Aftermath (NJ x Reader)

Genre: Smut, Angst, Guesthouse AU

Pairing: Guesthouse Manager!Namjoon x Foreign!Reader

Warnings: Dirty talk, possessive behaviour, rough unprotected sex on the kitchen counter (ALWAYS use precautions, lads and lasses), accidental voyeurism, squirting, fingering, swearing, breeding/impregnation kink, dom!Namjoon

Summary: The sequel to ‘’Dionysian’’

Every aftermath is different, ranging in variety to all its extents. However, this one experienced by a silver tongue no longer numbed by blueberries does not nullify its need to speak the truth. Thus, the blonde wolf holds on to beliefs made explicit in drunkenness and hopes for physical conviction in sobriety.

By means which carry a sober soul into a former mutual intoxication.

Masterlist

The impact of an aftermath all depends on the reason for its cause, so naturally, it follows that the bigger the agent, the grander the effect of the afterburn. A jet lag tried to be cured by reading, for example, does not have as much if any unpleasant side effects aside from a sense of discombobulation, this is disregarding the fact that what followed the leisurely activity does make walking not all that easy, while the smoky blueberry hangover causes a major headache on top of muttering grumpiness. Withal, and perhaps this is fortunate regardless of the oppressing morality of reality, the negative mood in case of the latter seems to lessen quite a bit when exhausted pained espresso eyes shrouded by haphazard platinum meet drowsy sheepish irises containing various travel stories in the second living room upstairs.

‘Y/N,’ it comes out as a surprised reaction, not having expected to run into the person indirectly involved with the lingering effects of rice-based clear alcohol contained in emerald if that is remembered at all considering the vague forgetful haze shrouding an always comforting gaze, ‘I thought you’d be out and about by now.’

The remark signifies last night has been forgotten and with that the strangely meaningful act that turned out entirely different than expected, oddly making the heart sink with the stone of knowledge that even the genuine passion and devotion has been erased. ‘No, I’m here sleeping off the jet lag. But, uhm, can we talk?’

‘Sure, but,’ a palm presses against the forehead in a futile endeavour to push the likely agonizingly pulsing hurt into retreat, ‘can we do so at a low volume. My head is killing me.’

More than that is currently being figuratively murdered, but there is a voice inside which says that the tall guesthouse manager does not have to know about the events of the past twilight for they are best left in the past. Henceforth, it stays at a consenting nod before two pairs of bare feet ascend the stairs to the stylish though small area both functioning as a hallway, living room, dining room and kitchen all at once.

Along the way, a brief spark of hope is ignited when fingers brush against each other in an absent-minded fashion, hoping for them to entangle entirely or mayhaps go beyond that chaste boundary, falling into the sin left behind in oblivious dusk. A straying digit encourages this renewed type of contact.

But is disregarded as opportunity fades away directly when the wanted big hand swerves away towards the front door where a few coats hang neatly in a row to retrieve a small box of Marlboro Red cigarettes. ‘I’ll be right back. Maybe a smoke will help me clear up.’

The spring weather is warm enough to allow going outside without a jacket provided the upper body is in the least covered by a T-shirt, so the grey long-sleeved shirt on top of loose navy pyjama pants more than suffices when the front door briefly opens and closes without another word to carry on the communication seemingly unaffected by the sensual encounter.

The silence that sets in is cold, the warm lingering affection normally shown nor the traces of the rough version present to calm an anxious heart fearing being abandoned by the handsome manager despite being bound to a gentle ocean artist. Hence, for a moment that feels longer than it truly is, eyes begin to water at the sight of the closed entrance as arms wrap around the shivering body to keep it from unjustly falling apart, barely shy of sobbing when asking the rhetorical questions of the emptiness. ‘Why can’t you remember? Why did it have to mean nothing?’

And with those very same haunting unanswered inquiries, the task of making two decent cups of instant coffee is taken up while fighting the tears that inevitably stream down the cheeks. Shivering hands retrieve a pair of matching crimson and ink black mugs from the cupboard that is slightly too highly installed for the short person determinedly trying to grab a hold of the china, eventually succeeding by standing on the tips of toes. Soft hiccups get lost in the loudly boiling water and the dimmed sobs in the pouring that brings the caffeine to life.

However, a new noise is audible over the tinkling of spoons mixing the powder and water to create a godly beverage: bare feet rapidly padding over the Alaskan white cedar floor after a shocked gasp. Before the door has closed with a hardly audible click, unusually physically affectionate strong arms clad in grey have wrapped around the middle and pulled a fragile figure against a worried chest scented with fresh smoke. ‘Why are you crying?’

‘It- It’s nothing. Do- Don’t worry.’ To move on from the stupidly prominent hurt at the hand of lying fancies, a trivial detail is asked after while continuing to keep the whirlpool in the cup alive, moving. All consuming. ‘Do y- you drink it black?’

‘Y/N, please tell me what’s bothering you. I hate to see you like this.’ The warm breath on locks makes teeth bite down on the lower lip in a desperate attempt to withhold another heavy heave evoked by the genuine loving imaginations it conjures, gravely reminding the mind Taehyung already has an allegation to the title of significant other.

‘Namjoon, re- really. It’s o- okay.’ The handsome tall tree was never meant to be a selfish girl’s lover anyway, so the mourning of the fact is nothing but superfluous information to the man who cannot even remember how amazing and wanted he made her feel. How good it felt to lose control.

‘Is it about last night?’ A plush mouth no longer ghosts over strands grown haphazard by slumber, pressing down on the back of the head in a sincere loving smoke-scented kiss.

A weak nod confirms the suspicion, bravely trying to speak up to ask the question previously asked to the nothingness in a blonde wolf’s wake. ‘Have you forgotten what we did?’

‘I was far gone, too drunk to memorize what happened.’ Had it not been for what follows the statement, the crying might have commenced in earnest without ever giving a proper explanation for it afterwards to neither the platinum giant nor anyone else. Fortunately, the sorrowful chill fades from limbs at the heated reassuring mumbled words. ‘But I remember everything we did, all that I said. How gorgeous you looked while riding me, solely mine instead of his.’

The hug loosens enough to allow for turning around when noticing the urge to do so, needing to see the truth of the claim beneath the soju aftermath.

The dark reminiscent glint says more than enough, emphasizing the wanting has not been nullified over the course of sobering during the remnants of the nightly hours. Especially the barely held back anger pointed towards the artist called a “blueberry” in drunken rage signifies still wanting to be the sole one for a taken travelling individual living on a deadline. ‘I do hate it, you know? Hate it how he’s your boyfriend and I have to watch from the sideline. It should have been me who fucked you when you two came back from eating ramen. In fact, that could have been our second date if only you had recognized the trip to ARTBOX meant as much to me as a first.’

