Timmy didn't understand gender when he was young. His parent weren't often there, but when they were they didn't really follow the stereotypes.
His mother was distant, sometimes cold, and she ran the Drake inc shareholders like they were her dogs. In comparison, his father preferred to stay home and cook, it was one of the view places he actually had access to a kitchen.
Timmy has a memory of sitting on his fathers lap as he shows Tim his great grandmother's prized earrings. They were a family heirloom, lasting for generations from one women to the next. When Jack Drake's mother died before she could give a daughter the earing were reluctantly pasted down to Jack.
Jack would hold Tim in his arms as he put the earrings on, one by one. Timmy would always get mesmerized, his father was the pretties person he knew. It was one of the few times he saw his mother actually smile. Not the wide one which had the goal of showing teeth rather than joy, but the tight lipped quirk of the mouth, where Janet Drakes eyes were squinting with glee.
Tim remembers that moment with his father, one of the moments that kept him in that house for so long.
Timmy takes out the blue sapphire earrings of his great grandmother as he finishes putting on his tux. He puts on the earrings delicately threw the botched ear piercings Tim did by himself when he was twelve. He never felt as much like himself as when he wore those earrings.
Bruce as a man was a shock for Dick when he first entered the manor as an angry child.
His parents were colorful and loving. They both wore makeup and clothes that didn't fit their perceived genders, but they were still traditionalists.
Dicks father was the man of the house, he would come home and play with Dick, take a smoke outside and then go to bed kissing his wife.
Dick's mama would come home after work to cook diner, wash the dishes and clean the house.
They were both happy in their roles, and on weekends things would switch up and dad would cook and sometimes Dick would sneak a peek through the window and see mama smoking with her friends, but in the end they still had rolls that they filled.
Bruce is anything, but traditional.
Bruce is soft, but not in a way that Dick knows.
He isn't bright and colorful like his mama and papa, he doesn't follow the rough love of Dick's papa, nor the soft sweetness of his mama.
Bruce is sleepless nights of sitting on a lap while being sung a lullaby. He is helping put on your eyeliner before a gala, he is the support as you keep trying different suits because they don't seem to bring the right feeling that the robin suit use to give you. Because you are not robing anymore, just like Mama and Papa aren't your only parents anymore.
But still interested in feeding yourself? What if I told you that there’s a woman with a blog who had to feed both herself and her young son…on 10 British pounds ($15/14 Euro) per week?
Let me tell you a thing.
This woman saved my life last year. Actually saved my life. I had a piggy bank full of change and that’s it. Many people in my fandom might remember that dark time as when I had to hock my writing skills in exchange for donations. I cried a lot then.
This is real talk, people: I marked down exactly what I needed to buy, totaled it, counted out that exact change, and then went to three different stores to buy what I needed so I didn’t have to dump a load of change on just one person. I was already embarrassed, but to feel people staring? Utter shame suffused me. The reasons behind that are another post all together.
AgirlcalledJack.com is run by a British woman who was on benefits for years. Things got desperate. She had to find a way to feed herself and her son using just the basics that could be found at the supermarket. But the recipes she came up with are amazing.
You have to consider the differing costs of things between countries, but if you just have three ingredients in your cupboard, this woman will tell you what to do with it. Check what you already have. Chances are you have the basics of a filling meal already.
Here’s her list of kitchen basics.
Bake your own bread. It’s easier than you think. Here’s a list of many recipes, each using some variation of just plain flour, yeast, some oil, maybe water or lemon juice. And kneading bread is therapeutic.
Make your own pasta–gluten free.
She gets it. She really does. This is the article that started it all. It’s called “Hunger Hurts”.
She has vegan recipes.
A carrot, a can of kidney beans, and some cumin will get you a really filling soup…or throw in some flour for binding and you’ve got yourself a burger.
Don’t have an oven or the stove isn’t available? She covers that in her Microwave Cooking section.
She has a book, but many recipes can be found on her blog for free. She prices her recipes down to the cent, and every year she participates in a project called “Living Below the Line” where she has to live on 1 BP per day of food for five days.
Things improved for me a little, but her website is my go to. I learned how to bake bread (using my crockpot, but that was my own twist), and I have a little cart full of things that saved me back then, just in case I need them again. She gives you the tools to feed yourself, for very little money, and that’s a fabulous feeling.
