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Mar 5

as promised. slippery cesdoc business below the cut, with a little fear and loathing in arizona for the real ones. there are accompanying footnotes.

NOTE: this is an explicit scene. Allen is a trans man in this fic. Allen and Cesare have already hooked up prior to this point. Virginia Woolf is the name of Allen's cat and is not the real Virginia Woolf who somehow found herself living in Allen's flat.

It's twenty minutes past seven when the front door creaks open. Allen is just finishing hand-drying dishes in the kitchen, watching from the corner of his eye as Cesare creeps into the apartment. He moves silently, shutting the door with a muffled click! and bending to start quietly unlacing his boots. Like a spider, sticking to the skirting boards, afraid of being seen. He's still wearing Allen's rain jacket, and the sight of it sends a little thrill through Allen.

Virginia Woolf emerges from behind the couch. She approaches Cesare with caution as he toes his boots off, and he eases into a slow crouch, offering his hand to her.

"Hey, beautiful," Cesare murmurs. "How's the moonlight treating ya?"

Virginia Woolf sniffs his fingers, grey-green eyes circumspect, then allows a gentle buff of her cheek against his knuckles. Cesare pets a hand down her spine, up her tail, gentle but firm.

"Just like your papa," Cesare continues, glancing up to meet Allen's eye over the kitchen island, something wry in his expression. "Thorny on the outside, gooey on the inside. Ol' prickly pear, your papa, straight out of the Mojave."

Allen allows a small smile. "Have you been? To the Mojave, that is."

"Oh, yeah. Gorgeous joint." Cesare scratches his nails through the thick patch at the base of Virginia Woolf's tail. She knocks her head against his knee, purring like a small motor. "L'Amour really butchered the place, made it seem more apocalyptic than it is.1 In Joshua Tree, when the sunset hits the ocotillo just right, it's like the ends are on fire. Real Brewerton shit—Jornada del Muerto but in real time."2

Allen finds himself entranced, keeping quiet. He wipes his hand on the dishtowel, lays it over the handle of the oven. Cesare keeps talking, his focus on Virginia Woolf as he works out a tangle in her fur.

"Honestly, Van Dyke really put it best. 'Stern, harsh, and repellent at first. But what tongue shall tell the majesty of it, the eternal strength of it, the poetry of its widespread chaos, the sublimity of its lonely desolation?'"3

The words are sibilant, iambic, familiar, as if Cesare has rolled them between his teeth for years, as if he had passed them in decades between his fingers, like rosary beads. He lets Virginia Woolf glide out from his touch, then pushes himself upright with a crack of his knees.

"Some academic shit like that," Cesare concludes. He shrugs. The rain jacket shifts with the movement. "The guy was a congressman. Can't trust him as far as you can throw him into Scrooge McDuck's money pit."4 He seems to realise that Allen has been staring at him, and tenses, words sharpening. "What?"

"Nothing," Allen reassures. "I just didn't realise you knew so much about art history."

Cesare looks away at that. He fiddles with the buttons of the jacket, fingers passing agitatedly over the metal studs. "Yeah, well. You pick up a couple knick-knacks from the roadside when you've been on this bitch of an Earth long enough."

Again, Allen wants to ask how old he is. He just knows so much. Has seen so much. But he bites his tongue, instead approaches Cesare with slow, open movements, as Cesare had done with Virginia Woolf. He lifts his hands, cups the knife-like edges of Cesare's cheekbones. Cesare stiffens at the touch, then bends, malleable, like the ocotillo he had mentioned.

"I'm glad you came," Allen says, soft, and lifts up on his toes to kiss him.

It's slower, tonight. They actually make it to the bedroom this time, only the glow from the streetlights below filtering through the gauze of Allen's curtains. Allen wants so desperately to see Cesare, to beg to turn on a lamp, anything to take him in properly, but he doesn't, just pushes Cesare down into the sheets and kisses him pliant.

"What do you want?" Allen says, mouthing the sharp hinge of Cesare's jaw.

"Just—" Cesare's voice cracks, just a little. His hands creep tentatively up Allen's back. "This is—good. Keep doing this."

"Okay." He angles his head toward the space between Cesare's jaw and ear, grazes his teeth against the curve of a lobe. He feels Cesare jerk beneath him. "May I take your trousers off?"

"You can mail them to Jamaica, New York," Cesare tells him, sounding distracted. "The shirt stays on, yeah?"

"Of course, boss." He presses a kiss to pale skin. "Whatever you want."

