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foxghost · 3 years

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Joyful Reunion, Chapter 60

Translator: foxghost @foxghost tumblr/ko-fi1 Beta: meet-me-in-oblivion @meet-me-in-oblivion tumblr Original by 非天夜翔 Fei Tian Ye Xiang Masterpost | Characters, Maps & Other Reference Index

Book 2, Chapter 14 (Part 5)

Thunder rumbles faintly in the distance. Wu Du comes back to their room to find Duan Ling lying on the bed with his eyes still open, glancing over to him as he comes in.

“Not asleep yet?” Wu Du says.

Duan Ling shakes his head, about to get up so he can give his spot to Wu Du.

“Just sleep on the inside of the bed. The floor’s gross. I saw the attendant mop the floor earlier and that bucket of water he was using was so dirty I wondered how many years he’s been mopping with it. Even an ancient dead well is cleaner than that.”

Duan Ling laughs. Since they’re on the road together, they’re making do by squeezing into the only good room in the post house; the bed though, is plenty big enough.

“By the time we get back they may already have relocated the capital.” Wu Du says offhandedly, “We get some good work done here, Mu Kuangda may give us a more spacious house.”

Duan Ling is still thinking about their conversation from earlier in the afternoon. “Is Xie You in Jiangzhou?”

Wu Du gives him a short hum in the affirmative. Duan Ling lets his mind wander, circling back to all those things Wu Du said earlier. He wants to learn even more, but Wu Du is one of the society types, unfamiliar with the political machinations of Mu Kuangda and his ilk. Since the dawn of time the powers between emperor and chancellor, and between local and central government, has always been a series of mutual checks and balances, a test of strength in a tug of war.

Great Chen has experienced many conflicts of war and has finally survived the most perilous period, but Duan Ling has gradually come to realise that beneath the calm surface of recuperation there are crisscrossing undercurrents; one false move and the government will capsize entirely, sinking to the depths below. Northwest of Jiangzhou stands Huaiyin, which has become an increasingly important location to Jiangbei2 ever since the Liao occupation of Shangzi, and now its local lord has grown so powerful that it seems strong enough to act in opposition to imperial powers. Princess Duanping’s marriage alliance with the Marquess of Huaiyin Yao Fu was one way of winning him to the imperial family’s side.

Relocating the capital at a time like this is equivalent to confronting the Marquess, and it is also showing the Li family’s resolution to recover the north with the central plain as a foothold. On the face of it, Mu Kuangda looks like the one who’s pushing this plan forward from the shadows, but in practice the final decision rests with Li Yanqiu. There is no telling, however, whether or not the fake crown prince possesses such valour and insight.

“What’s the crown prince like?” Duan Ling asks suddenly.

Wu Du turns over, ignoring him. Duan Ling gives him a shake, but he can only leave it be when Wu Du doesn’t give him an answer. Eyes wide open, he keeps on thinking. If all he has is himself and his fourth uncle, will he be scared? They’ll have to move the capital sooner or later; when he thinks about that, he finds himself overcome with a vague sense of excitement instead of fear. It is the excitement one feels in the face of imminent danger …

“Why do you always look like you’re still half asleep?”

The next day as Wu Du gets ready to get back on the road, he can’t even get mad when he notices Duan Ling nodding off again; Duan Ling is drowsy as anything the moment he steps out the door, so sleepy he’ll get lost if no one is there to keep an eye on him. A light drizzle has started to fall today, off and on; it’s nearly autumn now, and as they move north along the border of Xichuan, it’s also gradually getting cooler.

By the time they get to the Min River, it’s sunset behind grey skies that wouldn’t stop raining. Wu Du says to Duan Ling, “Right now you’re the young master and I’m your attendant.”

“Alright.” Duan Ling nods, and ties the belt around his robe properly. With painstaking patience, Wu Du instructs him on how he’s supposed to talk depending on with whom, what he’s supposed to say, how not to let his real identity slip. Duan Ling keeps nodding with a humble and self-effacing look on his face while thinking about other things.

Wu Du has begun to realise that Duan Ling is indeed no ordinary person — or put another way, not the ordinary person he used to think Duan LIng was. This kid thinks much, says little, and never says anything before careful deliberation. At first glance he seems inattentive, but he actually possesses penetrating insight, noticing details that even Wu Du may easily overlook.

Days of rain have left the mountain paths wet and slippery, and once they’re outside of Xichuan’s borders, many of the places ahead of them have had landslides, giving their coachman no other option but to take detours. Tonight their coachman has gotten them lost, and he calls out inarticulately to Wu Du. Wu Du can only come out of the carriage and jump on top of the roof in an attempt to survey the terrain.

“What do we do?” Duan Ling wants to come out, but Wu Du gestures for him to stay in the carriage.

“You just get some practice … on how to be a young master,” Wu Du mumbles to himself, spreading a map open. Their surroundings are pitch dark though, and there’s nothing to see with; cold raindrops wrapped in a chilled wind weave themselves through the air around them.

"The people at the post house said this is the right way, "Duan Ling says. “We’ve verified it.”

“I suspect we went the wrong way two intersections ago.” Wu Du is downright frustrated. They have a deaf-mute coachman that’s pointless to yell at, so you can only use hand signs. It’s one thing travelling on Xichuan’s roads, but as soon as they entered the Hanzhong region they’ve lost all sense of direction.

“Or we can just head back,” Duan Ling says.

“Too many forks in the road,” Wu Du replies. “Who knows where in the wilds we’ll end up if we keep moving? Let’s just stay here for the night.”

The coachman drives the carriage to the side of the road and sets up an awning behind it. Duan Ling is sitting in the carriage. Wu Du says, “I’ll go check around the area.”

“I’ll go too.” Duan Ling gets off the carriage with the dagger Mu Kuangda’s given him for self-defence.

Wu Du looks him up and down, a bit surprised.

“How come you’re so brave now?” Wu Du looks rather baffled.

Duan Ling’s not sure how to answer that; as soon as they’re out of Xichuan and his life’s no longer in danger, it seems his courage has grown along with distance. After all, no one else besides Lang Junxia is going to come kill him for no good reason, and while he’s neglected his martial arts for a year, he has been training on a regular basis so he can probably still fight.

“I … just wanted to take a walk,” Duan Ling replies.

“Just wait right here.” Wu Du turns to go, but when he thinks about it he doesn’t feel quite assured. He turns back and feeds Duan Ling a pill. “Swallow it.”

“What is it?” It’s awfully bitter, but Wu Du is looking impatient so Duan Ling can but swallow it. It sits there in his belly with a cool sensation before it starts to glow with warmth. And then Wu Du hands him a gold bead.

With a start, Duan Ling remembers the gold bead — it’s a centipede!

He daren’t take it, and even more so he dares not look at Wu Du. Wu Du says, “Take it!”

Wu Du tosses the centipede at him, and since there’s not much else he can do, Duan Ling catches it. Anyway if he’s bitten Wu Du will just have to give him an antidote. However, the golden bead does not stretch out into a centipede — it simply remains calmly rolled up.

“Put it under your shirt and keep it safe.” Wu Du gestures at his chest. “I’m going to go find you some water. I’ll be back right away.”

Wu Du’s gone, but Duan Ling dares not move that gold bead around, and he wants to hold onto it even less. He sets it down nearby and observes it for ages before he recalls the pill Wu Du gave him. It probably contained realgar3 or other drugs like it, and the centipede won’t bite him if that’s so. He’s not sure why Wu Du asked him to do it, but he follows his order anyway, and carefully tucks the bead under his shirt.

In the dark the coachman pushes a pipe cleaner through his pipe, and crouches down beneath a tree to take his smoke. Duan Ling pulls a piece of flatbread apart and climbs down from the carriage, giving half of it to the coachman, and makes a few random gestures trying to thank him for his hard work. Since they can't communicate, they each go back to what they were doing.

From far away comes the cry of an animal. At once alarmed, Duan Ling opens the carriage’s curtain to look outside.

It has stopped raining, and the night lay silent all around them; in the pitch black darkness of the night the only source of light is the intermittently dim and bright end of the coachman’s pipe, scattering off a faint, red glow. Duan Ling leaves the carriage and stares off towards the end of the road.

The rain clouds have gradually faded away, and the rain that has been collecting into puddles big and small now reflect the starry skies above. Duan Ling notices something flying away from a tree and takes several steps closer, and suddenly he finds a pair of glowing eyes glaring at him, making him yelp in surprise. His voice travels a long way on the quiet plains.

“What’s wrong?!” Wu Du’s been given quite a fright, and he appears on the highway in a single leap.

“There was … a bird.” Duan Ling points up at the tree. He saw an owl — a “cat-headed-eagle” in common parlance. Wu Du’s face twitches, and turning away he leaves once more for the pond for water.

Duan Ling catches up to him, keeping pace at a step behind. As soon as the night sky cleared up earlier, the air turned clean and fresh, brightening his mood at once.

“Someone’s been in this area.” Duan Ling says, “Look over there. Should we go check?”

“When you’re away from home don’t go around saying hello to just anyone. Not everyone enjoys having guests.”

Wu Du has wiped down his upper body and he’s left his shirt off. Holding a shoulder purse loosely in one hand, he walks back side by side with Duan Ling dressed only in a pair of pants.

“You hungry?” Wu Du asks.

Duan Ling has just had a bit of flat bread, and he holds up the rest of it for Wu Du. Wu Du eats it out of his hand and says, “Once we get to Tongguan I’ll get you something better …”

He’s barely finished saying that when they hear a horse whinnying in the distance as though something has happened; Duan Ling and Wu Du are both startled at the same time.

“Oh no!”

With a loud rumble, the carriage begins to move. The coachman yells at the top of his lungs, but his voice is abruptly cut short. The survival instinct that has accompanied Duan Ling through many brushes with death brings him back to his senses.

“Run for it!” Duan Ling immediately shouts, and pulling Wu Du with him, he starts running towards a patch of shoulder-high grass in the wilderness.

“Everything is in the carriage!” Wu Du says.

A split second’s thinking later has Wu Du accepting Duan Ling’s decision, and the two conceal themselves in the tall grass. Just as they finish doing so, arrows fly through the air, aiming at their hiding place. Duan Ling turns over once, dodging out of the arrows’ paths, and makes his escape towards the pond with Wu Du.

A horseman charges into the open. There are high piles of straw everywhere, and neither of them had been guarded against an attack; all Duan Ling has on him is a dagger, and he’s just about to give it to Wu Du when without even looking at the dagger Wu Du presses a hand casually on his shoulder to let him know he should wait behind the piles of straw. Then he covers Duan Ling’s mouth and nose with a wet cloth before tossing out a handful of glowing powder that spreads out like fireflies onto the nearby grass.

There are people coming towards them in every direction, yelling things in a language they can’t understand. Duan Ling realises immediately that they’ve run into a group of Tangut people! This place isn’t far from Xiliang, so they must have reached the border between Chen and Xiliang. Mounted banditry is a familiar sight in Tangut territory — looks like they’ve been targeted!

As this realisation dawns, the Tangut dressed up as mounted bandits nock their arrows, pointing them in the middle of the half circle they’re forming while calling out loudly.

Slowly, Wu Du raises both hands to show that he’s unarmed.

“Don’t come out.” Wu Du says, “Hold your breath.”

Duan Ling hides himself behind a pile of straw. He’s not at all worried about Wu Du’s abilities, however — he’s merely curious and wants to see how Wu Du’s going to deal with them.

The bandits come a little bit closer, and that’s when Wu Du stoops low; every bandit reacts at the same time, but as they take in a breath and fire their arrows, they all start shouting instead, evidently from a sharp pain to their hearts, and several arrows fly off haphazardly without any strength behind them at all. Some of the bandits cry out, probably having realised that they’ve been poisoned, and the group of them just falls into utter mayhem. Meanwhile, Wu Du back flips from where he stands onto a pile of straw and casually reaches out for one of the longest strands out of the pile.

“Don’t come out!” Lest Duan Ling would give him trouble again he orders once more. Then like a cyclone he spins into the middle of the mounted bandits.

Between his fingers the straw flips and spins, each casual flick bringing up a spray of blood from a bandit’s neck, and only then do the rest of the bandits realise Wu Du isn’t someone to be trifled with. With howls of fear, they back away from him. All Wu Du has in his hand is half a piece of straw not even two feet long, but as it makes contact it seems as sharp as a blade.

They’re all deeply frightened, and run away screaming with their hands to their necks.

Wu Du tosses the straw aside. His mouth slightly agape at the scene, Duan Ling has just noticed a problem.

The ground is covered in weapons, all the horses have run away, there’s blood sprinkled all over the grass, but … he hasn’t killed a single person.

“They all ran away? But … But didn’t you cut their throats?”

“All I did was scratch their necks open to scare them a bit. Who’d have the guts to keep fighting when his neck is spraying blood? Of course they’d all run off.”

Duan Ling is speechless.

Once their conversation is done, their eyes look once again into the distance. That’s when Wu Du suddenly remembers something.

“Oh no! All our stuff is in the carriage!”

As soon as this occurs to Wu Du, he quickly stumbles onto the highway, and begins his pursuit towards the direction of the bandits’ escape.

I do not monetise my hobby translations, but if you’d like to support my work generally or support my light novel habit, you can either buy me a coffee or commission me. This is also to note that if you see this message anywhere else than on tumblr, do come to my tumblr. It’s ad-free. ↩︎

Jiangbei literally just means “north of the river”, Jiangnan “south of the river”. The river it refers to is the Yangtze. ↩︎

People used to drink realgar wine to keep away evil spirits, poison, and insects, since realgar was an insect repellent that was sprinkled on stuff to keep bugs away. It contained arsenic compounds, but not enough to kill you. ↩︎

#相見歡 #fei tian ye xiang #joyful reunion #xiang jian huan #fox translates things

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skyfields · 3 years

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biography: kang yumi

it begins in the early winter of 1999, and kang sohyun screams in a delivery room. the baby screams louder (she carries that habit for the rest of her life). kang sohyun was not a flashy woman. she did not sugarcoat her words or say more than she ever needed to. so rather than talk about the impact it brought about to her children, she would be pleased to know her obituary simply stated her date of birth (june 8, 1964), her date of death (november 17, 1999), and her cause of death (died in childbirth). the mother doesn't have the breath to name the child, so the oldest sister, yura does-- and like a flame flickering to life, kang yumi enters the world.

yumi is six, and her oldest sister yura is twelve, and her middle sister yuna is eleven when they begin to save money to move to america. their father left after the death of their mother— they’ve been placed into the care of their paternal uncle, and they like it that way. their uncle ignores them, and they like it that way. they only have each other, and they like it that way.

their uncle is the same as them; abandoned by the same people, not really knowing what to do or where to go. he hardly tolerates them besides their pocket money he leaves on the table and the food he leaves in the fridge. he is never home; it is as if the kang siblings have a house all to themselves, because their uncle never uses it, preferring to snooze at bars instead.

yura plays baseball, and she plays it so well and with such a passion that yumi boasts her sister will be in the big leagues somewhere in america. she even learns english to prepare for it. yura is lean, strong, and besides their uncle, they depend on her the most. yuna, with her long, flowing hair and captivating eyes and moonlight skin, is the opposite. yuna always has boys on the doorstep, making the kang uncle cranky on the rare occasions he’s home and wakes up to them serenading his niece.

“unnie,” yumi says one day with a bowl of tofu soup on her lap. yuna is out with a boy, probably flirting him into buying her and her siblings dinner for that night. yura has taken up a job fixing their neighbor’s kitchen light and let yumi tag along to hand her tools as she needs them. “your eighteenth birthday is tomorrow,” yumi continues, “are we going to america then?”

“no,” yura responds with a grunt, “we’re going down the street.”

yura had decided that america was unrealistic; pulling her sixteen and twelve year-old sisters out of school just so she could follow her baseball dreams simply made no sense.

instead, yura buys out a building at the end of the road where their uncle’s home sits. it has two bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen above a storefront. yumi takes one bedroom, yuna takes the other, and yura takes the sofa. their uncle becomes a neighbor; he also becomes kinder and more present without the stress of raising three children, and takes up a job under yura for the new store: kang sisters restaurant.

(it’s a little ridiculous, but it works.)

yura and yuna butt heads more than anyone yumi knows. one sister is personable and clever and the other is vain and haughty, and the kang household is always filled with yelling between the two sisters.

it always stops when yumi cries her loud, loud cry and yura and yuna hold her apologetically, despite throwing dirty glares at each other.