Tip: Whenever you have a little extra money, buy a 10 dollar/pound/euro giftcard from your discount grocer. Stash it. That’s your super emergency money. Make sure they don’t charge by the month for lack of use, though.
I don’t care if it sounds like an advertisement–you won’t be buying anything from the site. What I DO care about is your mental, emotional, and physical health–and dammit, food’s right in the center of that.
If you don’t need this now, pass it on to someone who does. Pass it on anyway, because do you REALLY know which of the people in your life is in need? Which follower might be staring at their own piggy bank? Trust me: someone out there needs to see this.
Reblogging for students, working folks, and everyone who’s ever had to choose between essentials at the store because you can only afford milk OR bread, not both.
told my parents i miss archaeology and my mom was, very sympathetically, like: “do you want to dig holes in the garden?” and i was like. yes. i want to dig holes in the garden.
These are both moods, but unfortunately I am primarily a bioarchaeologist. (IE, I specialize in digging up old human skeletons.) And, uh, home-made bioarchaeology is tragically discriminated against by law enforcement.
Out of work paleontologists can take a page out of the Girl Scouts handbook and eat a chicken, clean the bones, encase them in a mud and plaster mix, then chip it back out. Which is legitimately how Girl Scouts earn their paleontology badge.
this messed up vintage cat sewing pattern has tormented me since i saw it & like some other folks have done in that post - i tried my hand at tweaking the pattern to resemble the illustration (and my personal tastes) a little more. i've ended up with this, which i have only tested at a small scale and not this final version exactly (where i have done such things as further widening the cheeks and finalizing the leg shapes.) i bestow it upon you nice folks now 👐
go forth and make weird little beanbag kittens! pls show me if you do!
My first attempt! I made the pattern a bit smaller as I wanted it to be able to fit in a pocket, but then (accidentally but perhaps unavoidably) sewed it with a wider seam allowance than the resized pattern indicated, so the face is proportionally a bit too big and I lost some detail in the ear shape. I'm pleased with it though! It was fun to make something and to do some handsewing.
Years ago back when I worked in cubicle land, we were hiring junior software developers. They didn’t have to have a ton of experience, just a willingness to learn, and some demonstration of their software skills. Like: show me a program you wrote (any language) or a web site you designed. Anything.
And there was this one guy I talked with who seemed super sharp, but had virtually zero experience writing software. When it came time to do the show-n-tell part of the interview he whips out his laptop, brings up a website, and spins it around to show me what he made.
A website of tiny ceramic frogs.
Not for sale. Just… all these ceramic frogs, organized into categories. Frogs on bicycles, frogs with hats, frogs sitting on lily pads. It was a virtual museum of ceramic frogs in web form.
I scrolled through his online collection of frogs, slightly baffled.
“This is your website?” I asked finally.
“Yep!”
“You coded this yourself?” I popped into view-source mode and poked around some incredibly well-formatted, well-commented html. I nodded slowly. This guy was meticulous.
“Yep!”
“So… where’d all the frogs come from?”
“I made those too,” he says, beaming.
And while I’m processing this he rummages in his bag and pulls out a little ceramic frog working at a computer terminal. He places it on the table before us, next to the laptop.
“And THIS one,” he says, “I made for you! As a thank you for the interview.”
It was adorable. I hired him on the spot. I mean, why not? Worst case he’d wash out in 90 days and we’d hire somebody else. He turned out to be one of the best developers on our team.
And yes, his cubicle was loaded with ceramic frogs.
there’s been a really bizarre trend in the past couple years of TERFS/radfems getting pissed off about biology posts. posts about the bilateral gyandromorph cardinal (one half male, one half female), posts about older hens beginning to crow and act like roosters, posts about animals being animals. and it’s hilarious because they interpret these posts as some kind of agenda. no! these are animals not choosing any gender identity or sexuality but being born into bodies they have no control over. weird how that happens in nature huh
Do you want to hear about white-throated sparrows?!
Of course you do, they’re fantastic. They come in two models, one with tan head stripes and one with white head stripes. But the gene that controls stripe color also has a bunch of other effects! It’s a supergene!
To briefly sum up a grueling amount of fieldwork by people who were probably not getting paid nearly enough, basically the tan-stripes are nurturers and the white-stripes are fighters, across both males and females. White-stripes chase away intruders more, tan-stripes bring more food to the nest. Tan-stripe females bring more bugs to their chicks than white-stripes, white-stripe females are more aggressive and sing more.
