Fashionable People — Lenny kisses Midge’s bruises
(Maybe the next morning after What Are You Doing (New Years Eve)? and a lead-in to this)
He wakes up alone and rubs at his hair as he looks around Midge's apartment. It is blissfully quiet. There are no children running around, or Polish housekeepers demanding his pans. He doesn't even hear Abe and Rose.
Lenny gets to his feet, wandering out of the living room and down the hall, where he can hear fabric shifting, and when he gets to the master bedroom, he finds Midge struggling to unzip her dress.
"I have some experience with that you know," he jokes gently.
"I've got it," she tells him. 'I was just going to get changed...maybe make us some more coffee...unless you have to go."
"I don't have anywhere to be," he confesses. "Can I please help?"
Midge swallows hard, her face going a little red. "Just- it's not very pretty."
"I beg to differ."
"That was before," she reminds him, her voice snapping a little.
"Midge..."
"It's different now," she tells him in a more even tone. "I'm different now."
"Now that I have the warning, may I?" he asks gently.
Midge takes a breath and nods, turning towards him.
He carefully unzips the dress, and underneath the fabric he finds her shoulders and back - what he can see that isn't covered by her corset - littered with deep bruises.
Lenny gazes at them for a long moment, silent as he takes them in.
"It's awful, I know," she mutters.
He doesn't listen, stepping closer and settling his hand on her unbroken arm, letting his lips press gently to a particularly pronounced bruise. "It's healing," he assures her.
Midge says quiet for a long moment. "You should go."
"Midge..."
"We were up late. You should go home."
"But-"
"You'll call later, won't you?"
he nods, rubbing the back of his neck. "Yeah. I will. I promise."
"Bye, Lenny."
He takes a breath. "Bye, Midge."
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ok this sounds insane but in 2018 i went to a few carnivorous plant talks at the botany conference in minnesota. i got caught up in conversation with one of the guys there who was a huge nepenthes guy who told me a story about another collector in the pacific northwest who'd been buying poached plants, like a huge amount, and eventually got staked out by the fish and wildlife service and arrested and had all his plants seized and went to prison for it. idk if i ever talked about this on this blog before-- i know i liveblogged a lot from that conference but cant remember what all i posted-- but ive avoided talking about it since then because i was never able to find like, news articles or anything covering it, but behold.... we now have proof it was real, and im like 80% sure this was this guy he was talking about. the raid happened in 2016 and they'd been staking them out since 2013. he had nearly 400 plants and had been sourcing many of them from poachers in indonesia and borneo.
remember folks: poaching happens with plants too! it's a huge problem not only in carnvirous plants (nepenthes especially, which this piece is dedicated to talking about) but also in native plant populations in the US, including native carnivorous plant populations (north and south carolina's venus fly traps, california's darlingtonia, and sarracenia from the east coast), native orchids (historically one of the most poached categories), desert plants/cacti/succulents, and slow-growing woody ornamentals (cycads, for example). never buy bare-root plants off ebay or facebook! your best bet is local nurseries (which usually purchase farm-raised plants that do well in a wide range of conditions, and as a result have a healthy population in the wild) or specialty greenhouses (more expensive, but at least in the case of carnivorous plants offer young plants bred from established adult plants in-house, raised in captivity).
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Dustin posts a series of videos on his Tiktok account of his time babysitting Steve and Eddie while they’re sick. He claims it’s evidence because no one would believe that two grown men act like this.
The first video he posts is literally just him asking why they are in the living room and not in bed anymore. Eddie says that he didn’t want to be alone and Steve grumbles something about this being his house, Dustin can’t tell him what to do. Dustin just sighs, “I’m glad we’re going to be mature about this.”
In the second video, Steve is throwing the pillows off the couch in search of his glasses. Eddie’s in a blanket burrito on the floor, throwing out suggestions. None of with are ‘hanging off your shirt’ with is where Steve’s glasses are.
He post one later in the day of Eddie bitching about how he can’t even walk up the stairs without needing to use his inhaler despite the fact that he doesn’t need to walk up the stairs at all. Steve is snoring so goddamn loud in the background of this one.
He post one where he and Eddie are trying to take Steve’s temperature while he’s asleep. They fail. He wakes up and he’s pissed off. He also has a fever.
Dustin post a video of the absolute death glare Steve gives Eddie the entire time Diane is reheating the soup she made for them in the kitchen.
In a different one, Eddie suggests they ‘screw the sickness away.’ Steve with his head in his hands says ‘that has literally never worked.’ Dustin tells them to knock it off or he’ll leave for real this time.
In a different video, Eddie walks into the room and sees Ozzy laying on Steve like he does when Steve’s had a seizure and tries to get up before he should. But that context isn’t known to the wider world so it looks like Eddie walks into the room and says ‘I took a shower,’ frowned, and then said ‘oh no.’
He post one of Eddie and Steve asleep with the caption ‘thank god’ and then another when he’s leaving for the day and they’re both upset that he doesn’t want to hang out with them. He ends it with, “It’s literally been a nightmare, guys.”
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