(they always make up later anyway and fall asleep with yumi held tight between them.)

the year is 2006. the day is june 12th. yuna is eighteen and serving a squid bowl to a customer when he looks her up and down lewdly and explains that he is a scout for wonder records and wouldn’t you be perfect for our upcoming girl group? yuna blushes prettily and smooths out her flour-covered apron and admits that yes, i’ve always thought i’ve been meant for something bigger.

the year is 2007. the day is august 5th. yuna debuts with a girl group called pandora at the age of nineteen, and yumi is right up there in the front row with an unsettled yura who’s proud of yuna anyway. seven-year-old yumi decides right then and there that even if it kills her, she’ll become an idol just like her big sister.

as the youngest of three, yumi always gets what she wants anyway, but it’s nothing to this extent. yura is hesitant to give her dance lessons (“isn’t one idol in our family enough?”) and even more hesitant to give her singing lessons (“kang yumi, don’t be ridiculous— you’re tone deaf!”). it’s only after yumi sheds tears, lies face-down on the floor for three hours straight, and threatens to call yuna who’s in the middle of her promotions, that yura finally relents and lets yumi learn to sing and dance. yuna’s stardom brings publicity to their restaurant anyway, and yura’s food is so good she supposes she’s alright with her other sister becoming an idol to attract more hungry customers.

yumi is hell-bent on debuting at nineteen, just like yuna, so she works harder and harder till she’s better than everyone in her class. even her terrible singing becomes something passable, and she makes sure to learn all sorts of languages so that she has something to boast when auditioning for the company.

it all comes to a halt when yura is killed at the age of twenty-six.

kang yura was not a flashy woman. she did not sugarcoat her words or say more than she ever needed to. so rather than talk about the impact it brought about to her sisters, she would be pleased to know her obituary simply stated her date of birth (march 18, 1987), her date of death (february 13, 2013), and her cause of death (fatally stabbed in a mugging gone wrong).

she’d been walking home after dropping yumi off to her audition for worldwide records, and yumi returned to an empty home. yura was found in the alleyway down the street the next morning. she was known among the community as the big sister everyone wanted, and her disappearance hit hard.

what started as a local attack goes national when it’s discovered that the woman is the sister of one of the nation’s top girl group members. yuna doesn’t even find out about her sister’s death until three days later; none of yumi’s calls could be patched through due to yuna’s strict promotion schedule, the kang uncle is away on a yuna-paid vacation in tahiti, and so yumi spends the first three days after yura’s death weeping alone.

when yuna arrives in their small restaurant (she has to push her way through mourners and media alike), she breaks down.

“i found out through the news,” wails her bell-like voice, her jewel-clad hands waving around her face in panic. “we were too busy promoting and i didn’t even know—”

she takes in a gasping breath before passing out onto the floor right then and there, and yumi has to drag her sister upstairs away from the cameras. they turn it into a sob story much later, and yumi wishes the headlines would be silent.

(even when she finds out later that she was accepted into worldwide, she barely registers any joy.)

yuna locks herself up in her room for the next three months, clearly under the same impression as yumi that their eldest sister was invincible. she gets kicked out of pandora in that time period for refusing to show up to any practices or shows. thirteen-year-old yumi just barely manages to keep her second-oldest (or now, her only) sister alive by forcing food into her mouth and making her swallow. and worldwide media— now that yuna’s lifeless and yura’s dead, yumi forces herself to practices for their company. their uncle runs the shop while yumi dances her heart out.

yuna emerges one day, emaciated and sallow.

the first thing she does is fix the light in their kitchen. It had broken only days after yura’s death.

yuna becomes more beautiful in her grief, her idol days long behind her. she rolls up her sleeves and ties back her hair and captains the shop, her face taking on a natural, surreal sort of loveliness in the determined lines that set in her jaw. yumi clings hard to yuna, expecting her to collapse in on herself. she never does, and yumi never understands how yuna changes from a vain, spoiled girl to a decisive, capable young woman. the older kang sister still receives double-takes when people realize that the flannel-clad girl serving their food is the same sundress-wearing idol who used to be splashed across the front pages of magazines. who yuna becomes after pandora is respectable enough that yumi’s name isn’t ruined for her own debut, and yumi is infinitely proud of her sister after that.

so slowly-- painstakingly slowly-- yumi starts piecing herself back together.

she still visits the now-married yuna in their restaurant, which has begun franchising under the name “three kang sisters restaurant” and is well on its way to becoming a multi-million dollar food chain. whenever yumi can, she spends the night in their two-bedroom apartment; yuna’s husband is kind enough to take the second bedroom on these nights to allow the sisters to cling to each other until far past the sunrise.

on the days she can’t be with her sister, she turns to her group instead; three days alone is three days more than she cares for. netizens comment on how she follows them around like a puppy, occasionally getting distracted by something pretty but always coming back to show her group members with an excited smile.

so it goes that yumi learns to heal. she builds up her name and image and separates it from yuna’s. she might still be piecing herself back together, and she might have gone through far too much for any seventeen year old, but she knows that she has a strong support network to turn to. and whether it takes years or even decades to fill the hole that one sister left behind, kang yumi has more to turn to, and she’s more than ready to go along for the ride.

#kymbio #kymabout #skyfieldsbio

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artificialqueens · 5 years

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if we have eachother (Branjie/Scyvie/Everyone) 1/5 - PinkGrapefruit

chapter one. in which family means chaos

A/N - hey guys! i finished this way before i thought i would (but please don’t hold your breath for the next chapter) and i wasn’t expecting to go soooobranjie but ah well - shit happens. Thanks to Frey and Meggie for putting up with my ass (and Saiph for validating me early on) (and Clanjie for the idea) and lets get on with the show!

Vanessa names his kids after ’The Notebook’ characters because ‘well, I want them to be happy and find love and shit’ and they live in a bubble for a few months between the end of August and the season eleven announcements. It’s anything less than calm and a learning curve and a half before he sleeps full nights again (when he does, he’s got Allie under one arm and Noah on his back, but he’s never been happier). He cuts down his drag shows and leans on his sisters a little for support, A’keria talks him through the little things his research didn’t prepare him for - how they don’t like being alone and can’t quite understand when they’re being addressed because their old family wasn’t ideal. He never cries in front of them, only drinks a glass of wine every few nights, alone on his couch. Brooke is around when he can be, all 6’3 of a Canadian man who becomes just so soft around the kids - they don’t know of their Papa’s relationship with Uncle Brooke. It’s for the better as then again, they’re three.

Then season eleven premieres and his world is turned back on its head, moments filtering through his mind like sand particles until everything makes it through the hourglass. He spends more time away from his kids than he would ever want to, but still manages to read them a bedtime story over Facetime. They celebrate their birthday in early March (and Brooke triumphantly reminds Vanessa that his kids are Pisces). It’s a family affair and they - a good handful of season ten and eleven sisters - go to the beach, Noah staying safely in the embrace of Nina while Allie jumps waves with Scarlet and Yvie. Brooke and Vanessa stay under the giant umbrellas, watching the kids as they wonder how they got this lucky. The twins may not be in any relation with Brooke, by relationship or blood, but he takes pride in knowing he was one of their first people, that means more than any crown he could win. The Latino regularly fields questions about how he co-parents with an ex but the answer is more complicated than it might seem, so he keeps his mouth shut and watches his son be spun around on the other man’s back, flying.

It’s a moment of solitude in a time that is far too busy for his liking. He longs for days back in the summer when he would sit in the garden, watch them run around until they fell onto the warm grass. Ice cream and dance parties and the smell of freshly washed baby hair - apple shampoo.

He’s doing okay, he swears, as he juggles Allie and Noah between Alexis and A’keria and anyone else who’s in town at the time. Then he books four straight weeks in California and he’s doing better. It runs all the way up to Drag Con and then they start the tour, something which - against all odds - he can bring the twins on. It’s going to take a village but he’s endlessly excited for the upcoming months.

He makes tiny matching jackets and buys them light up sneakers, takes them to a mini street dance class at the local community centre, and while Allie takes to it like a fish to water, he watches Noah struggle. When they get home, the kids are still singing ‘The Greatest Show’ (who decided that was a good street dance song, he will never know), and he tries on a few outfits for them. Noah’s personal favourite is the strings on his thigh-high lace-up heels. Dressed in the reunion outfit and a random pink wig of Allie’s choice, they spend the early afternoon dancing in the living room to RuPaul songs till the twins are exhausted enough for a nap. He has to carry them upstairs one by one, laying each on their bed and removing the sneakers so that they sleep better. He tucks them in, presses kisses to their foreheads, and returns to his drag studio to tidy up the mess they made.

When he hears clumsy footsteps in the hall, he turns and finds a tiny little brunette staring at him. She’s got eyes that encompass oceans, big and blue and they’re streaming as she sniffles, hugging her ballet bear (a present from Brooke) close to her. He takes two big strides and envelops her fragile frame in his, whispering words of comfort as little hands grip into his vest. “Shhhh Allie-baby,” he coos, hates hearing her cry. “‘C’mon baby girl, it’s okay.” - umber meets cerulean as he pulls her away slightly, facing her. “What happened?”

The girl balls her tiny fist around one of his vest straps, mumbles a soft and muffled “Papa,” into his torso before sniffling.

He sets her down and holds out a hand, walking her back to her bedroom like his mama always taught him to treat women. He sets her on her bed and looks at her softly. “C’mon boo, we gonna have a story?” She perks up a little, relaxes her grip on the teddy bear as she snuggles under the covers. Vanessa is momentarily impressed by how Noah is still asleep.

“Once upon a time, there was a queen called Miss Vanjie -”

Vanessa is endlessly surprised at how people step up if you let them. It’s the second week of the tour and he’s almost run out of easy ways to entertain the twins, has let them watch more YouTube than he is proud of and begins to wonder how anyone thought it was a good idea to bring them on tour (he forgets this every night when he shares a double bed with them and wakes up to them cuddled into him like a giant teddy bear). His silence comes when they are napping in his and Brooke’s respective bus bunks one afternoon, the two men happily drinking their coffees and doing absolutely nothing at all.

“You do know they’ll all help if you let them,” points out Brooke, after a while. He vaguely gestures to their sisters, lounging around the bus in various states of disarray. The shorter man just shrugs and sips his coffee.

“They’re my kids,” he says after a while. “I don’t want to inconvenience anyone.” He states it like it’s fact, like it’s at all a justification - it’s not, as far as Brooke is concerned.

“Yes,” he formulates carefully, “but we’d rather hang out with the tiny humans than be annoyed with them?”

Vanessa sighs - for not the first time in their fractured relationship, the older man is right.

So he lets people help. After their nap, Nina takes the twins into the venue with her - plays ‘Drag Is Magic’ over the loudspeakers while everything is set up around them. The shorter man watches proudly from the balcony as his kids dance to his spelling bee song, yelling the lyrics to the whole album after a couple of shows. It becomes a routine, and then afterwards, Vanessa pulls out some healthy snacks and they sit on their laps as Uncle Nina and their Papa discuss the political state of America.

Michelle walks in on this one day, the adults’ legs dangling off the stage as Allie and Noah shovel watermelon into their mouths. She looks on in pride as she sees a young man she knew could do great things, transform in front of her eyes into someone special.

On the afternoon of the Chicago show, Vanessa comes back from his rehearsal to find Scarlet performing a fashion show with the twins, Noah twirling around in Yvie’s yellow kaftan as the respective queen watch on in hysterics. The small boy is drowning in the floaty material and almost falls twice as Yvie keeps catching him. Allie’s dark hair holds a denim mane (that, in turn, is being held just above her head by Scarlet so that it doesn’t fall off). He pauses at the door for a second or two, takes in the couple as they play around with his kiddos - ‘Sissy that Walk’ blasting through a wireless speaker as they prance like lunatics.

“You two are gonna make great dads,” he teases when the song stops, winking at the men as he hoists Allie onto his hip.

Scarlet holds two fingers up in a suck-it motion and Yvie cackles loudly, as she attempts to remove her outfit from the bouncing little boy. Once she succeeds, she ruffles his hair triumphantly before leading him to the door.

“It’s been a pleasure, Vanj,” she says as Scarlet loops an arm around her waist.

“Yeah, they can bask in my excellence anytime,” adds the other queen, deadpan.

“Yeah, right bitch,” retorts Vanessa, covering Noah’s ears as Allie snuggles further into his hoodie. “Thanks though.”

Noah waves as they leave the dressing room, returning to the safe haven of his and Brooke’s where there are blankets on the chairs, toys on the floor and most importantly, Uncle Brooke.

Brooke promises to teach Noah ballet after Vanessa had a wine-fuelled rant about how ‘that boy is so fucking clumsy I swear he’s gonna give his Papa a heart attack, holy Jesus’. He sits in an empty dressing room with the kid and holds his waist while he gets him to point one foot. He might be four but he’s a quick learner and pretty soon the man has him in a nice first position. Calmer than his sister, Noah has a special place in Brooke’s heart - always considering him as taking after him more so than his Papa. They take a break after ten minutes and the boy snuggles into the Canadian’s side, warm body on cool shirt - his dark hair soft on his arm.

He takes him out for pizza afterwards, his treat (Allie and Vanessa went to a pop-up mini hip hop class so Brooke has free control). He wipes the sauce from the boy’s mouth, cuts up the pizza into smaller pieces for him and, not for the first time, feels like this is his son. It stings a little, knowing he could have had this, but resuming his place as favourite uncle helped clean over the wound a little.

On their way out, Brooke sits Noah on his shoulders, tiny hands curling into his hair. A woman bumps his arm,

“Your son is adorable,” she says and while it’s surely meant kindly it feels like someone poured a glass of ice water down his back. He nods politely, Canadian coolness running over him as he moves past.

“Papa!” calls Noah from atop his shoulders and he stops with a start. He takes a deep breath, followed by a heavy swallow before the boy speaks again.

“BrookeBrooke!” the man swings the boy around so his legs are around his waist.

“Yes, honey?” he responds eyes all warmth and kindness and furlongs of love.

“I can see Papa!”

The man swings Noah back onto his shoulders before looking around curiously. Sure enough, coming towards them from across the street are Vanessa and Allie, smiling like Cheshire cats. He raises an eyebrow but it doesn’t stop the smirk developing on his face.

With practised ease, Vanessa gently pulls Noah off Brooke’s shoulders while Brooke swings Allie onto his back. “Heya, Baby Girl,” he coos as she wraps her short arms around his neck. The warm caramel of her skin a contrast against his own Canadian pale.

He gives a familiar nod to the other man, “Hey, boo,” and they return to the theatre in easy silence. Nothing needs to be said that they both don’t already know - he can’t tell if it’s better that way.

They all go for a cast dinner. Ariel does the kids’ hair so that Vanessa can get ready in quiet for once but he misses the sound of them. He stands in his hotel room bathroom but cannot help the overwhelming emptiness he feels. Every noise he makes feels like it carries on forever - endless within the confines of the small room. He keeps flicking his eyes up to the mirror out of habit, watches the bed in the reflection like it is going to jump at him. He’s so distracted that he cuts himself shaving, feels the blood dripping down his neck before he refocuses enough to look. He moves to Ariel’s bathroom instead.

When he gets there, he hears a familiar Canadian voice through the door.

“I must save you, prince Noah!” comes the enthusiastic cry, followed by squeals of laughter.

“It’s Queen Noah,” his son replies, diving comically onto the double bed as Vanessa opens the door.

Allie and Ariel watch as the queen tries to coerce his daughter’s hair into a braid of some sorts - the look of concentration is comical as Allie keeps laughing at Brooke’s antics. He smiles, a contented smile and moves through to the bathroom, finishes getting ready in something close to peace (but loud and annoying and full of so much joy).

After the meal, Brooke and a couple of the others head to a nearby bar. He flirts recklessly with different men for a few hours, downing whatever shots they buy him and dances till his feet hurt. It doesn’t quite feel right, but it’s okay - he’s content.

Or at least he thinks he is as he turns around from a particularly attractive Puerto Rican man to see Yvie and Scarlet waving frantically at him from the bar. He mutters an apology and leaves a neat kiss on the man’s cheek before wandering over there. He’s three tequilas down and doesn’t particularly care but they’re looking at him and not each other so he assumes something must be wrong.

Something is.

They show him Scarlet’s phone (which he cannot read right now) and shout things at him that he loses the meaning of the second he hears ‘Noah’ and ‘hospital’.

He’s always thought it was a cliché when people in movies say that time stands still. Never really been impressed by the shots of the flashing lights and muffled screams, but this? This feels like a car crash in slow-motion, two trains going off the rails, a hurricane with no preparation, a fireball fired at a wooden house. It is plummeting down a hill with no pedals, no handlebars, just falling - it is too scary to be flying.

Yvie offers to drive - knows that if she doesn’t, Brooke will try and he is infinitely too drunk to do that. She gets them to the ER significantly quicker than their satnav tells them they will - cuts corners, runs a red light or two but Brooke cannot find it within him to care (Scarlet enjoys it way too much).

When they arrive, the Canadian jumps out of the car with a fervour, runs headlong into the building, grabbing onto the reception desk as he stops.

“Hi, sorry,” he heaves, partially nerves, fully out of breath from the cardio. “Noah Mateo?”

The woman sighs with disinterested boredom. “Yes, waiting room.” she says, gesturing vaguely to the open seating behind him. He turns, eyes scanning frantically, trying to locate him.

They lock eyes, Brooke racing over and pulling the shorter man into a hug, warm and long. He pulls away every so slightly before pushing his nose into the other man’s hair and inhaling deeply the smell of his cologne.

“I’m so- I’m sorry, baby,” he mutters, muffled by Vanessa’s hair. He exhales but pulls him in tighter, arms winding around him as his tears wet his white button down. They pull apart so that Vanessa can blow his nose and Brooke immediately turns on his heels to face the little girl. She’s sitting on one of the hard plastic chairs, tear tracks down her face as A’keria runs her hand through the braid Ariel had done so nicely. He kneels in front of her, takes each small hand in his.

“Allie,” he says, long, drawn out and soft. “Baby.”

She surges forwards to hug him, her petite body barely the length of his torso and he holds her close as he stands up,her head tucked into the crook of his neck. Vanessa loops an arm around his waist and leans into him for support - they must look quite like a family, he supposes blankly.

“What happened?” He asks, quiet but serious, as he thumbs Allie’s back.

“Peanuts, apparently - the woman was real mean.”

Brooke tilts his head a little, curious.

