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hillgeorgia:

Friday nights didn’t mean shit to med students–

They didn’t mean shit for pre-med students, either, where 3am only meant sore palms and poor penmanship; a soft drink stocked fridge to keep her from creasing her textbooks whenever she fell asleep at her desk. Dog-marked pages and multi-coloured sticky notes. It had her fraying away at the coaster, now, remembering– had her playing with the straw between her teeth. Still soft drink (Lemonade), with a twist, and a wooden countertop (Vodka Lemonade). A train and a tram ride away from home.

She didn’t want to be here.

Classes started on Monday. Georgia passed on March– wanted more time to study, wanted more time to breathe around what it meant for her. What it’d mean if she succeeded (or failed). September wasn’t far away, and finishing her bio-med degree with flying colours still mattered. She had to balance them both: had two first priorities. Time shared at its centre– and all this meant was time wasted.

She didn’t want to be here. Her roommates were giggling past their shoulders over a bad idea, with elbows in her side. Voices, slurred and inebriated, layered over the music: c’mon, G because it’ll be fun and so funny and Kaye was scooping up coins off the bar top, and dropping them off in Georgia’s hand. “It’s bullshit!” A whine, stirring her straw through a tumbler of ice. “You’re gonna have to give me more money than this– it’s a con, you assholes.” But they were pushing her out of her seat, and pushing notes into her pockets, and Georgia was trying to whisper-shout so the psychic (was she a psychic?) wouldn’t hear it. Ashley ordered a beer from the bartender. Georgia was scratching at the spot between her eyebrows. “And you guys study science.” With fingers curled around a couple of bucks and a beer bottle, Georgia moved to sit down at the booth.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she pushed her payment across the table. A glance back at her roommates: a palm easily read, with their hands over their mouths – laughter dulling out any sound of music. Georgia bent back against the booth and looked. Blue and black and blonde, and Georgia had to tip the coins out onto the table. Always had to keep her hands moving. “Sure,” through a sigh. “This’ll be an easy one for you, I bet.” She wasn’t that complex, or interesting. Cynicism wasn’t hard to read. “Do you know my name?” Is that how this worked? Her friends, like frat boys, yelling out G. Chanting. And Georgia placed a few coins on the dinner plate marked with Tips, and prayed that the psychic knew how to make people– how to make her– disappear.

It wasn’t a karaoke bar, but Leah could set her phone off the time people started singing along. Not quite 11 on a Friday night: here were the 80s hits, kicking in slow with a ballad and building, building, and here were the first of the night’s drunks pitching in with Bonnie Tyler. Sorority girls, Leah thought – and then she thought no, that was unfair, that was cruel.

She’d known sorority girls. Only most of them couldn’t carry a tune.

The girls in the group, with the straws and the whispers and the colorful shirts – they were sorority girls, too, she’d reckon, but the smart sorts who went resume-first. The nudged this one forward like a sacrifice, like (what did they call it?) a pledge, and the only way Leah knew she wasn’t a newbie was the look she shot back at her friends. Watered-down poison, with a sigh of acceptance. Her reluctant shove to center, aided by eager hands at her shoulders – and Leah, sitting squared, ‘cause she could spot a prospect from eighteen miles away. In this bar, at least. Half of ‘em had the same look of distrust curling the corners of their mouths.

And what, was she gonna say no? If she turned away nonbelievers, she’d be broke by V-Day; everything was something, even the decidedly-not-five-dollars the girl laid out on the table, and the pocket-change she unfurled onto the plate to make up for the difference. Leah blinked slow at her, shifting to get comfortable in the chair across the table. Over her shoulder, friends held each other’s arms and huddled to get a closer look. A stronger person would’ve made eye-contact with them. Leah wasn’t a stronger person, so she evaded, and looked instead at the small shape of her customer’s nose.

Bad choice. That was – yeah, she was all delicate, all of her, and Leah was all sharp breath as she squared shoulders against the intake. When she cleared her thoughts, the girl on the other side was still staring, blank and waiting.

Leah took the bills, and slid them pointedly across the table. “Easy,” she echoed. Self-assessments said something. She listened. “Let’s see.” She took a dollar and held the corner to her forehead like a letter, like that TV host her grandmother made her watch on reruns when her father was out. “Your name,” she said. “I’m seeing a… G?” The smart sorority girls behind her, cupping their hands around their mouths – Leah smiled with her mouth closed, and looked down at the table.

“It’s not like that.” How many skeptics? How many quarters in the tip jar from people who just wanted to roll their eyes? “I’m not like that,” she said, and shook her head lightly, so the ends that weren’t tucked behind her ears shimmied against her temples. “Here, lemme make it easy–” and the cards weren’t for people who couldn’t buy in, so she held out her palm, instead, open for the other girl’s hand. “Palms don’t lie, even if you don’t believe,” she explained.”

fuckyeahfactoryrecords

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#this is a cameron song but #sue me #songs

@devon-flores

Leah wasn’t exactly easy to live with.

She knew this because Marissa had told her, folding sweaters on the bed so she wouldn’t have to look while she said it -- you’re not exactly easy to live with, you know -- and Dean had nodded from his corner, ‘cause what can you do? Fiancés have to live with each other. Engagement rings need their own bedrooms.

Okay. So there were Craigslist ads, and tram rides across neighbourhoods, and Leah checked her credit score so often, it was like watching buds sprout. Slower, even -- so that by the time she met with the last girl, not even the best of luck felt like enough. She wasn’t exactly easy to live with, and she was sure, now, that she radiated that; even sitting down for coffee (hot tea) with Devon had her thumbnail in her thigh, dragging through the grain in her cropped corduroys.

