roses

i'm alex and i believe in magic About the bae WANTED CONNECTIONS Everything else Selfies Slab City

[precious-teacake]

toby-ringer:

“Seriously kid?” Toby said stretching out on the ground. “You’ve lost your mind.” He chuckled, taking a long hit off his joint Toby shook his head. “I don’t know, make up a story or something, I really don’t care.” 

“Really? You don’t wanna see the magic of the written word on one of these machines? I think there’s 100 all told in the whole world left. It’s rare. So many of my literary heroes used typewriters. I couldn’t even begin to list them all.”

[sierraclub]

[precious-teacake]

In the shade, behind a white trailer with rickety peeling walls, you hear clacking noises. Mechanical, whirring, rickety noises. Closer inspection reveals a young boy doubled over some kind of machine, fingers flying. 

“Look what I found!” Alex says. As if he’s found a chest rattling with gold pieces of eight. As if he’s found something worth of any value at all instead of a typewriter with the W, X, A, and C letters missing, barely yielding a functioning ink ribbon. “What should we write?”  He looks at you, expectantly, eagerly, like the next thing to come out of your mouth will be Salinger’s Catcher, or something of equal literary value. “We could write a poem, take turns with lines. Or a letter to someone. Or just your name over and over. Wait, what is it again?” He looks guilty, as if he can’t believe he’s forgotten.

[oliviergiroudd]

x

[precious-teacake]

a-g-g-i-e:

Aggie had only been in Slab City for a night, but was already taking advantage of their generosity. Already on her third icy beer since she woke at eleven, Aggie’s sudden hearing of one of her childhood favourites had her singing to herself. It was only after landing an impressively timed ‘Smoke weed everyday’ that she realized she wasn’t alone. 

“Woops. Sorry ‘bout…uh…yeah.”

Max cracked a smile and felt grateful for the sudden apparition of company; he had in truth been wondering whether he’d spoken to someone approaching him from behind or if it was his imagination again and he was entertaining the lizards. The song finished and phased into D12′s Purple Hills, and Max’s smile turned into a grin. “S’cool man, sing along if you know the words. Gets boring talking to myself constantly.”

[precious-teacake]

The sun was hanging on its coat hook high up in the sky, drying up the already cracked and hissing desert earth. A 1995 Chevy Blazer stood parked on a raised mound of earth some distance from all the trailers, its hood popped up and a sweaty, shirtless blonde working underneath it, towel slung over his shoulder. Dr. Dre’s The Next Episode blared from the beat up black boombox propped up on an empty tank beside the car. 

 “You know, this 00′s Hip Hop channel is really starting to grow on me. Who would’ve thought.”

[precious-teacake]

luna-loves-aliens:

“Uh huh,” Luna decided to ignore the fact that he hadn’t answered her question about how he ended up here. She wouldn’t pry, it seemed like everyone here had secrets. Instead she’d simply stalk him for a while to see if the answer had anything to do with her friends “up there”. With a final sigh, Luna exhaled the last of her cigarette and looked for a place to toss her stub. “Well, as much as I’ve enjoyed the view…” she took the opportunity to stare a little bit longer at his butt while his head stayed under the hood, “I think Nugs could suddenly turn to a Christmas dinner if I keep her out any longer.”

Max shot her a smile the next opportunity he got to pause and peek out from under the hood of the car he was fixing. “Good idea. Don’t let nugget fry,” he said, grinning from ear to ear at his own pun. “How does someone even name a chicken that? Like having a pet pig named Bacon.” 

[precious-teacake]

desertxangel:

Angel replied to Max’s wide smile with hers and she nodded. “I think it does. So, welcome!” She probably looked a bit too happy for being able to help Max getting rid of he tin cube, but really, she liked company and if she could get company by saving someone else from terrible sleeping place it was a win-win situation. “Well, if you happen to get some stuff, feel free to put them in there”, she replied and tapped the cabinet’s door nodding at the couch reply. “Okay, but only if you really are sure about it.”