There is a reason Jordan Peterson picked lobsters, not sparrows, to get all MRA about, because the sparrow ladies are ALL about the tan-striped males. Sexy nurturing tan-stripe males are immediately grabbed up by the more aggressive white-stripe females (who are also dead sexy if you’re a sparrow.) Then the remaining birds pair off, so you get tan and white couples reproducing in virtually all cases—nurturing male with aggressive female, hyper-aggressive male with hyper-nurturing female.*
And this is good!** Because it turns out that they can have a tough time if they don’t mate across stripes—white x white sparrows often come out undersized if they come out at all. There was some cool recent genetic sequencing and one particular chromosome is way funky, inverted, and scrambled in the white-stripes. So now every white-stripe has a funky chromosome and a normal one, and every tan-stripe has two normal ones.***
This is all really unique and means that white-throated sparrows effectively have four sexes, because they now only reproduce with a member of the opposite stripe and sex chromosome, and their offspring may be any one of the four sexes. The stripes have essentially become a second sex chromosome.
The geneticists involved think the funky chromosome probably showed up as a weird import from somebody gettin’ jiggy with another sparrow species. Presumably this created a hypersexy female whose white head stripes brought all the boys to the yard, and very unusually, that bred true.
Is that cool or what?!
*No word on whether there is a resulting sparrow tradwife media genre.
**Leaving aside the impact on the emotional health of the non-sexy sparrows.
**A population solely of tan-stripes can reproduce safely, they’re just not that into each other.
I reblogged this a minute ago but I’m going to reblog it again, because I want to add another non-binary bird species: the ruff.
First of all, look at it.
That’s a male ruff, specifically. You can see how they get their name. The females don’t have that fancy collar. They just look like sandpipers, which is what they are.
Like other sandpipers, these are wading birds, but they live in wet meadows and marshes instead of by the seashore. During the breeding season they gather together and the males hold territories, called leks, in which they display to attract females.
At least, some of them do.
Some male ruffs do not display in leks. They have plainer, often white, neck ruffs, and they sort of wander around the display grounds courting the females wherever. The interesting thing is that the territorial males tolerate this. Research suggests it’s because females are more interested in a display ground that has both kinds of males. The ladies like variety, it seems.
But it gets even more complicated. In 2006, a third male form was discovered. This form is extremely rare, and doesn’t have male display plumage at all. It looks just like a female ruff in the field. The other birds, however, can tell the difference, judging by their behavior. These female mimics travel with other males when the sexes split for the winter, and during homosexual mountings (which are common, as they are in many other animals), they often top.
What’s really interesting about these ‘cryptic males’, or faeders, is that they are apparently super sexy. Seriously. Females and males both prefer mating with them. And it’s believed that, like the satellite males, the presence of a faeder attracts more females to the area, which benefits all three forms.
And the thing about these forms is they are fundamentally different from one another. The plumage and behavior differences last throughout a bird’s life, and are determined by genetics. They are functionally three different genders - one of which shows natural intersex characteristics. All three can breed with females, and females are more interested in breeding when all three are present. They know that diversity is the good shit. Which makes them much, much smarter than TERFs.
Good morning and happy pride, bird lovers! Please enjoy these funky facts and feel free to send in your favorite bird sex and/or gender facts this month!
Tomorrow is the first day of REDUCE REFUSE RESIST. We are getting started with tomorrow's economic blackout. Let's do this! If you're like "WTF is REDUCE REFUSE RESIST," go check out the pinned post on my profile.
And while we're talking about totally changing our relationship with shopping and consumerism (and using it as a political force), let's talk about clothes.
On average, Americans buy about 70 new articles of clothing each year.
If you’re shocked by that or you haven’t bought new clothes in years...remember that this is an average. That means if you bought no new clothes this year, someone else bought 140 garments. Over the past 15 years, the amount of clothing produced each year has doubled, while the amount of time we actually wear a new item has dropped by 40%. Most garments are only worn about 7 times!!! 😖
And the thing is....it's a lot easier to buy 70 new items of clothing in a year than you might think, thanks to online shopping, free shipping thresholds ("free shipping over $50," etc), and super duper cheap ultra fast fashion like SHEIN and Temu.
