More character profiles:
Javier Emanuel Serafin Foster Rosario was born at the Woodstock arts and music festival, August 16, 1969. He had no name until the pair of hippies who took him home arrived back in Austin to stay with their grandmother- a pair of hippies, it should be mentioned, who were decidedly not pregnant when they left to hitch to all the summer festivals three months before. Their grandmother, one Anna Elisa Rosario Ortiz Foster, took immediate charge of the infant, and saw to it he was clothed (for the first time ever, and despite his unhappiness at the idea), fed and properly named. Anna was gregarious, opinionated, practical and strong, a devout catholic and a widow at the age of 48 who had raised 5 children and worked to put them all through school. Joe barely noticed when his hippie ‘parents’ left for India later that same year.
Joe loved his Nana with all the sweet devotion he’s so capable of, and it was extremely traumatic for him when she died in 1980 of a stroke, not the less because he was the one to find her, dead on her immaculately scrubbed kitchen floor. He still wears her crucifix in remembrance of her, though he no longer believes in any religion at all, much less the catholic.
After her death, Joe found himself passed around among various relatives and friends of the family, living a few months each in Houston, Galveston, Taos, New Mexico and Gainesville, Florida before returning to Austin to live with the daughter of one of Anna’s cousins in 1982. Having found himself variously unwanted by all of Anna’s relatives, he decides to run away and search for his real parents. However, on his first morning away from home, he’s caught sleeping in the bed of a pickup truck by none other than our own Donny Rosario (either no relation to Anna’s family, or something like the great-grandson of her father’s sister). Donny cooks him a big breakfast, and even lets him have some coffee (I’ll probably write this at some point. Someone should.). Donny also doesn’t protest when Joe shows up for dinner that night. After a few days of sleeping on Donny’s couch, Joe is convinced to go home for the beginning of the school year, with the promise that he can come over and hang out- either at the apartment or the garage- when ever he wants. With this refuge from his indifferent aunt and uncle, Joe manages to make it through the rest of high school, graduating in the lower third of his class. Donny also manages to keep Joe out of too much trouble with the rough crowd he tends to run with, his quiet, stern disapproval more than enough to chastise Joe for getting mixed up with drugs and fights.
Upon graduating high school, Joe leaves Austin on his second attempt to locate his birth parents in the summer of 1987, and returns in the spring ’88. About this trip, he has never said a word to anyone, nor is he likely to. He moves into Donny’s apartment immediately on his return, not even bothering to retrieve his clothes or his broken down guitar from his aunt’s house (she had thrown them out as soon as he left, anyway). Donny agrees to let him work part time at the garage office to help cover the rent while he looks for a job. Between the summer of ‘88 and the winter of 90-91 Joe works a string of odd jobs that don’t require him to wear a shirt. Jackets, yes. Shirts, no, until a job as a third-shift security guard brings his bare-chested era to an end. Finally 21, Joe discovers his calling, and manages to put himself through bartending school. He lands his first bartending gig in late ’91, and moves over to Marie’s in fall ’94. Joe dreams of someday running his own bar, though he finds the amount of work Donny puts into his business daunting.
Overall, Joe is easygoing, sensual, sarcastic and rebellious with a deeply-buried romantic streak and a healthy chunk of hard-won pride. He discovered his bisexuality early and the joys of casual sex soon thereafter. Though he’s had several long-standing fuck-buddies, Len is his first Serious Relationship. Definitely a night person, he has no trouble seeing the sunrise, as long as it’s at the end of his day. Joe is in charge of maintaining Donny’s houseplants, which love him, especially the cacti he keeps near his couch. If he were to have a pet, he’d probably want a dog, or a huge badass iguana. He, of course, loves fishing, and can swim, though not very well. He can also merenge, bachata, salsa and country line dance and make it look good. His motorcycle, Delilah, an ancient Harley in need of a complete overhaul, was purchased in 1991 before Donny could point out that it belonged in a junkyard, and has been taking up space down at the garage ever since. Fortunately, Riley has adopted it as her pet project, on the condition that she is awarded part-ownership if she ever manages to get it running. His nick name was given him the second he entered public school. Nana was the only person allowed to call him Javier, ever- in fact most people don’t know his real name and will occasionally call him Joseph, which he lets slide.
Angelina Lauren Baker, or Riley as she re-named herself upon leaving her parents’ house, was conceived in the Bahamas after a few too many daiquiris- a fact her mother never fails to bring up when unpleasantly confronted with her daughter’s existence. Riley was everything her career-driven, Old Dallas parents didn’t want in a child- loud, messy, stubborn, disrespectful and young- a constant problem that could only be temporarily solved with a liberal application of money.