“They were on at me ‘cause I should’ve known ‘parently.” He sniffles a bit, head resting on Brooke’s heaving chest. He decides he never wants to let him go.

It’s funny, he later recalls, how emergencies bring you back to the truth. How one awful thing can reset you a little, till you see good things.

“Noah Mateo?” a nurse calls.

The entire cast stands bolt upright as Vanessa steps out of Brooke’s grasp.

“Uhuh,” he says, hoarsely.

“Two people, come with me.”

The shorter man tugs at Brooke’s arm, an invitation of sorts, as Silky unlatches Allie from him. He allows himself to be pulled through the waiting room, not looking at the rest of the families in distress, not wanting to imagine that could’ve been them. Vanessa intertwines their fingers and he squeezes his hand tightly. It’s an “okay”, a “this is going to be alright”, an “I’m here.”

The woman shows them through to a small room where Noah is on a drip; there are not as many tubes as Brooke thought there would be, and he’s so very glad, but even seeing the boy look so small - it hurts in a way he didn’t realise it could. Vanessa’s grip loosens as he breaks away, moving to grip his son’s hand fiercely. He can hear his soft murmurs as Brooke takes the opposite chair, stroking the boy’s arm.

“Por Dios. Por Dios. Por Dios.”

“I’m gonna have to make you some arroz con dulce when we get home, baby.”

The shorter man looks up at him and smiles. It’s tired, like all his energy has been removed and he’s running on coffee for the third day, but he feels the warmth in it nonetheless.

“I’m grateful you came, Brock.”

As he looks into Vanessa’s eyes, wind meeting earth, he knows there is no place he’d rather be.

They don’t discuss it until three days later when they are back in LA and the kids are at A’keria’s with Silky. Vanessa would be lying if he said that that assuaged all of his fears of leaving his kids alone, but it certainly saved some of them.

Brooke comes over and they drink wine on his couch watching ’Pretty Woman’ and discussing nothing and everything all at once. Vanessa cries at the ending (as he had every time he’s made Brooke watch it) and the taller man hands him a tissue before the tears start rolling. He smiles a wet smile and shuffles a little, so his legs touch the other man’s. As the end credits roll, he mutes the TV, facing Brooke head on.

“We, we should talk ‘bout this,” he says, calm and collected.

Brooke sits up straighter, back cracking as he moves to be more comfortable.

“Yeah,” he drawls slightly.

Vanessa nods at him to continue.

“I know we had our issues, but-but I love these kids. And I want to be here for them.”

“I don’t think I’m seeing your point,” responds the Puerto Rican - he is, but he needs him to say it.

“I want this. I want us.”

“How do I know you ‘ain’t just gonna leave again? How, Brock?”

The other man hesitates and Vanessa keeps talking.

“There are kids involved now, I need you to understand this shit.”

“I know,” the Canadian concedes. “You better believe I will protect those kids with my life.”

“That’s not the point though. What’s different now?” This stumps Brooke as the other man gets more and more frustrated. He’s tired and upset and wants this more than anything but there is more on the line than a title and some money. There is life - human life filled with blood and flesh and emotions and love and he can’t just offer that up as collateral.

Brooke reaches out across the invisible canyon that spans the sofa, grabs his hand in an oblivion that he doesn’t quite know how to talk his way through.

“My mama always taught me not to make promises I can’t keep,” and Vanessa’s heart breaks a little.

“But I promise those kids will be my priority until the day I fucking die.”

Vanessa hums a little, his face a mix between unhappy acceptance and overwhelmed. He’s been watching Brooke through this, hopeful but always a little cautious. His heart is telling him to jump this man’s bones run to Brooke, to hold on and never let go. But his head has reservations.

Brooke can sense the apprehension from miles off, smells it like a wolf sniffing out its prey. He wants to hold him and promise the world but he’s already done that - those kids are his world.

“Whatever freedom I have doesn’t compare to how I feel when I’m with you, José, and if I can’t have that, I don’t want anyone.”

It’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back, the boulder that sets off the avalanche, as Vanessa surges forward to wrap his arms around his neck, pushing Brooke’s back into the cushions of the sofa.

“I would have taken you back at the promise,” he mutters, smiling into his neck.

“I would have waffled until the end of time,” replies the other man, a grin adorning his face. It suits him, Vanessa decides as he pulls back.

“FUCK, SHIT, FUCK!” he exclaims suddenly. “WE NEED TO PICK UP THE KIDS.”

The inclusion of ‘we’ doesn’t go unnoticed as Brooke dies laughing on the couch, the man’s sudden change of mood utterly hilarious to him.

“HURRY YOUR ASS UP, BROCK, OR THERE WILL BE NO COOKIES.”

They arrive at A’keria’s stressed and tired, LA traffic still too much for the both of them. When Silky opens the door (with a raised eyebrow at the pair who look on sheepishly), the twins rush out to meet them. It’s late, and Vanessa should be mad that they’re not asleep but as he watches them tackle Brooke to the ground - he realises he doesn’t care.

#rpdr fanfiction #brooke lynn hytes #vanessa vanjie mateo #nina west #yvie oddly #scarlet envy #ariel versace #branjie #scyvie #s11 #fluff #hurt/comfort #parenting au #if we have eachother #pinkgrapefruit #dad!vanjie #concrit welcome #submission #canon compliant

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what-even-is-thiss · 5 years

Text

I wrote a creative essay about my least favorite aunt. Yeet.

Read it if you’d like. I’m just happy to finally get the damage she caused me mostly dealt with to the point where I feel comfortable writing about it.

Language Barrier

Whenever I speak in German my expressions and hand gestures suddenly become ridiculously animated, like I’m trying to make up for my lack of vocabulary with a sign language that hasn’t been invented yet. One that only I know the meaning of. I flap my hands around like a maniac and point to things I don’t know the words for and make broken sentences that sound like a caveman made them as I misgender inanimate objects left and right.

Das. Das. That. That. This. This.

I can physically feel my brain rewiring itself. I speak like fool. Wrong order spoken are words. Sometimes anxiety make cry me. Social kind.

However, I speak much more German than my uncle’s mother and stepfather speak of English so I’m forced to use what I can and hope they can understand my thick American accent as we stay with them in Southern Germany. Everyone keeps trying to reassure me that my German is very good, but I can’t stop out of order speaking.

Kann ich habe Brot mehr bitte? Can I having bread more please?

I want to crawl into a hole and die.

My grandmother warned me that a person can grow tired of the amount of bread that Germans eat and according to that Bible thing that we both read man cannot live by bread alone. I’m starting to understand both of those things, eating bread and jam for breakfast yet again because I don’t like butter with marmalade and there’s no cheese left.

The weather, unlike my breakfast or Deutsche Grammatik, is perfect. Slightly cold, sunny and overcast at the same time. The neighborhood that my uncle’s parents live in is beautiful, suburban, on the edge of Schwartzwald, known in English as the Black Forest. I can’t remember the name of the town but I do know that we tried to get a brewery tour and my aunt, her twins, and I waited in the van as my uncle talked loudly at somebody in a local dialect until he got out of them that they don’t do tours anymore.

We went to a rope climbing course instead. My uncle, tall and skinny, balding, fit, took the twins, boy and girl, skinny like their dad, not taking after their mother, my mother’s sister, and went rope climbing in Schwartzwald.

I’m stuck talking with my aunt as we stand below the ropes course and I’m tired of speaking in German so we both take time to find comfort in each other’s distinctly Californian manner of speaking.

My aunt is a character. That’s a polite way to describe her if you don’t want to speak ill of someone that’s not in the room. She wears no makeup except for when she’s getting her picture taken or going somewhere important and she always looks stressed and tired with her eyes just a little too wide open. She’s maybe four inches shorter than me but she has the ability to make me feel like I only come up to her waist. In my mind she’s always wearing a knee length beige skirt and a green t-shirt even though she owns other articles of clothing than that, including more than 20 pairs of shoes. Her eyes are wide and her hands move in an animated fashion even when she speaks English. When she speaks German she becomes an exaggerated version of herself, perhaps to make up for her thick American accent and occasionally sketchy grammar. She has lived in Switzerland since the 90s and spoken German since the 80s. I once asked her how to tell what a noun’s grammatical gender is. She told me that she had no idea.

I didn’t know my mother for very long before she died but my grandmother tells me that when my mom was young, to describe her sister, she quoted a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The one about the little girl with the little curl who when she was good she was very good and when she was bad she was horrid.

My aunt’s hair is straight, but other than that the poem describes her very well. Today would be a day she was horrid.

I don’t claim to be a perfect human being. I can be a bitch sometimes just like anybody else. The thing is though, my aunt never let me know when I was doing something bitchy like a normal person would. Instead she let me keep on doing it until she was ready to explode. And then she exploded.

Or, no. Not exactly being bitchy. Just doing something that she didn’t understand or like. She’s a very animated person and her voice goes like

And

Up.

Down.

All the time.

She’s very expressive. I, on the other hand, am not that excitable. I smile, yes, I cry, yes, but I try to be stoic. I like being stoic. It feels natural. I don’t want to express to everyone around me every time I am excited or upset. In my opinion it’s none of their business. I also tend to express gratitude through actions and gift giving rather than hurting my face and voice smiling and screaming all of the time.

I had thought bringing gifts from America, delivering onto my aunt’s family the ever elusive box of grits and Bakersfield candy and trinkets from Disneyland Anaheim would show gratitude. I was under the impression that helping to cook dinner, pack the van, refill the ice trays, take care of the twins, carry the groceries, clean the house, would show how much I loved her. I learned though, in a firestorm under the canopy of dark trees and children riding on zip lines that our love languages didn’t translate properly and she thought that my lack of expressiveness meant that I hated her. She was hysterical about it. I then expressed myself by changing into a lovely shade of red and producing saltwater from my eyes.

Climbing hills is a thing you get used to when you spend time in Central Europe. Walking for three or four kilometers isn’t such a feat in a valley, where the ground is flat and rarely changes, but in hilly terrain you quickly learn just how long that distance is and how much walking can hurt. Locals take no pity on you because they expect that everyone has those muscles built up in their legs when you’ve never had to use your legs like that for long stretches of time before.

Navigating emotion and expectations at home is easy. There is one language being spoken and everyone uses it to tell each other what’s wrong. When staying with my aunt for long periods of time, however, you start to understand emotional exhaustion. Something that would take half a minute to communicate takes up ten minutes of screaming because she expected you to know everything. A flat crowded city turns into a hilly countryside with no help for miles. You quickly learn how to swear in German because she pushes her husband to screaming as well.

Scheiße.

Eventually my uncle finished with the ropes course and pulled me away from her. He gently explained to me in English what we were going to be doing for the next few days. I stopped leaking water from my eyes and tried to remember what had prompted her to start yelling at me but I couldn’t figure it out. Another talent she has. Distracting you from linear events.

While I was in Germany there was a terrorist attack in Münich. Brexit was fresh in everyone’s minds. My first presidential election would be happening in November. I only understood about half of what was said on the news. My little cousins and their dad took turns translating for me. I had the feeling that I still wasn’t getting the whole story.

My aunt and uncle have twins. Test Tube Babies. The girl is the older twin but strangely enough doesn’t hold it over her brother’s head, which would fit perfectly with her personality. The boy takes after his mother in some respects, namely her loud voice.

When we went to Prague we stayed in a campground because that’s a lot cheaper than a hotel and that family affords a second house because they’re stingy. Almost every morning it was a struggle to get the boy out of bed. He and his sister were almost ten and he screamed and refused to move. He cried. He was loud. No amount of discipline worked. His sister stood around quietly going about her business, as did I. We did the same thing when her parents got into screaming matches.

Prague is an old city. A busy city. I loved it, even with all of the pay toilets and Czech bluntness. Even when an angry Czech lady smoking a cigarette yelled at me in broken English for not knowing that I had to pay for the restroom. The old castles and cathedrals and statues and just the right amount of dirtiness in the subway more than made up for it.

My aunt payed for me to go look at a museum that she didn’t want to look at. She told me to take all the time I wanted as the rest of the family waited outside. I didn’t sense any passive aggressiveness that time, so I did. It was a complex that was part of the Prague art museum, a system spread out around the city. The section I walked through by myself was a collection of medieval Roman Catholic art. Stained glass windows, paintings, tapestries. I’m a Lutheran that lives with atheists, so my experience with Catholic art is mostly non existent. Atheists don’t have religious figures to draw and Lutherans are extremely stingy with their images, worried about crossing into the realm of idolatry.

One thing I noticed was that Mary appeared everywhere, even in stories I thought she didn’t belong. In some images she stood equal with Jesus, reminding me of a female God. She seemed mature, different from the outcasted teenage mother I had told children about in Sunday School classes. Different from the refugee that had been painted for me in sermons. I wondered what kind of mother this Mary was. I wondered what her Hebrew sounded like. Or, maybe this Mary spoke Czech and the Mary in Germany spoke German and the Mary in the Vatican spoke Latin and the Mary my Catholic friends at home looked to spoke Spanish. Maybe if I prayed to Mary she would speak English. Maybe she would turn out to speak German and would look down at the frantic dancing of my hands, trying to find meaning in it.

But I don’t pray to Mary, and neither do my aunt or uncle. I report to them what I saw and my observations about Mary. Namely that she seems to be everywhere. My aunt doesn’t quite pick up on the fact that I simply find it interesting and takes it as an invitation to rant about Catholics. I squint at her as we walk back to the subway. I’m trying to figure out if I’d somehow been speaking another language. She certainly seems to be. Maybe it’s a generational gap. Maybe it’s just her, but I try to turn the conversation back to a tone of tolerance rather than complaint. A battle I quickly lose.

Later, in a public park in that busy city, my aunt yelled at me and cried because I had been calling her by her first name rather than Aunt. I nearly start leaking again. I shake. I think she’s speaking English but I don’t understand it. I physically step away from her as she accuses me of not seeing her as family. At the bottom of the hill we’re standing on a dog plays fetch with his owner. Neither of them take notice of the screaming middle aged American woman throwing accusations her deceased sister’s child as her own children zone out and wait for it to be over. No help comes. Nobody translates for me and Google Translate doesn’t have a setting for this.

Twenty minutes later she jokes with me as we find a rare but welcome burrito shop. I buy a mango soda imported from Mexico and it softens my homesickness. We eat on the steps of a light rail station. I laugh. The twins laugh and bounce around, talking to each other in a mixture of English, Swiss-German, and high German. The boy takes a bite out of my burrito and thinks the fact I can eat something that spicy makes me the coolest person in the world. My aunt laughs with me. We make plans for when we go to Southern Germany and visit her husband's parents. That’s where his dentist is. He needs a bit of work done. We’ll have fun, she promises. We had a good time in Prague. I put the bad times in a shoebox for later and then agree with her.

After she yells at me in Schwartzwald for not showing emotion I go quiet. I put more things in the shoebox I’ve made in my mind to deal with later. I learn that all of them have been eavesdropping on the phone calls I’ve been making to my dad and friends back home. My aunt approaches me about how I complained about the yelling. I’m suddenly paranoid and wonder if she read some of the postcards I sent out. I watch my words now and put the ones that might set off her fuse in the box. The little house outside of Zurich has started to feel like home when I return to it and I’m slightly disgusted at that realization. The flowers all make my eyes water and I’m not given nearly enough allergy pills. I still don’t understand what language she’s speaking. Her words are in English or German, as are mine, but we still don’t understand each other.

Currants, especially the red ones, are beautiful fruit. Not easy to find in stores, even in Europe, so you’ve gotta pick them yourself. My aunt and uncle have a small city of currant bushes living in their backyard that hugs the bank of the stream that runs through the neighborhood. They’re beautiful and inviting, asking you to eat them please, but when you do your face scrunches up at the tartness. I never did care for sour tastes, so I found my own way to make the currants sweet by baking them into scones. At first my aunt was sceptical of my scones but after some reassurance from her kids that they didn’t taste like cinnamon she tried them and agreed that I did a good job. They were sweet and went really well with milk or tea. We all enjoyed them very much. Nobody had to translate anything.

Every member of that family gives excellent hugs when you can get them. They share drinks and food with each other, a concept that shocked me at first, but I quickly fell into the rhythm of it with them. They bought me my first beer and took me to Worms, Germany. I loved that place. I got to see one of the first print versions of Luther’s German translation of the bible. I ate pastries and tea with them at an outdoor cafe. It was cold and wet in the middle of the summer and the cobblestones made it even gloomier. The moving feet on the sidewalk seemed to have a language of its own and the new architecture standing by the old had no words to be translated but told a story nonetheless.

My experience in Europe was like Europe itself. Americans expect it to be shiny and beautiful, and it is, but you also have to pay to use the restroom which leads people to piss in the street. You will also find cigarette machines on almost every corner. There is one right outside my aunt and uncle’s second house. The packages of cigarettes have pictures of black lungs and diseased gums on them. The people smoke anyways. Europeans are people. They have drama, they worry about money, they cry, they abuse, they kick, they scream, they love. All the problems you had in America won’t disappear over there, and in fact you might find some new problems you didn’t expect. Like not finding salsa or not knowing how to deal with carnival rides that have no line and are boarded like a much more violent version of musical chairs. And don’t expect to practice your target language there either. The people will hear your accent and excitedly try and use you to practice English. And even if you do speak the language, don’t expect to understand with everyone. Hand gestures can only go so far.

When I got home I left the German language behind me for the most part. I also slowly cut off most contact with my aunt’s family. Six weeks spent putting things in a shoebox and not speaking whatever language my aunt was speaking with English and German words was enough for me. By the time I opened my shoebox a few months later it was rotten, smelly, and leaking. It took over a year to clean it out and it’s still warped and stained, containing whispers of my own desperate language that would never penetrate my aunt’s skull or jump over the barrier we had built together.