The embrace is made entirely undone as palms move upwards over the upper arms, following the curve of the neck and at last coming to rest on the cheeks where two kind thumbs wipe away the remaining brooks. ‘I don’t care how many men fuck you, but, in the end, I want you to be mine. That, out of all the times another touches you, it’s only meaningful when it’s me. I want you to be mine.’ Lips connect in a kiss tasting of smoke, old alcohol and restless sleep with a fruity hint of blueberries. Not really a preferable combination due to the sharpness of rice alcohol, but otherwise as pleasant, if not more, than the turpentine and lavender experienced each night before going to bed, every morning at waking up and all the little shared moments in between. ‘Leave him. Leave him for me, baby.’

‘I promised he could stay with me.’ Attention shifts to the side, staring at the floor in conflicted self-loathing for wanting to give up for Namjoon but wondering whether it would even matter since the blue-haired art teacher was turned on by the idea of being shared. Said he could learn how to love this body and soul better that way. However, it begs to ask the question where the line is drawn, at which point even this explanation no longer applies.

‘And he still believes that when I’ve clearly marked you as mine? Made him watch you getting a good pounding by me?’ Focus is shifted back by suddenly being picked up and put on the counter, the contact with the cold surface beneath the thighs making a shuddering tingling run down the spine. ‘I want him to stand by and watch, know there isn’t anything he can do to take you from me.’ A tanned hand creeps up the inside of dangling legs, gripping the upper part firmly at the last statement with a concoction of rage pointed towards an absent party and lust towards the present one. ‘Make him feel as I have all this fucking time.’

Helpless palms try to futilely push away the persistent shoulders leaning in to retrace the wonderful path of marks left behind in the twilight purple past, kissing each plum sign of belonging created in the craze of desire, hovering above the gradually heating skin and increasing the temperature by tickling warm breath. Without a second thought, in spite of Sense urging against doing it, fingers acting on muscle memory entangle in soft fluffy platinum locks like they had done before as the foreign body mindlessly bridges the small space between it and the local one.

The obvious hunger for the wolf disguised as a nice guesthouse manager evokes a tangibly bright smile on full lips while the oversized piece of clothing which is the property of a rival is endeavoured to be removed. ‘I think I like this complacent you more, baby. Now take this damn shirt off, I dislike lavender on you.’

‘You will have to deal with it. It keeps me warm.’ The smugness of the dark has not faded since talking back to Namjoon when the man thinks there is no courage to do so is actually quite amusing. Furthermore, it is also another way to avoid giving into the sensual craving stirring in the gut, fueled by the sensations of wanting to be possessed.

‘Hm, maybe not so obedient, after all.’ Clearly, the attitude is not tolerated even in a sober state. Yet, the caressing of the sides combined with a pondering hum forms an example of actual care about wellbeing. ‘I don’t want you to catch a cold, though. Hold on, baby, I’ll be right back.’

Just briefly a handsome face can be regarded fully in earnest before it rushes up the stairs and comes back down with a gorgeous creme-shaded silk kimono with intricate patterns in complementing colours and black bands at the ends of the sleeves. Quick as lightning, making sure there is no opportunity to resist at the last second, the crisp white shirt is almost torn off to be replaced by the personal piece of clothing.

Withal, before the new garments are donned, espresso eyes are drawn to the mesmerizing sight of the revealed chest, grand palms enveloping the two sensitive cushions perfectly as if made exactly to fit the broad-shouldered human tree’s hands. ‘Why did you hide this from me? You’re beautiful.’ The head dips down to take the swollen right rosebud into the mouth, teasing it by nibbling and licking the agitated bud of nerves, while left digits glide over the stomach towards the source of the hedonic scent as their right counterparts curl over the edge of the counter to remain balanced though they rapidly shift to the hip closing in with the ache to be closer. ‘So incredibly beautiful.’

When the coy amusing ministrations over cotton becoming sticky with uncontrollable wanting bring bliss almost too close, the desperate grip on hair that has to be renewed with every novel angle of exploration begins to shake and the chest is falling and rising heavily with laborious breaths mixed with pathetic whimpers and surprised gasps at harder bites or pressure on extremely sensitive spots, the sorry excuse for panties are torn off and the kimono embedded with a trace of nicotine blueberries put on. ‘Look at you, Y/N. Naked but for my clothes, marked as mine, blushing all cutesy with the need for me.’ Legs spread automatically and with a lewd squelch, two fingers slide in embarrassingly easily, soon joined by a third when notice is taken it can be done without problems. ‘So hungry for my cock, craving a good pounding.’ A too eager nod. ‘But first, I’m going to make you squirt all over my fingers and only use you as my personal fucktoy when you’re all nice and complacent, sensitive. Begging me to stop, whining for me to pull my big cock out, crying when I pump you full again. After all, you’re nothing more than my little breeding machine.’

It does not take long for the first promise to come to fruition, the remaining restraints of reality rapidly let go of once that special mind-boggling spot is found and touched over and over after the betraying whine, compelled to watch the obvious watery effects of pleasure by means of an unrelenting controlling grip on hair and baritone growls that shatter every thought in a white haze. ‘You’re such an easy fuck. Already cumming so quickly, making such a mess. But it’s also perfect, because it makes it that much easier to force myself into you, for you to handle me.’

Keeping the earlier given word, loose marine blue bottoms alongside the once fresh pair of boxers - now ruined by the transparent sinful sign which was only noticeable in a tangible shape - are pushed down to the ankles to give free reign to a sober part of the body that the one of the self is already well-acquainted with. Without warning nor inquiry about consent, making use of the floating trance which causes every reaction to be slowed down immensely due to the ignorant bliss exerting a hypnotizing influence on the consciousness, a more intense version of the renewed physical bond is established. The sole reaction that can be managed is hands tightening the hold on the buff upper arms that were already previously held tight when it were only long digits bringing about sexual ruin, hot tears on the brim of falling at the burning sensation of being stretched open again which is intensified by every nerve still standing on edge by the plunge into sensitivity. ‘Namjoon! It- it’s too much. I- I can’t- please, pull out.’

A dark chuckle falls from full lips at a pained whimper evoked at the hand of overstimulation, corners of the mouth curled up in a satisfied devilish grin. ‘You feel even better than I remember. So fucking tight. I said I’d give you a good pounding when you’re nothing more but an obedient little thing, flinching at every contact because it’s too overwhelming.’

Honey-toned digits fold themselves perfectly over the waist, scooting the infiltrated persona closer with ease and thus deepen the union with another pained outcry contrasting with the gesture of holding on tighter to the intoxicating offender driving out any thought dedicated to Taehyung and Jungkook, muffling the beginnings of crying in ashen nicotine fabric, finding comfort in the characteristic scent. However, the hiding place is merely temporary as the counterpart of the shackle on the middle forms around the jaw, ensuring with force that stares remain locked under any circumstance. ‘I want you to keep looking at me as you beg for me to stop. Just know that it won’t actually help, so you can whimper and cry all you want but it only turns me on. You’re going to take my cock like last night, let me empty entirely inside you, and there is nothing you can do about it. You’re gonna take every last drop,’ the hold tightens yet is not fought against as the effect of the sheer strength is as good as a drunken stupor, obliterating the last slivers of the old hypnotizing veil and immediately replacing it with a new blindfold, ‘milk me till I’m dry and your pretty pussy, swollen and sore, is leaking again with my seed.’

