oh you know it's all latestage capitalism but the thing is. how are you supposed to be a person inside of this. a person trying to be a better version of yourself.
oh, you started working young, which was kind of hard, but it's just the way stuff works sometimes. and it was 2008 and your family couldn't afford heat. but it's fine, you grow a spine and get used to the professional world and besides it was the suburbs we're talking about here, like, your life could have been actually hard, so what if your father lost his job and you can't afford to move or turn the lights back on. and once you start making money, it's good. you keep doing that. because now they're relying on you. so you have to do that.
oh you were in thousands of dollars of debt at 17 years old so that you could go to school, because you have to go to school if you want to get a "real" job. you even did it "right", you worked parttime and attended community college before you transferred to a public school. you were under so many merit scholarships.
which is fine. you pick yourself up and you say like, okay. i graduated college. i'm holding down a job. i'm doing the Adult Thing, which looks and acts like this, according to all the books i've read. you start with the shitty job and then you climb that corporate ladder.
but the shitty job doesn't cover rent and you stretch yourself too-thin so you get sick. good luck with that. the shitty job no longer pays for your meals. everyone asks why you don't just move, but there's nowhere to move to. and with what money are you going to be moving? and then the loans come back, because they were never going to forgive them, because you were 17 and trying to do the right thing, which was stupid. people are now saying you shouldn't have even gone to school.
which is fine. but because you have no other option, so you do the shitty job, and you apply every day for like 5 new ones, and despite the fact everyone says "there's no one who wants to work!" it's actually just that nobody is fucking hiring so you can either work for 13 dollars an hour in the shitty place you know (where at least you have a passingly friendly relationship with the manager) or you can start from scratch again with a different 13 dollars an hour without knowing how much abuse from the new job you'll be taking.
and if you quit you lose your insurance. if you quit you lose your housing. if you quit, you'll be another burnout kid. the lazy ones. these assholes, look at them!
and you come home to a family dinner and you hear from your father the same old thing. how he worked hard at his job and yes it sucked for a while but he was able to provide for the family and then the house and the dog and the rest of barbie's dream vacation. how the insurance did cover some of it. how you just really need to start speaking up more in manager conversations so they know you're a go-getter. you want to tell him - did you know we're actually doing more now hourly than any previous generation? - but you can't remember where you heard that statistic, and you're far too tired for the fucking argument. and then he starts in on his usual bit. where's the house? where's your kids? where's your ambition.
the same job the same money the same hours doesn't do it anymore. the same nose-to-the-grindstone now just shreds your face off. there's no such thing as upwards mobility, not really. and as far as you're aware, the money certainly is not trickling. you do the soulless stupid shit you signed up for because you fucking have to or else you literally risk your life (food, the apartment, the insurance), but it's not getting you anything. you download the stupid "save more" app and you budget and you do every right thing and then the price of eggs is 7 dollars and you say - oh great! another thing i have to fucking worry about now!
and you go to your stupid job and everyone in your father's generation just tells you to be better about being an adult. they have their homes and their savings account and their bailout and they say. well have you tried not drinking starbucks. well your generation just spends too much on clothing. well you might just be too addicted to travelling. and you - because you need the job - you bite your tongue and don't say i am being held prisoner and you're suggesting i stop pacing my cell if i don't like the scenery and you don't say what the fuck do you think i've been doing with my money and you don't say i haven't spent a cent on something nice in literally forever much less coffee you arrogant asshole. you open and close your bank app and check your loans and check your credit score and check fucking zillow and ziprecruiter and apartments.com just one time more. and still they give you that demeaning little grin and say - see, what you need is -
what you need is for your meds to stop being so fucking expensive. what you need is for the housing bubble to explode into dust. what you need is for billionaires to choke on their wealth. what you need is actual help. what you will get is more economic advice from people who are older-and-wiser.
and above you, almost in a glimmer, you can see the wedged smile of your debt getting toothier, wider.
5K notes
·
View notes
Angels in America
It's amazing how fast an evening at your favorite club can be ruined by someone keeling over and frothing at the mouth. The band never quite gets back into the swing of things afterwards.
"Angel," sighed one of the men, or nearest approximants, at the table next to mine, "why is it that I can never go anywhere with you without stumbling across a body?"