There is already too much clothing on this planet. And no, we aren't running out of secondhand clothing (so please stop telling people that they shouldn't thrift). All of us must make a shift into a more ethical and sustainable wardrobe.
While plenty of brands and retailers are happy to offer us brand new "sustainable" collections, the reality is the most sustainable and ethical clothing is...clothing that already exists! Some experts believe that we need to buy 75% less brand new clothing. And it's a lot easier than you think!
A sustainable wardrobe isn't JUST shopping secondhand (although that's a part of it), it's also rewearing the things you already own, extending the life of your clothing via repair and care, and sharing/swapping/rehoming things you no longer wear.
As we REDUCE REFUSE RESIST, it's a great time to reevaluate the clothes we already have and get comfortable with buying a lot less new clothes long after March is ever. It's a great time to learn new habits! So let's do this!!!
this is a highly controversial opinion, I have no doubt King Arthur was bisexual but I think he was one of the few people in Camelot not interested in fucking Lancelot. he wanted to retain him as an employee but it did not cross his mind that Lancelot was fucking his wife because Lancelot is such a weird little twerp that he did not perceive him as a sexual being. my interpretation.
So true. The Galehaut/Lancelot relationship was like a dynastic marriage to resolve the conflict between two imperial powers. I like to imagine Galehaut was like “I have decided to abandon my plans of capturing [what is now] all of southern England and surrender to you despite my military advantage, all for the love of my achingly beautiful and spectacular new male wife, Lancelot du Lac.” and Arthur was like “Okay. Weird. Not homophobic or anything but Lancelot? You’re in love with Lancelot?”
Co-signed. That’s some real shit you said. Also, unlike Arthur, he was willing to yield and share his lover for everyone’s benefit. And then he died for love. A real freak. One of the best freaks in 13th century French literature.
When I was little my mom’s meatloaf was my favorite food. But ONLY her meatloaf. I didn’t like anyone else’s, and she told me that she would teach me how to make it when I was older. And when I was like 19? She finally taught me, but she told me never to tell anyone else and I was like weird but okay
Anyway, she was super fucking homophobic and abusive to me when I told her I was gay, so here’s the recipe
4-6 lbs of Hamburger/turkey burger
1 pk onion soup mix OR ranch mix
1 TBs ketchup
1 Tbs spicy brown mustard,
1 Tbs bbq sauce
1 Tbs steak sauce
1 egg
mix, shape into a loaf in a big pan, and bake at 350 for 2 hrs (maybe 2 and a half if you’re feeling dangerous)
You can get almost all of these ingredients at the dollar store, and have leftovers if it’s just you. The leftovers make great tacos if (taco seasoning is also like a dollar). Enjoy your revenge loaf
here's a mashed potato recipe from my homophobic mother that i swore to never share that would pair perfectly!
(6 servings)
-2lbs red potatoes
-1 cup butter (2 sticks)
-1 cup cream cheese (1 pack)
-Chives (optional)
-Salt & Pepper to taste
1. drop those bad boys (potatoes) in a big ol pot. U don't even have to chop them just wash them
2. boil til soft!
3. Drain
4. Mash (usually they're small enough you can use a fork if u don't have one of those squashers) until its a pretty chunky mix
5. add the other stuff. Keep mashing
I like my mashed potato consistancy more lumpy but its all up to you!! Peel the potatoes or keep them on, it literally makes the creamiest fluffiest mashed potatoes which she always served with the nastiest fuckin meatloaf
So after spending hours combing through the recipes in the comments of this post I have created a cookbook. Feel free to use it. The link should work for everyone, its the only file on the google drive! I have referenced all of the recipes I used, all of which are from this thread. I made it for myself, but figured after all that work I should probably share. Happy spite cooking!
I hate to be making another post begging for commissions. I know I just made a post this week asking for help for my fiance to get him meds and to the dr, and we didnt get enough to get him seen, but things are still rough so here we go.
I'm trans, he's intersex and an international adoptee. Both of us are disabled. It was on thise grounds that we were evacuated from our state to a safer state several months back. It went very badly and we haven't gotten stable at all since. I am applying for jobs, and taking commissions in the meantime. Our immediate needs consist of a couple of bills and legal fees to cover his name change for the sake of his saftey. Our phone bill has paticularly been a concern, seeinf as its how I take commissions, apply to jobs, and recieve calls from potential employers and doctors. We have a waiver for my fiancé's legal fees, but if that doesnt go through, we will need to pay the fees ASAP. All of our needs listed here could be covered by $500.