“I promise I won’t be in your hair too long, just until I can fix up a more...permanent situation,” he said with a grateful nod. Or until he had to leave, whichever came first, Max thought. But for now he was good. “I’ll do that,” he answered in a nod when she showed him the cabinets, enjoying the small tour of the place he was getting.  “Yes, really. Honestly, if you’d known the kinds of people I’ve shared beds with you’d know your offer was rainbows compared. But I still don’t feel right putting you through that.”

[precious-teacake]

ourladyoftheslabs:

That couldn’t just be settled with a giggle, it called for laughter and Suza happily obliged, throwing her head back and offering her laughter, crystal, featherlight to the stars for a few heartbeats. “You’re a funny man. That’s a pretty useful gift. Torrance is nice but Max looks better on you.” She smiled. “Me too, but Suza was more appropriate for my line of work. Not that Suzana doesn’t work, but you know. Why settle for second-best when you can have first-best?” She went quiet again, words coming and going like the tide with everything he said but found herself nodding at his words, as if she had a clue (or a care) about the economy. “Where are you from? Where are you staying?”

“Torrance was spoiled growing up, I got hard work and discipline, but I think I turned out better. He was just fat as shit by the end of his life and had to be carried from room to room.” He lapsed into a silence after, as if so much sharing had  to be counteracted by the lack of words. He did feel like he was oversharing. Maybe the key was to direct questions at her instead, keep the focus on her and not on him; that would certainly be beneficial.  “How did you come about this wonderful community? I’m from a place called Daly City. Just south of San Fran. And I’m staying in the tin can next to Tony’s hut. Well — this girl actually offered me her couch to stay on, and it has less splinters than the banana boxes in my shack; so I might just accept the offer.”

[precious-teacake]

desertxangel:

Angel’s smile turned into a even brighter one and she stepped inside the caravan completely and put her hands behind her back as she watched around her in her home. “Thank you.” She took a step closer to Max and opened one of the smaller cabinettes. “You can put your things here, if you need more space, I can always reorganize my own. Also, feel free to open the doors and drawers to know what is where, I don’t mind.” Then she pointed at her bed at the other end of the caravan. “And the bed is in that end, it really is a big one so we’d both fit in it easily, unless you really want to sleep on the couch.”

He couldn’t help but smile as he put his hands on his hips. “So does this mean I’m officially moved in?” he added with a crocodile grin, finding it more amusing for some reason than he should have. “Don’t really have any stuff,” he said with a high shrug. At the mention of the topic of the bed his eyebrows climbed high too. “I really wouldn’t want to inconvenience you like that, so I think I’ll take the couch outside,” he said with what he considered a polite but reserved smile.

[precious-teacake]

ourladyoftheslabs:

“Max” she repeated, tasting the name like one would taste a new candy. It didn’t matter that she had met other people named Max before; it never did. You could name every person out there Spike and the name would transform into six billion different names, somebody’s voice and feelings the only magic necessary for the spell. “It suits you,” she announced in the end. “Is it short for something else, or is it just Max? I’m Suzana but people call me Suza. And I do that a lot. Romanticizing things I mean. Bad habit, I know.” Suza thought of his words. “She sounds like she would have liked it here. We would have been the state capital of midnight ice cream if only we had decent freezers.” Her eyes returned to the desert. “Is that why you ended up here? Sick of a strict home?”

"Nope. Just Max. I think my name and the dog’s tag got mixed up at birth cause the dog we had as a kid got named Torrance,” he said, nodding, imparting the information as if this was the first time he’d made the joke. “Suza,” he repeated, trying on her name like one would a brand new shoe. Then he thought of Cinderella. “Suzanna. I like both. But Suza’s shorter of course. Long names become a pain in the ass.” He wished he’d had a beer in his hand because right now seemed like an appropriate time to put a period on the sentence with a swig, but he didn’t, so he just played with the arms of his chair. “Yeah, I suppose a gelato shop in the middle of Slab City is just a pipe dream...” he said as he looked out onto the expanse. It was cooler in the nights considerably but still what most would consider ‘fairly warm’. “Nah, I haven’t seen my family in god knows how long. I’m just a drifter, you know, can’t get a decent job in this wonderful economy of ours so I hop from place to place. This No Rent deal you guys’ve got here is a cracking incentive though,” he said, not bothering to add what the incentive was for (for him staying, of course).

