in front - a little daring for the time, especially for a buttoned-down Catholic girl.

Amid the flattops on the pier, the guy with the mop of hair stood out.

Jim had been sent here by his father, then a Navy captain, after he blew off his high school graduation ceremony in Virginia. He had just finished the year at St. Petersburg Junior College and lived with his grandparents, who ran a coin laundry on Clearwater-Largo Road.

On her beach towel, Mary turned to her friend and uttered the first sexual comment of her life:

"Wow, look at those legs!"

Jim tagged along when his friend came over to flirt with Mary Wilkin. He told our Mary he was a regular pro at the game of matchsticks, a mental puzzle in which the matches are laid out in rows, like a pyramid. Loser picks up the last one.

Jim challenged Mary and suggested they spice things up with a wager. If she won?

"You'll have to be my slave for the day."

If he won? Mary had to watch beach basketball with him.

As Mary's first command, she marched Jim to the barber. She was just finishing her junior year at Clearwater High, where all the boys had flattops; she was not going to be seen with such a hairy mess.

"Shorter," she told the barber.

"Shorter.

"Shorter."

To a buzz cut.

He must really like me, Mary thought. I'll see if I still dig him by the time his hair grows out, and if I do, it won't matter.

Slave order No. 2: Iron and clean. And wash her black Plymouth, a.k.a. "The Bomb."

Jim had begun the wax job when Mary's father rescued him with a picnic basket and suggested the couple adjourn to the Clearwater Causeway.

To cap slave day, Mary had Jim chauffeur her to St. Pete, in the shiny Bomb, to see the movie West Side Story.

Mary was on the high school homecoming court. Her friends did cotillion dances at the Jack Tar Harrison Hotel, hit Brown Brothers dairy store for burgers and malts, and shopped Mertz's records for Ben E. King, Del Shannon and Elvis Presley.

Hair shorn, Jim still attracted attention, shy behind granny glasses, army jacket and a conductor's hat. The local law stopped him multiple times to check his ID.

He read his poetry at the avant-garde Beaux Arts coffeehouse in Pinellas Park and visited St. Pete's only live burlesque show, at the Sun Art Theater on Ninth Street.

Friends who thought they knew Mary couldn't fathom why she would want to hang out with the likes of Jim Morrison.

What they didn't know was how out of place Mary felt in her social circle. Jim talked like no one she had met.

"We're just going to talk in rhymes now," he would say.

He recited long poems from memory. "Listen to this, listen to this," he'd say, "Tiger, tiger, burning bright . . ." - excited, like it was breaking news, not William Blake.

This was not puppy love, Mary says, like the earlier boyfriend who played guitar, wrote songs and serenaded her by phone. This was different. This was intense.

"We connected on a level where speaking was almost unnecessary. We'd look at each other and know what we were thinking."

She liked her alone time, in her bedroom, dancing and drawing.

Jim liked his alone time, in his bedroom, reading.

They skipped dances and football games and hung out, at her house, his grandparents' house, wherever.

"I hated to let him go at night. I couldn't shut the door."

When it came to sex, Mary's answer was no.

"It was not happening. And it didn't for a long time. I'm surprised he held out that long."

Mary's grandparents were strict Catholics. She had visions of them at the last judgment, watching her. "It was too much for me to bear."

The poet

Everybody, everybody, remembers the notebooks. Any time, any place, Jim would fish one from his back pocket, scribble and chuckle.

Chris Kallivokas, Bryan Gates and Tom Duncan. And Phil Anderson, George Greer, Ruth Duncan, Gail Swift and Mary. They all remember.

Around Jim, you always felt watched. He'd bait and goad, get a rise, take notes. "There was no one who wasn't under observation," Gates says. "His only purpose in life was observation."

When Jim drove, Mary kept a notebook at the ready.

"Write this!" he'd say, dictating an observation. Or he'd pull over and scribble himself.

Everyone has a story about Jim's brainy side. Kallivokas remembers the night his Clearwater High buddies and a new kid came by Alexander's Sundries, his father's drugstore on Clearwater Beach. They wanted Kallivokas to come party, but he had a term paper due the next day, on Lord Essex. Naturally, he had written all of two sentences.

"I know all about him," the new kid volunteered. Jim wrote the paper off the top of his head, with footnotes and bibliography.