Cesare huffs. "I'm not fragile, Doc. Don't need you to hold my hand while you fuck me."

Allen hadn't planned on fucking him, but if Cesare is open to the possibility—

He pushes back upright to look at Cesare, who looks irritated at the interruption. "Would you like me to?"

"What, hold my hand? Or fuck me?"

"I can do both," Allen tells him, seriously.

Cesare doesn't seem to know what to do with that. He flounders for a moment, and it's a little endearing to see, Allen admits privately.

"I don't—I don't give a flying fish of a fuck what you do, Doc," Cesare ends up blustering. He tugs insistently at the back of Allen's shirt. "Just—put your hands on me like you mean it."

And if that isn't a loaded sentence. Allen means it, means every touch he gives Cesare, far, far more than he thinks is good for him. He doesn't dare consider what this means to Cesare, just sits back on his heels and reaches for the buckle of Cesare's belt. It slithers from the belt loops, down the side of the bed. Allen had washed the sheets just this morning, and he smells bamboo detergent and cold, earthy musk where he bends down to mouth at a jagged, thin-skinned hip bone.

Cesare sucks in a breath. His hands fall to clutch at the pillows, and Allen gives him an encouraging hum as he trails his mouth, hot and wet, across the thin sliver of skin that's revealed to him as he slowly peels Cesare's trousers and underwear down. Cesare trembles beneath him, small, obliterating noises escaping from between his gritted teeth that scorch Allen's insides.

He shucks the trousers and underwear and socks off, pushes them over the side of the bed. Cesare is all long, long pale lines and wiry tendons where Allen sits between his legs, the kind of musculature that suggests he could have been a runner, in another life. He's also much thinner than Allen would like, a wire-trap strangulation, the bones of his ankles fine, almost delicate. But Cesare is not delicate. The look he gives Allen from the top of the bed, the half-lidded eye shine of a predator, is anything but delicate.

Allen starts at his ankles, massages warmth into the hollows between ankle bone and heel. He skates his hands up thin calves, firm shins, the cold, almost arctic bend of a knee, up to starved thighs that twitch under Allen's touch. Allen moves up, up, until he can curl his fingers around the twin arcs of hip bone, his thumbs at Cesare's iliac crest, bracketing the long, hard cock resting in a sparse, dark nest of curls at the base of Cesare's pelvis.

"Stunning," Allen breathes.

"Is it?" Cesare asks, dubious. Allen squeezes the ridge of a hip bone and feels Cesare shiver under him. He's so responsive. "Looks like a carnival skeleton down there."

Allen ignores that, shifting a hand down to trace the shadow of a vein under Cesare's cock. Cesare's legs jerk, knees snapping up to clamp down on Allen's ribs with enough force to knock the breath out of him.

"Shit, Doc—" Cesare gasps. "Give a guy a little notice."

"Sorry," Allen says, winded. He taps the sides of Cesare's knees until the man lets up a little. "Is oral alright? Or will that endanger the rest of my floating ribs?"

Cesare scowls at him, clearly embarrassed. Allen laughs breathlessly, pets his hands down Cesare's thighs reassuringly.

"I'm teasing," he says, and then, more gravely, "But I do think I might do something drastic if I don't blow you right now."

Cesare's thin brows shoot up to his hairline. "Damn. That's some real Shamela shit.5 If you're jonesing to rewrite 'Ode to A Grecian Urn' about my cock, then by all means, Doc.6 Have at her."

Allen manages a fond roll of his eyes before he shuffles down the bed, hands trailing across Cesare's thighs. He takes Cesare in hand a bit more firmly, and Cesare's head hits the pillows with a muffled groan. Allen gives him a few languid pumps before he guides the bluish head to his mouth, hooks his fingers over Cesare's hips, and takes him down to the root.

The sound that wrenches from Cesare is like it's been punched from him, hips snapping off the bed. "Oh, hell—"

Allen holds him down, gagging at the jolt of Cesare's cock against the back of his throat. Tears prick the corners of his eyes. It has, admittedly, been a very long time since he deep throated someone, and not someone of Cesare's considerable length. But he forces himself to breathe through his nose, wrapping his lips securely around the base of Cesare's cock and slowly bobbing his head.

Here, that earthen smell is stronger, deeper, the cock in his mouth heavy and cool. The salt and musk are tidal, like ancient waters beneath limestone. It's nothing at all like the other cis men Allen has blown, but it's so uniquely Cesare that he feels nearly dizzy with it. The weight on his tongue, the smooth roll of veins between his lips, the man himself beneath Allen, clinging to his bedsheets like he's trying to rip through them. Allen's hips shift without him noticing, searching for friction.

