We didn’t get much insight on nias breakup with brainy, like how nia was feeling through the whole thing! It was pretty upsetting. So how about an almost rewrite of reality bytes where Yvette takes nia out to a party to loosen her up, she gets drunk, and brainy comes to the rescue? Like takes her home, stays with her when she gets sick and takes care of her kinda thing. Thanks!

- Okay the word count speaks for itself but this one really got away from me. But I had to throw in all the angst I possibly could. Thank you for the prompt! x

Working under the oppressive eye of Lex Luthor grew worse by the day.

Brainy had always been a master at multitasking, and so he had never assumed it would be exactly there that he would struggle the most.

And yet, here he was. Trying his hardest to focus on Lex’s latest tedious task to keep him in check. After all, Lex Luthor may have very well believed Brainy’s impassive charade, but that did not buy trust. Only time and a one hundred per cent success rate would accomplish that.

To achieve it, distractions had to be eradicated. He had already made his excuses time and time again for not attending one of Kara’s famed game nights, and despite Alex’s insistence, he had not given in to any other form of group activity, either – especially those involving Al’s Bar. He needed to maintain a clear head, to do as his doppelganger had instructed; to protect his friends and their future, he had to rid his mind of them. All of them. It was imperative to success.

And yet, the moment his phone buzzed with an incoming call, Brainy’s heart leapt into his throat.

It was Nia’s name that popped up on his screen. Nia’s face. So jovial, so care-free. In the photograph, her arm was wrapped around Brainy’s shoulders where she had pulled him in for a last-minute selfie. She’d kissed his cheek just seconds after it had been taken, insisting it’d be an awesome couple photo.

He had meant to change that. Why had he not…?

He swallowed hard, focusing instead on his computer screens, relaying information back and forth between them. It was without passion, meaningless data that could be shifted anywhere whilst maintaining the same result. But, it still served a purpose, keeping him from his intestinal inclination, that gut instinct to reach for his phone and answer without a moment’s hesitation.

When was the last time he had heard her voice?

He had been keeping his distance where he could, maintaining a professional formality with her whenever he caught her in the field as Dreamer. He knew it hurt her, every time it hurt her, but he could not avoid his duties in as much the same way she could not avoid hers.

They were in effect destined to bump into each other. The only way Brainy could lessen that hurt was by avoiding conversation as much as possible, throwing up every wall he could think of, even if he had to stumble over his words to do so.

When Nia’s face disappeared, Brainy released the breath he’d been holding, letting it dust across his screens.

Then, his phone buzzed twice more.

Voicemail.

Nia never left voicemails. Not since he had ended things with her so abruptly, walking out of her apartment, refusing to elaborate, to offer her any kind of closure.

It was a calculated hurt powerful enough for her to abstain from asking questions; a necessary evil, and one Brainy would never forgive himself for causing.

He shouldn’t be doing this, his mind warned, but his thoughts were racing, derailing from all twelve tracks at once.

His hand was already poised over his phone. Before he could think better of it, Brainy snatched it up, connecting to his most recent voice message. He pressed it to his ear, pursing his lips in anticipation.

“You suck, you know that?”

Brainy flinched, the phone nearly slipping right from his hand. Nia’s voice was harsh, anger tinged with upset, but it was her voice. It could have been filled with all the fury in the world and Brainy would have still listened just as eagerly, if only for the chance to hear her again.

As the voicemail continued to play, Brainy realised that Nia’s words were slightly obscured by the heavy beats of music playing in the background, not to mention the loud chatting and whooping of people he certainly did not recognise. Brainy frowned. She must have been at some kind of party. Although, none of the voices present sounded as though they were talking to her specifically.

A nightclub, perhaps?

Nia wasn’t usually one for clubbing. So, why would she-?

“And y’know what?” Nia’s voicemail continued out just as harshly, cutting off Brainy’s train of thought. “Yvette’s so right, I deserve better than some guy who’s gonna leave me hanging, who leaves with zero explanation, and I- oh crap, sorry-” There was a scuffle, one caused by Nia knocking into a fellow patron if her apology was anything to go by. The slur in her voice was very evident, which led Brainy to conclude that she had been drinking heavily that night, enough to pick up the courage to call him.

His stomach lurched when he heard another voice in the background.

“Girl, what are you doing?” It was Yvette. Of course Yvette would have been the mastermind behind this apparent night out, likely with the well-minded intent of assisting with Nia’s mood.

Yvette’s voice grew louder as she came closer. “What are you- wait, are you calling him? No, no, you get off the phone right now, that’s messy as hell!”

Brainy was inclined to agree. Nia, however, seemed to have other ideas.

“It’s fine,” she insisted. “I-”

Before Brainy could hear anything more, the message cut off.

Brainy squeezed his eyes shut, clenching and unclenching his jaw methodically.