If bad luck knows who you are, become someone else.

She tried. Pleasant all through the audition -- she sat still before, knew how to fold her hands -- and it worked, somehow, and then she was folding her own clothes, messily creased to swaddle crystals so they wouldn’t break in transit. Even coming from a two-room, this was an upgrade; she couldn’t afford the U-HAUL, so she got Chloe from the shop to load up her car, and together they tugged boxes out the back-seat crevice to set them careful, careful, gentle on the pavement outside.

Devon (her new roommate) (felt weird, hard to give that a new name) said she’d be out today. Leah used her freshly-minted key, still shiny where the machine had carved the grooves in. She wasn’t the overly investigative type. She’d only seen pictures of the inside -- and she took the time, now, to spread herself out in all the empty space, lying flat on the living room floor with her limbs spread like a snow-angel on the wood. Plugged her record player in, first-thing, and even with the shitty speakers she could hear the music from the kitchen as she set her herbs along the windowsill, cilantro and rosemary and sage. This was her home now, right? So she should make herself at home.

Leah was in her room, hanging the second set of sheer curtains from a chipping plastic rod, when there was a sound in the main room. Her feet made ballet points on the rug. She imagined they were ballet points. And the record didn’t scratch or stop, but in her head, there was only static as her heart stuttered and steered her hand to the doorknob, slow to open and poke her head outside. She’d left the door unlocked, hadn’t she? One day, not even, three and a half hours in her new apartment and now she’d let in a robber, and she should’ve known you can’t disguise yourself from bad luck, ‘cause it follows you, but she’d just gotten so excited, and now she was she was--

She was looking her new roommate right in the face. “Oh holy fuck,” she breathed. “Oh my god. I thought you were -- I was about to, like...” Leah tried to calm it down. In through her nose. “I didn’t know you were coming--coming home.”

#devon #devon001 #THIS IS SO LONG but worth it honestly

sosisku

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ph. jan-willem dikkers

#face

@hillgeorgia

They didn’t endorse her, or anything, but they let her set up every week. That was enough. No chalkboard advertisements on the sidewalk outside, no flyers about the readings every Tuesday and Friday -- but they gave her a booth, in the back corner, and they let her put up a sign and a tip plate, and they never ever asked to share her profits.

There weren’t a lot of profits.

Leah’s twice-weekly sit-in at the Station Hotel was more about practice than money, anyway. She slid into the cushion and tugged the sign out of her tote bag, letters smudged and warped where the paper had bent. She thumbed the crease to make it stand up straighter: Readings for $5 or a Beer in blue block letters you could see even in the dim dark of the bar. It was the kind of deal that attracted all sorts of people -- but mostly the desperate kind, drunk and doubtful, shuffling over to sit across her and close their eyes. More than one person had fallen asleep, this month, while she pored over tarot results. That’s what drinking does to you: their minds were open, but their bodies were slow, slow, slow.

Tonight, it was a group of friends. 10:30 at night and Leah had been here, had learned to swallow irony so long as it gave her something in return; no one can screw you if you’re getting paid, even if the payment’s just pints they pass over. This wasn’t anything new. Three women with glistening lip gloss were sipping from straws, talking -- couldn’t hear, couldn’t hear over the music -- to a fourth with her eyebrows dark. Leah leaned against the booth to square her shoulders. When the girl sat down, she followed with her eyes. “You drew the short straw, huh?” she said, fading out the friends behind her. “Want me to tell your future?”

#georgia #georgia001

paceofbase

#face

stillxbloodyxmary:

“Uuurg..!” Exclaiming in a very frustrated, intense sound, the brunette struggled with the bottle of champagne. The cork wouldn’t come out and it wasn’t like she could ask for the opener after she stole the drink. It wasn’t like Mary needed to be stealing - although she had been in quite a financial affliction - yet the woman couldn’t help it, her impulses and desire for trouble were stronger than her. “Why can’t I open this, tell me whyyy,” she wined in a strangely Northern English accent, automatically returning to her origins when disturbingly intoxicated, her doe eyes actually watering up slightly. An emotional wreck, the British could barely hold her feelings. “Why. Won’t. You. Open!” With one final push, the cork flew across the bar in strong pressure, hitting the back of someone’s neck. “Bloody shite, mate! Are you alright?! I’ll share the alcohol, I promise!”

The energy had been off all day. It was the kind of thing she didn’t have a name for, but could feel anyway, from the moment she woke up -- like a friction when she tried to think, like the universe was pushing back. Tripped on a raised sidewalk square, jeans scuffed at the knees. Brown on four different petals’ edges, dead shit that crinkled when she tried to thumb it straight. Leah’s whole stomach was static, little bubbles she smoothed over behind the cashier’s desk, and the Open sign flickered the whole shift, every time she looked away.

It wasn’t her night at the Station Hotel, but she wound up there, anyway, ‘cause sometimes the Universe is too stubborn to listen. Leah and her jacket, the tourmaline still in her pocket; she rubbed circles in it as the bartender passed her a bottle, something light to lighten her head. She stood by the pool table and sipped. She waited her turn for the cue.

And then something hit her neck. Leah reached up to touch but whatever it was had already fallen -- and she wasn’t sore, but she still turned to see who’d thrown it at her. An accident. A woman with a champagne bottle, leaning closer to apologize over the music. “That’s--that’s okay,” she said, “Neck bruises look like hickies, anyway, and I could... I could be cool with that, I think.” It had been a few weeks since she’d shared her bed. She already missed the way her skin smarted with the sting. “You can keep the bubbly, though. Not really a, uh.... you know, not really feeling so celebratory tonight. But congratulations, for you.”