He bobs his head a few more times, enough to work his jaw into a comfortable soreness. He keeps his hands firmly pinned to Cesare's hips, though the man seems to have gotten the message, now shifting in small, agitated movements, the muscles of his thighs tensing around Allen's sides in time with each bitten-off, hitching whine. The sounds are devastating, going straight to Allen's cunt.

Allen drags himself up, pops off the cockhead with an obscene sound, spit and watery precum dripping from Cesare's cock and Allen's chin. He uses the spit to pump up and down Cesare's shaft, pulling back the foreskin to thumb at the head, the slide slick. When he speaks, his voice has gone rough, gravelly, the heat in his gut molten.

"Good?" he asks, hushed in the lush darkness of the room.

Cesare looks like he might have died, his chest heaving for all that Allen can't feel any breaths. "They teach that in medical school?"

"I think that would be considered malpractice."

"You should do more of it," Cesare says, fervidly. "I'll pay for your PhD in cocksucking."

Allen lifts a brow. "Are you offering to be my sugar daddy in addition to my employer?"

Cesare groans, long and loud. "Don't get started on consensual workplace relationships, Doc-y. I'll pay you in whatever currencies you want if you get that gorgeous mouth back on me."

Allen flushes, the tips of his ears turning hot. But he complies, lowering back down to take Cesare back into his mouth. He reaches out until he finds Cesare's hand, tugs it up and into his hair. He pulls back up just enough to speak into damp skin, moving his own hands to Cesare's waist.

"You can fuck my mouth, if you like," he tells him. "Be as rough as you want. I can take it."

"San Marco—"7 Both sets of Cesare's fingers sink into his hair. "Doc, baby, you're a fucking freak. I love it."

Allen moans, heat prickling through him. Cesare responds beautifully, nails scraping against Allen's scalp, catching in his hair. He lets Cesare set the pace. Cesare is initially hesitant, starting with short, shallow thrusts into Allen's mouth. Allen keeps breathing through his nose, relaxes his jaw. He rubs coaxing circles into Cesare's waist, ensuring his fingers never stray under the fabric for all that he hungers for it, for more skin, more of Cesare's taste and smell and coolness.

When Cesare gives a slighter harder tug at his hair, jerking Allen forward until his nose presses to the base of curls, Allen lets out a satisfied groan that rattles all the way down Cesare's cock. It seems to do the trick, because Cesare adjusts his grip, grabbing whole fistfuls of Allen's hair in a tight, stinging grip. He bends at the knees, pushes his heels into the mattress, and begins to fuck Allen's face in earnest.

Allen loses himself to it, eyelids fluttering shut as he lets Cesare fuck his throat raw until there are tears running down the sides of his cheeks and spit bubbling down his chin. His back hurts and his neck twinges and he doesn't think he'll be able to talk for a week, but it's the most annihilating, glorious experience he could have ever hoped to have.

He feels Cesare's abdomen tense beneath his fingers, the muscles quivering. Cesare's pace gets shakier, rougher, short, sharp curses torn through by Cesare's incisors puncturing the air between them. Allen braces himself, taking a watery breath through his nose just as Cesare goes rigid, bowing upward and staking Allen onto his cock with a guttural yell.

Cum, watery and thin, plasters the back of Allen's throat. Allen dutifully swallows it down, his jaw aching, barely able to breathe against Cesare's pelvis. Cesare shudders, jittering through the last of his climax until he finally releases Allen, collapsing boneless back onto the sheets.

Allen carefully lifts himself up, Cesare's cock slipping from his mouth, spent. He breathes slowly through the roar of blood in his ears and the thunder of his heartbeat, wipes his mouth on the back of a shaking hand. The collar of his shirt is absolutely soaked through with spit, and he feels a little bit like he's been hit by a train, but the fucked-out expression on Cesare's face is worth it, Allen decides viciously.

He soothes his hands up Cesare's thighs, his hips. "You did so good, Cesare."

Cesare shudders, whether at the words or at how wrecked Allen sounds he doesn't know. A hand paws at Allen's arm, eventually finding his shirt to pluck at it, albeit without much force.

"Think you just blew out whatever was left of my nervous system, Doc," Cesare groans. "Category 5 transformer failure."

Allen preens. "High praises from you, sir."