My rotten shoebox is revolting to look at, and while I was cleaning it parts of the mess got onto the happy memories but thankfully they’re still there. The cathedrals, the warm hugs, the new foods, and comforting rain are all there. Late nights and early mornings, potato pancakes and beer, museums and trees and the times I could honestly say; Ja, ich bin glücklich. Yes, I am happy. And thankfully that sentence is easy to translate.

#roman wrote a thing #religion mention #roman said a thing

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noramoya · 5 years

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MICHAEL JACKSON’S PERSONAL PHOTOGRAPHER,HARRISON FUNK,SPENT 3 ROLLERCOSTER DECADES CAPTURING THE LIFE OF THE POP LEGEND. HE REVEALS THE STORIES BEHIND HIS FAVORITE SHOTS...

“Me and Michael had our own language,” says Harrison Funk. “The buzzword was always the same. He would ask, ‘Harrison, can you make magic?’ Anything less wasn’t acceptable.” Funk was the photographer who got closer to Michael Jackson than any other, working with the singer from the late 1970s right up until his death in June 2009, witnessing and capturing his many changes, as the star rose to be the most famous person on the planet.

Funk was born 12 days before Jackson, on 17 August 1958, just outside Brooklyn. He was inspired to pick up a camera by his uncle, Leo Friedman, a famous Broadway photographer. Starting off with street photography and shooting local basketball matches, Funk worked his way up to such magazines as Time, Life and Newsweek. But a chance meeting with Jackson at New York’s infamous nightclub Studio 54 (where Jackson, a regular, would dance in the DJ booth to avoid autograph-hunters) set Funk’s career on a different trajectory.

Impressed by his versatility, Jackson employed Funk as the official photographer for the Jacksons’ Victory tour in 1984. Funk says he quickly sensed the media circus that was starting to form around the singer: “Rupert Murdoch’s people called and practically begged me to sneak out a photo of Michael from rehearsals. I told Michael and we laughed about it – but the fact I told him built up a trust.”

Subsequently, while on the Victory tour, Funk was given unprecedented access to the singer. One intimate photo taken by Funk captures Jackson applying his own makeup, something he took great pride in. “Him and Jermaine [Jackson] loved putting on their own makeup,” says the photographer, who adds that Michael became more and more interested in his appearance, more determined to look sharp, under the influence of such mentors as Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire and James Brown.

Jackson’s make-up routine, adds Funk, was also a sign of the singer’s gender fluidity: “It wasn’t so much femininity on Michael’s part as androgyny – he was fluid around gender. Michael had no interest in assigning a gender to anybody.” At that moment, he recalls, “he didn’t overtly identify as one particular gender”. However, when Jackson became a dad, his image changed to that “of father”, Funk says. “He became a strong man in that sense.”

On the Victory tour, Funk was exposed to occasional outbursts. “Don’t be fooled,” he says. “Michael had very demanding moments. If he didn’t like something, he let you know. Michael was never ridiculing to me ever, but if someone messed up the design of his stage, then he would yell at them. He expected perfection.”

The sold-out Victory tour was a turning point for Jackson. Just two years earlier, he released Thriller to stratospheric acclaim, and the media circus was now starting to spiral out of control. Yet some of Funk’s most iconic images of Jackson aren’t from his undisputed reign in the 1980s, but from the 1990s – when albums Dangerous and HIStory marked the singer’s evolution into a more socially conscious artist, who could be both profound (Black and White) and ridiculous (the messiah complex of The Earth Song was so jarring it provoked Jarvis Cocker to storm the stage during the 1996 Brits).

“PEOPLE SAY MICHAEL HAD A JESUS COMPLEX — THAT PISSES ME OFF !

In one of Funk’s favourite shots from this period, Jackson can be seen holding his arms out in an almost biblical pose. “People say Michael had a Jesus complex,” he says, “but that pisses me off, as it just wasn’t true. There was a practical reason for me taking that photo. Michael had huge hands and I wanted to make the most of them as they were expressive – and a good way for him to embrace the world. At that stage, his whole existence was geared towards healing the world, so having big, expressive hands was a very important way to speak to the people.” The way he communicated with his hands, adds the photographer, “you’d have thought he was Italian!”

Another Funk photo shows Jackson holding a book in front his face. It is an intensely personal shot intended as an advert for the World Book Encyclopedia, which would be distributed to American classrooms. “The art director gave me carte blanche to do what I wanted, so I really wanted to push the limits of what was possible. Michael’s eyes were his most defining feature, way more than his feet. I knew I could capture his soul by focusing on his eyes and that’s exactly what happened with that photo.

But was Jackson actually covering his face due to shyness? “Maybe. But his shyness and introversion never hindered his ability to work with me as a photographer. Michael knew exactly what he wanted artistically, right up until probably the last two years of his life, where he got swayed by the wrong people and got in way over his head.”

This was the time of the This Is It tour, which Funk had been due to photograph. Jackson was all set to play 50 dates in quick succession at the O2 Arena in London. But, 20 days before the opening night, he died from cardiac arrest, triggered by acute anaesthetics intoxication. “As much as I don’t like talking about the end,” says Funk, “I will say he got destroyed by people who only had their own financial interests at heart. I can tell you that a big part of his plans following the This Is It tour was to do charity work and use his influence to better mankind.”

In 2003, Jackson was charged with child molestation, only to later be acquitted. The memory still angers Funk. “All the accusations and crap he went through,” he says. “Let me ask you this: what is a better way to ruin someone who is going to make massive positive changes to the children of the world than to discredit them?” Jackson’s awareness of the power of photography was perhaps best illustrated in the early 1990s, when he asked Funk to shoot him with Elizabeth Taylor and Nelson Mandela, who had recently been released from prison. The image, which Funk describes as the highlight of his career, shows the trio smiling infectiously.

“Mandela was so excited to meet Michael,” says Funk. “He flew in all of his family especially. I was told by the publicists I had no time to shoot, but Michael kicked them all out and let me take my time. I didn’t want a boring photo so I suggested they jump on each other’s backs and hug one another. Liz Taylor said, ‘Harrison, you know I’ve got a bad back!’ And Nelson said he was too old and joked he wanted to put his feet up instead. I tried to capture the joy of this incredible moment.”

Funk then watched as the three went into a meeting room to discuss plans to topple apartheid, improve women’s rights, tackle the Aids crisis, and address crime in Africa. He claims Jackson was acutely aware of how the photo could help Mandela’s bid for the South African presidency.

HE DIDN’T WANT TO LOOK WHITE. HE WAS SUFFERING FROM A CRUEL DISEASE. I HAD TO RISE TO THIS AND ADAPT HIS LIGHTING.

“That image was in something like 400 newspapers. It was real powerful. The next year, Michael went to Africa to shoot the They Don’t Care About Us video. He would have done anything for Nelson – Michael and Liz gave his presidential campaign a very generous donation. I believe he and Nelson got on so well as Michael was like the Mandela of music, in the sense that he too broke down a lot of barriers. Remember, Michael was one of the first global black superstars.”

But Jackson’s image started to change dramatically. Some critics accused the singer of being ashamed of his blackness, and of gaining a dangerous obsession with plastic surgery. In a recent interview, Thriller producer Quincy Jones said: “I used to kill [Michael] about the plastic surgery, man. He’d always justify it and say it was because of some disease he had. Bullshit … He had a problem with his looks because his father told him he was ugly and abused him. What do you expect?”

Funk, however, insists Jackson was actually the victim of a “cruel” media campaign and was suffering from the pigment-destroying skin disease vitiligo (a claim confirmed by Dr Christopher Rogers, who carried out Jackson’s autopsy). “It was all a load of bullshit,” Funk says of these reports. “He didn’t want to look white or find a way out. He was immensely proud to be a black man. Michael was suffering from a cruel skin disease, which changed his appearance, and I had to rise to this as his photographer and adapt his lighting. I think the problem was Michael wanted badly for his skin to look even-toned. I didn’t have Photoshop back then so I lit Michael myself and had specific techniques to make him look at his best.”

Funk, who seems to have an endless supply of Jackson stories, speaks softly in a New York accent, energetically recalling their nine consecutive rides on Space Mountain at Disneyland. Jackson attempted to persuade Funk to ride it for a 10th time but by then the photographer felt sick and his legs had turned to jelly. They would also regularly take the Viking boat ride at Jackson’s Neverland ranch.

“I was sitting across from Michael,” says Funk, “shooting him with my camera, as he told the guy controlling the ride to go higher and higher. I screamed at Michael that he’d make me lose my camera. He screamed back, ‘I don’t want to lose my cookies!” These were in his shirt pocket. Yet, for all the fun they had together, Funk’s most cherished memory of Jackson is a dark one. He remembers sitting with the singer in the home theatre of his Neverland ranch while watching What’s Love Got To Do With It, the 1993 biopic about the abusive relationship between Ike and Tina Turner, when Jackson began to cry. “The scene where Ike beats on Tina was playing and Michael started to tear up. I asked him if he wanted me to stop the film but he signalled to keep it rolling. He squeezed my hand tightly. I really felt his humanity in that moment.

WE PLAYED PRETTY NASTY ON THE THE BUMPER CARS. WE REALLY WENT FOR EACH OTHER...

“After the film ended, we walked out of the theatre and Michael asked me to go do bumper cars with him.” Funk laughs. “We played pretty nasty and really went for one another. He was like a big kid.”

Jackson was not the only star who turned to Funk. The photographer is currently planning a London exhibition of his work, which also includes shots of David Bowie, Tina Turner and Amy Winehouse, though the king of pop will of course dominate. This will be an interesting postscript to On the Wall, the show about to open at the National Portrait Gallery that looks at how Jackson was portrayed in paintings and photography. Funk, who is based in Los Angeles, is quite happy to let his career be defined by his shots of Jackson. While daydreaming, he sometimes hears the singer’s voice, imploring him one more time. “Let’s make magic,” it says.”

AT THIS PIVOTAL TIME !

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skyfields2 · 3 years

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biography: kang yumi

yumi is six, and her oldest sister yura is twelve, and her middle sister yuna is eleven when they begin to save money to move to america. their father left after the death of their mother— they��ve been placed into the care of their paternal uncle, and they like it that way. their uncle ignores them, and they like it that way. they only have each other, and they like it that way.

“no,” yura responds with a grunt, “we’re going down the street.”

yura had decided that america was unrealistic; pulling her sixteen and twelve year-old sisters out of school just so she could follow her baseball dreams simply made no sense.

(it’s a little ridiculous, but it works.)

it always stops when yumi cries her loud, loud cry and yura and yuna hold her apologetically, despite throwing dirty glares at each other.

(they always make up later anyway and fall asleep with yumi held tight between them.)

it all comes to a halt when yura is killed at the age of twenty-six.

when yuna arrives in their small restaurant (she has to push her way through mourners and media alike), she breaks down.

“i found out through the news,” wails her bell-like voice, her jewel-clad hands waving around her face in panic. “we were too busy promoting and i didn’t even know—”

(even when she finds out later that she was accepted into worldwide, she barely registers any joy.)

yuna emerges one day, emaciated and sallow.

the first thing she does is fix the light in their kitchen. It had broken only days after yura’s death.

so slowly-- painstakingly slowly-- yumi starts piecing herself back together.

#kymbio #kymabout #skyfieldsbio

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caroltheman · 3 years

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Read at your own risk. These are MY thoughts and MY feelings and they do not cater to the leftist idealism, so if you are afraid of getting your feelings hurt, STOP HERE.

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Today is a big day. I’ve never been so involved with politics EVER in my life than this year. In 2016, I was with the Democrats, the left, and whatever ideas were pushed towards me to stop Donald Trump from winning. I hated him. I hated the way he spoke. I was against my husband’s political stance (yes, the hubby and I can have different opinions and get along PERFECTLY). I thought he was a terrible example of what our nations leader should resemble. I was ANTI-Trump.

When he won, I didn’t care too much. I got over it. But... I kept an eye out on events after his election. I never really understood what was happening but I did hear whispers of what was going on in the white house every so often. As issues kept coming up... Build the Wall, ending of DACA, Large amounts of people running from other countries (mainly Latin American countries) trying to get into our southern border, Individuals from the cabinet slowly being replaced or resigning, impeachment, school shootings, banning of firearms, court cases (don’t really know much of that, but now I know its about individuals getting seats on the Supreme Court), etc. etc. etc. BLM, Antifa, more civil unrest, shooting of cops, burning of poor democratic cities, etc etc etc.. I started to wonder.... WTF is going on?? And demos still crying about the same shit...

I started to do research. I don’t really care to listen to local news and big news stations like Fox or CNN or whatever. Yes, sometimes I tune in to both sides, but seriously, I was sick of watching things set on fire. American flags burning. Looting. Violence. I was searching for perspectives outside of my overly democratic run social media feed. I’ve watched probably hundreds of videos of different people of all different walks of life. I started discourse with more right-winged individuals. I started to become more open minded about things on the right. And when I think about my only personal values, I kept finding myself more and more on the right side of things.

Today, this is where I stand:

1. I stand for strong border protection. I do not support shouting “Build the Wall” out loud, but I do support what that message means. To me, the wall is analogous to our house door. For all the people against strong borders, I challenge you to keep your door unlocked at night. Would you feel safe knowing that anyone can come in at any time? Anyone, as in people we don’t know. Any sane person with rationale would say NO. We must lock our doors at night. We must secure our house (just think of all the tech we buy to keep out houses secure) to keep people outside and keep our families safe. An open border sounds like chaos and the most unsafe place to stay. People are confused that building a wall means no immigration. That’s not what that means. It means that we are against ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. I am an immigrant for heavens sake. I naturalized. I was not born an American Citizen and in order for me to receive benefits of an American Citizen, first, my dad served 12 years of his life in the United States Navy. He brought over my mom, my kuya, and myself to start a new life in a country with opportunity. I am thankful for his service and my moms sacrifice and bravery for leaving everything she knows and loves behind in order for my siblings and I have to an opportunity to be successful. People don’t understand that you cannot have a country as successful as the U.S. without protecting our land from outside forces. I do believe that we desperately need immigration reform. I would like all people of all different backgrounds and economic status to have a chance at being able to immigrate to our land, but I believe there is a right way to do it... and it definitely isn’t let everyone in anytime they want. I have kept my mouth shut about my stance on border protection because I am aware of my audience. I know that I have hundreds of students watching me. I know that a lot of them are low income. I know some of them are illegal. But as a teacher, it was never my mission to out undocumented students or families. I sympathize with my students who’s families face deportation, but I stand my ground that illegally penetrating our borders is not the way to do things. I don’t have a full on answer on how the country should handle it (obviously, I have my own life and I am not a politician - although I do have some ideas) but I know the difference between wrong and right. Entering this country illegally, to me, is not the right way... AND ESPECIALLY with the thought of my own family in the Philippines who also face the same struggles that others who flee their country face. It is unfair that due to physical proximity, some can just come through while others from PI and countries from all over the world are waiting for their turn. To me, that is unfair. Moving to Hawaii and having spoke to Aunties who have immigrated from PI has added even more support to my stance. I spoke to an Auntie that said she waiting 21 years to get her Visa. She is petitioning over her son who may wait about a decade before being looked at. I stand my ground on illegal immigration for people who are in line waiting patiently, yet desperately, to come here for their opportunity. I stand my ground for all the other people in the world who are also waiting for a way in to this country the legal way.

