Post by Deleted on Apr 27, 2021 21:21:09 GMT
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  NATURAL HABITAT: THE AFTERPARTY There is nowhere on earth I'd rather be than lying on the floor of my buddy's place, fresh from the club, still rolling and in charge of the music. That phase of a roll where you're sleepy without being tired, warm with affection but not talking shit, feeling yourself sink into a song like it's a hot bath and knowing that everyone feels exactly the same way... it's magic, real world magic. All good vibes, the only threat to your happiness the slow creeping of daylight, bringing with it the end of the night. I chase that feeling all the time. I get baked to try and feel that same level of mellow, I surf to try and capture those waves. These days I try not to party too much, not because it's bad for you (though fuck, my brain has suffered), but because I'm building up so much tolerance, it's all too short lived and disappointing. Once a month max, that keeps the highs high and the lows in check, though if I could it would be all the time.  If you were to look up the dream girl for your son to bring home to meet mom and dad, it would be Lily. Lily has always been radiant, no other word for it. Even when we were kids, real kids, she'd have her long golden hair in a plait and it would catch the light as sunshine poured in to the classroom, making her look like she was glowing. She was also just a sweet, musical kid, everyone loved her. I was scruffy and used bad words, the kind of kid who got invited to birthday parties because other kids' moms made them invite me, not because I was in any way popular. We stayed that way as we grew up, which is why it was such a shock to me when one day I found myself asking her to hang out, and even more shockingly, she said yes. I never understood what people meant by a person feeling like home until I met Lily. It didn't matter what happened, the second I found myself alone with her I could feel myself relaxing, residual tension easing away. She might not believe it now but I was head over heels for her, she wasn't just the only girl I really wanted to spend time with but the only person, period. Everyone else felt like work. As time wore on, I guess we started to feel the strain that others felt was obvious... we were different, we had different trajectories. Her family were nice to me but it was obvious I wouldn't be the first pick for their daughter and who could blame them? I acted out more, I was slipping into bad habits, and I definitely started to take her for granted, I can see that now. Anyway. What happened happened, and she eventually figured it out. She always was too smart for me. But I figure it just hurried along something that was always going to happen, Lily McCarthy was never gonna wind up with a drug dealing high school dropout. I mean, look at her now. I'm really proud of her, though I probably don't have any right to be.
"If I had one thing to say about Xan, it would be that he would be a totally different person if he was an only child." "I guess most people would be, but it hits harder with Xander. He's such a middle child. Rafael was the dominant older brother, stoic, macho, actively dangerous. Carmen was the youngest, the fragile beauty, a slip of a girl, sheltered by her brothers, Xander was... Xander. A stoner, a confidant for Raf, ultimately a high school drop out. On the one hand he was Rafael's lackey and would have done anything to impress him, and then on the other he spent so much time meddling in Carmen's life, warning boys off and making her commit to school, he got lost between the two. This is a terrible, awful, shitty thing to say, but Rafael dying liberated Xander. For the first time he realized he had to make his own decisions in life, and following Raf's blueprint would only end up with him going the same way-- something he would never let happen to Carmen. These day he's the best version of himself so far, but I think he still has plenty of room to grow." - JAVIER, COUSIN  Is it something genetic with redheads that they're fucking psycho? It's like a 100% rate. Ellie's a great example of that. She looks like a doll, her face littered with a constellation of freckles, her full lips often in a pout. But she's pure hellfire under that china doll facade. She's got a short fuse and for a lot of people it's intimidating, but yeah, I get off on it, I won't lie. She thinks I do things to piss her off on purpose and sometimes I do. Sometimes I'll blare techno out of my airpods, knowing that the tinny sound of the beat leaking pisses her off even more than when I just play through a speaker. She hates techno, it's one of many things I love that she despises, and vice versa. Sometimes I'll go to a friend's house for two days without mentioning it, knowing that she's like a tightly coiled spring getting tighter and tighter, all that tension building until eventually she'll blow and we'll have one of our usual fights and make up sessions. God, I love the make up sessions. Toxic is a word that's been used to describe us, but I think that's a total misunderstanding. Yeah I piss her off and yeah she plays games with me, but we're upfront about it. She thinks I do things on purpose and I do and I tell her as much and she tells me that pisses her off. It's all out there in the open, no weird passive aggression like with every other couple I know. We don't test each other, we don't bitch about each other, we bitch to each other and I think that's healthier. It's not always fun to be around but hey, fuck off then if you don't want to be around it. I've lost friends over Ellie and I'm happy to lose more if that's what it comes to. There's something under her hot and cold act, something broken at her core. How cliche, us both being broken, together. That's the one thing we don't really talk about, only because neither of us really want to get into it. But we don't have to, co-existing with those similarities going unsaid is comfort enough. SPOTIFY 01 - gosh, jamie xx  At some point I started buying into my brother's mythology. I agreed with the whispers about him, I basked in the reflected glow of his notoriety. I thought of him as the man people were scared of, someone no one would fuck with. It's funny, since he died, that all changed; I've been flooded with memories of us belting out In the End by Linkin Park, playing air guitar in our garage, all the times he let me win at Burnout Revenge, just typical brother shit. Somewhere along the line I'd forgotten that he was my big brother before he was Rafael Sanchez, notorious drug dealer and murderer. I saw a glimpse of the old Raf not long before he was taken from us, when he showed up at my place visibly rattled, begging me to follow a different path in life. I was blazed and confused and, if I'm honest, upset by it, and I told him to stop being stupid, to fuck off and call me later. That was the last thing I said to him, he was found with a bullet between his eyes not even a day later. I'll always hate myself for that. |
lex jacob atwood resident |