He shouldn’t do it. He shouldn’t be giving into gut instinct, not now, not-not ever. Not with so much at stake. He was supposed to be monitoring Lex’s movements, doing everything he could to keep a step ahead of whatever he was planning. So far, he had failed at that. And, if he continued to lose sight of his objective, he would only slip further still.

But, if there was one thing he could count on now more than ever, it was the Big Brain. Perhaps it was not that his skill at multitasking had been limited as of late, but more-so that he was not utilising it to its fullest extent. He could easily keep a thought track open for any updates on Lex’s data entry, could even continue development on the bug he was planning to slip into Lex’s private servers. For the moment, they were obstructed by a firewall even he was having difficulty breaching. But, with time…

Brainy’s fingers curled together, winding tightly around his phone. He had the room to deviate from his plans for one night. Besides, it would take mere seconds to get a lock on Nia’s GPS…

He had been trying so hard to keep out of her private business these last few weeks. The little he did know were only of her recent exploits as Dreamer that had been plastered all over the news. But, even knowing what she’d accomplished in such a short time, how capable she had become as a hero, it could not stop the worry that clogged so suddenly inside his throat.

He just had to know where she was, he rationalised. He just had to know that she was safe.

The moment her co-ordinates flashed in his mind, Brainy’s chest caught, lips parting. She was close-by, an estimated three minutes by flight from his current location.

He shouldn’t be doing this.

Brainy’s eyes scanned empty air, but beyond that he saw everything. The security for the club was rudimentary at best, and far too easy to hack. Nia’s most recent location had pointed her somewhere near to the club doors, which was only confirmed when Brainy linked up to the cameras out front, pinpointing her almost immediately.

Yvette was with her, holding up her weight as Nia slumped precariously into her side, nearly tripping down the club’s steps in an effort to remain upright. If it hadn’t been for Yvette’s guiding hand, she likely would have.

Brainy gritted his teeth. Just how much had she had to drink? He had never known Nia to drink so excessively, especially with how rigorously she had been training as of late. This was new behaviour for her, but not unpredictable. Brainy was more than aware of the many coping mechanisms one might find themselves adopting in times of emotional distress.

He had caused this.

He could fix this…

But he couldn’t, couldn’t - no matter how much his heart insisted otherwise, he could not give in. Nia wanted nothing to do with him, that much was clear from her message. And… Yvette was with her. Yvette would get her home safely.

But Yvette had clearly been drinking, also. What if something were to occur between the club and their apartment? Nia was disorientated, vulnerable, and with alcohol marring her judgement, her reaction timing would never match that of a clear-minded foe.

Brainy stood from his desk all at once, nearly toppling his chair in his haste. Fortunately, he was in a private office. Another upgrade from Lex. He swallowed down the bitter taste in his mouth; at least he could use this particular gift to his advantage.

He needed to get to Nia undetected. Immediately.

Brainy’s calculations had been - as expected - totally correct. He reached the club in no less than three minutes, giving himself ample distance to land so that no drunk bystanders might notice his arrival. Not that their likelihood of remembering any of this come morning was very high, but it was best not to push those odds.

The moment he saw her, Brainy’s world stopped moving.

Nia and Yvette were sat together on the club’s steps. It appeared Yvette had not been successful getting Nia all the way down them. Now, she was stubbornly trying to encourage Nia to drink from a water bottle she’d had stashed in her bag. Nia only turned away from her with a grimace, pushing her face firmly into her hands. Her cheeks were rosy from alcohol consumption, her dark hair beginning to thicken and frizz from the humidity of the club. The dress she wore danced with row upon row of sequins, glinting in purple and pink tones beneath the streetlight.

She was so beautiful it nearly caused a physical ache inside of Brainy’s chest.

Never had he wanted to go to her so ardently, to scoop her into his arms, hold her close and never let go.

But, he couldn’t. He was bound by his decision and, what’s more, he was the very cause for this entire situation in the first place. Nia was only in this position because of what he had put her through, and he couldn’t take that back. So long as Leviathan was a threat, he could not give up this ruse, he could not tell her the truth.

Even if he did… the acidic tone in Nia’s voicemail told him all he needed to know. That he may have well lost her for good by doing this. And he could barely stand to think it.

Again, a distant part of his mind queried why he was even here? Was this not already traipsing on incredibly dangerous territory? If Lex found any reason to distrust him, this logical and distant image Brainy had been parading would’ve all been for naught, and his Earth would meet the same fate as his female doppelganger’s.

No, no. Regardless of his decisions, the side he had been forced to take, he was still himself. In which case, there was nothing wrong with helping those that required his assistance, even if they hadn’t exactly asked for it. In that way, he could at least be there for Nia. If she would even allow it at all.

He hadn’t expected a warm welcome, but when Yvette recognised him from halfway across the club grounds, the look she gave him was practically poisonous.

“You,” Yvette sneered, wrapping an arm protectively around Nia’s shoulders. Nia only groaned, digging her fingers against her face. Yvette’s eyes narrowed distrustfully. “Voicemail didn’t cut it, hm? You know you broke her heart, right?”