"To this day, I don't know if it was right," says Kallivokas, who says he got an A+

They would rag Jim that the books crowding his living space were for show. He'd look away and challenge nonbelievers to pick any book and read the beginning of any chapter. He'd name the book, the author and more context than they cared to hear.

"He was a genius," Mary says. "He was incredible."

She says his heroes were William Burroughs, William Blake, Hieronymus Bosch, Norman Mailer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Arthur Rimbaud, Aldous Huxley, Jack Kerouac.

Mary didn't have heroes like that. "Jim was my hero."

The provocateur

Pre-Mary, Jim's buddy Phil Anderson brought him to a house party on Clearwater Beach.

Jim was dazzling with the dictionary game. People would pick obscure words, and Jim would tell the definitions.

Phil turned, and his pal was standing on the couch, peeing on the floor. "Needless to say, we were asked to leave."

That was Jim. He'd charm, then provoke. It was worse when he drank.

He got epically drunk on Chianti at the all-day car races in Sebring, crawled around in a white fake fur coat like a polar bear covered in dirt and tried to launch himself onto the track. Friends grabbed his ankles.

"He'd get a real pleasure out of shocking people and being a little eccentric and peculiar," Kallivokas says. "And that came to the forefront when he had a couple drinks."

Mary says he rarely drank in her presence.

"It was out of respect for me. We were in love, and he didn't want to do things that I didn't like."

"That's a real key to understanding Jim," Gates says. "She was the love of his life in those days. They were virtually soul mates for three or four years."

In the fall, Jim transferred to Florida State. Most weekends, rain or shine, he hitchhiked back to Clearwater, 230 miles down U.S. 19. Most days in between, letters postmarked Tallahassee arrived at the Werbelow mailbox on Nursery Road.

Mary's father intercepted one, read the page about sex and never got to the part that made clear Jim was writing about a class. Furious at her father's snooping, she burned all Jim's letters, a move she came to regret, deeply.

She wasn't much of a letter writer herself. At Jim's direction, she wrote once a week and included the number of a public telephone in Clearwater and a time he should call.

On his end, Jim would put in a dime for the first two minutes. They would talk for hours. When the operator asked him to settle up, he'd take off. Free phone service.

On her end, Mary would loiter by the phone at the appointed hour, glancing about, certain it was the week the cavalry was coming to arrest her.

"I was so scared," she says, laughing. "I just thought it was normal. I see now it wasn't."

She always assumed he had her wait at different phones for her protection; now she's thinking it was his way of making sure she wrote him at least once a week.

March 30, 1963:

Eight years before Jim died

It's hardly something Mary brags about; she says she would have declined. But when the Jaycees called to recruit her for the Miss Clearwater competition, Mary's mother answered the phone.

"Oh, yeah," mom said, "she'll be happy to do it."

The third and final night of competition, more than 1,000 people packed Clearwater Municipal Auditorium. Five finalists matched "beauty, personality and poise."

Mary was looking good, not that Jim was thrilled. If she won, it was on to Miss Florida. Less time for him.

In her toreador outfit - tight-fitting green pants with red sequins down the sides from hip to ankle - Mary did the bossa nova, swirling a red and yellow satin cape. The Clearwater Sun called her performance a "house-stopper." Time for her big question: "If your husband grew a beard, what would you do?"

What a stupid question, she thought, and answered: "I'd let him grow it. Whether he would kiss me or not would be another matter."

She told the judges she was headed for college, torpedoing her chances because it meant she would not be available to fulfill all obligations of Miss Clearwater.

Sitting through other contestants' routines, Mary scanned the darkened hall until she spotted Jim, bored senseless. But there.

She got first runner-up.

1964-65, Los Angeles:

The breakup

Mary's father banned Jim from the Werbelow house. Mary won't say why; she doesn't want to add to the Morrison myth.

When she followed Jim to Tallahassee for a semester, her parents objected. When he started film school at UCLA and Mary announced she was following him to Los Angeles, they were devastated.

To bribe Mary to stay, her mother bought her an antique bedroom set, no competition for a 19-year-old following her heart.

Mary says Jim asked her to wear "something floaty" when she arrived in Los Angeles. "He wanted me to look like an angel coming off the plane."

Instead, she drove out a week early and surprised him.