I have a bunch of stuff for sale in my kofi shop starting at $5, including everything shown below. You can also dm me for art if thats easier or more convenient.
I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard
Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.
Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.
Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.
Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.
SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.
SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.
Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.
Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.
Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.
Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.
Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.
“Do you think the Rolling Stones could be convinced to come perform at my funeral? I’m sure they owe my dad a favour.”
“Not likely. Maria Callas might, though, if you tell her how big a fan you are.”
One day, I’d like to publish a graphic novel. It’d be a huge undertaking, but it’s a dream of mine. In the meantime, I’ll post partially conceived stories and fragmented plot ideas to my blog.
With that said, the accompanying short story for this post sits below the tab for those who fancy something bittersweet to read.
|Instagram|
Until It’s Time for You to Go
December 1973. A single phone call brought him back into her life. It was a name she hadn’t heard in years: Ronald Spence. A childhood friend. A name that’d been conflated with promise and potential. The child prodigy, primed to be groomed for Britain’s halls of power. She thought she might hear his name again one day in humdrum political campaign adverts on the radio or telly.
This wasn’t what she expected.
Drug charges. Repeat offender. Caught cultivating and smoking cannabis. Habitual heroin user. Low life. Drifter. Deadbeat. Junkie. He needed someone to pay his bail.
They called her during rehearsal for Spartacus. Some solicitor’s aid in London. Said they had a client who’d given her name. She had to shunt her second on so she could make the trip. At half-past one in the morning, she came with the £4,000 bail.
There was no “Long time no see,” or “Thanks for coming up, Harlow,” when she arrived. He just gave her a long look and settled on: “Nothing is more terrifying than your own potential, Harlow.” As though he knew precisely what she was thinking: what have you done to yourself, and why?
All profundity, though, was thrown aside when he followed up with, “You’re a bottle blonde now, I see.”
She raised a brow. “And you’re a heroin addict now, I hear.”
He laughed. Rich and melodic.
She paid his bail. His doctor, wearing the look of a funeral home director on the clock, took her aside and put Ronald’s medical records in her hand. She didn’t get a chance to read through them—somewhere between the courthouse and hers, they disappeared. Likely down Ronald’s pants, never to be seen again.
But she took him home. Her home. He had no place of residence, nowhere to go. His family wanted nothing to do with him. His father, a high-flying lawyer who once defended the Rolling Stones on drug charges, now claimed he had no son. His mother destroyed herself with drink to cope with her son’s addictions. Yet for a time, she’d been desperate to keep her only child (and his habit) afloat. Sold every nice thing she owned. It all came to a head when she went to pawn her jewellery. Because someone else had beaten her to it.
Her wedding ring was all that was left. Everything else was shot up into the veins of her twenty-year-old son.
His parents disowned him. His uncle and aunts, too, when word got around. Cousins. Grandparents. Everyone. “I am officially persona non grata, Harlow,” he told her on the train home. He said it as if warning her that she ought to reconsider the charity of taking him in—she, too, might be branded an outcast for daring to even look at him, let alone put a roof over his head.
She ignored it. “Well, if you’re without friends, even, where have you been living?”
“Oh, I didn’t say I was without friends. No, me and Big Daddy Milton, we’re a team. We fly real high.” He said it as though he were on stage in Shakespeare, not sitting beside her on the last train for Wandsworth.
“Dare I ask?”
He laughed—a quiet puff of air through his large nose. There was a distinct lack of mirth to it. “Poor Milton. They threw the whole book at him. Got a year in prison. And that’s with probation.” He sat back then, lounging against the train seat and unspooling his thin and ragged body with a sigh. For a few moments, he simply watched the ceiling, likely staring through it and back into his memories. The movement of the train gently rocked him. “It should’ve been me; he never smoked the stuff.”
She asked after the subject of his guilt—this ‘Big Daddy Milton’ character—and received a rundown of Ronald’s life for the past four years.
Ronald Spence had been arrested while hiding in a cannabis patch in Oxford. The property belonged to ‘Big Daddy Milton’, some hotshot barrister. For two years, Ronald lived with him. Before that, he’d lived in a squat in East London. There, he’d befriended two women, the eighteen-year-old Jessica Bobin, and the twenty-eight-year-old divorcee and mother of four, Patricia Nodge. Tired of the squat, they’d set their sights on better horizons and motored off for York. They got halfway there before the car gave out. For half the night, they sat on the roadside before someone thought to pull over.