[desertxangel]

Angel followed behind the other and she made sure to watch Max’s face as he saw how the caravan looked from the inide. Pretty much it didn’t look like it would be even possible for it to look like that when you stared at it from the outside, but Angel really loved how her home looked like now. “Two. I just had a lot of time to decorate. It was actually my first time doing that.” Before everything had been done for her so now that she got to do it herself she might have gotten a bit too excited with it. “Maybe there is a bit too much in here, but I like it.”

[precious-teacake]

"You did a hell of a job,” he said with a nod. It certainly wasn’t like any abode he’d been in, which made it even more interesting. But he guessed that a lot of places here were like this, an assortment of knick-knacks and other things combed together to create a home, a wondrous oasis in the unforgiving desert. “I like it too. Everywhere your eye lands there’s something pleasant to look at. Beats my tin shack, at any rate.”

[ourladyoftheslabs]

“Go ahead. I can do difficult.” The light of her smile didn’t flicker, nor did her hand move from his arm. “Wicked. Do I at least get a name or do I just call you “guy”?“ She looked at his tattoo again, this time with knowing eyes and shook her head. “Deep. Maybe I should get one too. I mean we’re all doing time on this earth anyway.” Her words sounded foreign and unfitting even to her own ears: if the world was a prison, Suza would be the sort to shoplift in front of a cop. “There’s irony there somewhere. Or you guys were just Aware,” -and if you were careful you could hear the capital A in her voice- “knowing exactly what you’re doing and like, immortalising the present forever on your bodies. Now the past is still the present because it’s on your skin. Which is probably proof that time is not linear. Or maybe I’m right and you don’t ever stop doing time, you’re doing time simply by existing. But like, in a good way, you know? Not in a prison way.” Another person might have stopped to ask themselves “what the hell?” after this speech but Suza just leaned forward to reach for the man’s other arm. Her eyes glossed over the numbers, making a mental note in invisible ink to ask him later, but honestly, who cared about numbers when you had pictures? Finding a tattoo that caught her eye, she looked back up to him. “What about this one?”

[precious-teacake]

"No, you get that. It’s Max.” He shook his head. “You’re doing something...romanticizing it I think. It wasn’t deep or insightful in any way. Just a bunch of dudes crammed into max security whiling away their mistimed lives.” There was a shrug placed in there somewhere. “Feel free. No one’s going to bring out the Prison Tattoo police on your ass,” he said with a chuckle, some kind of ultimate irony in those words. “Oh, you’re gonna laugh at that one,” he said with another chuckle. “It’s for my grandmother. Passed when I was ten, but her words and life left a lasting impression on me I guess. She was the one free spirit in our family. Everything was very...regimented, structured for me growing up,” Max said, being vague but also unable to help himself about being so vague. “She was the one who taught me it was okay to eat ice cream at midnight. That’s a metaphor, but you get what I’m saying,” he said with a hollow laugh. “Although I think I do recall a bowl of cherry ice cream at two in the morning if I think back hard enough.”

[desertxangel]

“I didn’t really have time to watch tv. Sometimes I thought about how some of my friends did, told me about their favorites, but I couldn’t really talk about those with them since I haven’t seen them. Sometime I managed to see an episode or few, but usually I didn’t. Now that I could, I just find it weird to watch something since I’m not used to such.” She shrugged softly. She didn’t miss something she was never used to.

Angel looked at Max’s body and then hummed softly. “Yeah, no. Wouldn’t fit you in any way.” She smiled and gestured for him to get in the caravan. “Just look around and so.”

[precious-teacake]

Max nodded as he listened, feeling in agreement. He remembered a time when nightly TV was part of his daily life, but that seemed like an entirely different person and lifetime. He smiled when she joked, beginning to feel somewhat at ease, though he never completely let his guard down. Simply as habit, as a reflex. Max entered the caravan, and immediately his reaction was evident from his face, seeing all of the drapes and tapestries, all the frills and hangings decorating the place. It certainly created a mood. “How long have you lived here, three years?”