Together again, in an exciting, intimidating city, they kept separate apartments. Mary got her first real job, in the office of a hospital X-ray department. Later, she donned a fringe skirt and boots as a go-go dancer at Gazzari's on the Sunset Strip.

Jim studied film. At the end of the year, a handful from among hundreds of student films were selected for public showing. Jim's was not among them.

Shortly after, Mary says, he told her he was humiliated, considered his formal education over and needed to forget everything. He built a fire in his back yard and incinerated many of his precious Florida notebooks.

Mary says he started doubting her commitment. "You're going to leave me," he would tell her.

"No, I'm not. How can you say that? I'm in love with you."

After one fight, Jim went out with another woman. He wasn't home the next morning. Mary went to the woman's house, but she said Jim wasn't there.

Mary called: "Come out wherever you are!"

Jim slinked forward, a hand towel around him. Mary bolted and, in a blur, hit the woman's fence as she sped off.

"That was the beginning of the end."

He was drinking hard and taking psychedelic drugs. The darkness she says she had seen from the start was overtaking him, and she didn't want to watch him explore his self-destructive bent. She felt he had swallowed her identity. Whatever he liked, she liked.

"I had to go out and see what parts of that were me. I just knew I had to be away from him. I needed to be by myself, to find my own identity."

She enrolled in art school. The day Jim helped her move to a new apartment, she told him she needed a break.

"He clammed up after that. I really hurt him. It hurts me to say that. I really hurt him."

They split up in the summer of 1965.

A few months later, Jim got together with a film school buddy, Ray Manzarek, who says he wanted to combine his keyboards with Jim's poetry. They started the band that became the Doors.

Friends from Clearwater never saw it coming. Back then, Jim didn't have much interest in music. He didn't even appear to have rhythm.

"He didn't sit around and sing," Mary says, laughing. "Jim, no, he was a poet. He wrote poetry."

By phone from his home in Northern California, Manzarek says all the guys in film school were in love with Mary. She was gorgeous, and sweet on top of that. "She was Jim's first love. She held a deep place in his soul."

The Doors' 11-minute ballad The End, Manzarek says, originally was "a short goodbye love song to Mary." (The famous oedipal parts were added later.)

This is the end, Beautiful friend

This is the end, My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end

Of everything that stands, the end

No safety or surprise, the end

I'll never look into your eyes . . . again

. . .

This is the end, Beautiful friend

This is the end, My only friend, the end

It hurts to set you free

But you'll never follow me

The end of laughter and soft lies

The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end

* * *

Within two years of their breakup, Light My Fire was No. 1 on the charts and Jim was the "King of Orgasmic Rock," the brooding heartthrob staring from the covers of Rolling Stone and Life.

He took up with other women, notably with longtime companion Pamela Courson, but Mary says she and Jim kept up with each other. She says she was his anchor to the times before things got crazy.

"I'd see him when he really needed to talk to someone."

Before a photo shoot for the Doors' fourth album, she says Jim told her: "The first three albums are about you. Didn't you know that?"

She says she didn't have the heart to tell him she had never really listened to them. She had heard Doors songs on the radio, but she didn't go to his concerts, she didn't keep up with his career.

Mary vehemently denies it, but Manzarek says she told Jim, "The band is no good and you'll never make it." He says Mary wanted Jim to go back to school, get a master's degree and make something of himself.

When Mary moved, she says, Jim had a knack for finding her. He would eventually ask if she had changed her mind. "Why can't we be together now?"

Not yet, she would answer, someday.

More than once, she says, he asked her to marry.

"It was heartbreaking. I knew I wanted to be with him, but I couldn't."

She thought they were too young. She worried they might grow apart. She needed more time to explore her own identity.

In late 1968, Mary moved to India to study meditation. She never saw Jim again.

March 1, 1969, Miami:

Two years before Jim died

With the Doors coming for their first Florida concert, Chris Kallivokas left a message with his old friend's record company. He says Jim called him back, loving life.

"The chicks we get, the money. . . . It's great."

"So that crowd control works," Kallivokas teased, talking about theories that intrigued Jim in Collective Behavior class at FSU. He said Jim answered:

"You've got to make them believe you're doing them a favor by being onstage. The more abusive you are, the more they love it."

They planned a reunion in Clearwater.