“I’m… aware,” Brainy said tightly, trying his hardest to maintain the same collected calm he’d been offering the rest of his friends. Any slip-ups now could be the end of this ruse once and for all.

Nia had yet to lift her head, and so Brainy took that as his opportunity to remove his phone from his pocket, very clearly displaying the Uber app on his screen, making his intentions clear. “I can help get her home.”

Yvette snorted derisively, tightening her hold around Nia. “Uh-uh, there is no way I’m leaving Nia alone with your cheating ass.”

Brainy’s face fell. Cheating? Was that what Nia had told her? Or… or had that been Yvette’s own assumption of events? “I didn’t cheat on her,” he said, a little defensively.

“Please,” Yvette scoffed. “No one’s feelings magically change overnight unless there’s another woman involved.” She gave him a snide once-over. “She can do better than you.”

Brainy’s stomach sank, his eyes flickering to Nia, capturing every inch of her. “I… I have no doubt.”

It took some back and forth, but eventually, Yvette agreed to his help on the condition she came back to the apartment with them. Brainy understood that she hadn’t wanted to cut her own night short, but Nia’s health came first. At least on that, they could both agree.

Regardless, it was a very awkward Uber journey back to the apartment.

Nia didn’t speak the whole car ride, and Brainy began to wonder if she was lucid enough to understand her surroundings at all. She didn’t look up from her hands, and more than once Brainy considered that she might be doing it purposely, far too aware of who she was currently sharing a car with.

Although, the steadily worsening pallor of her skin pointed towards another, far likelier, possibility.

Which was confirmed the second they got into the apartment’s elevator.

The juddering motions of the small space was all it took for Nia to break her silence, cupping a hand desperately over her mouth.

“I feel sick,” she murmured into her palm.

“Hold off,” Yvette said gently, rubbing Nia’s shoulders. “We’ll be home any second.”

Brainy wished it could be him to offer Nia comfort like that, but he’d practically backed himself into the furthest corner of the elevator, acting as nothing more than a passive shadow to the night’s unfolding events. He dug his hands into his pockets, clenching them tightly to keep from reaching out to her, watching with worried eyes as Nia grabbed suddenly for the elevator’s rail with her free hand, swallowing thickly.

The moment the doors opened, Nia stumbled out, nearly tripping in her haste to exit. Brainy maintained his distance while Yvette helped Nia down the hallway, waiting awkwardly with his arms folded as she fumbled with the keys to the door. He hovered hesitantly outside the doorway when Nia broke from Yvette, rushing into the bathroom, although he noticed that Yvette was wary to follow her in.

When he caught her eye, Yvette grimaced, shaking her head. “I- I can’t, I’m a sympathetic vomiter,” she explained weakly. “If she hurls, I hurl.”

Brainy nodded his understanding, reviewing the door’s entrance as though it might swallow him whole. After a long moment, he ducked his head, stepping inside. “I can stay with her, if you would like,” he offered, quirking a brow. “After all, you are in need of rest as well.”

Yvette pulled a face, staring at him suspiciously. “You really don’t quit, do you?”

Brainy only shrugged.

“I’m keeping my eye on you,” Yvette said, which at first Brainy didn’t understand as an invitation. That was, until, she stepped aside, waving her hand in the direction of the apartment’s bathroom.

Brainy didn’t waste any time. He barely managed a breathy thank you before he headed the way Nia had disappeared.

Nia was curled around the toilet when Brainy pushed the door open, her hands pressed firmly against the rim. She hadn't appeared to have thrown up yet, but she was pale and shivering, her jaw clenched tight with discomfort.

The moment he was close enough, Brainy dropped to his knees, reaching out a hand hesitantly towards her, gauging her reaction. When none came, Brainy carefully rested the flat of his palm across her back. She didn’t try to move away from his touch; instead, with a shaky sigh, she relaxed against him, eyes fluttering shut.

And so, Brainy continued, boldly enough to massage his fingers gently and precisely around her spine, quickly finding a pattern that she seemed to appreciate. He rubbed her back in large, repetitive circles, filling the silence with the quiet crunch of sequins as they rolled lethargically beneath his palm.

It wasn’t long before Nia’s shoulders tensed up. Her chest convulsed and she groaned out, throwing her head over the toilet just in time before she vomited into the bowl. As expected, the contents of her stomach appeared to mostly be liquid, which certainly explained the dangerous level of her intoxication. Brainy remained exactly where he was, holding her back steady with one hand whilst studiously bunching Nia’s hair behind her shoulders with the other, tugging away loose strands that had caught across her lips. No sooner had he done so, Nia gagged again, squeezing her eyes shut as round two commenced.

Brainy continued to rub her back, murmuring soft comforts at her side, slipping between both English and Coluan. Nia had certainly picked up some of his native language in the months they had been together, but not enough for her to realise in that moment the weight of what he was telling her. Or, rather, what he wished he could be telling her - in a language she might recognise.

