BASICS:
Full Name: Matthew Saul Swift
Age: 27
Date of Birth: August 8, 1993
Gender: Male
Pronouns: Â He/him
Sexuality: Bisexual
Place of Birth: Las Vegas, Nevada
Occupation: Assistant Manager, Bloom & Bud
3 positive traits: Honest, thoughtful, humorous
3 negative traits: Skeptical, emotional, oblivious
FC: Joe Keery
BIOGRAPHY:
TW: homelessness, drug/party culture, episodes of major depression, domestic violence
Matt Swift always liked to think of himself as a different kind of animal. He got that from his dad, Saul,  an old wannabe record producer in downtown Las Vegas. He didn’t learn he absolutely was until he got home from his junk yard job at sixteen and found Saul raging at his mother, Clare. She was leaving through the front door, twilight on the horizon, with two bags on her back. Saul pulled on one bag with his left hand, and punched Clare in the head with the right.  Matt would wind up dodging his first charge that year; he’d jumped out of the car, pushed his mom out of the way, and knocked Saul out with three punches. He’s stated to Clare, his lawyer, and a medical professional that he doesn’t remember a second after he’d pulled in the driveway that night. He didn’t even go to court — it was ruled that he acted in the defense of his mother and presumably himself. Matt hasn’t spoken to his father in eleven years.
In the decade since that night, the event that really put him on a roll, he attended college for collision repair, and dropped out due to his alcohol habit. He went again for EMT certification, which he had to withdraw from because he went into rehab for cocaine before the final exam. After his ninety days in a state funded facility, he tried to go again for diesel tech, and wound up withdrawing off pain pills in his fourth semester.
Clare tried to help him with it,  whatever he was going through. She had to give up on him when he was twenty-three. Matt was a week from being evicted from his apartment, and he’d basically done nothing to preserve himself, despite working a lot of odd jobs. Las Vegas was celebrating the new year, and he got popped for dancing on the roof of a cop car, sloppy, having both drunk liquor and done xanax. The cop that took him in that night was the very same one that responded to the domestic on Meadowlark Ave somewhere around seven years earlier. He caught a public intoxication charge and did thirty days in county. The first thing Clare said to him when he called her was, “I don’t know why you can’t love yourself enough to see something better for your life.“
He spent the following ninety days sitting halfway in a transitional housing facility run by AA. He went three quarter and managed to keep up his odd jobs and working on cars. He tucked away enough to get a place, work on some hobbies, kept going to meetings. Life moved on. And yet, Matt continued to feel an emptiness in him that he couldn’t place. He’d hadn’t kept up much with Clare, which was odd since they used to be attached at the hip. Matt was her only child, you know. There was a day when they spoke on the phone, a little more in depth than what became for them when he was out there doing whatever he wanted. Clare had managed to get her doctorate in psychology with a concentration in art therapy. Clare didn’t invite him to the classes that were listed on her administration page, and Matt didn’t technically book a spot for the community friendly evening, but he showed up. Then he kept showing up. Then he found that he liked working with his hands and textiles, and began selling art and jewelry in spring when Las Vegas and Indigo Springs held annual art festivals in a booth with Clare.
At twenty-five, he applied to Bloom & Bud, sold his art on the side, still dressed like a flamboyant college guy, and ended up pretty alright.
penned by steph