She’s also practical, athletic, mechanically inclined, and devoutly against anything even remotely girly. She started cutting her own hair when she was 7 and has kept it as short as possible ever since. It’s not that she should have been born a boy- she rather likes her body, in fact- it lets her do cool stuff like eat and ride bikes and fix engines. It’s just that she has no interest in looking pretty or any of that romance crap. She’s got better things to do.
Riley always has things to do and places to go. Her campaign against sitting still developed even before her penchant for taking things apart, and she ran all of her nannies, au pairs and babysitters ragged- none of them lasted more than six months. Boarding school was no better. Between increasing problems with her peers and her utter lack of interest in academics or respect for school policy, she’s set records for amount of time spent on probation at every school she’s attended. Middle school was especially trying, and she only graduated on the strength of her parents' generosity to the institution.
Within weeks of starting 9th grade at an upper crust private academy, Riley found herself threatened with expulsion for beating up the president’s nephew. Unable to stomach staying at academy or returning to her parents’ house, she withdrew from the school, took a cab into Dallas, ditched most of her stuff in a convenient dumpster and hitchhiked out of the city. Her third ride turned out to be Joe, in Donny’s rattling old pickup. They fought like siblings, she and Donny bonded instantly, and her night on the spare couch turned into a week, then a month. Once she started hanging around him at the garage, and demonstrated both an interest and an aptitude for the work, Donny gave her a part-time job. Though he was unhappy about it, they agreed not to make her attend public high school due to the dubious legality of her situation. Instead they bought her a fake ID, claiming she’s 18 (not 21, despite her protests), made her promise to get her GED some day, and let everyone believe she was Donny’s niece. Riley made a number of warm acquaintances through the garage, the skate park where she goes to ride her BMX, the local music scene and the free bike shop where she hangs out, though she has no close friends outside Donny and Joe, (until 1994, anyway). She hasn’t talked to her parents since she left school, and isn’t sure whether they’re looking for her or not. She also isn’t sure whether she wants to know, so, like most unpleasant things, she tries not to think about it. No one in Austin knows her real name, or that she was forced to take violin lessons when she was little. Joe knows that the backs of her knees are extremely ticklish, but if he tells anyone, she’ll kill him.
Above all she’s Goku- optimistic, confident, open, straightforward to the point of tactlessness, street-smart rather than book-smart yet capable of penetrating insights into people and situations. She runs on guts, instinct, and unflagging enthusiasm. She’s also slightly more standoffish than Goku due to her distant parents and slightly more sensitive to the social friction created by her general indifference toward others’ expectations. She can be slow to trust people but will do anything for those she loves.
Zane Colson-Smith was born to Joyce Colson, Jefferson Smith, Chip Levay and Vera Ferguson in Virginia in 1978. He was the youngest of the family’s four children, including his older brother, Victor Colson-Levay and his sisters, Fern and Bennet Ferguson-Levay. Moved with Joyce and Jeff to Austin at the age of four, he has been a solitary and independent sort of boy ever since. He sees his siblings every couple of summers, when they spend a month in Virginia, though these visits have become less and less frequent over the years, as Joyce and Jeff became increasingly involved with their careers and the Austin community. His older sister, Fern, and he were particularly close, and they still write each other letters every month. Though Joyce insists on the closeness of the two halves of their family, to Zane his other father and mother feel more like an aunt and uncle, and his siblings like the cousins you only see once a year. He doesn't really remember how it was when they all lived together.
Singled out for his odd dress, odd parents, general aloofness, and feminin-ish beauty, Zane has been in almost as many fights as Riley, and held his own just as well, though unlike his girlfriend, none of his fights were initiated by him. School administrators and guidance counselors fail to grasp this, however, and he spent a lot of his time in public school suspended or in detention. When the same problems followed him from middle to high school, and an unwary guidance counselor suggested to Joyce that she needed to discipline her son more, Zane left public school for home schooling- or no-schooling as his parents' lack of supervision generally renders it. Leaving school was both good and bad- good because school sucked but bad because of the isolation of his parents' house and himself in general. Fortunately, Zane is good at inventing things to do, for example, making his own clothes, though the boredom and utter lack of a schedule some times makes him listless and depressed.