When Nia was reduced to dry heaving over the bowl, Brainy realised that her mascara had begun to run, bleeding black streaks down her face. The strain of vomiting could certainly cause such a reaction, but something in his heart told him that this was more than that.

He wished he could brush those tears away as tenderly as he once had, that he could reassure her that everything would be okay.

But how could he when he knew the probability of their relationship rekindling once the dust had cleared? How could he when said relationship was already in shambles, pushing them apart even while they were sat so closely together on the bathroom tile?

“Here.”

Brainy blinked out of his thoughts, turning his head to find Yvette stood in the doorway, trying very hard to keep her eyes away from Nia’s current condition. She held a glass of water outstretched towards him.

Brainy took it gratefully, lowering his head into a sincere bow. “Thank you.”

“You’re still so weird,” Yvette said, although for just a moment, he thought he caught a fondness in her tone. Then, she cleared her throat. “This doesn’t mean I like you,” she said quickly, heading back out into the hall. “Remember, I am one room over. You try anything, and I’ll-”

Her words were cut off by the slam of her door, but Brainy understood well enough the threat she had posed. He nearly smiled. If anything, he was glad Nia had a friend and roommate as protective as Yvette. She had been there for Nia in a way that Brainy had not been able to for far too long, offering her a shoulder to cry on, and a party to draw her mind away from the pain, if only for an evening.

Perhaps it hadn’t worked as Yvette had wanted, but Brainy hoped that even for a little while, Nia might have experienced something other than heartache that night.

When there was nothing but bile left in Nia’s stomach, Brainy took her shoulder, offering the water glass out to her. “Nia,” he said gently. “You must try to drink this. It’ll help-”

Before he could finish, Nia shot to life, slapping away his hand so hard that the glass’s contents sloshed down Brainy’s arm, drenching his sleeve.

“No!” Nia cried out weakly. “No, get off me, you jerk!”

Brainy let go of her immediately, shuffling away from her forlornly. He watched instead as Nia folded her arms angrily across the toilet bowl, pressing her forehead against the rim.

For a while, only her harsh breathing echoed around the small space. Then, Nia stopped, arms clenching as she squeezed her hands into fists. “Why’re you even here?” she croaked.

“You… called.”

Nia snorted. “That’s never stopped you from ignoring me before.”

Brainy’s stomach twisted uncomfortably. “You were in need of assistance,” he said instead, trying his hardest to keep his voice from crackling.

“What is this, Brainy?” Nia asked exhaustedly. She lifted her head, dark hair curtaining her face, but Brainy could see that her eyes were trained downwards, seeing nothing. “Why’re you doing this to me?”

“Nia—”

“No, no, you go radio silent on me for weeks. You don’t give me any explanation, you don’t talk to me, you act like I don’t exist. And you think you can just turn up now and- what? What do you want?”

Brainy’s eyes were beginning to burn. He blinked quickly, doubling down on the same toneless voice he’d perfected over the last few weeks. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Nia laughed, although it sounded more like a sob. She spat into the toilet, lips twisting sourly. “Well,” she muttered darkly. “I’m not. You broke my heart. And you can’t fix that.”

Brainy’s own heart felt as though it might shatter in his chest. He opened his mouth, only to close it again when he realised there was nothing he could say that might absolve him. He didn’t want to be absolved. Nia was right. No matter what he said, even if he folded and told her everything right that second, wouldn’t fix what he had already broken.

He didn’t try to touch her again. Instead, he simply knelt there, watching as she picked up the water he’d left out for her, drinking the half that hadn’t spilt over his sleeve.

When Nia didn’t appear to be in danger of vomiting again, Brainy walked her to the bedroom. He stayed a respectable distance from her the whole while, enough that he could steady her should she decide to fall. At the last few steps before her door, she did stumble slightly, and Brainy held his arm out to her on reflex. Begrudgingly, Nia took it, staggering the final distance down the hall.

Nia let go of him the moment her bed was in sight, practically falling against the mattress, uncaring of the uncomfortable and clearly not bedroom-appropriate attire she was still wearing. Instead, she curled up quickly beneath the comforter, hugging her knees close to her stomach.

Silently, Brainy set about placing a fresh glass of water on her nightstand, as well as retrieving a trash can from the bathroom, tucking it within easy reaching distance of the bed. When he was done, he stood there a moment, watching the steady rise and fall of Nia’s back, wondering briefly if she may have fallen asleep.

“You know the way out.”

Her voice was devoid of any care, and yet it was still sharp enough to cut a hole through his heart. She sounded so empty and drained, exhausted by the night’s events.

But, worse yet, she had been exhausted by him.

Brainy closed his eyes, a million and one apologies budding on his tongue, desperate to leave him in a fierce burst, to explain everything, to beg for her forgiveness in every language he knew.

But as always, logic won out. No matter how much he wished he could tell her, he couldn’t. Not unless he wanted to put his family’s lives in mortal danger.