"Oh, come now," said his partner, a soft, fluffy confection in caramel and cream, rising hastily to make his way toward the source of the commotion. The first gentleman, dark, lanky, and excruciatingly chic, got up to follow him. "It's hardly every time."
I stayed where I was for now, casting my gaze around the room as I went over my memory of the past twenty or thirty minutes. Too many people passing close enough to slip something into the victim's drink, too many others to watch at the same time, too many more opportunities to poison him outside my field of view. I was a detective, not God.
"Stumbling upon, once. Literally. Do you know what it's like to have to clean up after that sort of thing? It takes a personal toll."
"Hush, Crowley," chided "Angel". "People can hear you, and you know how queer they get about these things. Ooh, yes, that's strychnine, all right," he added cheerfully, pulling a small vial from his vest pocket and tipping it into his handkerchief. "Nasty stuff."
I got up. As I approached, I caught the faint, unmistakable chemical sweetness of ether fumes and gave them a wide berth, choosing instead to inspect the victim's plate and glass before turning to scan the room from this perspective.
"Now, just what might you be doing?" drawled Crowley.
I looked him over, too, while I was at it. In Crowley's case, this involved a lot of looking and not much over; he was easily more than six feet tall, even while slouching rakishly. The snake tattoo on his right temple suggested certain things about him. The dark glasses that he hadn't removed since he'd entered just suggested questions, since I highly doubted he was blind. "I'm a detective," I said, leaving the obviously at the end of that sentence to implication. "What are you doing?"
This response seemed to delight him. "So are we," Crowley answered, and grinned. "But if you want to get specific about it, I'm keeping you distracted while my friend saves this man's life. Let's see your license, then."
As I took it out, keeping at least one eye on him and his partner, Angel called out to the rubbernecking crowd around us, "I need someone here to run and call the nearest hospital, and a couple of strong men to help get this poor fellow someplace dark and quiet to rest. Best use one of the tablecloths for a stretcher," he added to the first volunteer who stepped forward.
Crowley leaned in closer to study my license. "Drake Silas Donovan," he read off. "'Silas', really?"
"What about it?"
"I've just always wondered what kind of parent would name their kid Silas."
"The kind who had a grandfather named Silas," I replied coolly, snagging my license back. "Your turn."
He obliged. Anthony J. Crowley, it read, licensed in London since 1905, the year before mine. I wondered how long he'd been at this; he looked too young for his apparent age, but then I looked too old for mine. "A. J. Crowley," I read his signature aloud. "Get asked if you're any relation every time, or just most?"
There's a certain motion a person's head makes when they roll their eyes. Crowley's was making it. "The man's an embarrassment to the side," he griped. "I made my name legitimately."
"And your friend?" It wasn't as if I couldn't put two and two together. There's a certain type of person who's got both a nose for trouble and the brains to prepare for it; if it walks, talks, and thinks like a dick, it probably is one. It was just that I wasn't in the habit of trusting people, and I'd be a real schmuck to neglect basic due diligence on the guy purportedly surrounded by bodies.
Detectives are no better or worse than any other person. They just think it's usually more interesting to solve crimes than commit them.
"Oh, he's as legitimate as it gets." Crowley turned to his companion, who was getting to his feet, brushing his clothes off fussily. Beside him, the two volunteers hoisted the unconscious victim onto a tablecloth spread across the floor, momentarily dislodging the ether-soaked cloth before Angel caught it and laid it carefully back in place over the victim's nose and mouth. "Aren't you, Aziraphale?"
Angel — "Aziraphale"? — looked up, startled. "Pardon?"
"Mr. Donovan here wants to see your detective's license," Crowley explained, enunciating his words with malice aforethought.
"Oh! Yes. Of course I always have that with me. Now just where did I..." He started patting down his pockets, stopped suddenly, and took a lovely calfskin card holder out of his coat. "Ah. Here it is."
Beaming, he passed it to Crowley, who passed it to me with the comment, "You'll find everything in order, I'm sure."
I glanced down at the card, then back up at Angel. "Am I supposed to call you A. Z. Fell or Aziraphale?" I asked, pronouncing the Z correctly as zed.