Milton Dobson was a barrister from Oxford. Forty. A bachelor. Had some weakness about the shoulders. Hair the colour of ash. Had no idea how to fix a car. But he’d pulled over.
Abandoning their wreck, he’d taken them back to his home in Oxford. It was a quaint, tired cottage, the kind of place that felt ill at ease without a small family occupying it. Dobson let them stay for a week. Then a month. Then a year.
During the week, he resided in London to practice law. But on weekends, he’d stay on at the cottage. Patricia kept house for him. Jessica read every beauty and gossip magazine this side of England, and Ronald tended the garden and kept his heroin habit.
“You make a strange group of friends—the heroin addict, the mother of four, the sprite, and the burnt-out lawyer,” Bella commented.
“All lame ducks, the lot of us. Unlike you, Harlow. First soloist for the Royal Ballet.” He raised his brows expectantly, breathing out a lungful of cigarette smoke.
“I’m surprised you know.”
He was quiet for a breath. Before he dropped his cigarette on the train floor and crushed it underfoot. “I went and saw Onegin two seasons ago.” Oh. “Almost didn’t recognise you.” The way he looked at her then. The way men look at women sometimes. The intensity behind it; the sexual undercurrent.
She turned away, curbing the urge to roll her eyes. “Did you enjoy it?” she asked.
“Greatly.”
“Why didn’t you—wait. The flowers: were they you?”
After one particular late-night performance, backstage, she’d found a small bouquet of flowers awaiting her on her dressing table. There was no note attached, no name given. Just a posy of red carnations.
Here and now, Ronald smirked. “Did you enjoy it?” He turned her question back on her.
“You caused a minor stir—it’s not every performance that one of the grunts receives mystery flowers. Usually, all the praise, flowers and chocolates go to our principal. Bets were running on who my secret admirer was.”
“Was I an option?”
“Yes.”
Ronald was quiet—stunned at being caught red-handed, most likely.
She could have told him that half the company were wagering on her wannabe-fancy-man being some fat, elderly French millionaire, or a serial stalker (who collected the skin of ballerinas). But her own quiet bet had apparently paid off. “Red carnations gave you away, Ronnie. Anyone else would have plumped for roses.”
“You used to like carnations.”
“Still do.”
Quiet. Nothing but the gentle click-clack of the train tracks.
“Are you still on heroin?” she broached the tension, eager to ask the other question that was burning on her mind (and change the subject).
He took the question in stride. “No.”
“How about cannabis?”
“Never on Saturdays, never on Sundays.”
She raised a brow. Ronnie didn’t respond, except for a quiet, enigmatic smirk. An inside joke she wasn’t privy to, obviously.
That first night, that was all he cared to tell her of himself. She didn’t pry any further. What he’d shared already was enough to keep her mind turning over for hours—days, even. Long gone was the golden child and star pupil once set on a path that’d funnel him directly into Whitehall; that boy who’d bullied her into being his best friend. Instead, here sat a strung-out recovering junkie who could have passed as an off-brand Mick Jagger. It was a lot to process.
He settled into her home, as well as her life. Found a corner of her days and nights to wedge himself into. It unnerved her initially how easily he did it; how easily he stitched himself into her habits, rhythms, and wonts, and made himself indispensable to her.
He tended the garden, kept her house, and cooked for her. He spoke to and befriended her neighbours (Old Margaret, the widow over her back wall, handed him gifts—of the kind couples looking to start married life received). He fixed the rusted radiator. Fixed the broken banister. Wanted to restore her late father’s old 1930s roadster.
But most of all, he loved the garden. She’d never seen such a passionate love affair. He spent hours salvaging what he could, turning the overgrown Amazonian jungle into the Kew Gardens. She bought him a new set of gardening tools—her mother’s were rusted beyond salvation.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though. Despite the congenial air, sometimes the tension bubbled to the surface. Sometimes, she lost her temper.
It was something to be expected, perhaps. Because sometimes she forgot the circumstances that brought Ronald Spence back into her life.