A sloppy kiss in combination with the last spoken words before a devastating act of love commences in earnest unintentionally already shows how wanton personal longing has become, endeavouring to enhance the intimacy even further and satiate the uncontrollable craving which is at war with the urge to end it here merely on the grounds of the searing agony below. A brief repose would also be a good alternative, but the primal spirit within neglects the idea altogether and listens instead gladly to the platinum wolf. ‘So, spread your fucking legs like a good deprived bitch and let me breed you.’

Muscles loosen enough to heed the command, an awful joy the determining factor in keeping up with the directly set relentless pace between the thighs of which the ankles wrap around a carved waist that stirs up a paradoxical storm of pleasure and pain in the gut with its movements. Pleads for a halt mixed with sobs about how much it hurts, not lying despite also clearly showing the need for more, made to a beautiful face are returned with praise. ‘Keep begging like that, baby. I’m not going to stop, not when you’re taking me so well.’ The hideous snarl returns with the memory surfacing at a newly discovered detail, a trace thought to have been made undone when restoring the ruin of the night but which only evokes jealousy spurring on the desire to imprint it all over again. ‘When he’s erased every trace of me inside.’

‘N- Nam- Namjoon, pl- please. I- I’m taken. Tae- ah!’ The mention of the sweet artist’s name is obviously unappreciated, the roughness increasing at the attempt to involve a third party if only in speech alone and pushing the burning further into a novel depth. Whatever was about to be said about Taehyung having the right to cover every sensual track made by another on a beloved, albeit solely for a piece of peace of mind, is nullified in the scream preceding heavier heaves disrupted by more pleading while the body behaves in a contrasting manner.

The caramel compelling lover is held near with the tightening of shaking legs around a sculpted waist and cute howbeit flat tummy, hands meekly tugging at the powerful wrists to convince them to break off the harsh grip on the jaw in favour of an unbreakable clinging embrace, the idea of which is consented to and allows fingers to entangle in platinum fluffy strands. Withal, even though it is allowed but a warning is threateningly whispered into the ear almost deaf with the enchanting sounds of low grunts mixed with high-pitched whines against a background of skin meeting skin in the lewdest of fashions. ‘That blueberry doesn’t have the right to erase me from your system. Besides, baby, if you’d really love him, you wouldn’t be taking my dick.’

And in that is a truth universally acknowledged, because if there truly was devotion to a single soul, another one would not be enjoyed as much as it is. There would only be the chemical sting of turpentine made smooth by lavender and the ironically currently affected combination of nicotine smoke, fresh soap and sharp mint kept at bay in mere friendship.

But it is not.

‘Is everything alright? I heard someone... oh.’ The front door is unsuspectingly opened with haste by a panicked classic pastry and sweets maker, cheeks colouring a bright rosy pink matching the neatly arranged hairstyle when realizing what the source for the outcry thought to be in distress really is.

‘Get out.’ Possessive fevered irises glare at a stunned Jimin, frozen in place by awkwardness and ignorance as to how to proceed to come out of the situation as unscathed as possible, full lips parted in pure paralysis. ‘We’re busy.’

Hard-handed, the almost affectionate hug is broken off with a renewed hold on the jaw to unresistingly shift attention from desperately holding onto broad shoulders with black sensitive blindness to gaze at a flustered face lit up the bright Seoul spring sun. Though murmured at a low volume against the reddish-purple bruises on the side of the throat, what is being said is nevertheless audible for the unwelcome visitor with hair like the cherry blossoms around the concrete jungle. ‘And don’t you dare try to interfere. Y/N’s taking my cum, she’s my slut.’ A seemingly misplaced nuzzle under a primal trance makes it undeniable whom the ravished body belongs even though the intricate gorgeous kimono also gives off a clue. ‘Mine.’

‘Well, actually-’ The rest of the sentence is broken off when the risk of the manager’s wrath becomes too real again, sheepishly settling for something else before rushing off to God-knows-where after shutting the just opened door with a slam. ‘You know what? Never mind. I’ll, uh, leave you to- to it.’

‘I swear, if he also comes after you. Which he will, just like the others, even Yoongi, and that desperate boy trying to pretend he’s actually a cop.’ The continuation of the threat gets lost in a dangerously displeased grunt accompanied by a harsh thrust. The grip shifts from the underside of the face to the throat, closing the airways just enough to not suffocate in fueled rage taken out in passion. ‘However, I. Don’t. Share.’

Climaxes can be triggered in various ways, but the need to possess of a strong-willed wolf and the craving of a traveller to be controlled by the blonde animal in disguise because the ocean artist is too sweet throws entangled forbidden lovers violently off the cliff, on the edge of which has been tethered with words pushing the wish to achieve the lewdly described goals.

And just like during the last twilight and at the start of relived furious jealous love-making, the overstimulation is ignored as pained whimpers and repeated pleads for pulling out continue to function as an aphrodisiac until yet another promise is fulfilled, once more made to watch how it is established when not staring into raging deep brown.

‘Breath, baby, breath. Easy, easy, shhh.’ After the last release, shaking all over with effort which makes it hard to remain upright, a heated gradually calming chest is collapsed against in an explosive limbo as a hand transformed from rough into gentle caresses messy locks. Cushion full lips place an appreciating kiss on the temple, an action that is quite a contrast with the claiming biting, while every last drop of thick undoubtedly unclear fluid is attempted to be absorbed regardless of the soreness. ‘That’s it, baby. Milk me. Good girl, you did so well. I’m proud of you.’

When having regained consciousness enough to straighten the spine and be somewhat coherent in the reality that slowly sinks in, another chaste kiss is placed on a sticky forehead as upper arms clad in clinging silk are rubbed kindly before slowly sliding up to cup a tear-streaked face and wipe away the last of tears, now shed thanks to the impactful severing which results in the wished for outcome of leaking with white. ‘God, you’re beautiful. That kimono also looks wonderful on you. You should wear it more often.’ 

The smug smirk at the comment fades away into severity as fast as it appeared, baritone voice stained with a certain gravity when requesting something that cannot be easily consented to due to committing promises. ‘I meant what I said. I don’t share, especially not the girl I love. Even if this ends up in a polygamous relationship if you decide to sleep with any of the other guys or they persuade you to, know that I’ll hate each and every one of them for knowing what it’s like to be with you when I want the privilege of it. Furthermore, if they make you do anything you don’t want, I’ll beat them up and turn them out onto the street.’ Absentmindedly, the collar of the robe is corrected, fabric put around a shivering speechless body with genuine care. ‘For now, leave him. I really do want you to leave him for me. Be mine.’

‘I can’t, Joon. I promised Taehyung we’d be more than a spring affair, that he can stay with me.’ A shuddering sigh almost makes the rediscovered voice disappear again with the realistic afterthought. ‘At least until I have to go.’

‘You can make the same promise to me and I’ll guarantee we can stay together. I got a solid income from the guesthouse, a place to call home and which can be our home whenever you’re in Korea.’ The kiss that follows is grave, acting like the last bastion in the fights against determined realism. Espresso irises scented with dewy nicotine laced with fruit gleam with pleads held out of speech. ‘I promise. Please, leave him.’