[ourladyoftheslabs]

“I didn’t mean it like that, I was just saying that it should be more spontaneous. I shouldn’t know how you eat your tacos before the first time I run into you at Paco’s.” That rhymed. Nice. Suza smiled that special smile Tom saved just for Jerry when he thought he had cornered him. “Was that “begrudgingly”? I didn’t notice, but I guess it was. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream to revoke your status as a mystery so soon. I mean, I’m gonna ask anyway, it’s what I do, but I won’t cry if you don’t answer. Not for long at least.”  Suza turned to look at him, to really look at him. His shirt looked like it had seen better days. Gently, she placed a hand heavy from rings and bracelets on his arm, pointing at one design in particular. “What does this one mean?”

[precious-teacake]

Paco. His brain scanned the hundreds of faces he’d run into before today. Oh yeah, the kooky vet. “Now I wanna throw something out like I’m vegan or something just to be difficult,” he said, smile slowly easing into something like a familiarity with the other person, an ease of making jokes. “Then if it’s all the same to you, you won’t get anything out of me.”

He looked down when she placed a hand on his arm, at the broken clock that was missing hands. He was somewhat grateful that she didn’t ask about the numbers, since he’d have to give another lie. “Standard prison tattoo,” he said with an easy shrug. “You know, doing time. It’s actually pretty boring in there, a lotta convicts pass the time like that. Passing time getting tattoos about doing time.”

[ourladyoftheslabs]

“That feels kinda forced, but okay. I should warn you though, I’m a very curious woman, or so I hear.” She could feel his eyes on her and she smiled, keeping her own fixed on the desert. That was one of her favourite feelings, being looked at. Not her absolute favourite but pretty close. She didn’t flinch as he mentioned being in prison. She had met ex-convicts before, people who had been up to all kinds of things. It didn’t matter, they had been who they had been. The past was the past and it was like an asshole: everybody had one. No big deal. “Prison tats then?”

[precious-teacake]

“Did I say that very begrudgingly?” he replied, smile stretching lazily. “Not used to sharing, I guess.” He let the cigarette burn to the end instead of taking the last few drags, putting out the remaining embers out against a rock and then pocketing the butt. His one white shirt he washed and wore every day seemed to be getting more worn down by the day, he internalised; would be good to buy a spare. “Oh yeah. More than you can count. Hence me declining Kiwi’s handiwork but I suppose if I get an itch for my 105th I’ll let her know.” She could see quiet a handful anyway, the one peeking from the collar of his shirt, the ones slipping out and around his arms under the sleeves. Hands and wrists were clear of them, although he had writing up and down his arm, seemingly. Numbers and letters. Almost like code. 

[ourladyoftheslabs]

She shrugged, wide eyes taking in the night. Were they looking at the same spot in the dark? Were they seeing the same thing? Did it matter? “You know, you being a mystery is maybe the only thing you can’t tell for yourself. The only thing you need an outsider’s opinion about. If you’re dying to find out I mean. I don’t know you, so you could be a mystery to me if we both wanted you to be.” At this time, at this temperature, everything about her was slower, softer, and so was the cherry-scented chuckle that escaped her lips. “What kind of art will that be?” Her eyebrows furrowed as she tried to build his former home in her mind out of the darkness of the desert night. “Secondary is nice but primary is always better. At least for things so easy to find like weed.“ She wasn’t trying to tell him how to live his life, not actively at least, but she never had a mind to explain that. She simply trusted that the rest of the world took advice the way she did: with a gentle nod and a grain of salt.

[precious-teacake]

Max laughed and shook his head, as if what she’d said was almost too much for him. “Now that’s just making my head spin,” he said, laugh shaking the cigarette he held in his hand before he pulled on it. “You’re welcome to ask anything you’re curious about. I’ll answer totally honestly,” he lied. “Unless you prefer me remaining a mystery for some reason or other. I’m cool with that too.” He leaned back in the chair and looked up at the stars, but it wasn’t too long before he was looking back at her. “It was a joke, don’t have an artistic bone in my body I’m afraid.” Maybe something to do with building fractal algorithms but that was nerdy, and not necessary to be shared. “Primary’s good too. I’m just...I just got done serving time for dealing so I’m just keeping a little distance.”