The problem was he was so well spoken. Upright. Confident. He may not have gotten past his first day at Cambridge, but he gave off the air of a Cambridge Man. That good breeding that he came from was so ingrained in him. He spoke with the plummy accent of his forebears and could comfortably settle himself into a robust debate about the finer points of Thomas Aquinas or Foucault. One evening, rather than pull out her records and shuffle the couch back to dance, he had her sit centre of the couch so he could recite the Odyssey to her in Ancient Greek. Then Virgil’s Aeneid in Latin.
It set her teeth on edge.
At school, they’d been two peas in a pod. They’d met in drama club, or the “Ledgedites Society”, as their little troop of thespians preferred to be called. She made a mean Don Quixote at twelve. He did an uncanny Richard the Third when armed with a pillow-turned-hump beneath his shirt.
But, beyond the theatrics of the stage, she was quiet and studious. He maintained his brash loudness on and off stage, always vibrant and so full of life.
And brilliant.
Ronnie Spence accomplished everything with the apparent effortlessness of a god. She’d always been second to him. At Ledgewick, she’d been relegated to his shadow despite her own intellectual promise and potential. He’d been tapped on the shoulder in the womb to one day become prime minister. He came from the right family, the right social milieu, had the right name and gender, and was prone to thinking the right thoughts. He had everything.
After she’d left for the Royal Ballet School, he continued on at Ledgewick College, their star pupil shining bright. Even before graduating, he secured Cambridge’s most prestigious scholarship.
He was introduced to heroin on his first day at university. He didn’t make it six months before forfeiting his scholarship.
…But he’d once been brilliant.
And that’s what made her irate. Such potential and promise, wasted. He was the possessor of many a gift. And look how he’d squandered it. God, how royally he’d fucked himself.
She never said it to him outright. But when she yelled at him over trivial things, he was clever enough to suss out why she was really yelling at him. “Like I told you in the nick, Harlow. There’s nothing more terrifying than facing your own potential. Overcoming the beast that is your own promise…” He looked at her then, quiet and serious. “Only one of us made it, Harlow,” he whispered.
She intended to help him get his life back on track. He was twenty-four. Brainier than the average prep school science teacher (even after the hammering of drugs and alcohol for four long years). A good-time Charlie who genuinely liked people (or, at least, was very good at pretending he did). He wasn’t without time or options. She’d help him.
She suggested he find a job. There were jobs going down at the docks. She could also ask around with the mothers at the ballet school she ran, see if their husbands caught wind of any work going somewhere. Grocers and corner shops were always looking for someone. Maybe some nursery or the local council were looking for gardeners.
“I’ll try the docks,” he told her, laughing. He watched her, and she couldn’t puzzle out the look on his face.
They went on like this for a while, pretending he had a future. She hadn’t an inkling that something was off—not until Ronnie disappeared for a day and a night. At the time, she’d thought he’d done a bunk, that he’d grown tired of domesticity and run off back to a life of drugs, sex and rock’n’roll. Maybe it’d been inevitable.
Then came the knock a little before midnight. Two young women stood on her doorstep with Ronnie propped up between them. He was near comatose, limp, and racked with chills. She’d seen livelier corpses.
“He said he wanted to come back here. No hospital,” the older of the two women said—a blonde who looked and sounded like she’d brook no nonsense.
The problem had to be drug-related—he’d overdosed on dirty heroin, surely.
The women shared a look, and it became apparent that the truth was much worse. “Ronnie ain’t told you?” the younger of the two said, a shapely redhead with a thick cockney accent.
“Told me what?”
The blonde cleared her throat. “This is awkward. No, girl. He’s come back…‘cuz he wants to die here.”
Cancer. Leukemia. Stage Three. Riddled through his bones. He had little more than a year left to live.
At the hospital, she learnt Ronald had been avoiding his weekly check-ups. She gave him a dressing down. For everything: for lying, for not telling her, for neglecting treatment, for not trusting her. Then she burst into tears.
His health had been deteriorating for weeks, and he couldn’t face it. It was easier to run away, he told her…until an episode took him to the brink of death, and he realised he didn’t fancy dying on the streets in a puddle of piss. He’d asked Jessica and Patricia to bring him back.
“It was cruel. It was cruel not to tell me.”
“I’m sorry. But you’re all alone in that house. I didn’t want to give you false hope.”
False hope? False hope for what?