‘I can’t.’

Fists clamping Japanese clothing.

‘Why?’

Brooks on caramel cheeks.

‘Sorry.’

Clad in silk and traces of another that also cannot be.

Such is the devastating aftermath of two lonely broken hearts.

Beautiful vision

summary:  AU where Erwin is blind and a delinquent has to keep him  company. 

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14959061

Being blind is never something that you ask or wish for. Not even to your worst enemy. But what can you do when your vision deteriorates day after day until you can not even work or walk by yourself ? Hereditary condition. Men in white coats said. And Erwin thanked his grandma for the gift. He couldn’t do anything but accept his fate and move to an appropriate establishment with other disabled people like him. His world became black and soon enough his mind too. Erwin lost the envy to do and accomplish anything. His only purpose was to survive in a society where people like him where considered a disease. He was left in the dark until the day he met him.

Levi.

Delinquent, indomitable Levi. Until he got caught by the cops for being involved in burglary. He ended up doing community service in the same establishment as Erwin and became his help. The meeting was not what we can call peaceful. Levi showed a lot of resentment toward Erwin and the work he had to do. Most of the time he ignored him and cursed a lot as if he was not there. However, Erwin still tried to initiate little talk. In vain. He could understand why the boy wouldn’t like to be imprisoned all day with disabled people. Erwin gave up quickly when he understood Levi didn’t care. Anyway, Levi did his job, kept him company, walked him outside, give him his food and medication. He just counted the days until he would be done.

“Levi?”

“What?” The younger man asked, not looking away from his phone. It was almost 6 and soon he would join his friends.

“Can you give my medication please? I have a headache.” Erwin put two digits to massage the inside of his eyes. Reading braille was really a heavy mental exercise.

“Yeah wait.” he reluctantly left his phone to retrieved the medicine in the drugs compartment. He handed it to Erwin with a glass of water but Erwin’s hand was trembling too hard.

“Let me do it” Levi sighed and gave him the water himself. Erwin gulped it as if he had been stuck in a desert for a whole week. He then let his face fall heavily on Levi’s stomach, breathing deeply.

“Do you want me to call the nurse?” Levi said, concerned and not really comfortable.

“No just stay like that. It will be fine soon. Just don’t move”

Levi stayed until Erwin feels better.

After that, something changed. It was as if Levi had been hit by a truck of compassion and he became a little more nice and a little less angry. Even his way of talking changed as he used less curse words. Well it depended.

“Fuck!”

“Language Levi…”

“Sorry but why are people so fucking stupid?”

“Levi…”

“Fuck… I am sorry”

“…”

“That idiot. I can’t believe it”

“What happened?”

“I have this friend… he was also involved in the burglary” Levi mumbled. He was not proud of that. “Anyway apparently he is also linked to a cartel and I fucking told him to never get into that and he just never listens” Levi finished, frustrated. He just wanted the best for him and he hoped that after the end of their punishment they could begin anew.

“I am sorry”

“Anyway I don’t care. If he wants to rot in prison, then it’s his damn problem!” He is not his father. They are both adult, capable of making their own decisions.

“Come here” Erwin patted the empty seat next to him in the sofa. He couldn’t see Levi but he sensed his hesitation. He heard the man shift and the place next to him sank. Erwin sighed internally. Sometimes, he didn’t know how to act with Levi, he was just so unpredictable.

“I know he is your friend but if you tried to convince him and he didn’t listen you cannot do anything about it.” Erwin declared seriously. “You have to make the best decision for you Levi. And the fact that you are willing to change your life is already a big step. I am proud of you” He finished with a comforting tone and a light smile.

Levi stayed quiet for a moment, not knowing what to say. That was the first time someone told him he was proud of him. Something in his heart constricted.

“Thank you.”

“Why are you always reading? That is so boring” Levi greeted as he threw his leather jacket on the sofa.

“Hello Levi” Erwin greeted back. A smile playing in his lips “How are you?”

“I am good but the depressive aura here will the death of me soon” He sighed.

“I see would you like to play some ga-”

“I know! Stand up!” Levi put away the book from his laps and took Erwin by both hands, urging him to stand up.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” Erwin asked, confused. but Levi abandoned him a moment and soon enough Erwin heard an upbeat sounds playing.

“Do you know how to dance Smith?” Levi found him back and grabbed one of his hand. Letting his body enjoy the music jumping hard.

“Wait Levi I don’t know how to dance to that”

“It is easy! You just have to move you head up and down” Levi said his voice loud enough to cover the music.

So Erwin did that, he moved his head up and down. He felt ridiculous but at the same time he felt light and ecstatic. So he let it go.

“Yes like that Erwin!”

It has been too long since the last time Erwin had so much fun.

“That was not dancing” Erwin chuckled, sitting heavily.

“Whatever I enjoyed it” Levi said, lying exhausted on the sofa. He had to remove his sweater because he was just too hot.

“Me too” Erwin curved his mouth. “But I will show you what is real dancing.”

“Oh no. Do we have to listen to your exciting classical music?” Levi’s tone was dripping with sarcasm.

“Not really. Can you put the first disk and put it in the vinyl player please?”

Levi sighed but he roused from his position to do accordingly. He observed the disk collection before taking the one Erwin requested. “You are so old-fashioned”.

“Come here” He said as soon as the first notes hit.

“That sound like something my grand-mother would listen to”

“Shh, give me your hands”

“Are we really doing that?” Levi asked doing exactly what Erwin told him. Erwin intertwined one hand in his and put Levi’s other hand in his shoulder. Though, kind of. Because the man was that small. And Erwin placed his other hand in Levi’s lower back.

“Yes. You owe me that. I could have had a heart attack earlier” Erwin stated, tone serious. He let their body follow the sweet melody, their feet light on the floor.

“…” Levi looked at him bemused.

“I am joking” Erwin confessed, sensing the discomfort.

“You bastard. You are not that old”

“That is true” Erwin chuckled. They stayed dancing like that and at one point Erwin closed their proximity.

“Thank you so much” He whispered in Levi’s ear and let his head fall in his shoulder. Erwin couldn’t see him but he felt the tremor of Levi’s body. Levi took the opportunity then to tighten both arms around his neck.

“Can I try?”

“Try what?”

“The braille I am sure I can read it too.”

“Oh ok.”

Levi left his spot to come seat next to Erwin, their thighs touching and Levi’s upper body practically in his laps. The closeness made Erwin’s body hot and he tried to breathe evenly.

“The mov- movement? was, had?” Levi tried to decipher the words with his fingers but he had clearly a hard time “This is fucking difficult!” He said looking up to Erwin. The blond’s face was facing him. Seeing him without really seeing him.

“What?” Levi asked his brows frowning.

“I wish I can see you.” Erwin admitted, voice, like a whisper, a confession. Levi was taken aback by the serious tone of Erwin and stayed silent for a moment. “I am sorry” Erwin tried to take his words back but his cheeks were burning and-

“You can” Levi said without looking away.

