i'm wearing my special occasion polo
Happy Year One of the Mystical LIBRARY ARTS, girl! This is all for you. (and probably won't make sense to anyone who isn't faded-lilac)
First off, I am sorry that this did not come out when you actually finished your year. But in the grand tradition (birthday + one month and eleven days, December 16, birds' birthdays) (an account on which I still get notifications and trash, did I tell you that?) I think this is okay.
I mean, you like me, right? And will tolerate nearly everything I do -- most of which is overwhelmingly, grossly self-centered -- and this is for you, girl.
A Short List of Things You Like
Purple
Cake
Amazing crossovers in life
Books
Learning-jokes
the Boston Blades
being awful
Walks
Parks
Feminism
#stammertime
Books
Ladies
Canada
Databases and teaching people how to find stuff
Flip-flops
Having opinions
Baking
Costumes
Summertime
Cruel schadenfreude
Brunch
Learning the US Presidents
Smugness
Hockey
(truly I don't see how you can have a HOCKEY CANADA sign on your wall when these idiots [Stastny, Pacioretty, Johnson] are our MNT. I truly don't see it.)
(terrible) YA fiction
Haircuts
Tiny Animals
Magnets
also, me.
So I guess you HAVE TO put up with thousands of words of and also some pictures. CONGRATS.
Remember when I told you about Martin Brodeur: King of France, and we both thought it was wildly shameful and I should probably not share it? Each of my mistakes (=stories) is now worse than the last.
"Holy moly, is that a horse?" They're standing in the backyard, blinking in the sunlight. Or at least, Tavares is. Weight seems unbothered by the sudden shift from secret problem-solving bunker to tree-lined yard.
"Yes. Not for you, though. Unless." Weight seems to be calculating something.
Tavares intervenes. "Uh, no, Not unless you count the time I went to the carnival in Mississauga and stood on the back of a carousel horse. I was six," he hurriedly clarifies, so that Weight doesn't get any ideas about trick riding or Lippanzers. "How about I just take my car. I even filled it up like, two days ago."
Weight fiddles with his keyring. The horse munches some grass. "Expensive, was it?"
"Kinda, yeah? But the Audi gets really good mileage."
"Was it as expensive as your life?" Weight turns toward him, and asks. "Your life?"
"Um," is all Tavares can work out, because what the fuck. When did the conversation get this weird - probably when he volunteered to go to New Jersey. He hasn't even lived in New York that long and he knows about Jersey, knows about it."I don't think so. It was like, forty-five bucks. But there was only like a quarter of a tank. Neither of those things are true about my life, I promise."
"Good." Weight looks at the horse. "You should get going. It will be sunset soon." The sun glitters down on them. Tavares keeps his opinions - it's late May, and like three in the afternoon, if it gets dark I will just turn on the lights - to himself, since Weight is doing that thing where he says words like they're part of a conversation, but it's really a one-sided thing.
"I'll just go through the uh, tunnel? The one that goes through downtown? That's a fast way to get there, right?" Tavares is pretty sure that there's a tunnel somehow involved in at least one way to get to New Jersey. Last time they played the Devils away, the bus had gone though a tunnel for definite. It had been a kinda long tunnel, and there'd been a lot more driving after, but he can follow the signs. He's plenty attentive, yeah.
He thinks about maybe calling his mom: she has good ideas almost all the time, and he feels like he ought to, since this is kinda serious business. On the other hand, it is completely insane serious business, and he's kinda worried about blabbing around, since it is supposed to be a secret mission. Which his mom would definitely understand, and be helpful about, unlike say, any of his friends. Tavares belatedly remembers that he could talk to someone else, but like that's going to be anymore useful? All his friends are assholes. That's why they're friends, but it doesn't make them good at giving advice: he can just imagine asking Subban, after like twenty minutes of hysterical laughter and cackling he might -- might get something or other. Plus if he calls Subban, he'll probably also get Stamkos, who is a great dude but terrible at keeping secrets. Like, so bad that the second Flash page of nhl.com tomorrow might as well already read 'John Smarter: Mission to New Jersey.'
He calls his mom. "Hey, do you have a moment? It's me."
"What is it? The kids are at lunch, we can talk."