And so, it was upon Nia’s instruction that he left her without another word.

It wasn’t until he was out the front door, halfway back towards the elevator, that Brainy’s chest hitched, his breathing jerking harshly outside of his control. He stumbled into the wall, baring his teeth as the first of his tears began to flow.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured to nothing. To no one. After all, he knew in his heart that those words would never be enough; no words would ever be enough.

The longer he kept this up, the more he knew with one hundred per cent certainty that Nia would never forgive him.

And that hurt more profoundly than any words she left on his voicemail ever could.

happiness, a kind of holiness

I do writing warm-ups most days that I never post because they are rarely any good. But this week’s are set around Christmas so here you go. Please be aware that this is not edited and exists only to get the writing juices flowing (which is a disgusting turn of phrase).

It’s Monday. Early. Christmas week. The sky is cloudy, gray. Casting gloomy shadows where the filtered morning sunlight doesn’t quite reach. Michael parks his truck, cuts off the engine, and tries to see past the holiday decorations obscuring the interior of the small coffee shop where he is meeting Alex for breakfast. It’s not a date. It’s not a date. Even if they are both single.

The door opens with the jingle jangle of sleigh bells, the warmth of the furnace immediately wraps around him. He scans each table quickly, spotting Alex in the back corner. His head buried in a Manila folder, brow furrowed as he reads what Michael hopes is good news concerning their new ex-military friend, Eduardo Ramos. 

Alex drags his eyes away from the papers in the folder at the sound of the bells. He smiles, full and bright, when he sees Michael. Waves. Moves to stand for some reason, but Michael shakes his head and points to the counter. Alex nods and returns his attention to the folder. 

There are a few people in front of him so Michael takes the opportunity to not at all discreetly observe Alex. They’ve spent a lot of time together recently but always surrounded by the rest of their friends as they plan to go on the offense against Jones. Other than a stolen word or two on the way to their cars, they haven’t had any real time to talk. 

Until this morning. 

Michael had called Alex to relay information for their next meeting at Kyle’s house and Alex had suggested this meetup. The two of them alone together for no real discernible reason. Michael had easily said yes and spent the next 12 hours talking himself out of believing this could in any way be construed as a date.

But seeing Alex now makes him realize he’s failed. Badly. Because he desperately needs this to be a date. And he convinces himself that’s what Alex wants too. That his maroon sweater and black leather jacket and perfectly fitted jeans aren’t on accident. Michael looks down at himself and tries to imagine what Alex sees. Certainly the expanse of exposed chest. The worn, frayed edges of his shirt, the oil stains on his jeans, the scuffs on his boots. But maybe also the way his fingers always flex at the sight of him, the way the pulse in his neck races, the way his eyes linger heavy and for far too long.

He orders a small black coffee and heads to Alex’s table, sliding into the chair opposite him and throwing his hat into the chair between them. ‘Good news or bad news?’

Alex pushes the folder across the table, spinning it around so that Michael can read the document. ‘Most of what he said checks out. He was discharged from the Army eight years ago, but he left out the part where it was a dishonorable discharge.’

Michael’s eyes narrow as he skims the information. ‘What’d he do?’

‘Not sure. That’s classified above my clearance, but give me a few extra days to keep digging.’ He sips at his coffee and flips to another page in the folder. ‘He’s been off the grid for two years. Hardly any digital footprint which suggests he’s been in hiding.’

‘That doesn’t sound good.’ 

‘I would advise extreme caution until we know more. There are dozens of stupid reasons people get dishonorably discharged, and he might just be paranoid. Happens to a lot of guys once they get out.’ His eyes dart back to the door, the bells jingling again.

‘Nothing you have any firsthand experience with.’ It’s meant as a joke, but Alex’s forehead wrinkles. ‘Which is earned considering the lives we lead.’

‘Nah, you’re right. I had all those cameras installed long before I understood anything about aliens and mass government conspiracies.’ Alex taps his fingers on the lid of his drink and his forehead wrinkles disappear. 

He smiles, lopsided. A fair amount of flirt implied. ‘I always just thought that was your very thorough way of screening guests. No riffraff allowed. Mainly, your dad.’

‘Well, then I hope you also noticed that you’ve always been welcome.’ Michael hates how much that makes his heart pound. How much hope that spreads warm throughout his chest. Forever and ever he’ll be this easy.

‘I did.’ He’d rarely had to ring the doorbell twice. Often not even at all.

Tension joins them at the table, shifting them in their seats as they readjust to the extra weight. Michael clears his throat. ‘Why did you invite me here this morning?’

Alex’s eyes fall to the folder like maybe the answer is in his carefully constructed research. ‘To warn you. Ask you to be careful with this guy.’

‘That’s why? Probably could have waited until tonight. When you could tell everyone to be careful at the same time.’ Michael leans forward, elbows on the table. Hands as close as he dares to Alex’s still wrapped around his coffee. 