"Fuck, you have no right to sound so sexy after that. Like you've gargled nails and came out of it sounding like Johnny Cash. C'mere—"

He goes down willingly, bracing his forearms on either side of Cesare's head. Cesare's hands find his hair again, passing through the faded strands as Allen prises his mouth open, tongue dipping behind crooked teeth. Cesare lets him, workable and willing in his post-climax haze, and eventually, as the breath returns to Allen, so does the heat, pooling low and scalding in his gut as he nips at Cesare's bottom lip. The insides of his thighs feel slick, and he grinds, thoughtlessly, against the rise of Cesare's hip.

"'That a Model 1873 in your pants," Cesare murmurs against his lips, "or are you just really into cowboys?"8

Allen flushes, embarrassed. "Ah—Don't worry about me, sir, really—"

Cesare stops him, a hand coming to touch the side of Allen's face. "And if I want to?"

Allen's breath hitches. Heat hooks into his gut and rips clean through him. "Then I'd call you a good boy for asking for what you want, and I'd let you eat me out until the sun rises."

Cesare stares wide-eyed at him, stunned. He licks his lips. "Oh. Uh. Okay."

Allen pushes him back into the sheets. Cesare seems too shell-shocked to stop him as Allen straddles his chest and divests himself of his sodden shirt. He tosses it over the bed, then starts on his pyjama shorts. He's shameless as he strips, the shorts clinging, wet with slick, to the inside of his thighs. He flings them out into the dark, then meets Cesare's gaze head-on. He hadn't put on any underwear.

Cesare takes him in, gaze raking down his bare, heaving chest to his stomach, to the trail of dark, coarse hair starting at his belly and leading down to his pubic mound, the hair neatly trimmed. Down, then, to Allen's thighs, where the slick is shiny and oozing. Cesare swallows. The click of his throat is like a gunshot in the night.

"So, uh," Cesare begins, uncertain, hands fluttering at Allen's sides. "This, uh, 'good boy' thing. Is it a limited-time offer-type deal? Tear off one coupon for the fiscal restaurant year, sorta thing?"

Allen feels giddy. He hadn't ever thought he would get this far, could never have anticipated this shift in their dynamic. But Cesare has been so good to him tonight, so willing.

"It's a permanent menu option," Allen tells him, taking Cesare's hands in his and securing them on the backs of his thighs, just under his ass. "You can always have it, if you want it."

"Yeah?" Cesare's eyes are so dark. There's a nervousness to him, but his attention is wholly fixed on Allen, as if incapable of looking anywhere else. "What's the catch?"

Allen widens his stance a little, then leans forward, grasps the IKEA headboard of the bed. It creaks beneath his weight, his fingers curled around the plasterboard. His cunt hovers inches from Cesare's face, and Cesare looks up at him in a way that Allen can only define as starved.

"No catch." Allen curls his other hand around the headboard. "Just pleasure."

Cesare bites his lip. His fingers skim up the backs of Allen's thighs, catch under the crease of his ass. He fingers are so long, his palms broad, wide enough to nearly span the entirety of Allen's thigh. His skin is pale, drawn and thin and slightly blue-purple at the nailbeds and knuckles against Allen's warmer skin tone. Allen wants to burn the sight of it into the backs of his retinas.

"Go on," Allen encourages. "Take what you want."

The first press Cesare's mouth to the hot, aching core of him is stunning, like a blow to the back of the head. Even here his mouth is cool, the tongue that pushes past his folds dry. The sensation is maddening, the drag phenomenal. He clings to the headboard, stuttering out a breathy moan as relief, blistering, floods through him.

"Good boy," Allen sighs. Cesare moans, nails digging into the sensitive skin of the backs of Allen's thighs, bright, biting points of pain that skitter along Allen's nerves. "Just like that, boss."

The night air cools the sweat at his back, between his shoulder blades as he rides Cesare's face. The curtains billow, milky blue light spilling into the room and across the bed. Allen can barely keep his eyes open from the scorching heat lancing through him, but he forces himself to, taking in the man beneath him as he rolls his hips into that willing mouth. His heart skips when he finds Cesare looking right back, those yellow eyes sharp as he devours Allen with single-minded, terrible focus. He laves his tongue up through Allen's folds, flattens it against Allen's clit. Allen tosses his head back, seeking sensation.

He feels fingers nudge at his entrance, and his walls flutter in anticipation. "Yes."

Cesare breaches him slowly, deliberately, that same precision from last night in full force. As he does, so Cesare sucks at Allen's clit, and the bolt of white-hot pleasure that lightnings up Allen's spine is enough to make him gasp.