"You didn't keep them in to let them learn the wonders of math?" He's smiling at his own joke by the end of it.
"No, and stop sucking up to me. I'm your mother, I can tell when you're doing that."
"Okay, Mom. I get it. I was going to ask you for advice, but I guess I can call someone else."
"Oh what is it."
"Well, see." Tavares is temporarily embarrassed. It is sort of embarrassing to say. "Well, see, I'm on this mission to rescue a rookie from the clutches of an established player, and I got this mission, which yes, sounds super-dumb, but I have to actually succeed."
"Well, where are they?" His mom has never really followed the NHL. She likes going to games, but she's always claimed that twenty-nine extra team names are far too much for her to manage, she already has to know the names of all the incoming students. "You could talk to Sam about this. He liked those, what, those Lords of the Rings books."
"Lord of the Rings, Mom. I'm not sure that would be helpful since I am rescuing a person, not throwing a ring into a volcano. Also it's real life and not Middle Earth." He knows this shit; him and Gagner saw the movies in theaters, and when the movies all came out on DVD they'd totally watched them in sequence. With the deleted scenes. It had taken like, ten hours, but that's what best friends are for, as Gagner had insisted when Tavares started getting restless, about four-and-a-half hours in. And then he'd put Tavares in a headlock, so they'd basically had to watch the next six hours or whatever with his ear squashed on Ganger's thigh. "And I think it's only because he liked having a hobbit idol who was as short as him."
"Now, John." She says it quellingly, and he kinda feels like a shitty friend, even if Gagner isn't around to be insulted by it. "Sam is really one of your more sensible friends. If you don't like talking to me about it, you could talk to him."
Sensible, ha. Gagner spends his free time these days (some of the time, anyway: it's not like they never hang out) with Patrick Kane. Patrick Kane, who'd probably advocate throwing Henrique into a volcano. Tavares thinks about it for a second, and decides that's definitely exactly what Patrick Kane would say. Sometimes he wonders if everyone except him is really as dumb as he sometimes thinks they are. It's not a nice thought, but it's a true one. He shrugs.
Here's an interlude from the MOST DEPRESSING CANON HET story ever, written immediately after I read "The Hanging Tree." What could be worse than Soupy and Gracie's shared pasts of sexual and emotional trauma? Gus mowing all over the exposed nerves of ongoing trauma:
"She doesn't do that. Anyway, my mom's going to be around, it's nothing like what you're thinking." My mom, she'd tolerate a lot of stuff, and joined in on our jokes most of the time anyways, but Soupy and Gracie going for it might be too much even for her.
"You're not gonna make a Missus Robinson joke," I asked Soupy, "alright? 'Cause Greg de Vries tried it in English Lit, and I got him afterwards." I tried to inject a lot of menace into my voice, like how Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade did. And they were smart guys too; I'd just told Greg to stuff it, and made like I was going to trip him in the corridor.
Soupy made a kinda strange face, like he didn't believe me and thought the whole thing was gross. Which it was, but it wasn't like I was the one who had brought it up. "Yeah. You get him good? I wouldn't do that, I like your mom too much. Plus she's making us food, Gus. We are going to eat like kings tonight."
As a reward for the Hurricanes actually not putting together an all-Staal line until they were well and truly sunk, I wrote this, where Jiri Tlusty needs a friend and Alex Semin's into cool ladies with rockabilly tattoos. Why I thought this would be a reward I do not know, but later Semin gets a girlfriend and Tlusty gets a boyfriend and they learn about friendship:
He likes women. Kissing them, of course: wine-red lips and uneven teeth, a slight scar from a childhood high-stick, the slick of flavoured lip protectant. He likes putting his hands to arches, straight lines of bones, fleshy curves, the persistent heat next to him in bed.
He's always got on well with them, though. It never bothered him, though. They're generally easy to talk to, not so protective as men, and kinder about his accent. The first person he spoke English to hadn't been a teammate: it had been the teenager with a half-shaved head who worked at the lunch counter on Fourteenth. He'd been nervous, out alone in the new city, but she'd understood him, even if, looking back, he'd had a painfully-bad accent and she'd probably been frustrated but she'd never raised her voice like he was earless or spoken slowly to him like he was a little boy. She'd been unusually kind, packing up his various sandwiches, waiting with a small smile while he counted out the unfamiliar money. But he's found that women generally are that way: they don't mind taking a bit of extra time, and they look at him quite fondly.