"A. Z. Fell is how 'Aziraphale' is pronounced in the King's English," said Crowley blandly, affecting a cut-glass Oxford accent on the last phrase. His partner seemed pleased by this comment, rather than annoyed.
"I'm afraid my progenitor bestowed me with a rather unwieldy given name," Fell admitted, raising fascinating questions about just how many syllables the British peerage could fit on a birth certificate when they really tried. "Aziraphale just sounds so much more euphonious, don't you think?" Crowley was right; I couldn't tell whether Fell had meant to say A. Z. Fell or the de-accented gloss. He'd lengthened the half-syllable between zed and Fell to a full vowel, but some people said zetta.
"I wouldn't know," I replied, handing the license back to Crowley, who was nearest. When Fell didn't take my bait, I added, "Lucky that you happened to have ether handy. I wouldn't like to imagine what might've happened if you'd decided to stay in tonight." I also lied when I said sorry, and when I swore to tell the whole truth and nothing but. Little white lies are the oil in the gears of civilization.
"Oh, I always carry that, too," Fell explained earnestly. "One gets into the habit after one's first run-in with strychnine, and of course ether has so many useful applica—"
"I wouldn't, angel," Crowley interrupted, sounding very amused. "Mr. Donovan thinks you're the one behind this."
"Oh," said Fell, nonplussed. "Gosh. Well, I — I suppose I can't blame him. He doesn't know me from Adam, after all, and has no reason to trust me — I did warn you about giving people funny ideas, Crowley, honestly. Of course," Fell turned to me, laying an elegant hand across his chest, "if you were to search me, you would find only a small collection of antidotes — oh, but a habitual poisoner would probably carry those, too, especially if he were the sort of voyeur with a penchant for playing the hero. I certainly wouldn't be convinced of my innocence. Yes, I can certainly understand whatever suspicion you might feel towards me, however misplaced it may be."
Crowley watched this thought process with an expression somewhere between fascination and agony. "Well, at least now he probably thinks that if you'd done it, you'd have been caught by now," he remarked, presumably because he was thinking the same thing. "You'll have to excuse my friend," Crowley added to me. "He still believes that the innocent have nothing to fear. Somehow."
"First time visiting?" I guessed.
Fell's bemusement answered my question before he did. "Pardon?"
"Never mind."
94 notes
·
View notes
Has anyone ever really thought in detail about the fact that Cas fell for Dean. I know we acknowledge it, sure. We all know he did it. "I rebelled, for you", sure. But.
Cas fell as an angel multiple times and each time he went to Dean he was turned away at some point. And, as understanding as Cas may be to Dean's motives, it likely registered each time as something Cas did wrong. Because Cas always does something wrong. ( "Something happened, something went wrong-" "why does that something always seem to be you?" ) Cas has given up everything that he is and was for Dean and he's been turned away countless times, left to make it on his own, and hope he finds a way. An angel has been homeless, struggling to survive because the one he is in this state for turned him away.
Boiled down to its essence, Destiel is awful because it works like someone always trying to please the other but never being enough. "I gave up what I was so that I could be with you." "I liked you better before." is what their whole dynamic seems like, at least on one side. Cas, in the beginning, when he was an angel that had not yet been tainted, was revered by Dean and Dean was scared of him in a way. Once Cas fell for Dean? Things were different. Because he's an angel, or because he was, he needs to know /everything/, but it isn't all explained to him. He doesn't know what happens for normal people in the world, he has no concept of normal, he's lost and confused and he doesn't get help and he gets patronized and sent away because of it. Because he doesn't understand. Because he isn't human but he tries so hard to be for /Dean/.
Destiel is awful and horrible but it's great at the same time because of a myriad of things, but at some point in time, one of them always thinks they're doing awful, or there's miscommunication, or they push each other away. They can't be together because they don't talk things through. If they did, they'd be great- but they don't, and unfortunately that's the only universe, the only chance they ever had. Where Cas died telling Dean he loved him when the sacrifices Cas made throughout the years said it loud enough for it to not have to be said for any reason other than to put the nail in the coffin that Dean didn't notice or didn't know how to go through with it.
25 notes
·
View notes