Bright but generally uninterested in academics, Zane was none-the-less a very hard working student because he felt it was expected of him. He is, in fact, hyperaware of others' expectations and tends to go out of his way to try and fulfill them. This creates some conflict with his parents, whose expectations are few and far between. They nurture his artistic side, so he puts a lot of his energy into film and photography. Zane's been fascinated by cameras since he was first allowed to play with them at the age of 4. After he transformed his closet into a dark room when he was 10, following instructions from a library book, his parents promptly got him real photography lessons. Three years later, Chip gave him an old 8mm camera he'd found him at a yard sale, and Zane became heavily involved in film. His first documentary was about insects, and his second about birds. He meets Riley while filming a piece for his series about the cultures of Austin. Highly visual, he also sketches well, occasionally paints, and often helps his father with his ceramics. He also helps his mom with her garden and does work around the house. His only friend his age is a boy named Harvey, who helps him with his films. Harvey is an AV and c computer geek, and a fellow outsider at school, though the two have drifted apart somewhat since Zane left. Their relationship by the time he meets Riley is almost coolly professional, and Zane's obsessiveness about his girlfriend only serves to make them more distant.
Zane's personality can seem to yo-yo, since he tends to take everything to extremes. When he's serious, he's Very Serious, but when he's having fun, he can be excitable, mischievous and take wild risks with a seeming blind faith in his own good luck. He has a dry sarcastic streak, which only surfaces around people he knows really well. He likes things to be clear-cut and organized, and is meticulously neat and precise when it comes to his art, though he's less so about other things. He can also be a bit of a worrier, and has a tendency to obsess over things- like his girlfriend. Riley is his first real love interest, aside from a hopeless crush on Tori Amos, and some vague sexual feelings in the direction of various breasts. She dispels his lingering feelings of alienation and stagnation, while he helps her feel secure and centered- the two of them together are comfortable in a way they are not when alone, no matter where they are.
Born in Buffalo, New York in 1948 to uprooted, conservative Texan parents, Joyce Colson is a staunch feminist, pacifist, vegetarian and considers herself a practicing polyamourist. Joyce met her first partner, Chip, at Columbia through the Students for a Democratic Society, and they both participated in the takeover of Columbia University in 1968, as well other radical anti-war activities. She was wavering between pre-med and botany, and he was in pre-law. After a somewhat stormy relationship, the pair decided to travel for the summer after their graduation, met Vera Ferguson at a Folk festival and ended up hitchhiking to her home in British Columbia with her when Chip was drafted. Living in BC until the end of the war, both Joyce and Vera found themselves pregnant in 1972, putting a great deal of stress on their finances and to a lesser extent on their relationship with Chip. But these things worked themselves out, and in 1975, the entire family uprooted and moved to Chip’s native Virginia, where they met and promptly seduced Jefferson later that year. Vera and Chip had decided to have another child, their daughter Bennet, in 1974, and Joyce and Jeff had Zane in 1978. By this time, both Vera and Chip were deeply involved in a Waldorf School they were helping to found, so when Joyce inherited her Grandmother’s ancestral ranch house in Austin in 1982, they felt unable to leave Virginia. Feeling a deep connection to her roots in Austin, Joyce makes an attempt to get the other half of her family to move to Austin at least once a year, but has thus far been unsuccessful. In a word her personality is forceful. She’s still idealistic (though by now it’s tempered with plenty of practical experience), wise, upbeat and outgoing, with a somewhat mystical bent. She’s hyperconscious of her own tendency to be controlling, and can sometimes go too far in the opposite direction, providing her son with no direction at all. She’s a consulting naturopath and runs a small business selling home-grown herbs, tinctures and other remedies. She also volunteers at a local women’s’ shelter, where she counsels, organizes and teaches sexual education classes.
Five years younger than his common-law wife, Jefferson Smith an artist by temperament and by trade. He met Joyce, Chip and Vera while working as a potter/historical reenactor at Colonial Williamsburg in VA. Trained in short stints at several different art programs, including RISDI and the University of Virginia, he brings a great deal of patient, intent effort to the unique, complex glazing and firing process he’s developed. He sells and exhibits his works through several Austin galleries and stores. A craftsman and DIYer, he takes a great deal of pleasure in maintaining their old ranch house and its outbuildings and gardens. He also loves animals, in particular his dogs. Quiet, warm and casual with a wry sense of humor, he’s the kind of person who only really relaxes when he’s getting something done. He has walked with a limp since he fell from his parents’ roof as a teenager, which saved him from the draft and has had little to no effect on his life otherwise.
So, protests? Additions? Subtractions?
Here are some helpful links I came across while doing these:
Texas maps through UT. Many, many maps with lots of info that might be helpful for setting the scene.
Vietnam Timeline Very complete, good for backstories.
Also: Does anyone else remember that book, “Reviving Orphelia” being a huge deal in 95/96? Because I have this mental image of Donny reading it, and Riley laughing at him- he’s all parental! XD