2. Law and Order. I mean, how is this even a topic of confusion? like WTF? This is one of the reasons that literally pushed me away from the left. You’ve got Antifa and BLM rioters burning cities and businesses down. (and yes, I know, I know.. the response is, “but that’s not ALL of BLM” or “those people are not even BLM”, or blah blah blah. BULLfuckingSHIT. They are all ANTI-trump and some of them (actually most that I’ve seen) do wear BLM shit. They tag BLM shit everywhere and they don’t care about who they hurt or what they bring down with their anger.) I’ve seen videos of these groups harassing people who are minding their own business and eating lunch as protestors are yelling in their faces and forcing them to leave. They surround elderly who are merely walking down the street by blocking their way and yelling at their faces. I’ve watched countless videos of small business owners trying to protect their property and life’s work by getting jumped or die trying to protect their store fronts. And you know what gets me ever more riled up, SOME (if not most) OF THOSE PEOPLE ARE BLACK!!!!!!! Black owned business burned down. Black business owners crying about their life’s work totally gone at the expense of the anger of the wrongful death of another black person (who happens to be criminal). I empathize with the anger and sadness of the wrongful death of George Floyd. I agree that justice for his life should be served. I agree that Police Brutality needs to be addressed and police accountability and training needs reform... but how the left handles their emotions of anger is un-excusable. I’ve seen posts from my liberal friends, “Let them show their anger the way they want.” WTF? Seriously? So, if I’m mad, I can just go burn shit down? go beat somebody up? Go shoot cops? Like every field, I believe there are bad apples. Any one who denies that, I’d be very cautious to believe, but I have faith that the majority of our police officers are not racist. I believe that the majority of them are trying to do the right thing. I hate to admit that police presence is probably more prevalent in communities with higher numbers of people of color, but I’m curious to know WHY are communities with high numbers of POC are more prone to gangs, violence, drugs, and inevitably higher presence of law enforcement. I wonder why? ...and that leads me to the next reason:

3. Accountability. Leaders like Candice Owens, the Real MAGA Hulk, Kingface, and many many many many many many more Black Americans talk about it all the time. They talk about why nothing has changed in our Black American Communities. They have been voting Democrat for YEARS... and its still the same! Biden and Kamala Harris have been in politics for soooo long, but whats going on in these democratic cities? More tents of homelessness. More criminal activity. More drugs. More human trafficking. But instead of acknowledging the issues that minorities face and holding ourselves accountable for the changes we want to see, what do we do? BLAME TRUMP. The guy has been in office for less than 4 years and everything is his fault. Trump this, Trump that. Trump is the reason everything is going wrong. Trump divides us. Trump makes me mad. Trump, Trump, Trump. Jesus Fuck. Sooo OVER IT. People want to blame him for their shortcomings, for the racial tension, for every single challenge we face as a nation. As an individual I hold myself accountable for where I am today. Every accomplishment I’ve successfully completed has all been to holding myself accountable for making goals, whether for my career or for romantic relationships, and making sure I make no excuse to meet these goals. Yes, I grew up disadvantaged! I’m a victim of living in low-income housing and a victim of an unstable household to include divorce, domestic violence, and exposure to gang life. Yes, we had Section 8. Yes, my mom used food stamps when we were young. Yes, my dad was not around due to the military and my mom practically having to hold shit down with three children in a country she knows nothing about with a language she barely knew with NO HELP as all her family is in the PI and my paternal side being pretty much evil and hated her. Yes, we moved a million times as a child - from an apartment near Kimball Park... to Meadow Brook Apartments... to my uncle’s house... to my other uncle’s garage...to the same uncles house... to a rent a room near where Joann/Erika used to live... to a house on M street... to the apartment on 2nd street (in the front)... to the same apartment complex but another apartment in the back... to an apartment behind Suhi... to an apartment on Highland Ave bordering Chula Vista... to the apartment on 1st Street... with pockets of staying in Welfare housing to staying at Rvy’s house to staying at Apryl’s house to staying at Josie’s house. Schools: from Kimball to John Otis to Daniel Boone to Las Palmas to El Toyon and finally, Granger Jr. High and Sweetwater. I remember having to use candles because we had no electricity. I remember no christmas tree during the holidays and instead using a sorry ass fake plant to replace it. I remember going on our show choir weekend trip to SF where my kuya and I literally exchanged looks as we decided which meal at McDonald’s we should share keeping in mind we have to budget for the rest of the meals we have to pay because thats all the money my mom gave us - while everyone around us could order much more than what we had. I remember hanging out with gang affiliated individuals and realizing how lucky I am to have separated from that lifestyle. Recently, I’ve been challenged to remember my upbringing, yes, my dear friend, I remember. I remember sitting outside your front door, peeking into the black metal screen door as my siblings and I watched you play the coolest and latest console gaming. I remember you hanging out after school at the Boys and Girls club while I hung out with the Mexicans and Samoans and the other crips whom were my neighbors. We can sit here and compare our sad stories and struggles but for people to ask me to reflect on the shit I’ve been through, brother you have no fucking clue. Have you watched your mom beat to colors black and blue? And I whole-heartedly am not trying to discount the struggles you’ve faced, but please don’t lecture me on why I should be angry or sad about my upbringing, because you have no clue what I’ve had to endure. My story is sad. If I had let that this shit bring me down and cry “Woe is me,” I have no doubt I wouldn’t be where I am today. Ever since I can remember, I’ve volunteered to be part of the change. Any positive change. I’ve dedicated my high school career trying to make school life as enjoyable as possible - but what happens? - the majority is still upset and hated the ASB (People have NO idea how many hours I’ve spent on the Suhi campus as a student trying to make things better). I’ve dedicated my post secondary life to become a teacher in the community I grew up in to affect change for the future generations. I stand as living proof that despite all the shit we all go through in life, we can be successful. WHY? Because we live in the land of opportunity. America is probably one of the only places (I can’t think of no other, but sure, lets pretend there are other countries like ours), where you can be poor and go through tons of shit and despite all of it, can still come out and be successful. But blaming others and being upset is not the key. It’s about HARD WORK and PERSEVERANCE, not blame or bull shit. This is the same kind of accountability that haunts communities with majority POC and I will not support the “Woe is me” or the “Endless Circles of Victimhood” mindset. I want out of that shit and into something better.

4. National Security and all its benefits. This is the only country that I’ve seen where there are people who hate it and refuse to leave. Like damn, you hate our country so much, you want to burn it down, and you REFUSE to get the fuck out. Must not be that bad? Our borders are closed for random people to be able to come in without a Visa or Citizenship, yet we do not stop people from leaving this country if they really wanted to. The fact that everyone is trying to come in proves that people would die to be here. The scariest part of this election (to me) is losing our freedoms. I’ve watched a video of a testimony from a Cuban guy who risked his life to wind surf from Cuba to land on the Keys of Miami to seek asylum. Thats how great Socialism is. He says, socialism sounds great in text book. It may even feel great the first few years, but after a while, it starts to suck when you realize the government controls what you eat, when you eat, when to shop, where to shop, where to go for medical, etc. etc. He says, he wakes up very early in the morning to line up for food for his family to receive some mediocre bread, rice, and beans or whatever he said was the glamorous meal of the day. He says, when he finally got to America, he cried at the sight of being able to eat steak because he never had an opportunity to do so in his home country. He says medical attention sucks because since everyone gets treated the same, everyone must wait in line. Anyway, if socialism was so great, why’d he risk his life to leave it? They say Socialism is the step before Communism (places like China). You’ll never find anyone in China burning Chinese flags because if you do, you’re dead. I think at this point in the election, everyone has already chosen their sides. You’re either left or right. I don’t care to change Leftist perspectives but this is the side I chose for myself. Trump didn’t need to become president. Why the fuck would he want to do that? He had it all. He doesn’t even take a salary. He’s been attacked for the last 3-4 years, event after event. He’s attacked for being a racist, yet Dems support Joe Biden who LITERALLY said, “If you don’t know who you are voting for, me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.” That is literally the most racist shit I’ve ever heard and if we flip the script and Trump was the one who said that exact same line, the media will be having a field day!!!! But it was Biden who said it, so let’s forgive him, blame trump, and sweep it under the rug. Trump is not the best speaker, I’ll give you that. I can barely stand his voice sometimes. I too, need to take a break from his rallies of screaming and shit lol, but I admire that the guy is NOT a politician. He doesn’t need to listen to lobbyists who want him to do things because he doesn’t need money. He cannot be bought. On the other hand you have long time politicians like Biden and his family who have made money through and through by running for political spots promising things he’s never delivered. Black people look to him for some deranged idea of “hope” like he’s going to affect change when he himself wrote the 1994 Crime Bill which incriminated many people for petty crimes, primarily POC. Kamala Harris did the same thing according to many black testimonies I’ve seen - they are LITERALLY running away from her. Trump stands for America and its values. As a so-called racist, he signed a bill giving Historic Black Universities funding for not one year, but many years! I think 10, is it? (i’ll leave the dems to fact check it). He has created opportunity zones in democratically ran cities. He has pardoned POC to finally escape from prison for non-violent crimes. I mean, you have to wonder.. yes there are black people that hate him in the spark of BLM when they come out, but there are a lot of black people who love him too. Trump stands up to other nations and his “bad-ass” attitude may not be attractive to our soft demo’s who prefer to vote personality over policy, but it’s the same attitude that demands more from other countries in terms of financials and their fair share in world-wide peace. Trump is not a political puppet that can be swayed and pressured into selling out our country’s soul at the hands of other countries who are so called out performing us in every possible way - military strength, education, and financials. No one wants to talk about Biden’s ties with China but that shit is literally scary. It’s not that “impossible” to believe that we could be attacked at anytime (Hawaii and SD would be huge targets). Trump expects more from other countries and only makes deals that will benefit our country, not theirs. As the demos look up to Biden/Harris for whatever they are crying about, others are looking to Trump/Pence to literally MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. I have never been so proud and patriotic as a proud Republican Female Immigrant voting for Donald Trump. A long time ago, I let my teacher know (Mrs. Hall or Mrs. Rose) know that I was agnostic and asked, "Will I ever find my reasoning to believe?”. She said, “One day, you will find one. Some day. Just Wait.” I think it’s today, lol. If Biden wins, I’ll start praying our nation doesn’t get sold along with it. I thank my husband and Josie for helping me keep it together through this ever emotional year of 2020. I pray that all this is in my head. I look to House of Cards for a reminder that maybe... all this political shit is exactly that - just politics. I pray there is nothing to fear and that our national security is at no risk if Biden wins. I pray that if Biden wins, my demo friends or ex-friends are right - that he’s gonna do the right thing for the our nation and it’s citizens.

5. Hatred FROM the left. Honestly, I started to secretly doubt the left, but kept my mouth shut about it especially on social media - knowing that more than 90% of my feed were leftists. I only spoke to people I trusted who would help me create logical thought processes on how to absorb the things I was seeing realtime. Little did I know that my social media silence bothered a black person and he called me out for not saying anything. So I pursued research. I watched videos of the cries of BLM and found that besides George Floyd’s death (and a few others), I don’t see the same things other Demos see in these cases. Breonna Taylor died in the hallway of her own home, not in her bed when she was sleeping, unless she sleeps in the hallway, but idk her so who really knows? Coming to find that her bf is the one that shot at the cops first and shot a cop in the leg to be answered my gun shots leading to Breonna Taylors death but not the BF who hid behind her. Ya’ll want to protest that?? What about the cops that are trying to do their jobs? They were there due to continuous investigations of drugs that BT’s bf was involved in. What about the families of the cops? Are they expected to just come home dead? I would NEVER allow my husband to be a police officer. It is a bad time to be one. They risk their lives everyday to do what’s right and yet they get shit thrown at them, deal with rioters that hate them, etc etc. If my husband had to chokehold someone (IDGAF if he or she was white, black, asian, mexican, WHATEVER race bait you want to bring up), I authorize my husband to throw it down however the fuck he felt necessary to come back home to me and my future family. I stand with the spouses and families of all service members that sacrifice everything for the common good and safety for the people and their communities. AND I KNOW, that there are BAD COPS out there. I agree with you that they should be addressed and be pushed to resign, but I believe that the majority of our service men and women are here to do the job the right way. I back the blue 100%. If you don’t, I better not hear or see of any demos calling cops when you need help. I hope you win your battles with your pitchforks cause ya’ll won’t even have weapons to defend yourself if ever you had to because Demos are trying to take your guns away. lol Yea yea, pretty dramatic, but not “impossible” in my eyes. *DEEP BREATH* After sporadic days of emotional wreck, I made a decision on where I stand, I posted, “TRUMP 2020″ and here they come!!!! “If you vote for Trump, you are a racist” Really bro? All of a sudden, I’m a racist? “How can you vote for him? You are a female, asian immigrant!” What does that even mean???? Because I am a female, or because I am Asian, or because I am an immigrant, are you telling me that I only have ONE WAY TO VOTE?! That is the most UN-FREE-ING thing anyone has every told me. There’s only one way. Sounds like a fucking trap. The left made it clear to me - that is not the side I want to be on. Easy choice. AND EVEN THEN... My black ex-friend, says... “Ohhhh, your husband is white and in the miltary. Makes sense.” MOTTTHEEERRRRFUCCCKKKERRR. Did you just discredit my position because my husband is a white man in the Navy? Pffft. I’ve walked away from the left with no intent to return. I’ve learned that I need to have thicker skin when it comes to losing friends because we can’t see eye to eye with politics. I won’t initiate separation but I’ve spent plenty of time thinking about the kinds of people and ideology I’m leaving behind in 2020 and looking forward to cultivating relationships with those who still accept me despite our differences and especially those who share the same ideology.

6. Hate for America and Disrespect for our Armed Forces. I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I see American flags burning or football/basketball players kneeling during our National Anthem, it doesn’t make me want to join you. I asked my husband, “How do you feel when people kneel during the National Anthem?” He said, “I joined the military so they have the freedom to do what they want.” WTF?! My dearest hubby, I love you for your humble stance because you are right.. Americans are free to do what they want... and this freedom is protected by the men and women who sacrifice their lives to defend this country from outside forces! Don’t you guys fucking remember World War II??? We barely won this war. Some say by luck of the creation of the atomic bomb from someone from our side. If we had lost that war, we would probably be owned by Japan? maybe Germany? (Seriously, I wished I paid more attention when I was enrolled in history classes. lol) In my eyes, we wouldn’t have our current freedoms or our current lives if the brave men and women of our armed forces didn’t sacrifice their lives to preserve it... and ya’ll have the balls to kneel for what???? racial injustice for criminals?? GET. THE. FUCK. OUT. OF. HERE. There are plenty of mothers who give birth to babies who’s dads can’t be there because they are overseas. We’ve got people crying about COVID? << (don’t even get me started on that shit) Countless fathers miss their babies births, birthdays, graduations, weddings, etc. etc. to protect our great nation so that you can, in turn, burn the flag and disrespect what it stands for. People can’t be with their friends and families during COVID?? I sympathize with you but now you’ve had a small taste of what military families go through. Then you got people who respond with, “But that’s your choice. Your choice to join the military. Your choice to marry someone in the military.” FUCK YOU. Are you telling me that people like my husband don’t deserve to be loved and supported in fear that we will be separated for months at a time while he is over seas?? Fuck you. I’m actually VERY LUCKY that I met a man that has worked his way up that I didn’t have to feel ALL the sacrifices that other families have made. Do you know what military families have to go through to keep their families together?? There are plenty of families broken because spouses are not together, and to say - “oh that’s their choice” is the most selfish thing EVER... and I don’t (completely) blame the family members that are left behind when they can’t hack it, because seriously, it’s hard. Countless nights alone and separated from loved ones. Trying to do a two person job alone ALL THE TIME, not just a couple days, but MONTHS. Sometimes YEARS altogether. My husband may not care about the donk donks that disrespect our military and everything they’ve done and to all the lives sacrificed, and to all the service members who come back with no families, no love, and no one to support them, I STAND WITH YOU. Oh! Oh! Don’t even get me started with the VA and the medical that is provided to our service members. People want Free Healthcare?! Veterans have Free HealthCare and its one of the worst! We provide our service members with maybe “par” sometimes SUBPAR healthcare. I technically have free healthcare, but in fear that I won’t be seen on time or seen with proper care when I get pregnant, we have opted to pay the extra fees for better care.

7. Personal Health and Sanity. To discuss all the controversial things that the right vs left argue about sounds mundane and tiresome. It really is. I’ve invested so much time and emotions deciphering where I stand to include conversations with handfuls of people who say, “I respect your opinion and I’ve always respected you as a person and am curious to know why you’re voting for Trump.” I’ve questioned my position many times. I’ve watched and read (although, I’ll admit, I hate reading and it was never something I was strong in. I am a visual person and I prefer to hear and watch videos of other’s personal thoughts and experiences.” I appreciate my friend, Cassie, who reminded me, it doesn’t always have to be about policies. It is okay to vote for Trump based on my own experiences - just like how she see’s things. She a Mexican trump supporter who legally immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico and attended SYH. She watched her school cater to undocumented students putting their needs before hers when she is an Mexican-American who’s single mom pays taxes and wanted to learn curriculum in English, not Spanish, but was taught in Spanish because the other kids didn’t know English. Cassie, you literally lifted tons of weight off my shoulders. Thank you! I thank my long time friend Paulos, who responded to my recent post of me wearing a Trump hat with, “You’re about to piss off ALL your friends. Good job though. Fuck em lol” I responded with, “I fucking love you!!” Always have and always will. I’ve never in my life felt like I couldn’t be myself out loud until 2020, a time where leftists shame you for having a different opinion and basically delete you if you support Trump. But I thought to myself, this is the WORST TIME to stay quiet. I am worried that our youngsters who live in democratic cities like National City are only exposed to what the left exposes them to, triggering hate and fear that may or may not be real, and despite my very democratic social media feed, I figured, I’ll be the first to stand for what I believe in with pride and without shame. I have always done what I believe is right, even if its not the most popular opinion, and even if that meant standing my ground against people I thought loved me - especially coming from California, and especially coming from National City. I have ALWAYS told the hubby that after he retires from the Navy, I only see us living in SD. This is the first time in my life where I did not want to come back to CA. In fact, CA was third on my list after Texas and Tennessee. I want to thank my bf Jo, for reminding me of why I should reconsider and remember where my roots are. To remember our upbringing and remember that the people we are most close with today are those in proximity to us. Thank you for taking me out of my very emotional mental state and bringing me back to rationale about why it is important to me to live near my closest friends and family and I truly thank you for investing time to make sure I am always considering all my options rationally and not emotionally. I thank my family, although we are 3vs2 lol we still love each other despite what we value politically. I thank my husband who protects me, my thoughts, and my values. I thank you for being patient with ALL my emotions throughout this year. You have NEVER EVER EVER pushed me to be one way or another. You have ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS let me decide things on my own and in my own time, including the move to Hawaii and my recent change in political views. You truly are the BEST person I know and I will love you FOREVER!!!!! Lastly, Thank You Donald J. Trump for ruffling feathers everywhere and shedding light on the bull shit going on with politicians. Thank you for sacrificing your life as well as your families’ lives and businesses for the sake of preserving American values and American Life. GOD BLESS AMERICA.

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thesswrites · 6 years

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Leading the Blind

Carrying on from the first part of my gift to @true0neutral, another story of the Hearthhearts of Goldendale, with a difference. We meet Lira Sweetwater, halfling cleric of Pelor, at the start of her own journey into the mercenary life.