She felt all flushed with fever, embarrassed by his eyes. He saw too much of her. Knew she enjoyed the carnations and foxgloves he brought her from the garden. He knew she lay awake at night, tossing and turning until she made herself seasick with worry over him. Knew how he liked his coffee and tea. She knew to put on Roberta Flack whenever the mood took him. Fixed the rip in his jeans. She bought him the Stones’ latest album on a whim. Bought him boot polish. Bought him booze. Bought him all his toiletries, new gardening tools, anything and everything he ever expressed a need for.
Thank God he never asked for smack or hash.
But Ronnie saw all of this. He saw right through her silly pretence of keeping distance. He knew that when she sought his company, his job was to keep her warm and laughing.
She’d missed him. She missed the casual affection they’d enjoyed at school. And now that she had it back…
She managed to accurately diagnose the reason for him keeping his terminal prognosis under lock and key: so she’d treat him like a person, not a walking corpse. He enjoyed her yelling at him and being on his case to get his act together. Liked pretending he had a future. “Sorry, Harlow. But, if it’s any consolation, I’ll be out of your hair in six months.”
“No.”
“Sorry. No say in the matter, I’m afraid.”
The tears were relentless. They came welling up, and she had to cover her mouth. Ronald took pity on her. “Don’t regret yelling at me, old thing. I got a kick out of it.”
Finally, she sat beside him on his hospital bed. But what to say? She picked up his wig off the nightstand. “I knew this was fake. I just knew it.”
“What gave it away?”
“Other than the shaggy-goat chic? The sheer degree of volume you’ve got. I have to lacquer my hair to get anything close.”
He laughed. “You sound jealous. You’re welcome to try it on.”
“Thank you. But I wouldn’t want to give you girl cooties.”
“Who said I don’t want girl cooties? Maybe I want my wig slathered in them.”
She laughed, but popped the wig back on the nightstand. “I don’t know what you think you could accomplish with a wig full of girl cooties.”
“Oh, I can think of a few things.” His voice dropped to smooth velvet, and she found she couldn’t look at him.
“…Least your libido hasn’t perished yet.”
“I truly do pray that’s the last thing to go.”
She shook her head. “You are incorrigible.”
She wanted him to stay on with her. It was either he came to hers, or he stayed on at the hospital for the few months he had left. She couldn’t abide by that. So she took him back home, where she could keep him company and comfortable…as he died.
God, he was only twenty-four. Same age as her. At twenty-four, you were supposed to be figuring out what to do for the rest of the long road ahead of you—career, love, family, hobbies, and vocations. Not waiting to die. “How strange life is sometimes, hmm?” he whispered one night. “To go from the yellow brick road to guaranteed success, to sleeping in a gutter awaiting Death.”
“Excuse you. My house is not a gutter.”
“No. Nor is your bed.” With a smile into her neck, he rolled on top. She sighed, settled back, and let him do as he pleased.
But his romantic overtures were interrupted by her fists bunching at his shoulders. “It’s cruel,” she whispered into the dark. He stopped mouthing at her skin. “It’s not strange,” she clarified, “it’s cruel.”
After a time, he resumed his business at her neck. “…Life often isn’t kind, Bella.” Kiss. “It feels no such obligation.” Kiss. “Unlike you, my dear.”
From beneath him, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close. In less than a year, she wouldn’t be able to. And before this was no more, she would revel in it. In him. He always burnt so brightly, she couldn’t imagine him lying quiet and still beneath the earth.
(The best of this post and its reblogs, but with links that work)
Here is a website where you can scroll down to all the different levels of the ocean
Here is a website where you can see the future of the universe
Here is a website where you can press a ‘make everything okay’ button, over and over, until things really are okay
Here is a website that you can read if you feel like a burden
Here is a website where you can look at strobe illusions (TW strobe/flashing)
Here is a website where you can cut stuff up (TW blood/sh)
Here and here are websites where you can play with sand
Here is a website where you can draw with macaroni and other fun foods
Here is a website where you can paint someone’s nails
Here is a website where you can grow a garden with emojis
Here is a website with hundreds of videos of people hugging you (rightfully dubbed ‘the nicest place on the internet’ because it really is, y’all, it made me cry)
Here is a website that will take you to other useless websites
Here is a website where you can make a tiny cat play bongo drums (and other instruments!)
Here is a website to help give you gentle reminders <3
Here is a website where you can grow a tiny farm
Here is a website where you can take a bunch of scientific personality tests