They don't want things from him, either. Not unless he wants them too, and it's a nice thing about women here: when they want to have sex, they're direct and will say so. He's not looking to get married, not now, and they aren't either. It's a nice thing about women here, women in the United States, a good character feature. They grow up learning about how they will have jobs of their own, interests in gardening or comedy and then perhaps later, in children. Evelyn had insisted they split the check, even though she worked as a preservationist, restoring books, and he was, well.
He shuffles away from Tlusty, and Tlusty lets his hand fall away from Semin's forearm.
"I was so excited. I though that you were." A climbing blush makes Tlusty out in scarlet and pinked skin. "That. I thought so, but I guess I got it wrong. "
And, obviously:
"What was that?" William asks the hallway.
Hanover's damp palm leeches on his shoulder. "Don't worry about it. T's got it in the bag."
William turns to look at him. "What?"
Hanover, lacking a shoulder to hang off like a limpet to a rock, holds his hands up and shrugs. "Like I said, it's taken care of."
"Okay, fine, that's great, you've told me that. What is Tarleton doing? What was that? We're not in a Mob movie, you know. You have to explain what words mean when we talk." William sounds more plaintive than he intends, but he really didn't like 'The Godfather' very much at all.
"I did, didn't I? Clarkson was hassling Pitt. I'd have thought you'd support it, since you are friends and all. Or 'were,' you were friends I guess." Hanover shrugs again. "Your deal, man. I'm going to go wait for T to get out of the principal's office." He walks off, and William doesn't move at all.
"William. William, William!" Henry reaches out, and taps William's chin. "Close your mouth, you'll catch flies. That's what my mom says," he preemptively explains, even thought William is still staring down the hall. The door has totally stopped swinging on its hinges, and still William stares where Hanover had gone.
Clarkson had been hassling William? William would dismiss it out of hand, because he always knows what's going on with William, and Hanover is no one's favorite person. But William hasn't talked to William, really talked, in a while. He can't believe Hanover is better informed than he.
Even more obviously:
Katniss can't make sense of her thoughts. "What was that?" Peeta stomps around the room, checking the buckles on their rucksacks and breathing loudly.
"You sound like you're from the coast. I hadn't really noticed, but some people do. And they care about it."
"Why?"
"You remember when you said that the popular broadcast shows have jokes about the Interior?" Peeta waves Katniss' objection away: they weren't jokes, they were just the funny characters. "There are broadcasts like that here, too. There's a really popular historical novela called 'Pen and Sword,' which that hostel-keeper's family had on earlier. It's about before Devolution, and the main character is a journalist in Castile de Roc. He has to outwit the coastal governor, who always wants to shut down the press or keep secret some depredation. Jose Pluma y Espada, that's his name, and he's very dashing. Anyway, the governor is not very good, although of course it's clear that he's trying to take the meanest orders and make it easier on the people. But when he's ordering his troops, and mocking Jose, he sounds like you."
"I don't say things like that." Katniss isn't apologetic, but she's also not oppressive. Some oppressor.
As much as she ever does, Peeta lets a whisper of frustration twist in her voice. "No, of course not. And you don't sound much like it either. But it's enough to get people suspicious. Some of them are still old enough to remember before Devolution."
Katniss looks alarmed. Peeta pats her shoulder. "Look, it's not many people. It's certainly not me. The innkeeper's just imaginative. Once we get to Acunum, we will all have bad accents, and they're not going to make any trouble."
"My Acunumi isn't good."
"Mine isn't either. Everyone's is bad, actually. They just speak it because some of the Districts to the south speak it. Government and bread, they go together." Peeta is pleasantly reassuring, but Katniss is still anxious. "It's just the wheat-farming districts. They're their own thing." Peeta waves a hand, to demonstrate.
"It won't be a problem, once we're competing, right? That my Acunumi is heavily-accented?"
"Well, it's really only those few Districts which speak it. Everyone else has to learn it in school, only the Massalians get one language, but most of us aren't good at it. You don't have to be, unless you want to be in government. And anyway, there's not much talking in the Game."