A battlefield outside Pallav; Temeni (the Southern Lands)

Alone behind enemy lines, Lira reflected, was a bad place to be. Particularly with her target yelling at her through the communication earring Jennandrel had made for them. “Lira what by Tritherion’s bleeding piles are you doing? I thought I told you people to leave me!”

Lira rolled her eyes, slipping between bits of ruined building and trusting her substandard halfling height to make up for the target beacon that was her bright red hair. “We don’t do that, Goban. And you know it.”

Grumbled swearing in dwarven was the only reply. It was part of the motto of the Quickflight Diminutives, Twylla Quickflight’s mercenary band. ‘In fast, out faster, leave no man behind’. It worked well, and given the makeup of the company, it was the only way it could. They were the Diminituves because that was what they were - diminutive. Four halflings, a dozen or so dwarves, six gnomes, and a surprisingly useful fairy dragon that Lira had liberated from a local noble’s household and now followed her around like a faithful hound, they were the smallest mercenary band in Belarys ... but they were one of the best for insertions like this.

Goban was their demolitionist, one of the few dwarves in their group who wasn’t a straight-up fighter. He’d snuck into the cultist camp on the outskirts of Pallav with a few of his more localised bits of boom, intending to cause enough chaos to flush the cultists out of their tight battle formation and allow the skirmishers of the Diminutives to pick them off. This was a job for more than twenty-odd tiny people, but Lira didn’t consider the odds, any more than she considered the odds of surviving a solo extraction when one of her friends got trapped behind enemy lines.

These cultists called themselves the Eaters of Suns. Lira’s god was a god of the sun. While she herself was a pacifist by inclination, she would do whatever was necessary to stop these cultists in their tracks.

When she finally reached Goban, she reached for the symbol of Pelor around her neck with one hand and for the fallen dwarf with the broken leg with the other; she had a hand on his shoulder and had started to heal him before her knees had touched the ground beside him. Goban shook his head. “You’re a brave girl, Little Lira. Damn fool, mind, but a brave girl.”

Lira looked at him, eyes narrowing in mock offense. “Damn fool, hmm? How is saving our only demolitionist a foolish thing to do?”

Goban glared at her, meeting her eyes with some desperation. “I’m their only demolitionist, but since Ellain left, you’re our only healer, girl. Do you not smell trap on this? Agh,” he grumbled, shaking his head. “Of course you don’t and I shouldn’t expect it. You’re a fledgling to the ways of war, and--”

Fledgling she might be, but at the word ‘trap’, she touched her amulet again, this time seeking out evil. The force of it almost knocked her over, and without a moment’s hesitation, she took his flints from him and slapped the small coin Twylla had given her into Goban’s hand. Speaking the activation word, she opened a Dimension Door to get him out of harm’s way, cutting off his cheated curse mid-epithet. She hadn’t finished healing him yet, and she had no idea how well he’d be able to walk. She, on the other hand, could still run. So thinking, she found the fuse that Goban had spent many patient hours explaining and lit it with a hasty flick of tinder on slate, waiting for a spear to find her back with every second she wasted. Then, still miraculously unstabbed, she stood to face the oncoming enemy.

All that evil coming from a single man was disconcerting, to say the least. Although ‘man’ might have been stretching the point. The cultists they had been fighting had looked somehow wrong - the term Lira used was ‘soul-sick’. This one, however, looked soul-dead, and she pitied him even as she grabbed her dropped quarterstaff and drove him back, as much to get herself under cover before Goban’s black powder exploded as to keep him from finding and snuffing the fuse.

She was only barely in time; shards of broken rock skated harmlessly across her displacer cloak as she pinned the soul-dead cultist to a sandstone wall, somehow praying she could reach him. Pelor, let me help just one of them, she thought, pressing him into the wall with her quarterstaff mashing his elbows into the crumbling wall she’d found to back him against. She felt Pelor’s regretful smile even as she tried: “...Do you still have a name?”

The cultist responded by opening his mouth and spitting a mouthful of something green and foul-smelling directly into her eyes. She had a merciful moment of thinking that he had just vomited in her face (she was a healer, she worked with mercenaries, she’d had worse with every session of drinking, never mind war) ... and then the stinging in her eyes became a nearly insupportable burn and her eyelids refused to work ... possibly because they no longer existed.

While it was far too little and far too late, Lira turned her face away from the acid-spitting abomination that had once been a human man ... but she still refused to let him away from the wall. She had little enough strength left, more of it being sapped away all the time by the acid eating into her face, but there was one chance. She knew Twylla Quickflight, her immediate superior. While the plan to send Lira behind enemy lines to save Goban had originated with their commander, Lira knew that Twylla Quickflight left nothing to chance ... if only because her lover believed in preparedness to the point of triple-redundancy. Which was why, instead of an incoherent scream, Lira centred herself enough to put her cry of agony into a single word: “Rand!”

Lira’s ears were very good. She heard the quick flight of two arrows fly above her head, and the sound of impact indicated that Rand Hearthheart had chosen the path of poetic justice by putting out the eyes of the creature that had taken Lira’s.

It was about all that Lira could process before the pain overwhelmed her and she lost consciousness.

Only half-conscious, some unknown time later, Lira caught a few words from her commander. Not many, but enough to terrify her. Those words were “...back to the temple”.

Lira didn’t want to go back. She couldn’t. This cult was trying to kill suns, and one of those suns was her god. More, her time so far behind enemy lines had shown her what became of those who followed this sun-eating horror. No one deserved to have their soul destroyed that way, to walk on with darkness corroding their soul the way the acid had corroded--

Oh.

It was dark, and she was conscious, and while she could feel bandages over her eyes, she’d had cloth over her eyes before and still had some sense that she could see. Now she didn’t even have the sense of that. The pain had faded, but there was a sunken feeling where her eyes should be. Where her eyes no longer were.

The price of overconfidence.

All Lira could do was pray. Pelor, she thought, and would have closed her eyes if she could have. Pelor, if that is to be the last thing I ever see, please let me continue to help fight it. I ... I don’t ask for my eyes back. That is the mark of a lesson well-learned. Just ... please. I want to help. I want to stop them. I want my people to be spared the fate of the man who took my eyes. Let me heal them. Let me protect them. Let me help them. Let me do Your work in Your name, and keep them well.

She heard a chuckle - something huge and powerful and kind, indulgent as a beloved uncle - and felt the benevolence of a sun-god’s smile, and warm but otherworldly lips upon her forehead. Then, there was a word, and the presence of Pelor receded. Never gone - Pelor was never far from His chosen - but back in His proper place in the material.

Gods seldom intervened, by rules set down long ago - rules that Pelor and Nerull and Tritherion had all agreed upon to allow mortals to be free. But those who dedicated their lives to their gods could ask. There were dispensations, if a mortal like that asked. Knowing that Pelor had found her request worthy of granting, Lira sat up, murmuring the word she’d heard in her delirium. “...Truesight?”

“You need to be lying down,” said Rand Hearthheart. Lira had known for a long time that Twylla’s lover ‘Rand’ was actually a woman named Miranda, having healed her of enough wounds to see her without that much in the way of clothing. But now, to Lira’s lack of eyes, it was all the more obvious. The illusion spell that had at one point kept Lira’s notice away from certain anatomical features didn’t function as it should, because Lira didn’t see it at all; she sensed Miranda Hearthheart as sort of a polished stiletto blade of a woman, polished and versatile and hidden until needed.

Then a quicksilver presence that Lira identified as Twylla pushed forward. “Well, she can do that in a moment, but first I want to know what you mean by ‘Truesight’. Because I heard you say ‘Truesight’, Lira my girl, and honestly, that’s not the sort of thing I expect to hear from someone who had acid spit eat their eyes.”

Lira shook her head. “I ... asked Pelor ... to let me still help you. I ... said I didn’t want or need my eyes back. That the lesson learned was too important to lose, but ... you were talking about sending me back--”

Rand huffed out a little chuckle. “That was Goban,” ‘he’ said with a grin. “The guilt’s eating. He doesn’t really understand the whole thing where clerics put their trust in the gods. He’s less ‘praise the lords’ and more ‘pass the ammunition’.”

All Twylla could do at that point was shake her head. “Well, I’ll tell you this much, Lira-lass; you’re not going anywhere just now. And I don’t just mean because you’re injured, because whatever Pelor did to you, it at least healed the acid burns to scars, which will have to do, I suppose. Listen,” she went on, and Lira could feel the commander grinning, “even if you hadn’t had a bit of divine intervention, we’d have just kept you in the medical tent. We don’t have enough healing to spare. But a healer with Truesight? We’re not passing that up. We’ll train you up in blind-fighting and get you back in the field.”

After a silent moment in which Lira would have cried had her tear ducts not been obliterated, she simply said, “Thank you”. Everyone in the room knew that she wasn’t talking to them.

#Cupcake Coterie Prequels

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niksterisms · 7 years

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February 3rd 2017 marks a day in AFL history that I am super proud to see take place. The first official women’s AFL match will happen. Better late than never, a little late for me I’m afraid but I am excited for these young ladies about to embark on an adventure of a lifetime that was only a dream for me.

For those who know me well, I have grown up around AFL. When I was born my dad worked at St. Albans FC in Melbourne’s west, then when I was 11 he began working for the Melbourne Football Club. A dream come true for him and me! Suddenly my dad was a big deal! (He still is in my eyes today, even though he’s now retired after 25 years with the MFC.

I’ve grown up with a football in my hand and it’s safe to say it has always been my preferred toy of choice. I learned to kick the footy from an early age and showed no fear taking grabs or running from would be tacklers.

In between the reserves and senior matches you would see me out on the ground kicking the footy either with my mum, cousin, uncle, aunt or by myself. It didn’t really bother me if there was someone to kick to or not! I didn’t really have too many shots on goal because usually the bigger kids would occupy the area so I would head over to the wing where there was plenty of room to kick the ball as hard as I could. At home I would kick the ball about in our backyard. It was the best way to learn accuracy because having to jump the fence to collect the ball was scary (the neighbours weren’t so nice).

I was pretty good at most sports with the exception of swimming and gymnastics, so when it came to PE classes in both primary school and high school I was either the captain of a team or one of the first girls picked. When you are captain and you have to make good sporting decisions to give your team an advantage, quite often it can piss off your friends! That was a nice hard lesson to learn early on. Netball was the first real sport I played in competition starting at wing attack and eventually becoming the centre – keeping me as far away from the goals as possible!

When I was 10 years old and in grade 5 we could start participating in inter school sports. I loved this. I played kanga cricket and kick ball. I was also lucky enough to be given the chance to play my favourite sport in the world Aussie Rules Football. Now, in Aussie culture that’s not such a big deal, but it was when you are a girl, because Aussie Rules is meant to be a man’s sport. There was two of us girls who fronted up to the meeting to sign up to play for the blue and white deer park primary school footy team. I’m proud to say we represented the girls well, we were the team’s secret weapons. It didn’t come without a few comments of girls can’t play football, why aren’t you playing netball instead? Ironically I was playing netball also, outside of school!

One particular game, I admit, I was having a really bad game. I got dragged off the field and the coach yelled at me and told me I was playing like a girl. At the time I was so incensed about being told I was, god forbid, playing like a girl. It struck a chord with me at the time because after half time I went back out on the field and played like a girl possessed. I kicked goals, I took marks and I even tackled the opposition ruckman and threw him to the ground and made him cry! (Which, in hindsight shouldn’t have been something to be proud about). I ended up best on ground.

I look back on that today and I think I was more incensed about being told I was playing football like the weaker of the sexes, when I knew I could play just as well, if not better than any boy in the team. I really disliked being made to be different to the boys.

Around the same time as my football career was blossoming, my girly features were also coming into bloom. What a nightmare time that is for kids, as they are slowly morphing into mini adults. I, for one, was not amused by this sudden change (and I still blame my mother for the birds and the bees talk we had not 6 months prior!) Which in turn meant any promising AFL career I had my heart set on was put on ice… or hidden behind a trainee bra. So, instead I became a boundary umpire for my cousin’s under 15 / 16 footy team. When you’re 11, trying to run the boundary line in footy boots and a white pleated netball skirt in the mud a fair bit was challenging and 15 year olds can kick the ball a mile! A few times I didn’t quite make it to see if the ball was out on the full or just out of bounds which opened up a loophole for the boys to yell out that I was a stupid girl who shouldn’t be partaking in any part of football. One day my cousin stood up for me and told a team mate to shut his mouth because I was actually a better kick of the footy than he was.

My high school years coincided with dad becoming a trainer at the Melbourne Football Club. The horror of high school was counteracted by the excitement of my dad rubbing shoulders (and backs & legs) of famous footballers. And for our family’s team we followed too! Occasionally I was driven to training after school by my grandad to Junction Oval and when I got older I would catch a train in and get a lift home with dad. I’d sit there and watch the players go through their drills, taking it all in. After training I would get out and kick the footy. Developed a crush or two along the way... Sorry Matt Febey! Jeff Farmer wanted me to become the first girl to play for the MFC (I’m still waiting for my contract offer Jeff!) I became good friends with Russell Robertson and got to hang out with players at so many events outside of football. Those were the days… Anyway I digress, each time I watched a game or kicked the footy at training how I wished I could take part in playing football. Year 11 was the beginning of VCE & as part of our English subject we were asked to do a communication project. I chose to arrange a football clinic for my high school mates and the primary school kids up the road. I had to go into Junction oval and ask Neil Balme who was the coach at the time, by myself, if I was allowed to ask some of the Melbourne players if they would like to host the clinic. Neil was lovely and said of course. It was a bit naughty because the west was always the area the Western Bulldogs roamed. I nominated Allen Jakovich as the main player to attend because all the girls had a crush on him. Alas, he pulled out at the last minute and David Neitz stepped in along with Daniel Clarke & Damien Gaspar. I think they were amongst the tallest players at the club! It was nice getting an A+ for an assignment I had so much fun organising.

We would kick the football at lunch time with the girls v the boys. Always made for giggles. In year 12 I was approached by my English teacher from the year before, who was a huge Bombers supporter, who asked if I would be interested in helping put together a girl’s AFL team. She had heard there was a girl’s competition amongst the local schools and she thought it would be great to participate. I agreed, so I went on a recruitment drive. We couldn’t get enough girls from the senior levels so we opened it up to the entire 7-12 year levels. We arranged for the trials and training to take place at the junior campus of the school so the young kids didn’t have to travel so far. We had a pretty good turn out. I was in charge of the training drills and we really had to start at the basics because quite a few of the girls did not know how to kick or handball. We worked through handball drills, short kicks, gradually getting longer, marking, running and bouncing the ball, shots on goal, defending, etc. By the time game day came around these girls had their position and skills down pat. It was the first time the school had ever had an all girl’s AFL team and the first (from memory) when it involved people from all school levels.

Game day consisted of a round robin competition. I was the captain of our team and played in the midfield. We won every game with the exception of the last that we lost by 1 point after the siren. The games were intense and fun, the wind was blowing a gale too. I managed to kick a goal from the boundary line just inside 50! Not bad considering I wasn’t wearing my glasses and didn’t have contact lenses at the time.

That day would have to have been my favourite day of high school ever. Our girl’s team ended up being the most successful sporting team that year and we could’ve become state champions, had the PE coordinator not declined the offer on our behalf without consulting us or our coach purely because he didn’t agree that girl’s should play AFL. (I protested this with our principal and we were asked to play at a later date but it clashed with our final exams). It really did put a downer on our success with the team. It was the first time I recall being angry that a man was denying the girls the chance to play football after we proved that we could play it and play it well.

Our football adventures even lead to them being mentioned in my letter of recommendation from the principal. Something of which I am super proud of.

After high school life changes happened, I ended up living in Queensland for seven years. I was planning on joining the women’s AFL team in Maroochydore but I was working in a restaurant and the hours clashed with training and match day commitments. So my dream of playing AFL was put on hold indefinitely and became nothing but a dream.

So as this day approaches I cannot describe how excited and proud I am that the Melbourne Football Club along with the Western Bulldogs, Carlton, Collingwood, Fremantle, Adelaide, Brisbane & GWS Football Clubs are about to make history with the first season of Women’s football professionally and recognised by the AFL. So many dreams are about to be fulfilled and so many more dreams are about to be created. I cannot wait to get out to the games and cheer the girls on, and although my heart belongs to the demons, I hope all the teams in the competition have successful campaigns and the girls have the times of their lives.