"Oh, God—Cesare—"

He can feel himself leaking down Cesare's chin, his hand and wrist, but Cesare just pistons his fingers, gradually picking up speed, fingertips curling, searching. Allen shifts his hips forward and Cesare's fingers sink deeper, grinding against that divine bundle of nerves deep inside him. Allen loses all thought after that, at sea in sensation, in the fullness in his cunt as Cesare makes two fingers three, his pace furious, unrelenting as he latches onto Allen's clit and sucks mercilessly. The slick, wet sounds between them are obscene, the plasterboard beneath Allen's white-knuckled grip creaking warningly. He's babbling nonsense, half-finished praises and high, rhapsodic moans—You're so good, so good to me, Cesare, my good boy—as the tension coils tighter, hotter in his gut, an impossible, blistering heat razing through him. He isn't sure he'll survive it. He hopes he doesn't.

Cesare caresses the thumb of his free hand over Allen's hip, careful, tender, and the tension snaps with such abruptness that Allen comes with an open-mouthed sob.

His walls clench down hard onto Cesare's fingers as slick floods from him, down his thighs and Cesare's chin. The pleasure is overwhelming, a full-body wrench of his organs against his diaphragm that he has to choke through, the bedroom narrowed down to this single, wretched point until he swears he can feel the throb of his pulse in his cunt.

He's shaking something fierce by the time his climax finally relinquishes its hold, his thighs trembling and knuckles stiff where his fingers have fused around the headboard. It's a little embarrassing how long it takes for him to stop clenching enough for Cesare to pull out his fingers, and he shivers as a gush of cum, pearlescent, trickles down the inside of his thigh. Cesare wipes his mouth on his hand and then on the sheets—thoroughly soiled—and grasps his thigh, thumb passing mindless circles over skin, light enough to not irritate Allen's oversensitive state.

"Was that good?" Cesare asks, low. His voice is scratched hoarse, and he looks as wrecked as Allen feels, but Allen hears the testing intonation, the tentative, underlying thought—Was I good?

Allen laughs, a little breathless. "You were very good, boss." He gives Cesare a small, exhausted grin, managing to release his death grip on the headboard to cup the side of Cesare's face. He doesn't miss the way Cesare leans minutely into the touch. "Though you'll need to help me lay down. Your—ministrations may have seized something in my back."

Cesare's answering grin is all teeth and triumph against the palm of Allen's hand. He does eventually help Allen lay back down, vanishing into the bathroom for a moment. He returns fully clothed, a wet washcloth in hand. It's even warm, and Allen lets Cesare clean him up, basking in the unexpected attention as he lays spread out on the sheets, sated in a way he hasn't been in a long time. His eyes fall to half-mast as Cesare passes the washcloth lightly along the inside of his thighs, his hips and stomach. Cesare's touch is gentle, lingering, but Allen sees the way his eyes flit to the hallway.

"You need to go?" Allen guesses. He keeps the question neutral, hand pillowed under his cheek as he watches Cesare find and dump the washcloth into his laundry hamper. It's dark outside, the sky bruised blue, the air chilled.

"Creatures of the night," Cesare reminds him, but he loiters at Allen's side, gaze scraping over his nude form. His eyes are lambent in the low light, as if there was some truth to his statement. "Though you make an old zombie want to stay, let me tell ya."

Allen meets his gaze. "You could, you know. If you wanted."

The smile he's given is rueful. "Saint Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go," Cesare croons, low and resonant, "I owe my soul to the company store."9 He leans down, plucks Allen's hand up to brush his lips against his palm, strangely, terribly intimate. Allen's chest gives a tight, seizing lurch. "I've already taken more than I'm owed tonight, doll."

He parts from the room. Allen listens for his footsteps in the hall, the sound of his boots being put on. The opening of the apartment door, and the close, like a tomb shutting. Allen rolls over in the bed, body aching. He finds his phone buried under the pillows, swipes to the group chat.

Lenny: Five inches.

The replies come instantly.

MansionAndAnEastWing: CONRAD WAS RIGHT??

contact connie [gun emoji]: lol

MansionAndAnEastWing: is he still there???

Lenny: He just left.

contact connie [gun emoji]: So is. he skinny lik e wethought?

MansionAndAnEastWing: who was on top??

MansionAndAnEastWing: I bet he's like. a closet sub

Lenny: He's quite thin. Possibly malnourished, honestly.

Lenny: I'm not answering that.

contact connie [gun emoji]: Weshould rly get him On so me p rotein shakes. :(

MansionAndAnEastWing: conrad I think you forgot your glasses again

contact connie [gun emoji]: O h.