TRICKS IS GOOD, GIRL, TRICKS IS GOOD, AND YOU'RE THE BEST.
First off, I am sorry that this did not come out when you actually finished your year. But in the grand tradition (birthday + one month and eleven days, December 16, birds' birthdays) (an account on which I still get notifications and trash, did I tell you that?) I think this is okay.
I mean, you like me, right? And will tolerate nearly everything I do -- most of which is overwhelmingly, grossly self-centered -- and this is for you, girl.
A Short List of Things You Like
Purple
Cake
Amazing crossovers in life
Books
Learning-jokes
the Boston Blades
being awful
Walks
Parks
Feminism
#stammertime
Books
Ladies
Canada
Databases and teaching people how to find stuff
Flip-flops
Having opinions
Baking
Costumes
Summertime
Cruel schadenfreude
Brunch
Learning the US Presidents
Smugness
Hockey
(truly I don't see how you can have a HOCKEY CANADA sign on your wall when these idiots [Stastny, Pacioretty, Johnson] are our MNT. I truly don't see it.)
(terrible) YA fiction
Haircuts
Tiny Animals
Magnets
also, me.
So I guess you HAVE TO put up with thousands of words of and also some pictures. CONGRATS.
Remember when I told you about Martin Brodeur: King of France, and we both thought it was wildly shameful and I should probably not share it? Each of my mistakes (=stories) is now worse than the last.
"Holy moly, is that a horse?" They're standing in the backyard, blinking in the sunlight. Or at least, Tavares is. Weight seems unbothered by the sudden shift from secret problem-solving bunker to tree-lined yard.
"Yes. Not for you, though. Unless." Weight seems to be calculating something.
Tavares intervenes. "Uh, no, Not unless you count the time I went to the carnival in Mississauga and stood on the back of a carousel horse. I was six," he hurriedly clarifies, so that Weight doesn't get any ideas about trick riding or Lippanzers. "How about I just take my car. I even filled it up like, two days ago."
Weight fiddles with his keyring. The horse munches some grass. "Expensive, was it?"
"Kinda, yeah? But the Audi gets really good mileage."
"Was it as expensive as your life?" Weight turns toward him, and asks. "Your life?"
"Um," is all Tavares can work out, because what the fuck. When did the conversation get this weird - probably when he volunteered to go to New Jersey. He hasn't even lived in New York that long and he knows about Jersey, knows about it."I don't think so. It was like, forty-five bucks. But there was only like a quarter of a tank. Neither of those things are true about my life, I promise."
"Good." Weight looks at the horse. "You should get going. It will be sunset soon." The sun glitters down on them. Tavares keeps his opinions - it's late May, and like three in the afternoon, if it gets dark I will just turn on the lights - to himself, since Weight is doing that thing where he says words like they're part of a conversation, but it's really a one-sided thing.
"I'll just go through the uh, tunnel? The one that goes through downtown? That's a fast way to get there, right?" Tavares is pretty sure that there's a tunnel somehow involved in at least one way to get to New Jersey. Last time they played the Devils away, the bus had gone though a tunnel for definite. It had been a kinda long tunnel, and there'd been a lot more driving after, but he can follow the signs. He's plenty attentive, yeah.
He thinks about maybe calling his mom: she has good ideas almost all the time, and he feels like he ought to, since this is kinda serious business. On the other hand, it is completely insane serious business, and he's kinda worried about blabbing around, since it is supposed to be a secret mission. Which his mom would definitely understand, and be helpful about, unlike say, any of his friends. Tavares belatedly remembers that he could talk to someone else, but like that's going to be anymore useful? All his friends are assholes. That's why they're friends, but it doesn't make them good at giving advice: he can just imagine asking Subban, after like twenty minutes of hysterical laughter and cackling he might -- might get something or other. Plus if he calls Subban, he'll probably also get Stamkos, who is a great dude but terrible at keeping secrets. Like, so bad that the second Flash page of nhl.com tomorrow might as well already read 'John Smarter: Mission to New Jersey.'
He calls his mom. "Hey, do you have a moment? It's me."
"What is it? The kids are at lunch, we can talk."
"You didn't keep them in to let them learn the wonders of math?" He's smiling at his own joke by the end of it.