* * *

Some 15,000 fans cram into the 10,000-capacity Dinner Key Auditorium, a sweaty, converted seaplane hangar in Miami. Jim Morrison announces his drunken presence with dissonant blasts from a harmonica.

The cover boy, 26 now, has a paunch and beard, a cowboy hat with a skull and crossbones and noticeably slurred speech.

One stanza into the second song, Five to One, he berates the crowd.

"You're all a bunch of f - - - - - - idiots!"

Confused silence. Uncomfortable laughter.

"Letting people tell you what you're gonna do, letting people push you around. How long you do think it's gonna last? . . .

"Maybe you like it. Maybe you like being pushed around. Maybe you love it. Maybe you love getting your face stuck in the s - - -."

Screams from the audience.

"You're all a bunch of slaves. . . .

"Letting everybody push you around. What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do! What are you gonna do! What are you gonna do!"

He talks as much as he sings. He wails about loneliness and rants about love. Three songs after berating the crowd, the music softens and he lets loose a plaintive:

"Away, away, away, away, in India

"Away, away, away, away in In-di-a

"Away, away, away, away in In-di-a."

* * *

Morrison invited the crowd onstage, and the concert disintegrated. Amid the chaos, he supposedly unzipped his pants, exposed himself and simulated sex with guitarist Robby Krieger.

With the country debating indecency run amok, Jim Morrison was Exhibit A. He was charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, a felony, plus indecent exposure and two other misdemeanors.

The courtroom in Miami was packed. State witnesses saw what they saw. Others said it was hype, Morrison only simulated what he was accused of. There wasn't a single damning photo.

Bryan Gates hadn't seen Jim in ages. They caught up during a break, and talk inevitably turned to Mary. What ever happened to her? Gates asked. Jim said he had lost touch, California seemed to have swallowed her up psychically.

He was acquitted of the felony but convicted of indecent exposure. On Oct. 30, 1970, he was sentenced to six months of "confinement at hard labor" in the Dade County Jail.

Out on appeal, he moved to Paris, where he shared an apartment with Courson.

The Doors released L.A. Woman in April 1971, with hit songs Love Her Madly and Riders on the Storm. Months later, Jim Morrison was dead.

On July 3, 1971, Courson found him in the bathtub. The listed cause of death was heart attack; drugs were suspected. He was 27.

September 2005

34 years after Jim died

Mary is 61, unemployed and rarely leaves her mobile home. She says she married and divorced twice, and she has no children.

"I can't find anybody to replace Jim. We definitely have a soul connection so deep. I've never had anything like that again, and I don't expect I ever will."

She painted, mostly realistic oil portraits. She won a small legal settlement after she said she developed multiple chemical sensitivities from rat poison that seeped through the vents of her art studio over the years. It makes it difficult to be around scented products, and she gave up her art.

Mary would not meet with a reporter for this story or allow her photo to be taken. She says she weighs exactly what she did in high school - 107 pounds - but now her hair is long and gray. "People sometimes tell me I look like an artist."

She doesn't think the early Doors albums are all about her but says the lyrics include references to her and Jim's shared experiences, including the "blue bus" in The End. She considered writing about the references but decided against it. An artist herself, she didn't want to spoil people's various interpretations.

For decades, she says, she brooded over how things might have turned out had they stayed together but finally concluded it was destiny. "He was supposed to go into that deep, dark place."

His grave in Paris draws pilgrims from around the world, but not Mary. Quite the opposite, she says. She wants to forget, and still she feels his ghost checking on her.

Lines in Break on Through especially pain her, lines she interprets as Jim saying she betrayed him by not getting back together:

Arms that chain us

Eyes that lie

"I promised it wouldn't be forever, that I'd get back together with him sometime. I never did. It's very painful to think of that. For a long time, any time I would think about him, or anyone would talk about him, I'd cry.

"It used to make me so sad. I never gave him that second chance. That destroyed me for so long. I let him go and never gave him that second chance. I felt so guilty about that."

Mary says she is tired. She has trouble sleeping. She says she's not sure if she has done right by talking so much. She's worried that others will seek interviews that she does not want to give. She wants that made clear: She does not want to talk about Jim anymore.

- St. Petersburg Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.http://www.sptimes.com/2005/09/25/Doors/Mary_and_Jim_to_the_e.shtml

#Jim Morrison #Mary Werbelow

20 notes · View notes