“You can see me Erwin” and with that said he took both of Erwin’s bigger hands and placed them in his face. Erwin's fingers wondered, first on his large forehead and thin eyebrows, then went down to his narrow eyes, he caressed his small pointy nose to finally reach his feather small lips. He memorized every single piece of information about his face and printed them in his brain.

“You are so beautiful Levi” Erwin choked, a lump stuck in his throat.

“Kiss me Erwin” Levi demanded. He had been repressing this urge for too long. “Please”.

“Levi…”

“Please.”

Erwin gripped Levi’s face firmly and closed the distance slowly. Levi shut his eyes too but opened them soon enough when Erwin’s nose bumped into his forehead. Levi let out a small painful sound.

“I am sorry” Erwin panicked.

“Let me ok?” Levi angled their faces properly and finally met those lips.

Did Hearst’s Culture Kill Hearst’s Biggest Magazine Story?

One evening in August 2018, Maximillian Potter, then a writer for Esquire magazine, was sitting in a restaurant in California’s inland empire, trying to persuade a man in his 30s to share his memories of rape and abuse at the hands of powerful men in Hollywood in the late 1990s.

Mr. Potter ordered a glass of wine — and instantly regretted it. The other man at the table had given up alcohol but seemed so shaken that Mr. Potter worried he might trigger a relapse.

The dinner came toward the end of a year of reporting by Mr. Potter and a fellow investigative journalist, Alex French, on allegations against Bryan Singer, the director of “The Usual Suspects,” “X-Men” and “Superman Returns.” Mr. Potter assured his reluctant interview subject that he — and the powerful media company behind him, Hearst Communications — would have his back.

But Mr. Potter was not following the intricate corporate succession drama taking place inside the Hearst Tower, a 21st-century skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan built atop the Hearst Building, a 1928 structure commissioned by the press baron William Randolph Hearst.

There, Hearst’s chief executive officer, Steven R. Swartz, had been trying to get to the bottom of complaints about the workplace conduct of Troy Young, the company’s first head of digital media and a leading candidate to take over the magazine group.

Mr. Swartz, a former journalist, had enlisted Lincoln Millstein, a longtime Hearst executive who had recently retired from full-time employment, to help him get frank feedback from top editors. Mr. Millstein said last week that he told Mr. Swartz that Mr. Young had “overwhelming support” to carry out the company’s transformation into a digital operation.

On July 25, 2018, Mr. Young was named the president of Hearst Magazines, a job that put him in charge of Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Town & Country, Harper’s Bazaar and Good Housekeeping among its more than two dozen titles. Along with the promotion came a plan to give him “considerable mentoring and coaching,” a Hearst executive told me.

On Thursday, Mr. Young resigned under pressure.

His departure came shortly after my colleague Katie Robertson and I reported on the lewd and otherwise inappropriate remarks — and years of complaints about them — that had characterized his time running a company built largely on publications aimed at empowering women. In the Hearst cafeteria, for instance, he approached a heavily pregnant employee and said, “So, is the baby mine?”

Mr. Young, who did not reply to email inquiries for this article, previously told The Times that the accusations against him were “either untrue, greatly exaggerated or taken out of context.”

Under Mr. Young, Hearst Magazines did not only have a difficult workplace environment; it also may not have been the ideal company to back an ambitious investigative project like the one Mr. Potter and Mr. French had been working on for Esquire.

On Halloween, three months after Mr. Young had become the Hearst Magazines leader, the two reporters found themselves in a meeting led by the division’s head of content, Kate Lewis.

A former human resources executive at Condé Nast, Ms. Lewis had worked with Mr. Young at a start-up, Say Media, before signing on as his deputy in Hearst’s digital unit. Soon after his promotion to the top magazine job, Mr. Swartz and Mr. Young had named her the magazine group’s chief content officer, a job she still holds.

The Halloween meeting, which included Esquire editors, took place in Ms. Lewis’s brightly lit office at a time when the article on Mr. Singer was in the late stages of editing for the December/January issue. As the meeting progressed, Ms. Lewis expressed doubt that the sources would stand up to scrutiny, the two reporters said.

Ms. Lewis, who had little experience with investigative journalism, offered suggestions that struck the reporters as unhelpful. She told them the story could use a sympathetic victim, like Gwyneth Paltrow, the writers said. She also suggested serializing the story online, or publishing it as a kind of blind item, three people who attended the meeting told me. The next week, she informed Jay Fielden, then Esquire’s editor in chief, that the article would not run. (Ms. Lewis did not reply to requests for comment sent by email and through a company spokesman.)

In retrospect, Hearst seems timid, at best. Mr. Potter and Mr. French, who had been working as contract writers for Esquire, took their work to The Atlantic, which ran the article in January 2019. For Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s top editor, the decision to publish was not difficult.

“There’s not a lot of nuance here,” Mr. Goldberg told me last week. “They spiked a story that should have been published in the public interest for reasons unknown.”

The Hearst executives I spoke with said they couldn’t recall Mr. Young having expressed a view on the Singer article. And even while speaking on condition of anonymity, they refused to say who made the final decision to spike the Singer story. At the time, Ms. Lewis told the Esquire staff that it was an editorial decision, which the company repeated publicly.

Hearst’s chief legal officer, Eve Burton, said in a statement to the New York Post media reporter Keith Kelly shortly after the article appeared on The Atlantic’s website that the company’s decision not to publish it was “made based on our editorial standards.”

Pressed for detail on Sunday, Ms. Burton said in an email: “We simply believed, both my lawyers and our senior editorial team, that we did not have a story that was defensible and fair. One of the hardest things to do sometimes is to not publish. It was a close call. We stand by that decision.”

The Atlantic, which has been around since 1857, is hardly a run-and-gun tabloid operation, and its publication of the article was an important part of Hollywood’s #metoo reckoning. The piece won praise in part because it was a nuanced story about damaged young men, and it sent Mr. Singer’s career into a tailspin.

Mr. Singer denied the article’s allegations shortly after it was published. “It’s sad that The Atlantic would stoop to this low standard of journalistic integrity,” he said in a statement at the time, describing the article as a “homophobic smear piece.” A movie he was scheduled to direct, “Red Sonja,” was put on hold in February 2019, and he was later replaced on the project by the writer-director Jill Soloway.

Hearst’s call on the article was probably the highest-profile journalistic decision of Mr. Young’s two-year tenure as the magazine division’s president. It raised questions that still hang over the media industry, even three years after The New York Times and The New Yorker published their first investigative articles on the sexual misconduct of Harvey Weinstein.

How much do the values of the men who control much of the culture industry trickle down into the culture?

Is there a line to be drawn between a top media executive who asks a pregnant writer if the baby is his and what his company chooses to publish?

Mr. French, the reporter, said he still doesn’t know why Hearst decided against publication. Mr. Fielden, the former Esquire editor, has told friends he still doesn’t know the reason, but a person close to him told me that when Hearst “made the decision to kill the Singer piece without any explanation, and in violation of editorial standards, Jay knew it was time to go.”