"No, and stop sucking up to me. I'm your mother, I can tell when you're doing that."
"Okay, Mom. I get it. I was going to ask you for advice, but I guess I can call someone else."
"Oh what is it."
"Well, see." Tavares is temporarily embarrassed. It is sort of embarrassing to say. "Well, see, I'm on this mission to rescue a rookie from the clutches of an established player, and I got this mission, which yes, sounds super-dumb, but I have to actually succeed."
"Well, where are they?" His mom has never really followed the NHL. She likes going to games, but she's always claimed that twenty-nine extra team names are far too much for her to manage, she already has to know the names of all the incoming students. "You could talk to Sam about this. He liked those, what, those Lords of the Rings books."
"Lord of the Rings, Mom. I'm not sure that would be helpful since I am rescuing a person, not throwing a ring into a volcano. Also it's real life and not Middle Earth." He knows this shit; him and Gagner saw the movies in theaters, and when the movies all came out on DVD they'd totally watched them in sequence. With the deleted scenes. It had taken like, ten hours, but that's what best friends are for, as Gagner had insisted when Tavares started getting restless, about four-and-a-half hours in. And then he'd put Tavares in a headlock, so they'd basically had to watch the next six hours or whatever with his ear squashed on Ganger's thigh. "And I think it's only because he liked having a hobbit idol who was as short as him."
"Now, John." She says it quellingly, and he kinda feels like a shitty friend, even if Gagner isn't around to be insulted by it. "Sam is really one of your more sensible friends. If you don't like talking to me about it, you could talk to him."
Sensible, ha. Gagner spends his free time these days (some of the time, anyway: it's not like they never hang out) with Patrick Kane. Patrick Kane, who'd probably advocate throwing Henrique into a volcano. Tavares thinks about it for a second, and decides that's definitely exactly what Patrick Kane would say. Sometimes he wonders if everyone except him is really as dumb as he sometimes thinks they are. It's not a nice thought, but it's a true one. He shrugs.
Here's an interlude from the MOST DEPRESSING CANON HET story ever, written immediately after I read "The Hanging Tree." What could be worse than Soupy and Gracie's shared pasts of sexual and emotional trauma? Gus mowing all over the exposed nerves of ongoing trauma:
"She doesn't do that. Anyway, my mom's going to be around, it's nothing like what you're thinking." My mom, she'd tolerate a lot of stuff, and joined in on our jokes most of the time anyways, but Soupy and Gracie going for it might be too much even for her.
"You're not gonna make a Missus Robinson joke," I asked Soupy, "alright? 'Cause Greg de Vries tried it in English Lit, and I got him afterwards." I tried to inject a lot of menace into my voice, like how Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade did. And they were smart guys too; I'd just told Greg to stuff it, and made like I was going to trip him in the corridor.
Soupy made a kinda strange face, like he didn't believe me and thought the whole thing was gross. Which it was, but it wasn't like I was the one who had brought it up. "Yeah. You get him good? I wouldn't do that, I like your mom too much. Plus she's making us food, Gus. We are going to eat like kings tonight."
As a reward for the Hurricanes actually not putting together an all-Staal line until they were well and truly sunk, I wrote this, where Jiri Tlusty needs a friend and Alex Semin's into cool ladies with rockabilly tattoos. Why I thought this would be a reward I do not know, but later Semin gets a girlfriend and Tlusty gets a boyfriend and they learn about friendship:
He likes women. Kissing them, of course: wine-red lips and uneven teeth, a slight scar from a childhood high-stick, the slick of flavoured lip protectant. He likes putting his hands to arches, straight lines of bones, fleshy curves, the persistent heat next to him in bed.
He's always got on well with them, though. It never bothered him, though. They're generally easy to talk to, not so protective as men, and kinder about his accent. The first person he spoke English to hadn't been a teammate: it had been the teenager with a half-shaved head who worked at the lunch counter on Fourteenth. He'd been nervous, out alone in the new city, but she'd understood him, even if, looking back, he'd had a painfully-bad accent and she'd probably been frustrated but she'd never raised her voice like he was earless or spoken slowly to him like he was a little boy. She'd been unusually kind, packing up his various sandwiches, waiting with a small smile while he counted out the unfamiliar money. But he's found that women generally are that way: they don't mind taking a bit of extra time, and they look at him quite fondly.