MansionAndAnEastWing: two nights in a row huh

MansionAndAnEastWing: allen you sly dog

MansionAndAnEastWing: so did you pull out the dommy mommy or what

Lenny: I never should have texted this chat.

contact connie [gun emoji]: Gu ys.

contact connie [gun emoji]: I think I left. My glases in the truc k. :((

Another text comes in, this one from Frances. Allen reluctantly taps it open.

Frank: but fr was it like okay

Frank: like. did you at least enjoy yourself

Frank: otherwise I'll beat up the boss for you

Frank: or I'll get connie to do it. smear boss into the concrete

Allen smiles, thumb hovering over the keyboard. Slowly, he types out his response.

Ally: It was good. No workplace violence is required.

Frank: good!!

Ellipses bounce at the corner of his screen, pause, continue.

Frank: so DID you pull out the dommy mommy

Frank: bc that shit rewired my brain

Frank: one hundo percent would bounce on that dick again if I liked your dick enough

Ally: Thank you, Francesa. I'm going to stop looking at your messages now.

The next morning, Allen finds that the rain jacket missing from the coat rack. He ghosts his finger along the empty hook, the twinging ache in his jaw and hips momentarily forgotten. At his ankles, Virginia Woolf twines her whipcord tail around his calf, impatient for breakfast. Something shifts in Allen's chest as he considers the empty space before him, something tentative and not all that new. He thinks of ocotillo, the sun-rich red of desert skies. The pink half-moon crescents on the backs of his thighs, where Cesare's nails had dug in and held.

Allen wills himself away from the coat rack, toward the kitchen, Virginia Woolf shadowing his heels. He scrolls through the audio book app on his phone, finds and resumes where he left off. The narrator murmurs through the portable speaker on the shelf as Allen busies himself with fixing Virginia Woolf breakfast.

"—But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—'Thou mayest'—that gives a choice," the narrator, voicing Lee, pushes, insistent and beseeching.10 "It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man."

Thou mayest. The word rolls across the countertop as Allen digs out a spoon, cracks open a can of Virginia Woolf's wet food. Thou mayest.

1 American novelist Louis L'Amour was a pivotal figure in the pulp Western mode, known for his "frontier novels" in which sullen gunslingers, swinging saloon doors, virginal homesteaders, and racist caricatures of Indigenous Americans feature heavily. L'Amour's works were heavily formulaic, encapsulating the "cowboy and Indian" myth in their depiction of lone white men attempting to bring law to the purportedly lawless, violent Western frontier.

2 Brewerton, George Douglas. Jornada del Muerto, oil, 1853.

3 Van Dyke, John Charles. The Desert: Further Studies in Natural Appearances. C Scribner's Sons, 1918.

4 Scrooge McDuck is an anthropomorphic cartoon duck created by Walt Disney. A capitalist known for jumping into vaults of money.

5 In Henry Fielding's 1741 burlesque novella, An Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews, Fielding satirizes Samuel Richardson's 1740 conduct novel, Pamela, by supposedly revealing the "true" events of Richardson's novel. In the satire, the titular Shamela is depicted as a lascivious social climber rather than a working-class woman rewarded with marriage for her virtue in the face of sexual assault. Similar Pamela satires from the time were deliberately hyperbolic in their depiction sexual licentiousness and domestic violence, recurring topics in Richardson's original, with the intent to criticize what Fielding and others saw as the contemptuous moral failings of Richardson's original work.

6 John Keats' unusual take on the ode in his 1819 poem, "Ode to a Grecian Urn," inculcates a simple Greek urn with Keats' philosophical ambivalence, elevating a simple object to that of apostrophe—an abstraction containing metaphoric weight.

7 Saint Mark is the patron saint of Venice, Italy.

8 The Winchester Model 1873 is a lever-action rifle, frequently touted by Western expansionists as "The Gun That Won the West."

9 Ford, Tennessee Ford. "Sixteen Tons." Sixteen Tons. Capitol Records, 1955.

10 Lee, the Chinese-American house servant to the troubled Trask family of American author John Steinbeck's 1952 novel, East of Eden, is the moral compass and philosophical interpreter of both the Trasks and the novel as a whole. He investigates the concept of timshel, or "thou mayest," and the broader implications of humanity's free will to choose between good and evil.

#I am shaking like a wet chihuahua waiting for people's comments #please like my cesdoc smut and literary thoughts I wrote all of this on the plane to montreal #bigtop burger #btb #cesdoc

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