This is not to say that media organizations wrestling with internal cultural issues — as virtually all are — cannot publish important work. Virtuous journalists do not always come up with worthy articles. No editor, reporter or newsroom is without sin — and yet we’re all in the business of throwing stones from our glass houses.

But for many reporters who have covered the media industry’s recent bouts of self-examination, the issue of who, exactly, decides which subjects merit journalistic investigation is at the heart of the matter.

“For generations, the abuses of power we loosely group under #metoo were considered a private matter, rarely newsworthy,” Irin Carmon, a senior correspondent for New York Magazine, said. “It’s not coincidental that those terms were set by powerful men who often had their own skeletons to hide and the incentive to protect each other.”

She added, “It’s damning that Hearst would promote someone with multiple documented complaints against them in the middle of a national reckoning about the same behavior — it really speaks to what, and who, actually matters at the top there.”

Hearst executives, speaking anonymously, hotly disputed the notion that Mr. Young’s workplace issues had spilled into the company’s journalism. He was, they said, focused on salvaging Hearst’s advertising business, which has battled the same headwinds as the rest of the media industry.

As Ms. Robertson and I reported, Hearst executives described Mr. Young’s behavior as part and parcel of sharp-elbowed digital disruption, while hinting that his detractors were tired print editors unable to get the hang of the internet.

Shrinking businesses make for bitter workplaces, and it’s true that Mr. Young shifted Hearst away from the freewheeling era of glossy print journalism toward the new reality of clicks and algorithms. But I’ve never seen crude talk as part of the digital transformation.

In recent months, Mr. Young tried and failed to keep alive a valuable print publication, O: The Oprah Magazine, which Hearst had published in conjunction with Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Entertainment Group since 2000. Ms. Winfrey has decided to discontinue it as a print magazine, Hearst acknowledged to the Business of Fashion’s Chantal Fernandez on Friday night.

A Hearst spokeswoman called the plan to end the print edition of O: The Oprah Magazine after its December 2020 issue “a natural next step for the brand.” But the scaling back of the relationship between the company and Ms. Winfrey is a major blow to the magazine group, and Hearst’s leaders had wrestled for weeks with how to make it public.

As media companies go, Hearst is discreet, without the frequent public dramas besetting its more glamorous rival, Condé Nast, and even this newspaper. Perhaps for that reason, its executive comings and goings have not attracted much scrutiny. The highest profile recent departure before Mr. Young’s was probably that of Mr. Fielden, the editor who lost the fight to publish the Singer story.

On the day he left the company in May 2019, he posed for a photograph that captured him striding out of the Hearst Tower while dressed impeccably and carrying four luxury-brand bags. The image, an immediate Instagram hit, subjected him to one of Twitter’s great roastings, and The Cut declared him a “fancy man.” The last thing the photo projected was an editor who had taken a professional risk for the cause of journalism.

But Mr. Fielden ignored pressure from above to prevent the story from appearing elsewhere, according to three people with knowledge of what happened, and had encouraged The Atlantic’s Mr. Goldberg to take it.

“I told Jay that if we publish a version of this story, it could be embarrassing for Esquire and it could get him in trouble,” Mr. Goldberg recalled.

In the end, Mr. Goldberg added, Mr. Fielden “stood up for his writers, and he stood up for a story that was true, and he doesn’t get the credit he deserves for doing that.”

The post Did Hearst’s Culture Kill Hearst’s Biggest Magazine Story? appeared first on Shri Times.

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Rediscovering the Lost Art of Travel

Posted: 5/16/2019 | May 16th, 2019

Seth Kugel is the former Frugal Traveler columnist for the New York Times and author of the new Rediscovering Travel: A Guide for the Globally Curious, from which this is adapted. I’ve known him for years and our travel philosophy dovetails a lot. I read his book last year and thought “If I were ever to write a book on the state of the travel industry, this is the book I would write!” It’s a great book and today, Seth excerpted part of the book for us!

Stenciled in white block letters on a dreary cement wall in Mezöberény, a tidy but fraying town of twelve thousand in the hyperbolically named Great Hungarian Plain, appeared the word:

SZESZFÖZDE

Hours earlier, in the overcast predawn hours of a nippy January day, I had stumbled off the Bucharest-to-Budapest train to see what it would be like to spend the weekend in the opposite of a tourist destination. Mezöberény was not just absent from guidebooks — it did not have a single restaurant, hotel, or activity listed on TripAdvisor, something that cannot be said for Mbabara, Uganda, or Dalanzadgad, Mongolia. I did have some info on the town, though, thanks to its municipal website: resident József Halász had recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday.

Or that’s what Google Translate told me. Hungarian is a Uralic language, more closely related to the output you might get falling asleep on a keyboard than to English or German or French. That makes even basic comprehension a challenge, as I found as soon as I rushed from the train to the station’s restrooms and faced the urgent need to choose between two doors: FÉRFI and NÖI. The authorities had apparently saved a few forints by not splurging on stick-figure signs.

The day had been born cold and gray and stayed that way as I walked through the town, slowly getting my bearings, intrigued by the pre-war, pre-Communist homes and the more than occasional bike rider — there were almost more bikes than cars — who waved hello. But then a winter drizzle took up, causing an abrupt decline in the number of cyclists even as the number of wandering American visitors held steady at one. To me, a travel day that turns rainy is like a piece of chocolate I’ve dropped on the floor: it’s significantly less appealing, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to throw it away.

It was in the first minutes of rain that I came across that stenciled sign on an otherwise residential street. Beyond the wall, down a cracking, now puddle-pocked driveway, were a dozen or so plastic barrels lined up like nuclear-waste drums. Beyond them, maybe a hundred feet from where I stood, was a one-story L-shaped building. What was this place? Well, SZESZFÖZDE, apparently. But what was that?

In the old days (say, 2009), I would have pulled out an English-Hungarian phrase book or pocket dictionary, but instead, I activated international roaming on my phone, carefully spelled out S-Z-E-S- Z-F-O-Z-D-E, and tapped Go.

The less-than-lightning speed of Great Hungarian Plain mobile service provided a dramatic pause. And then came my answer:

DISTILLERY.

You don’t say.

I would have guessed PRIVATE PROPERTY maybe, or DANGER—STAY OUT, or MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS, YOU MEDDLING FOREIGNER! But a distillery? A wave of adrenaline washed down my torso as my lips curled into a dumb-luck smile.

Two rather gruff-looking men emerged from the door, the older one smoking a cigarette and wearing a sweater and work-stained trousers that suggested Warsaw Pact 1986 more than modern-day European Union. I waved to them, pointed to the bulky Canon 7D hanging from my neck, and then to the building. Old-school Google Translate.

They waved me in and gave me a tour.

Inside the ancient but fully functioning distillery, the men let me take pictures as they gave me a vaguely intelligible lesson via pointing, expressive looks, and smartphone-translated Hungarian, on how pálinka — Hungarian fruit brandy — was made.

Those barrels I had seen outside, it turned out, were full of fermenting pear and grape and apple juices. Inside, it was distilled somehow through a looping and tangled system of pipes running out of tin tanks up and along the walls. It looked like the laboratory of a mad scientist with a penchant for tacky linoleum flooring.