#Women's AFL #aflwomensgame #making history

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andya-j · 6 years

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It was the job of a lifetime for me, teaching people to speak English in Hanoi, Vietnam, and getting paid big money for it. In 1994, the war seemed long over, but for some, it was never going to end, soldiers becoming redundant, and innocent people becoming landlocked, their way of living and thought forever changed, so much so they could never rest, not until their job was done . Summer was in full swing there and two of my friends joined me, to help me settle in. They had been there twice before. Good old Jim Dyson and His wife John, short for Johnette. They were both older than me by about ten years. I was only twenty-six. An uncle of mine – Tom - had served in the Army during the war, got wounded at the Battle of Long Tan. He rarely spoke of it, but when he got drunk he did, and would troll off into his own little world, speaking in Vietnamese, because he had to learn the language, just in case he got caught. “ Eddie, “ he'd say, breathing alcoholic fumes on me, trying to look me in the eye, “ they tie ya to trees, boy. Then, they cut ya. From ya shithole to ya breakfast. “ Then, he'd look over his shoulder suspiciously, and smirk, “ We really should make a run for it. “ Uncle Tom was killed by a car walking to the shops in 1986. He had been sober for three years. Hurt my family deeply, Hanoi surprised me, because I thought I would be in a city of the past, with people selling rice, working bullock drays, on unpaved potholed roads, with throwback sixties bars, and tiny, pretty women in purple silk miniskirts promising to love me long time. It was nothing like that. The Dysons had warned me. It was very modern and very loud. And, man, it was loud. First day there, I saw a fight in the street. Two taxi drivers got into an argument over a potential fare and one stabbed the other in the back of the neck. The potential fare ran off and got on a bus. I wanted to step in and help the wounded driver, but Jim pulled me back, saying, “ No, Ed. It's their business. They don't like interference. Trust me. “ I trusted him, but I really think I should have helped. We settled into a hotel called the Hanoi Arms and I still had three weeks to go until I settled into the teacher's cottage. The Vietnamese government, crawling along as it was, had found me a permanent place to stay, which I was and will be forever grateful for. It was much like a modern bedsitter unit. It had an expanse to place a bed, a lounge, a desk, and television, which I never had reception for, unless it was a black screen with Viet music playing. The place had a seperate kitchen and bathroom, though. And it had electricity. I met the renevator – Tran – when I turned up the first time, with Jim and John. “ Ready. Ready soon, “ he said, smiling, covered in paint, a man in his late forties. “ You cook here. Big cook. “ He dabbed paint at the wall, then said, “ Here, man cook all time. Good for wife. Wife cook good, man cook better. Must cook better. No cook, no good. No cook, no wife, “ then he chuckled, like this was the local knowledge and a joke to him. Tran smoked a cigarette while he painted, the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, never once using his hands to deal with it, inhaling and exhaling through his mouth, squinting through one eye. When the cigarette was finished, he spat the butt with expert aim into a brass pot. I have never smoked, so I found it fascinating, and when I finally moved in at the start of term, there was not a shred of cigarette smoke in the place. I never met Tran again. At the community school, where I would be working, I met the head of education. She called herself Miss Maggie. She was taller then most Vietnamese women, had long and straight black hair, with legs that ran to her neck, and she had the greenest eyes. Jim and John met her with me and they later told me that meeting an asian woman with green eyes is very good luck, like marrying a white woman with blue eyes. It's simply the polar cultural opposites of good fortune. Being only twenty-six at the time, I won't lie, I wanted to fuck Miss Maggie bad. She was hot. With three weeks to go before the start of a new term, Miss Maggie said, “ You should cycle. Go get cycle, love. “ She said love. My heart was beating fast. Then, she said, “ The people there. In the country, they need you. I don't need you here. I need you there. Introduce yourself, Mister Grantley. Be a teacher. “ “ Just call me Eddie, “ I said. “ No, you are Mister Grantley. You are a teacher, like I am, but I am better than you are. You know why? You are here, love, “ winking at me, knowing she was the boss, and that was all of it. Love... That word again. A learned word to soothe the nerves of the caucasian, like junkies use it to appease a dealer they owe money to, or to get product from, or to slide their foot through the door. We were attracted, I could see it, but she wanted me to do my job, earn the money, better her homeland, and prove it. “ Certainly, “ I said. “ It's a very good idea. I'll listen to your advice. Bicycle, was it? “ “ Yes, “ she said. “ Blend in. A motor car distinguishes you at my school. Get a bicycle. I see you have friends waiting for you. You should take them with you. I heard your other friend speaking Vietnamese. Make sure he goes with you. To be a good teacher, Mister Grantley, you must be like the students. If they crawl, you crawl with them, then they learn to walk. “ I understood her logic and that's why I eventually married her. Jim and John were quick to rent bicycles for us and off into the Vietnamese countryside we went, leaving the noise of Hanoi behind. Before too soon the roads became dusty, dirty, pocked with holes, and irrigations. We laughed at how much those road jolted our bones. We stopped at villages, the villagers coming out, speaking to us, telling us where to go, and where not go, offering us their babies at times, freaking us out, always marvelling at the shininess of our bicycles, sunglasses, and watches, touching the fabric of our clothes. At one place, into our fourth day of cycling, at a village I still cannot pronounce, they held Jim and Johnette down, by the side of their toppled bikes, yelling, machetes high, willing to decapitate them both, then the villagers laughed and let us go. We wanted to go home then, but Jim was pissed, “ Fuck these little cunts! Fuck them! “ “ Shut up! “ Johnette shrieked. Then, they came back, and took us, shoved us to the ground again. Right there in the middle of nowhere. “ Be cool, “ I told my companions, “ Just be quiet for a moment. “ ( Please... ), I said in Vietnamese, especially to the older angry man with the machete above me, his dark face scrunched to kill, and me already having wet myself. ( We will ), from remembering all my uncle Tom's drunken Vietnamese. I was here to teach it, not speak it. The angry man with the machete yelled, “ We will? We what? “ I asked, ( Teach speak please? )( Can we please help you? ) ( Hear me? ) He kicked my belly, called me a smarty pants, slapped the back of my head, and snorted that english was easy. The Americans taught him that. Jim was next. He grabbed Jim by the fringe and put the machete to my friend's throat, yelling, “ You! What you do? “ John was pleading with the men roughing her up and Jim was seething with anger, his eyes making it clear. ( I can rip every tooth from your head and fistfuck your mouth for this, ) Jim growled in clear and profound Vietnamese. The machete man let him go and stepped back, understanding exactly what Jim meant. First, he smirked, then he chuckled, slapping one of his pals on the arm, then he laughed at Jim, “ No, you cant! I won't let you! “ Then, everyone was laughing at us. I was thinking they were going to keep us prisoner, rape Johnette, behead us, all the terrible things my uncle Tom told me about, but within in a few hours, they had fed us, given us water, returned our bicycles, and sent us on our way. We were glad to be away from them and Jim and John bickered momentarily, but they made up quickly, and held each other crying. They wanted to blame me for it, but couldn't, because I never invited them. They invited themselves. Two days later, we encountered an old compound that may have served as a military base during the war. The walls were huge and grey, four towers standing high, but vacant. The place seemed deserted, so we ventured inside to look around. We quickly learned that this place had been a prison. There were hundreds of cells with broken doors and rusty bars, an executioner's gallows rotting away. In the massive courtyard we heard a door open at the far end and a small old man was looking at us, just standing there, shaking his head in disappointment. “ Hello! “ John called. The man looked shocked and upset when she called out, then spoke to himself, turning around, and darted back into his room. “ Spritely old fart, “ Jim said. “ Probably has a huge cock, too. “ John giggled and punched his arm. We knocked on the old man's door and it opened slightly, unlocked. “ Hello? “ I quizzed. “ Are you there? Can we please come in? “ There was a breeze and the door opened a little more, so I gently pushed it all the way open. The old man was unravelling bundles of rope, cutting them into lengths with a large knife, mumbling to himself. We entered and he seemed oblivious to us. His room smelled of kerosene. “ Are you the caretaker? “ I asked. John was amazed at the silk tapestry on the wall. Jim checked in a vase and coughed, “ I think those are human ashes in there. “ I was trying to decipher what the old man was saying, but for the life of me, I couldn't grasp his dialect, wondering aloud, “ What do you think he's saying? “ “ Sounds familiar, “ Jim said. “ Some shit about three ropes. “ The old man kept cutting the ropes with the knife, nimble about it, but also quite distressed, like we had made him get out of bed to do something he didn't want to do, as if us being there was a chore, never once ceasing his mumbling that same phrase over and over. I turned to Jim and he had John's arm, backing out the door in shock, motioning for me to follow them, Jim nodding his head, wide eyed in panic. He walked calmly to his bicycle, telling me to follow, don't look back, but I did look back, and as we rode away, I could see the old man wailing silently at us, on his knees, rope in hand. When the compound was out of sight, Jim stopped pedaling, taking a breath. “ That old guy is fucked, “ Jim said. “ I recognized what he was saying from this time I went to Thailand to visit a friend. Some prison guards were speaking to each other in a bar. That old man back there was talking Thai. He was wasn't talking about three ropes. Even for an old man, he is very dangerous. He was a prison executioner and he was saying he needed to hang three more, meaning us. That was a gutting knife he had. He was going to gut us and hang us, Eddie! “ In 1994, the war was long over, but for some...

It was the job of a lifetime for me, teaching people to speak English in Hanoi, Vietnam, and getting paid big money for it. In 1994, the war seemed long over, but for some, it was never going to end, soldiers becoming redundant, and innocent people becoming landlocked, their way of living and thought forever changed, so much so they could never rest, not until their job was done . Summer was in full swing there and two of my friends joined me, to help me settle in. They had been there twice before. Good old Jim Dyson and His wife John, short for Johnette. They were both older than me by about ten years. I was only twenty-six. An uncle of mine – Tom – had served in the Army during the war, got wounded at the Battle of Long Tan. He rarely spoke of it, but when he got drunk he did, and would troll off into his own little world, speaking in Vietnamese, because he had to learn the language, just in case he got caught. “ Eddie, “ he’d say, breathing alcoholic fumes on me, trying to look me in the eye, “ they tie ya to trees, boy. Then, they cut ya. From ya shithole to ya breakfast. “ Then, he’d look over his shoulder suspiciously, and smirk, “ We really should make a run for it. “ Uncle Tom was killed by a car walking to the shops in 1986. He had been sober for three years. Hurt my family deeply, Hanoi surprised me, because I thought I would be in a city of the past, with people selling rice, working bullock drays, on unpaved potholed roads, with throwback sixties bars, and tiny, pretty women in purple silk miniskirts promising to love me long time. It was nothing like that. The Dysons had warned me. It was very modern and very loud. And, man, it was loud. First day there, I saw a fight in the street. Two taxi drivers got into an argument over a potential fare and one stabbed the other in the back of the neck. The potential fare ran off and got on a bus. I wanted to step in and help the wounded driver, but Jim pulled me back, saying, “ No, Ed. It’s their business. They don’t like interference. Trust me. “ I trusted him, but I really think I should have helped. We settled into a hotel called the Hanoi Arms and I still had three weeks to go until I settled into the teacher’s cottage. The Vietnamese government, crawling along as it was, had found me a permanent place to stay, which I was and will be forever grateful for. It was much like a modern bedsitter unit. It had an expanse to place a bed, a lounge, a desk, and television, which I never had reception for, unless it was a black screen with Viet music playing. The place had a seperate kitchen and bathroom, though. And it had electricity. I met the renevator – Tran – when I turned up the first time, with Jim and John. “ Ready. Ready soon, “ he said, smiling, covered in paint, a man in his late forties. “ You cook here. Big cook. “ He dabbed paint at the wall, then said, “ Here, man cook all time. Good for wife. Wife cook good, man cook better. Must cook better. No cook, no good. No cook, no wife, “ then he chuckled, like this was the local knowledge and a joke to him. Tran smoked a cigarette while he painted, the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, never once using his hands to deal with it, inhaling and exhaling through his mouth, squinting through one eye. When the cigarette was finished, he spat the butt with expert aim into a brass pot. I have never smoked, so I found it fascinating, and when I finally moved in at the start of term, there was not a shred of cigarette smoke in the place. I never met Tran again. At the community school, where I would be working, I met the head of education. She called herself Miss Maggie. She was taller then most Vietnamese women, had long and straight black hair, with legs that ran to her neck, and she had the greenest eyes. Jim and John met her with me and they later told me that meeting an asian woman with green eyes is very good luck, like marrying a white woman with blue eyes. It’s simply the polar cultural opposites of good fortune. Being only twenty-six at the time, I won’t lie, I wanted to fuck Miss Maggie bad. She was hot. With three weeks to go before the start of a new term, Miss Maggie said, “ You should cycle. Go get cycle, love. “ She said love. My heart was beating fast. Then, she said, “ The people there. In the country, they need you. I don’t need you here. I need you there. Introduce yourself, Mister Grantley. Be a teacher. “ “ Just call me Eddie, “ I said. “ No, you are Mister Grantley. You are a teacher, like I am, but I am better than you are. You know why? You are here, love, “ winking at me, knowing she was the boss, and that was all of it. Love… That word again. A learned word to soothe the nerves of the caucasian, like junkies use it to appease a dealer they owe money to, or to get product from, or to slide their foot through the door. We were attracted, I could see it, but she wanted me to do my job, earn the money, better her homeland, and prove it. “ Certainly, “ I said. “ It’s a very good idea. I’ll listen to your advice. Bicycle, was it? “ “ Yes, “ she said. “ Blend in. A motor car distinguishes you at my school. Get a bicycle. I see you have friends waiting for you. You should take them with you. I heard your other friend speaking Vietnamese. Make sure he goes with you. To be a good teacher, Mister Grantley, you must be like the students. If they crawl, you crawl with them, then they learn to walk. “ I understood her logic and that’s why I eventually married her. Jim and John were quick to rent bicycles for us and off into the Vietnamese countryside we went, leaving the noise of Hanoi behind. Before too soon the roads became dusty, dirty, pocked with holes, and irrigations. We laughed at how much those road jolted our bones. We stopped at villages, the villagers coming out, speaking to us, telling us where to go, and where not go, offering us their babies at times, freaking us out, always marvelling at the shininess of our bicycles, sunglasses, and watches, touching the fabric of our clothes. At one place, into our fourth day of cycling, at a village I still cannot pronounce, they held Jim and Johnette down, by the side of their toppled bikes, yelling, machetes high, willing to decapitate them both, then the villagers laughed and let us go. We wanted to go home then, but Jim was pissed, “ Fuck these little cunts! Fuck them! “ “ Shut up! “ Johnette shrieked. Then, they came back, and took us, shoved us to the ground again. Right there in the middle of nowhere. “ Be cool, “ I told my companions, “ Just be quiet for a moment. “ ( Please… ), I said in Vietnamese, especially to the older angry man with the machete above me, his dark face scrunched to kill, and me already having wet myself. ( We will ), from remembering all my uncle Tom’s drunken Vietnamese. I was here to teach it, not speak it. The angry man with the machete yelled, “ We will? We what? “ I asked, ( Teach speak please? )( Can we please help you? ) ( Hear me? ) He kicked my belly, called me a smarty pants, slapped the back of my head, and snorted that english was easy. The Americans taught him that. Jim was next. He grabbed Jim by the fringe and put the machete to my friend’s throat, yelling, “ You! What you do? “ John was pleading with the men roughing her up and Jim was seething with anger, his eyes making it clear. ( I can rip every tooth from your head and fistfuck your mouth for this, ) Jim growled in clear and profound Vietnamese. The machete man let him go and stepped back, understanding exactly what Jim meant. First, he smirked, then he chuckled, slapping one of his pals on the arm, then he laughed at Jim, “ No, you cant! I won’t let you! “ Then, everyone was laughing at us. I was thinking they were going to keep us prisoner, rape Johnette, behead us, all the terrible things my uncle Tom told me about, but within in a few hours, they had fed us, given us water, returned our bicycles, and sent us on our way. We were glad to be away from them and Jim and John bickered momentarily, but they made up quickly, and held each other crying. They wanted to blame me for it, but couldn’t, because I never invited them. They invited themselves. Two days later, we encountered an old compound that may have served as a military base during the war. The walls were huge and grey, four towers standing high, but vacant. The place seemed deserted, so we ventured inside to look around. We quickly learned that this place had been a prison. There were hundreds of cells with broken doors and rusty bars, an executioner’s gallows rotting away. In the massive courtyard we heard a door open at the far end and a small old man was looking at us, just standing there, shaking his head in disappointment. “ Hello! “ John called. The man looked shocked and upset when she called out, then spoke to himself, turning around, and darted back into his room. “ Spritely old fart, “ Jim said. “ Probably has a huge cock, too. “ John giggled and punched his arm. We knocked on the old man’s door and it opened slightly, unlocked. “ Hello? “ I quizzed. “ Are you there? Can we please come in? “ There was a breeze and the door opened a little more, so I gently pushed it all the way open. The old man was unravelling bundles of rope, cutting them into lengths with a large knife, mumbling to himself. We entered and he seemed oblivious to us. His room smelled of kerosene. “ Are you the caretaker? “ I asked. John was amazed at the silk tapestry on the wall. Jim checked in a vase and coughed, “ I think those are human ashes in there. “ I was trying to decipher what the old man was saying, but for the life of me, I couldn’t grasp his dialect, wondering aloud, “ What do you think he’s saying? “ “ Sounds familiar, “ Jim said. “ Some shit about three ropes. “ The old man kept cutting the ropes with the knife, nimble about it, but also quite distressed, like we had made him get out of bed to do something he didn’t want to do, as if us being there was a chore, never once ceasing his mumbling that same phrase over and over. I turned to Jim and he had John’s arm, backing out the door in shock, motioning for me to follow them, Jim nodding his head, wide eyed in panic. He walked calmly to his bicycle, telling me to follow, don’t look back, but I did look back, and as we rode away, I could see the old man wailing silently at us, on his knees, rope in hand. When the compound was out of sight, Jim stopped pedaling, taking a breath. “ That old guy is fucked, “ Jim said. “ I recognized what he was saying from this time I went to Thailand to visit a friend. Some prison guards were speaking to each other in a bar. That old man back there was talking Thai. He was wasn’t talking about three ropes. Even for an old man, he is very dangerous. He was a prison executioner and he was saying he needed to hang three more, meaning us. That was a gutting knife he had. He was going to gut us and hang us, Eddie! “ In 1994, the war was long over, but for some…

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‘I know their vital stats, their romantic histories’: how Sunderland AFC saved me

For this Chinese Jewish Texan, England was a difficult place to feel at home. But all that changed when she discovered football

Thats shite, man! the man behind screams. The discontent in the crowd is reaching a critical mass. Useless twats, snarls a father below, opening a packet of crisps for his nine-year-old son.