Michael watches him battle himself for the right words. A decade’s worth of emotions working across his face, haunting his features. His words when they come are quiet, simple things. Certain. ‘I missed you.’

Closing the gap between them, Michael’s fingertips tap at Alex’s knuckles. ‘We’ve seen each other every day.’ 

‘I know. But there were always too many people in the way.’ He takes a shuddering breath and concentrates his gaze on where their fingers meet. ‘I guess what I mean is, I missed us. Just us. I’ve missed us for a long time now.’

Michael nods and sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, considering. ‘Has there ever really been an us? One that wasn’t a secret?’

Hurt flashes in Alex’s eyes, mouth immediately parting to bite out a response. But he stops. Takes another breath. Swallows. ‘No, not really. So maybe I missed what I wanted us to be.’

‘I missed that too. You wanted to be friends once. That’s what you said. And we never really got there.’ Their fingers twine together of their own accord. Very little thought playing into the touch.

‘I’d like to try that now. How about a standing coffee date every morning this week. As a start?’ He rubs his thumb lightly over Michael’s, face open and flush with possibility.

Michael pulls Alex’s hand to his lips. Presses a soft kiss. ‘As a start.’

Rest In Peace, Alex! - Phroyd

Alex Trebek, who became known to generations of television viewers as the quintessential quizmaster, bringing an air of bookish politesse to the garish coli­seum of game shows as the longtime host of “Jeopardy!,” died Nov. 8 at 80.

The official “Jeopardy!” Twitter account announced the death without further details.

Mr. Trebek had suffered a series of health reversals in recent years, including two heart attacks and brain surgery, and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2019. He continued to host new episodes of his show until production was suspended in March because of the coronavirus pandemic, and then filmed socially distanced episodes that began airing Sept. 14.

For more than three decades, Mr. Trebek was a daily presence in millions of households, earning near-rabid loyalty for the intellectual challenge of his show, in which questions were presented as answers and answers were delivered in the form of questions. By the time of his death, “Jeopardy!” was one of the most popular and longest-lasting programs of its kind in TV history.

Mr. Trebek, the self-made son of a hotel chef, had no sequined co-presenter to match Vanna White on host Pat Sajak’s “Wheel of Fortune.” His show neither attracted nor allowed histrionics, no galloping, shrieking contestants such as those summoned to “Come on down!” on “The Price Is Right” with Bob Barker. Even the “Jeopardy!” theme song, one of the most recognizable jingles on television, was restrained in its dainty dings.

There was no “hot seat” like the chair for contestants on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” with Regis Philbin — a show that “Jeopardy!” purists disdained for its elementary subject matter and inflated prize money.

On “Jeopardy!” there were only questions and answers — or rather, answers and then questions — leavened by the briefest of banter before Mr. Trebek directed his three contestants back to business.

He became known, a reporter for the New Republic magazine once observed, for his “crisp enunciation, acrobatic inflections [and] hammy dignity” as he primly — and with precise pronunciation — relayed clues in categories such as “European Cuisine,” “U.S. Geography,” “Ballet and Opera,” “Potent Potables” and “Potpourri.”

“The folding type of this cooling device became accepted in China during the Ming dynasty,” Mr. Trebek might declaim, as competitors raced to buzz in with the reply, “What is a fan?”

“Jeopardy!” was the creation of singer and talk-show host Merv Griffin, whose TV empire also included “Wheel of Fortune” and “Dance Fever.” His wife, Julann Griffin, proposed the show’s conceit. If players provided questions instead of answers, she said, then “Jeopardy!” would be safe from the high-profile cheating scandals that plagued TV quiz shows in the 1950s.

The Griffin brainchild aired on NBC from 1964 to 1975, then returned as “The All New Jeopardy!” from 1978 to 1979, both times with the stately actor Art Fleming as host. Mr. Trebek took over when the show was revived in syndication in 1984, also serving during his first several seasons as producer.

Much like his program, Mr. Trebek indulged in few frills. He favored conservative suits. When he shaved his signature mustache in 2001 — “on a whim,” he said — his viewership erupted in titillation.

The most exuberant flourish about the show might have been the exclamation mark in the title. Mr. Trebek, for his part, emitted few if any exclamations as he led contestants through the first round of clues; then a second, higher-stakes round dubbed “Double Jeopardy!”; and then “Final Jeopardy!,” in which players could wager all or some of their earnings on a single stumper.

“My job,” he told the Associated Press in 2012, “is to provide the atmosphere and assistance to the contestants to get them to perform at their very best. And if I’m successful doing that, I will be perceived as a nice guy and the audience will think of me as being a bit of a star. But not if I try to steal the limelight! The stars of ‘Jeopardy!’ are the material and the contestants.”

(Perhaps the show’s greatest stars were Ken Jennings, who reigned over the grid for 74 shows in 2004, claiming $2.5 million in winnings, and Watson, the IBM computer that defeated Jennings and another champion, Brad Rutter, in 2011.)

