#tommy harrison

[terminusantequem]

Tommy Harrison (British, b. 1996), White Night II, 2023. Oil on canvas, 200 × 120 cm

[sheltiechicago]

Scuttle, 2023, oil on canvas, diptych, 78.75 x 94.5 inches (total), 78.75 x 47.25 (each).

Tommy Harrison - Artist

Paintings that exist between the mathematical and the intuitive.

Photos by Michael Pollard.

White Night, 2023, oil on canvas, 78.75 x 47.25 inches.

 Abyssal Plain, 2023, oil on canvas, 78.75 x 47.25 inches.

[arinewman7]

Dropping Quietly Into The River

Tommy Harrison

2022

[tommy-harrison-blog]

[oliverwildes-blog]

I swear, I end up feeling empty,        like you’ve taken something out of me               and I have to search my body for                         s c a r s.

[oliverwildes-blog]

Title: A Little Lost Word Count: 943 Pairings: Oliver/Tommy a.k.a. Toliver Summary: Oliver wakes up post-NYE and is all sorts of introspective + retrospective. Notes: So, this didn’t really come out how I had hoped (i.e. I wanted more focus on the actual night of NYE but then I was thinking about it and thought, eh. It was all sex, so…). And now I say unto you, Harriet: your turn. >:) (Obviously doesn’t have to relay the same events as my drabble; you are free to cover different stuff, etc.) Title pulled from an Arthur Russell song of the same name. Warnings: A boy feeling bad for himself + jumping to conclusions and a lot of grammatical errors because 1) f*ck grammar and 2) I haven’t edited this very well. Also, swearing.

Oliver groaned softly when he woke up, a wave of nausea hitting him like a wall of bricks as he shifted his body, curling slightly in on himself. The inside of his mouth tasted sour; his heartbeat hammered in his temples.  And as it always happened when he woke with a hangover, he thought to himself: this is the worst that I have ever fucking felt.

The night came back in snatches: fingers pressed into the small of a back, guiding and persuading; a whisper into a curve of a neck, praising and begging; and a warm palm hovering over heated skin, questioning. (“What do you say we ditch this party? It’s gotten kind of lame, plus there’s no one at my place right now.”) In a rare moment, Oliver felt his face flush as a hot rush of shame traveled down his spine. No one made him feel stupid; no one used him, unless it was a mutual sort of using between himself and a barely-known acquaintance from some introductory course. But as he replayed last night’s events in his mind, as he went over all the scenes he had ever witnessed of Tommy and another no-face hookup, he realized that he may have been.

What had happened a number of weeks ago was one thing; it was something easy to forget and easy to throw away with the dust as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. No one had to know about the heavy weight in the pit of his stomach nor the way his ribs ached; he definitely wasn’t going to waste his thoughts on those pangs. But this had been different— of course it was different. There’s a point when you offer something of yourself that’s beyond your body and Oliver offered that something when he smiled in response to Tommy’s suggestion; he offered that something when he followed Tommy to his place; and he offered that something when he pulled Tommy on top of him, digging his fingers into the fabric of his shirt with a short, hiccuping laugh.

Hesitantly, Oliver opened his eyes a fraction, unwilling to face the morning light more than what was necessary. He shifted again and froze, an ache in his hips, and swore under his breath: shit. It was then that he felt a weight on his waist, an arm, and hot breath against the back of his neck, a snuffling sound of someone deep in sleep. Slowly and as delicately as he could, Oliver turned his head to get a glimpse.

Tommy.

There was a small, brief furrow in his brow, as if he were thinking of the raging headache he’d experience the moment he was brought back into the world of consciousness, but otherwise, he looked relatively peaceful. He didn’t look like he’d wake up embarrassed or regretful of his actions. He didn’t look like he was hanging on the precipice of something he didn’t want to even begin to entertain the notion of. He looked completely comfortable in the way his arm tightened around Oliver’s waist and burrowed himself closer to Oliver’s back. Oliver squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and returned his gaze to the opposite wall, his hands clutching into fists as he remembered the things he did— the things he said, Tommy pressing down on him, the pads of his fingers tracing patterns against the skin over his ribs, where the ache settled weeks ago. And then he thought: this has got to stop.

So as slowly and as delicately as he could, Oliver extracted himself from Tommy’s hold. (“Fucking cuddling,” Oliver whispered to himself, struggling to balance himself as he pulled on a sock.) He picked up his clothing from the floor, sliding into each article as quietly as he could, trying his to best to will his eyes to look at anything other than the boy still lying in bed, his brow now perfectly smooth and his hand brushing the space that Oliver had just occupied. He felt pathetic and a tiny bit slutty, but not the good kind; he felt turned outside out, washed up and used. For not the first time in his life, Oliver felt like the butt-end of a joke— and one that he didn’t find even remotely funny.

Tommy made another snuffling sound, stirring in his sleep, and Oliver froze, shoes in hand. For a passing moment, he thought that this was it; Tommy was going to wake up and he was going to see Oliver there, dressed and ready to leave, and he was going to— to do what, exactly? Tommy stirred again, pulling Oliver from his thoughts and causing him to drop his shoe in surprise; the solid thump reverberating in the gentle stillness of the morning. He quickly ducked to retrieve it, nearly dropping it again when he glanced up and saw Tommy rubbing at his eyes, half-lifting himself on his elbow, and grumbling to himself.

“Where’re you goin’?” Tommy eventually asked, yawning. He looked more asleep than awake, his eyes slivers and his face scrunched in mild pain. Oliver winced, feeling his own temples throb.

“Home, obviously. I’m not staying in this den,” Oliver replied, half a second too late. He held on tighter to his shoes.

“’Kay,” Tommy breathed, settling back into bed. “Bring me some coffee later?”

Oliver hesitated for a incredulous moment then scoffed lightly, pulling on his shoes, and grabbed his jacket. No one used him and no one made him into a joke. “Yeah, sure.”

And as Oliver, now hardly trying to keep quiet, left the room, he thought again to himself: this has got to stop.

[daeien]

Song of the Week

My Little Grass Shack - Arthur Godfrey

"Little Grass Shack in Kealakekua, Hawai'i was a popular song written for the July 4th canoe races in Kona in 1933. Tommy Harrison gave the song to Johnny Noble to publish, who revised the music to give it a new melody without changing Bill Cogswell's words. Once published, the song became a major hit, and has since been recorded many times.

The title refers to Kealakekua Bay where Captain James Cook was killed in 1779. The song mentions Hōnaunau, site of Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park, also located in the Kona District on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi. The lyrics also refer to the Reef triggerfish by its name in the Hawaiian Language, the Humuhumunukunukuapuaʻa."