As they led me around, I engaged in that most intrinsic of travel activities: trying to see the world from the vantage point of someone utterly different from me. What was their life like? Had they traveled? Who were their parents and grandparents? The language barrier that did not allow them to answer did not stop me from wondering.

After soaking in every rusty detail and every glint of pride in the men’s tired eyes, I typed, “Come visit me in New York” into Google Translate — laughs all around — then headed back onto the drizzly streets of Mezöberény, utterly elated.

What was so great about this moment? Sure, the szeszfözde was a neat little story for friends, and in my case, worth a few paragraphs in the newspaper. But wasn’t it just a grimy business making local hooch in a town that even most Hungarians would classify as the middle of nowhere?

It was a great moment because I discovered it. Not an earth-shattering discovery in the sense of a cure for AIDS or a previously unknown species of poison-spitting neon frog the size of a pinky nail. But it was 100 percent unexpected, 100 percent real, and 100 percent mine.

Discovery used to be the lifeblood of travel, at least for those of us who shun tour-bus groups and all-inclusive resorts. We used to leave home knowing relatively little about our destination — perhaps with some highlighted guidebook pages denoting major attractions and local tipping etiquette, a list of tips culled from well-traveled friends, or articles copied and pasted into a Word document. For the ambitious, maybe a notional feel for the local history or culture gleaned pre-trip from a historical novel.

Beyond that, we were on our own.

Paper guidebooks frozen in time helped us along, as did pamphlets and paper maps from tourist information booths and tips from a hotel concierge. Earlier this century, Google searches in internet cafés also lent a hand. But otherwise, there was no choice: You decided what to do with your own eyes and ears, by wandering, by initiating human-to-human contact. Tips came from hearing fellow travelers’ stories over hostel or (non-Air) B&B breakfasts, entering a shop to ask directions and ending up in a conversation with the owner, or catching a whiff of fresh bread or sizzling chilies and following your nose.

Of course, all that still happens today — but only if you really go out of your way to make it happen. Not only is nearly every place in the world documented to within an inch of its life but that documentation — which comes dressed as both fact and opinion — is overwhelmingly and immediately available, thanks to pervasive technology. That’s great for many things in life — medical information, how-to videos, shorter commutes. But don’t we travel to break our routine? To experience the unexpected? To let the world delight us?

If we do, we have a funny way of showing it. We pore over online reviews for weeks, plan days down to the half hour, and then let GPS and the collected wisdom of the unwise lead us blindly. We mean well — no one wants to have a romantic dinner go wrong or to get lost and miss out on a “must-see attraction” or to risk chaos by failing to keep the kids entertained for three minutes.

But isn’t that just a digital version of the old-fashioned group tour? Well, almost, except that on the bus tour, you actually get to meet the person whose advice you’re taking.

One of my most ironclad rules of travel is this: the number of visitors a place receives is inversely related to how nice locals are to those visitors. Mezöberény, as far as I knew, had received precisely no foreign tourists ever. It was the anti-Paris, and this distillery the anti-Louvre.

People who inhabit the still-plentiful tourist-free swaths of the planet tend to be not only just nicer but more curious. They say a bear in the wild is just as scared of you as you are of it. I say people in places where outsiders rarely go are just as curious about visitors as visitors are about them. The question is not why the distillery workers invited me — a camera-toting, gibberish-talking stranger — in for a tour, it’s why wouldn’t they? If it were me, I’d be thinking: “What is this odd foreigner doing outside our szeszfözde with a camera? Wait till I tell the kids! And by the way, isn’t it about time we took a break?”

More importantly, is it possible that stumbling upon a dank distillery might be just as thrilling as a tour of one of the world’s great monuments? Did the surge of emotion I felt when the word distillery popped onto my screen match what I felt when I first glanced up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

Probably not, although I remember the distillery moment quite precisely and barely recall what I felt at the Sistine Chapel. Why? Because although Michelangelo’s prophets and sibyls and biblical re-creations are several trillion times lovelier than rusty pipes in a concrete building reeking of fermented fruit, I had seen them before in photos, heard professors talk about them, and read other travelers’ accounts as I sought the best times to avoid crowds.

That’s why I believe it is time we rediscover travel and recognize the value of what an overdocumented world has taken away: the delight of making things happen on your own.

***

Seth is the former Frugal Traveler columnist for the New York Times and author of the new Rediscovering Travel: A Guide for the Globally Curious, from which this is adapted.

In this book, Kugel challenges the modern travel industry with a determination to reignite humanity’s age-old sense of adventure that has virtually been vanquished in this spontaneity-obliterating digital age. You can purchase the book at Amazon and give it a read.