They don't want things from him, either. Not unless he wants them too, and it's a nice thing about women here: when they want to have sex, they're direct and will say so. He's not looking to get married, not now, and they aren't either. It's a nice thing about women here, women in the United States, a good character feature. They grow up learning about how they will have jobs of their own, interests in gardening or comedy and then perhaps later, in children. Evelyn had insisted they split the check, even though she worked as a preservationist, restoring books, and he was, well.
He shuffles away from Tlusty, and Tlusty lets his hand fall away from Semin's forearm.
"I was so excited. I though that you were." A climbing blush makes Tlusty out in scarlet and pinked skin. "That. I thought so, but I guess I got it wrong. "
And, obviously:
"What was that?" William asks the hallway.
Hanover's damp palm leeches on his shoulder. "Don't worry about it. T's got it in the bag."
William turns to look at him. "What?"
Hanover, lacking a shoulder to hang off like a limpet to a rock, holds his hands up and shrugs. "Like I said, it's taken care of."
"Okay, fine, that's great, you've told me that. What is Tarleton doing? What was that? We're not in a Mob movie, you know. You have to explain what words mean when we talk." William sounds more plaintive than he intends, but he really didn't like 'The Godfather' very much at all.
"I did, didn't I? Clarkson was hassling Pitt. I'd have thought you'd support it, since you are friends and all. Or 'were,' you were friends I guess." Hanover shrugs again. "Your deal, man. I'm going to go wait for T to get out of the principal's office." He walks off, and William doesn't move at all.
"William. William, William!" Henry reaches out, and taps William's chin. "Close your mouth, you'll catch flies. That's what my mom says," he preemptively explains, even thought William is still staring down the hall. The door has totally stopped swinging on its hinges, and still William stares where Hanover had gone.
Clarkson had been hassling William? William would dismiss it out of hand, because he always knows what's going on with William, and Hanover is no one's favorite person. But William hasn't talked to William, really talked, in a while. He can't believe Hanover is better informed than he.
Even more obviously:
Katniss can't make sense of her thoughts. "What was that?" Peeta stomps around the room, checking the buckles on their rucksacks and breathing loudly.
"You sound like you're from the coast. I hadn't really noticed, but some people do. And they care about it."
"Why?"
"You remember when you said that the popular broadcast shows have jokes about the Interior?" Peeta waves Katniss' objection away: they weren't jokes, they were just the funny characters. "There are broadcasts like that here, too. There's a really popular historical novela called 'Pen and Sword,' which that hostel-keeper's family had on earlier. It's about before Devolution, and the main character is a journalist in Castile de Roc. He has to outwit the coastal governor, who always wants to shut down the press or keep secret some depredation. Jose Pluma y Espada, that's his name, and he's very dashing. Anyway, the governor is not very good, although of course it's clear that he's trying to take the meanest orders and make it easier on the people. But when he's ordering his troops, and mocking Jose, he sounds like you."
"I don't say things like that." Katniss isn't apologetic, but she's also not oppressive. Some oppressor.
As much as she ever does, Peeta lets a whisper of frustration twist in her voice. "No, of course not. And you don't sound much like it either. But it's enough to get people suspicious. Some of them are still old enough to remember before Devolution."
Katniss looks alarmed. Peeta pats her shoulder. "Look, it's not many people. It's certainly not me. The innkeeper's just imaginative. Once we get to Acunum, we will all have bad accents, and they're not going to make any trouble."
"My Acunumi isn't good."
"Mine isn't either. Everyone's is bad, actually. They just speak it because some of the Districts to the south speak it. Government and bread, they go together." Peeta is pleasantly reassuring, but Katniss is still anxious. "It's just the wheat-farming districts. They're their own thing." Peeta waves a hand, to demonstrate.
"It won't be a problem, once we're competing, right? That my Acunumi is heavily-accented?"
"Well, it's really only those few Districts which speak it. Everyone else has to learn it in school, only the Massalians get one language, but most of us aren't good at it. You don't have to be, unless you want to be in government. And anyway, there's not much talking in the Game."
TRICKS IS GOOD, GIRL, TRICKS IS GOOD, AND YOU'RE THE BEST.