Fans who attended tapings of the show received a rare insight into Mr. Trebek’s dry humor when he held forth with them during commercial breaks, cutting up about how he didn’t “like spending time with stupid people,” which resulted in his having “very few friends.” He often regaled the crowd with tales of his DIY home-improvement projects.

He said his breakfast consisted of a Snickers and Diet Pepsi, or a Milky Way and Diet Coke. And he was not always as staid as he might have seemed, once tearing his Achilles’ tendon when he chased a burglar from his hotel room in 2011.

But to most “Jeopardy!” viewers, Mr. Trebek was akin to a neighbor they saw every day without becoming intimately acquainted. In a tribute to Mr. Trebek after his cancer diagnosis was announced, Jennings affectionately described him as “a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a Perry Ellis suit.” One of the few clues to his past was his slight Canadian accent.

George Alexander Trebek was born in Sudbury, Ontario, on July 22, 1940. His father was a Ukrainian immigrant, and his mother was French Canadian. In a memoir published in July, “The Answer Is . . . Reflections on My Life,” Mr. Trebek described a childhood marked by poverty and illness, including a painful form of rheumatism that he developed after falling into a frozen lake at age 7.

Mr. Trebek said that he considered becoming a priest but did not enjoy his experimentation with a vow of silence. “I was a very good student, but leaned more toward show business than anything else because I had a way of entertaining the class,” he told the Toronto Star. “I wasn’t the class clown, but always prominent — even when I was quiet.”

He said he was nearly expelled from boarding school and then dropped out of a military college after three days because he did not wish to subject himself to a buzz cut.

Mr. Trebek began working at the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. while studying philosophy at the University of Ottawa, where he graduated in 1961. As a broadcaster for radio and television, he delivered coverage in English and French, reported on news, weather and sports, and hosted “Reach for the Top,” a popular teen quiz show.

In 1973, Mr. Trebek came to the United States as host of “The Wizard of Odds,” a short-lived game show created by fellow Canadian Alan Thicke.

“It was canceled on a Friday, and I was disappointed, of course,” Mr. Trebek once said on “The Dan Patrick Show,” a sports talk program. “It was replaced the following Monday by a show called ‘High Rollers,’ which I also hosted. . . . After two and a half years, it was canceled, and it was replaced by another show which I hosted. So I have the either great honor or dubious honor of having replaced myself on three different occasions.”

Mr. Trebek, who became a U.S. citizen in 1998, also hosted shows including “Double Dare,” “The $128,000 Question” and “Battlestars.” He subbed for Chuck Woolery, Sajak’s predecessor on “Wheel of Fortune,” bringing him to the attention of Griffin. For a period Mr. Trebek hosted “Classic Concentration” and “To Tell the Truth” while also presiding over “Jeopardy!,” where he reportedly commanded $10 million a year.

As “Jeopardy!” host, Mr. Trebek participated in national contestant searches and shepherded the first teen, senior and celebrity tournaments. He also contributed clues, drawing from his knowledge in such arcane fields as oil drilling and bullfighting. He personally reviewed all clues before taping a show and claimed that he could answer about 65 percent of them correctly. If he judged one too difficult, he asked writers not to use it.

“I’ll say, ‘Nobody’s going to get this,’ ” he told the New York Times in a 2020 interview. “And they usually take my suggestions, because I view myself as every man.”

By the time Mr. Trebek completed 30 years as host, “Jeopardy!” reached 25 million viewers a week. His Emmys included a lifetime achievement award, and, in 2013, he ranked No. 8 in a Reader’s Digest poll of the most trusted people in America. Jimmy Carter, the highest-ranking president on the list, arrived at No. 24.

A ubiquitous presence in pop culture, Mr. Trebek appeared in the “Got milk?” advertising campaign, in films including “White Men Can’t Jump” (1992) and on television shows including “The Simpsons” and “The X-Files.” In a memorable episode of “Cheers,” Mr. Trebek welcomed as a contestant the postal carrier Cliff Clavin (John Ratzenberger), the sitcom’s most undesirable bachelor, in a round of “Jeopardy!” with categories including “beer,” “mothers and sons” and “celibacy.”

Mr. Trebek was spoofed on “Second City Television,” the Canadian TV sketch show, and “Saturday Night Live,” with comedian Will Ferrell, as his impersonator, barely containing his contempt for dimwitted contestants on “Celebrity Jeopardy!”

“I’ll take ‘Swords’ for $400,” Sean Connery, portrayed by Darrell Hammond, intoned in a Scottish accent when the category of clues was in fact “ ‘S’ Words.”

Mr. Trebek’s first marriage, to Elaine Callei, ended in divorce. In 1990, he married Jean Currivan. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.

Little changed about “Jeopardy!” as the years wore on for the show, for Mr. Trebek and for fans. Newfangled topics, such as twerking, were occasionally introduced. Over time, contestants revealed themselves to be more familiar with Dan Brown, author of “The Da Vinci Code,” than with the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the New Republic noted. And Mr. Trebek was called upon to learn to rap to read certain clues.