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One evening in August 2018, Maximillian Potter, then a writer for Esquire magazine, was sitting in a restaurant in California’s inland empire, trying to persuade a man in his 30s to share his memories of rape and abuse at the hands of powerful men in Hollywood in the late 1990s. Mr. Potter ordered a glass of wine — and instantly regretted it. The other man at the table had given up alcohol but seemed so shaken that Mr. Potter worried he might trigger a relapse. The dinner came toward the end of a year of reporting by Mr. Potter and a fellow investigative journalist, Alex French, on allegations against Bryan Singer, the director of “The Usual Suspects,” “X-Men” and “Superman Returns.” Mr. Potter assured his reluctant interview subject that he — and the powerful media company behind him, Hearst Communications — would have his back. But Mr. Potter was not following the intricate corporate succession drama taking place inside the Hearst Tower, a 21st-century skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan built atop the Hearst Building, a 1928 structure commissioned by the press baron William Randolph Hearst. There, Hearst’s chief executive officer, Steven R. Swartz, had been trying to get to the bottom of complaints about the workplace conduct of Troy Young, the company’s first head of digital media and a leading candidate to take over the magazine group. Mr. Swartz, a former journalist, had enlisted Lincoln Millstein, a longtime Hearst executive who had recently retired from full-time employment, to help him get frank feedback from top editors. Mr. Millstein said last week that he told Mr. Swartz that Mr. Young had “overwhelming support” to carry out the company’s transformation into a digital operation. On July 25, 2018, Mr. Young was named the president of Hearst Magazines, a job that put him in charge of Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Town & Country, Harper’s Bazaar and Good Housekeeping among its more than two dozen titles. Along with the promotion came a plan to give him “considerable mentoring and coaching,” a Hearst executive told me. On Thursday, Mr. Young resigned under pressure. His departure came shortly after my colleague Katie Robertson and I reported on the lewd and otherwise inappropriate remarks — and years of complaints about them — that had characterized his time running a company built largely on publications aimed at empowering women. In the Hearst cafeteria, for instance, he approached a heavily pregnant employee and said, “So, is the baby mine?” Mr. Young, who did not reply to email inquiries for this article, previously told The Times that the accusations against him were “either untrue, greatly exaggerated or taken out of context.” Under Mr. Young, Hearst Magazines did not only have a difficult workplace environment; it also may not have been the ideal company to back an ambitious investigative project like the one Mr. Potter and Mr. French had been working on for Esquire. On Halloween, three months after Mr. Young had become the Hearst Magazines leader, the two reporters found themselves in a meeting led by the division’s head of content, Kate Lewis. A former human resources executive at Condé Nast, Ms. Lewis had worked with Mr. Young at a start-up, Say Media, before signing on as his deputy in Hearst’s digital unit. Soon after his promotion to the top magazine job, Mr. Swartz and Mr. Young had named her the magazine group’s chief content officer, a job she still holds. The Halloween meeting, which included Esquire editors, took place in Ms. Lewis’s brightly lit office at a time when the article on Mr. Singer was in the late stages of editing for the December/January issue. As the meeting progressed, Ms. Lewis expressed doubt that the sources would stand up to scrutiny, the two reporters said. Ms. Lewis, who had little experience with investigative journalism, offered suggestions that struck the reporters as unhelpful. She told them the story could use a sympathetic victim, like Gwyneth Paltrow, the writers said. She also suggested serializing the story online, or publishing it as a kind of blind item, three people who attended the meeting told me. The next week, she informed Jay Fielden, then Esquire’s editor in chief, that the article would not run. (Ms. Lewis did not reply to requests for comment sent by email and through a company spokesman.) In retrospect, Hearst seems timid, at best. Mr. Potter and Mr. French, who had been working as contract writers for Esquire, took their work to The Atlantic, which ran the article in January 2019. For Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s top editor, the decision to publish was not difficult. “There’s not a lot of nuance here,” Mr. Goldberg told me last week. “They spiked a story that should have been published in the public interest for reasons unknown.” The Hearst executives I spoke with said they couldn’t recall Mr. Young having expressed a view on the Singer article. And even while speaking on condition of anonymity, they refused to say who made the final decision to spike the Singer story. At the time, Ms. Lewis told the Esquire staff that it was an editorial decision, which the company repeated publicly. Hearst’s chief legal officer, Eve Burton, said in a statement to the New York Post media reporter Keith Kelly shortly after the article appeared on The Atlantic’s website that the company’s decision not to publish it was “made based on our editorial standards.” Pressed for detail on Sunday, Ms. Burton said in an email: “We simply believed, both my lawyers and our senior editorial team, that we did not have a story that was defensible and fair. One of the hardest things to do sometimes is to not publish. It was a close call. We stand by that decision.” The Atlantic, which has been around since 1857, is hardly a run-and-gun tabloid operation, and its publication of the article was an important part of Hollywood’s #metoo reckoning. The piece won praise in part because it was a nuanced story about damaged young men, and it sent Mr. Singer’s career into a tailspin. Mr. Singer denied the article’s allegations shortly after it was published. “It’s sad that The Atlantic would stoop to this low standard of journalistic integrity,” he said in a statement at the time, describing the article as a “homophobic smear piece.” A movie he was scheduled to direct, “Red Sonja,” was put on hold in February 2019, and he was later replaced on the project by the writer-director Jill Soloway. Hearst’s call on the article was probably the highest-profile journalistic decision of Mr. Young’s two-year tenure as the magazine division’s president. It raised questions that still hang over the media industry, even three years after The New York Times and The New Yorker published their first investigative articles on the sexual misconduct of Harvey Weinstein. How much do the values of the men who control much of the culture industry trickle down into the culture? Is there a line to be drawn between a top media executive who asks a pregnant writer if the baby is his and what his company chooses to publish? Mr. French, the reporter, said he still doesn’t know why Hearst decided against publication. Mr. Fielden, the former Esquire editor, has told friends he still doesn’t know the reason, but a person close to him told me that when Hearst “made the decision to kill the Singer piece without any explanation, and in violation of editorial standards, Jay knew it was time to go.” This is not to say that media organizations wrestling with internal cultural issues — as virtually all are — cannot publish important work. Virtuous journalists do not always come up with worthy articles. No editor, reporter or newsroom is without sin — and yet we’re all in the business of throwing stones from our glass houses. But for many reporters who have covered the media industry’s recent bouts of self-examination, the issue of who, exactly, decides which subjects merit journalistic investigation is at the heart of the matter. “For generations, the abuses of power we loosely group under #metoo were considered a private matter, rarely newsworthy,” Irin Carmon, a senior correspondent for New York Magazine, said. “It’s not coincidental that those terms were set by powerful men who often had their own skeletons to hide and the incentive to protect each other.” She added, “It’s damning that Hearst would promote someone with multiple documented complaints against them in the middle of a national reckoning about the same behavior — it really speaks to what, and who, actually matters at the top there.” Hearst executives, speaking anonymously, hotly disputed the notion that Mr. Young’s workplace issues had spilled into the company’s journalism. He was, they said, focused on salvaging Hearst’s advertising business, which has battled the same headwinds as the rest of the media industry. As Ms. Robertson and I reported, Hearst executives described Mr. Young’s behavior as part and parcel of sharp-elbowed digital disruption, while hinting that his detractors were tired print editors unable to get the hang of the internet. Shrinking businesses make for bitter workplaces, and it’s true that Mr. Young shifted Hearst away from the freewheeling era of glossy print journalism toward the new reality of clicks and algorithms. But I’ve never seen crude talk as part of the digital transformation. In recent months, Mr. Young tried and failed to keep alive a valuable print publication, O: The Oprah Magazine, which Hearst had published in conjunction with Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Entertainment Group since 2000. Ms. Winfrey has decided to discontinue it as a print magazine, Hearst acknowledged to the Business of Fashion’s Chantal Fernandez on Friday night. A Hearst spokeswoman called the plan to end the print edition of O: The Oprah Magazine after its December 2020 issue “a natural next step for the brand.” But the scaling back of the relationship between the company and Ms. Winfrey is a major blow to the magazine group, and Hearst’s leaders had wrestled for weeks with how to make it public. As media companies go, Hearst is discreet, without the frequent public dramas besetting its more glamorous rival, Condé Nast, and even this newspaper. Perhaps for that reason, its executive comings and goings have not attracted much scrutiny. The highest profile recent departure before Mr. Young’s was probably that of Mr. Fielden, the editor who lost the fight to publish the Singer story. On the day he left the company in May 2019, he posed for a photograph that captured him striding out of the Hearst Tower while dressed impeccably and carrying four luxury-brand bags. The image, an immediate Instagram hit, subjected him to one of Twitter’s great roastings, and The Cut declared him a “fancy man.” The last thing the photo projected was an editor who had taken a professional risk for the cause of journalism. But Mr. Fielden ignored pressure from above to prevent the story from appearing elsewhere, according to three people with knowledge of what happened, and had encouraged The Atlantic’s Mr. Goldberg to take it. “I told Jay that if we publish a version of this story, it could be embarrassing for Esquire and it could get him in trouble,” Mr. Goldberg recalled. In the end, Mr. Goldberg added, Mr. Fielden “stood up for his writers, and he stood up for a story that was true, and he doesn’t get the credit he deserves for doing that.” The post Did Hearst’s Culture Kill Hearst’s Biggest Magazine Story? appeared first on Shri Times.

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