I stand frozen, wrapped up in a scarf and down jacket. Who are we yelling at? Why are we so angry?

Its Boxing Day 2012 and Im at the Stadium of Light in Sunderland for my first ever football match. Its freezing cold; it begins to rain. And then it happens. A Sunderland player fires a shot that creeps past the Manchester City goalkeeper and into the bottom corner of the net. The stadium thunders as a sea of 46,000 bodies fall over each other, total strangers hugging their neighbours, while simultaneously jumping up and down. The man next to me screams so loudly in my ear that Im momentarily deaf. Then he turns me towards him, grabs my shoulders, locks eyes with me and shakes my body. Ahhhhhhhhhh! he screams, in happiness and disbelief.

Ahhhhhhh! I scream back, in fear.

***

When I moved to London, I got a job as a junior editor on a luxury lifestyle website. The site was run by a flamboyant man from Croydon named Carlos, with coiffed salt and pepper hair. Never one to pass up an opportunity to show off, Carlos liked to introduce me to visiting VIPs as our New Yorker who speaks fluent Mandarin and went to Harvard.

None of these things was true. I grew up in a small town in Texas: Amarillo. For some reason, Carlos didnt think this as impressive as being from New York (despite Amarillo being the helium capital of the world and the home of Tony Christies sweet Marie). As for fluent in Mandarin, my dad is Chinese, but I speak only broken Mandarin after living and working in Beijing for a few years. I didnt go to Harvard I was rejected but I did go to a university an hour away. None of these things made sense to Carlos, so he went with his own version.

My exchanges with Carlos were stilted. Our interactions ended in awkward silences. He was twice my age and we had nothing in common. But he was well known in London media circles and I was desperate to get him on side.

After Beijing, I assumed it would be a breeze to assimilate in a country where I no longer faced a language barrier. In China, I had spent a good amount of time miming my interactions. I also had to get used to Beijing locals asking me how much money I made, or telling me I was looking fatter than usual. But it was a bluntness I came to embrace: at least I knew where I stood.

Not so in London. The city was so rife with passive aggression that I didnt know when people were being rude or kind. A woman thanked me on the train for moving my bag and I was almost certain what she was really saying was too fucking right. A man squeezed by me on the escalator and the pitch of his seemingly polite May I? was so snide, it nearly brought me to tears. Carlos asked me if I want to do something for him at work and I wasnt sure if it was an order, a helpful suggestion or sarcasm. The words themselves were unfailingly polite, but it was all in the tone. Other Americans I knew suffered the same way. I genuinely dont know if my colleagues are making fun of me or being nice, a friend from Chicago confessed one night over drinks.

London can be a tough city for newcomers to crack. Compared with the US, people prefer to keep to themselves, especially in public. Im shy, so this was wonderful at first. No one approaches you to chat. I once fell in a crowded street in broad daylight and began the, Im fine, Im fine, honestly protest. But no one had stopped. I lay on the ground, impressed with peoples dedication to not getting involved with strangers. I began to think that I might never find a way to break through the famous British reserve. Would I ever find common ground with Carlos? If only there was some magic key.

And then one day, I witnessed a man bite another man on live TV. This happened during a football match that was on in a pub I happened to be in. I was immediately intrigued: by the biting, the drama, the getting caught, the primal emotion of the incident. I didnt realise it at the time, but this was it: my in.

On a bus, I sat with a couple of friends who were discussing live scores; soon, the entire upper deck had joined the conversation. It was like a portal to another dimension in which everyone was chatty, friendly and open on public transport.

Football was everywhere, it turned out. Once I noticed this, I began to absorb football facts, though only certain things stuck. I loved it when footballers cried. Maybe it was the persistent myth of the stiff upper lip but seeing a player moved to tears, to me, showed he cared more than anyone else. It wasnt like watching an actor pretend to tear up. This shit was real.

I loved any sort of drama on and off the pitch. Family tensions, love problems, scandals, shoving matches; before long, I became a reliable source of useless, soap opera-esque information about players.

I also became a fervent Sunderland supporter. Why would a Chinese girl from Texas living in Highbury, north London, become a Sunderland supporter? Because I had married one. Ian, born and bred in Sunderland, talked about his teams players as if they were his family. That made them my family, too. I knew their names, their shirt numbers, their vital stats, their romantic histories. I was also a natural fit for Sunderland because I love an underdog and by God, I had chosen the underdog of underdogs. The big clubs, with their expensive superstars, were boring to me. Our wins were rare, but they were so much sweeter for it.

I watched televised matches, sometimes without Ian if he was busy or out of town, something that had my friends and family baffled. During visits home to Texas, Ian and I zealously woke early to catch the Sunderland game. My father would observe me, puzzled. My mother, who is Jewish, was also bewildered but said, Well, you were the most athletic of our family of klutzes. It was my childhood best friend Jori who called me out. We were in a Waffle House diner surrounded by grassy plains. I asked Ian if he knew how Sunderlands relegation rivals had fared in their six-pointer, when she interrupted me. Are you talking about British soccer? Who are you? I told her the truth: Im just a girl, standing in front of the TV, hoping a footballer scores a winning goal in the last minute of a high-stakes match and then weeps about it.

A young fan lets rip as Sunderland take on Man United. Photograph: Getty

Do you know who really liked football? Carlos. We soon developed a rapport. Every Monday, hed rush to my desk and wed discuss the weekends matches. He was obsessed with playing style, formations and league tables. Meanwhile, I was the expert on the fights, the crying and the hissy fits. Suddenly, we were friends. He wasnt just my scary boss who got annoyed that I didnt know who Lynyrd Skynyrd were. We were bonding.

They say that to assimilate in a foreign country, you have to speak the language, and now I finally did. Did I make friends from learning about football? I would go out on a limb and say that yes, I did. I made friends with Dave at the Three store when I sat there for two hours after accidentally flushing my phone down the toilet. I bonded with a Ghanaian driver as we discussed a former Sunderland player from his country. In a hotel in the Lake District, there was a communication breakdown with a concierge that ended happily when we both agreed that Diego Costa was a jerk and Jermain Defoe a great goal scorer. When cab rides were too silent, no problem. Lets talk about the match, driver.

***

Dinner in the north-east of England is different from dinner in Texas. Here the food is cooked well-done, the weather is colder and greyer, the company more polite, the table quieter.

Ians dad, brother and uncles are lifelong Sunderland season ticket holders. Ask them a question about what they want to eat, or their favourite movie, or their preference for boxers or briefs, and they will reply, Im easy. Suggest that Jack Rodwell is a decent footballer and they are unleashed animated, passionate, opinionated. I enjoy bantering with Ians brother and dad about football, but we argue a lot mostly because there is one thing I havent been able to wrap my head around since my first game.

After that first Boxing Day match, on the walk from the Stadium of Light to the car with Ian, his dad, his uncle and his brother, I ask the question thats on my mind.

Why do we yell mean things at our own players?

Silence. And then: They just didnt show up. For most of the match, they were bloody awful, Ian says. Good use of we, though, he adds.

But shouldnt we be supporting them? Encouraging them?

Ian shakes his head and sighs.

You know, like being positive and lifting them up? I was still trying to make sense of why 46,000 people would call themselves supporters when they gave the most vitriolic, abusive commentary on their own players. Their support was downright terrifying.

This was your first match, Jess. Weve suffered years of pain while watching players go through the motions. Ive been enduring this for 25 years, Ian says. Twenty-six years, Ians older brother says. His dad: Try 60 years. And finally, I understand the British subtext: You are a wide-eyed idiot.

You got me into this: Jess with her husband, Ian. Photograph: Pal Hansen for the Guardian

At my high school in Texas, there was a club called Senior Spirits. Senior Spirit members met to boost the egos of our sports teams and rally other students to support those teams. To quote from the yearbook, their mission was to make posters and give our school spirit. In the photo, a group of 20 girls wearing matching T-shirts and ponytails, grin at the camera, 100% heartfelt.

These werent cheerleaders. And they werent affiliated with the Steppers, the ultra-serious dancers who performed at pep rallies, the hour-long ceremonies dedicated to whipping up school spirit. Nor were they the student marching band that played during football matches to help stoke, yes, even more team spirit. Team spirit was like an elusive ghost permeating the school and we all had to worship it.

That spirit was partial to posters with marker pen and glitter, to ponytails, to cakes shaped like American footballs and prayers before the big game. It revelled in exclamation marks. It did not like folded arms and booing and sarcasm. It did not like being called a useless twat.

Apparently team spirit isnt a thing in north-east England. So how do English secondary schools pump up their sports teams? I imagine the halls of these schools are lined with posters of a different sort: You better not screw this up, Jones! and Dont do any of that long-ball shit, Gibbons.

I still struggle with this complete inversion, but it unlocked something core in the English mentality how ingrained the cynicism is, as well as the tendency to proceed from a position of cautious defeat. Expect to lose so it hurts less when it happens, and if we win, no harm done.

Diehard football fans remain sceptical of me. At matches, I ask questions. I get looks when I yell cheerful encouragement. I cant stop shouting, At least you tried! every time a player takes a shot but fails to score. Some have the gall to question my passion for football until I do well at the pub quiz football round. If you love something, does it matter if you love it for all the wrong reasons? Apparently, to them, yes. But one thing was for sure: I was emotionally committed.

In May 2016, at the end of that years season, Sunderland were on the brink of doom, as we are every year. Hundreds of fans gathered at the Old Red Lion in Angel, north London, for one of the last matches of the season. I am 5ft 2in, so I left Ian and his friends and waded through Mackems to get to a good vantage point to watch the match. We were playing Everton, and this would seal everything: would we stay up and relegate bitter rivals Newcastle in the process?

Awaydays at the Drayton Park pub in north London, before taking on Arsenal at the Emirates. Photograph: Pal Hansen for the Guardian

The first time we scored, someones pint of beer, spilt in jubilant joy and shock, doused my head. On the second goal, the shouts were deafening. On the third, a man threw his arms around me and together we jumped up and down and screamed with pure joy. I left the pub dazed, half-deaf, hair soaked in booze and my face aching from smiling.

I became a UK citizen last year. At a city town hall, I swore my allegiance to the Queen and stumbled through the national anthem with 17 other newly minted UK citizens. But that moment didnt come close to the buoyant feeling of pure joy and belonging I felt in the arms of a stranger as we celebrated the victory of our beloved team. If the root of football passion is said to be a sense of family and place, then this Chinese Jewish Texan has found her new home.

Unfortunately, that home is sometimes a den of pain and despair. By the time you read this, we will have played three Championship matches in the new season. Ian assures me we will not have won one: Sunderland havent won a league game in August or September for four years in a row.

In April this year, we were finally relegated from the Premier League with four matches left to play.

Useless losers! I yell at the players as Sunderland fail to score even one goal. Its all over. Nothing to hope for now, no Match Of The Day to look forward to.

As I shout at the players, Ian pats me hard on the back. Well done, he says. I look at him, confused. Now you know what it feels like to hate your own team.

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Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/17/i-know-their-vital-stats-their-romantic-histories-how-sunderland-afc-saved-me/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/09/17/i-know-their-vital-stats-their-romantic-histories-how-sunderland-afc-saved-me/

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reignbowandarrow · 7 years

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Queen Sugar, My Sister, and the Carceral State

Did y’all watch the season 2 opener of Queen Sugar? *spoiler alert* It was so good, Ava did the damn thing, again, of course. But I was incredibly triggered by Micah’s arrest and time in jail. Especially with the Philando Castile case ruling last week. Especially with Charleen Lyons’ murder after she called the police for help. Especially with what happened to my own sister last December. I couldn’t fall asleep last night because I was so terrified and infuriated by the police state under which black people live and die.

My sister G is an incredible human being. She’s artistic, intelligent, funny, stylish, sweet, thoughtful, and just all around a brilliant shining light. She’s almost 3 years younger than me, and we grew up Army brats, moving around every few years when my dad, an Army dentist and officer, would get a new posting. G, a sensitive introvert, had a harder time with that nomadic lifestyle than I, a sensitive extrovert, did. She had a hard time making new friends each time we moved, and she struggled with severe depression all through high school and after. Anti-depressants, cannabis, art, and our faithful dog Pepper probably saved her life.

When it came time for me to go to college, I only applied to out-of-state schools, way off in California, as far as I could get from Colorado and our abusive and alcoholic father. My sister was alone in the house with my parents, subject to more abuse from our father and lack of protection from our mother, and leaving her in that situation is something for which I have never really stopped feeling guilty. Even after she finally moved out in her mid-twenties, she stuck pretty close to home, finding an apartment in the same city as my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. We were all surprised, and I was very proud, when she decided to move from Denver to Austin, Texas, all by herself.

My father, who is white, has a cousin in Austin who agreed to let G live with her and her family until my sister got on her feet in the new city. Our mother is black, and both G and I are very light-skinned, but we do not pass for white. With my curly dark hair, dark eyes, and tan skin tone, I am often asked if I am Latinx (many of whom are actually of African heritage - #colonization). G is a shade darker than me and often wears braids, and while she also would get the question “what are you?”, people more often read her as black. G was a little apprehensive about living with white people - we have had very little contact with my father’s family because he is estranged from most of them, but we are very close with our mother’s family. But my father’s cousin, C, is a very sweet person and was very welcoming to G.

I mentioned that cannabis probably saved my sister’s life. It probably saved mine too. Basically we are both huge stoners. I’ve been smoking since I was 18. G started a little younger than me, but we both started smoking heavily around the same time, as a coping mechanism to deal with the trauma of being children of an alcoholic and all the complications that produces in every single aspect of our lives. Since we have a genetic predisposition to addiction given my father’s alcoholism, I do worry sometimes that we both have a psychological addiction and dependency on weed. But self-medication helped us to survive. And there are a huge number of stats that demonstrate how harmless cannabis is, and more and more it is being recognized for its medicinal potential. I worked as a campaign organizer to make medical cannabis legal in New York state, and the NIMBY (not in my backyard) arguments conservatives would use against our campaign were not grounded in facts, but in racist paranoia.

Colorado, of course, is one of the states that has legalized both medical and recreational use of cannabis. This was great for my sister when she lived there - no need to seek out shady dealers or be unsure of what was in the product you were buying. It was safe. A month after my sister moved to Austin, she drove home to Denver to celebrate Christmas with the family. The day after Christmas, she went to a dispensary before she left town and purchased bath salts infused with cannabis, thinking that after the long drive back to Austin, she would get to soak in a nice relaxing bath and melt the stress of the road out of her body. Everything was going smoothly, until she reached a small town outside Austin and was pulled over for speeding. The cop, a white man, asked to search her car, and G, afraid and unsure, consented. He found the tin of bath salts, and because it was over a certain weight, arrested her and charged her with felony possession. He arrested her, took her to the local jail and impounded her car and her dog.

I didn’t know any of this was happening until I got a frantic text from my mother - “G’s in jail!” - the next morning. I called my mom and she worriedly explained that G called her from jail the night before. She had to spend the night there. She gave me a number to call so I could speak to her. I called, but was told that G had already been taken to “the back”, whatever that meant, and that I would have to try again later. I was freaking out. I’m all the way in Brooklyn, a million miles away, and my baby sister is being held captive by the pigs over some fucking bath salts, I can’t reach her, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it. Sandra Bland’s story is running through my head. A traffic stop in Texas, and she ended up dead. Please let my sister be okay. Please let my sister be alive. Please don’t let them hurt my sister. Terrified prayers.

G did get a chance to call me back. She sounded so scared. I had been crying, but upon hearing her voice, I immediately put on my big sister hat. Everything is going to be okay, this is not your fault, you are not a bad person, you are not a criminal, don’t worry. Hearing her sound so small, so broken, so ashamed, so scared, was heart-wrenching and enraging. How could this bullshit happen to such a sweet and sensitive soul?

They set her bail at $3000. $3000, for bath salts! My family didn’t have bail money! She would have to stay in jail until it was paid. Thank goddess for G’s wealthy white godmother. She paid the bail. Cousin C’s husband and daughter went to pick her up. They were able to get her dog and her car out of the pound, but it took forever for them to release my sister. They finally did. She spent almost 24 hours in jail, and it almost destroyed her spirit.

So watching Micah’s face as he is led to a cell, and seeing the frantic way Charley is yelling at everybody trying to find him, and cringing at the song-and-dance Davis does to get him released, hit so close to home. Bougie black people, like Charley, like my own family, think that the carceral state can’t touch them. But the truth is that nobody non-white is safe in this country. If my sister had white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes, I am convinced that she never would have been pulled over, and if she had, they damn sure wouldn’t have asked to search her car. But she’s black, and now she’s in the system. If she hadn’t had white family to vouch for her, and a college degree to make her look like a “good negro”, I don’t know what would have happened. Luckily, the charges were reduced from felony possession to a misdemeanor, and now all she has to do is community service, drug tests, and pay a fine. But even that makes me so angry. It’s such a racket. The prison-industrial complex is a fucking racket. It’s the continuation of slavery. A way for wealthy white folks to profit off the free/cheap forced labor of black and brown people. It’s disgusting and dehumanizing. And it needs to end.

#queensugar #prison industrial complex #blacklivesmatter

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