But mainly the show stayed “comfortable, like an old pair of shoes,” Mr. Trebek once said. In its constancy, it became all the more comforting for the legions of fans who turned to “Jeopardy!” for its promise of clear right and wrong answers in a world where the matter of what is true was increasingly subjected to partisan debate.

“There’s a certain comfort that comes from knowing a fact,” Mr. Trebek told the Times in July. “The sun is up in the sky. There’s nothing you can say that’s going to change that. You can’t say, ‘The sun’s not up there, there’s no sky.’ There is reality, and there’s nothing wrong with accepting reality. It’s when you try to distort reality, to maneuver it into accommodating your particular point of view, your particular bigotry, your particular whatever — that’s when you run into problems.”

Phroyd

Four Minutes Too Late (SFW)

Summary: MC had four minutes to bring him back; what she thought to be enough time. She was horrifically wrong. Now, after returning home numb from her failure, MC’s heart chips at the last note he left for her... and she wishes she could sock him one last time. 

Word Count: 1,928

Genre: Angst (SFW)

Warning(s): MAJOR SPOILERS FOR CAL S2, EPS 10-12, mentions of death, a bunch of angst

A/N: Here’s an alternate version of the finale of Cal North’s season 2 where the resurrection fails and MC reads the note he wrote to her. The idea of this is right up my alley for severe angst so enjoy this heartbreaking fic as much as you can.

Also inspired by the this post by @official-alex-cyprin.

MC couldn’t keep still.

Despite the numbness infecting her body, MC’s legs continued to carry around the room as she paces restlessly. How could she rest? Cal was dead. He was gone and he would never come back. MC had repeated that a thousand times over in her head at this point but somehow, after stating this in the space and comfort of her room, it still rattles her from the inside out. First with her heart shuddering and crying with the truth at hand, then the tears that prick her eyes goading her to actually cry. I failed. I failed him. And he had to suffer the consequences. She shuts her eyes against the intense waves of guilt and frustration and sadness that all lap at her, tugging and knotting her heartstrings sordidly. As morbid as it sounded, it was true; no one could convince her otherwise. Cal had sought her out specifically--asked for her assistance and utter trust--and relied on her to do her part. Bring him back to life. But she didn’t. MC tried with every ounce of her being to focus on breathing life back into him, conduct CPR until his chest moved, stab the adrenaline shot into his heart until she could feel the dull thump of it against her fingertips... But nothing happened. Thirty seconds passed--nothing. Then a minute--nothing--then two, then three, then four until Wrath had to pull her away--drag her back into reality and relay the message that it was too late. Cal was gone.

MC collapses backwards onto her bed as more guilt swamps her. What about Avi? The little boy had no idea what Cal had been planning and now that the plan failed, how in the hell would the troupe be able to break the news to him? He was so small and pure and spared from the hard travesties of life; with Cal there to raise and monitor him, Avi never had to experience loss or true grief. And now he had to face all of those inevitable feelings with the loss of his legal guardian--the person who he saw everyday and who he loved most of all. Avi would experience grief from the person who had gone through hell and back to assure that Avi never went through the past he had lived through. That shred of happiness was gone; stolen right from under his feet like it was nothing--like Cal was nothing. That, more than any other revelation MC experienced, is what tears her heart into ribbons. She couldn’t wash her mind clean of the last moments of Cal’s life--the look of regret and longing. The feeling that there was something that should’ve been said--something that should’ve been shared between the two of them. It was almost a physical thing wedged between them, thickening the air and wrapping around them like a blanket of urgency. MC recalled how she wondered if they’d ever break that silence between the two of them; wondered if this was the last fragment of regret she’d have to tote for the rest of her life if she failed.

And she did, and now the blanket was hopeless around her shoulders.

MC heaved a quavering sigh. How was she supposed to live with that? Live with the fact that she never got to tell him how she felt? That she never gave him the chance to speak his heart? Was that even a possible thing to do? The answer is turbid, unable to be fruitful to her aching chest, and she palms the tears gathering in her brown eyes. Was Cal’s death really her fault? Of course it was--she had been in charge of resuscitating him after all. And that wasn’t even the most morbid cluster of the guilt buzzing within her rib cage. MC had seen him take his last breath, felt the last essence of life leave his body; she had seen the blue of his eyes dull as they closed for the final time. She watched him sip the venom and she felt his heart slow and then stop against her hand. MC had felt his blood on her fingers, felt the lively warmth of it as Cal stilled and passed on to wherever he was destined to go. She had been the last thing Cal saw right before he died. The thought sickens her. Though it should be beneficial to her consolation process, it just made her want to bend the rules of reality and rewind time. I shouldn’t have been the last person Cal saw: it should’ve been Avi. It should’ve been Avi, for god’s sake!

Cal loved Avi more than anything and to pass without seeing him again--for the last time? MC couldn’t even fathom the prospect of it, her pulse twittering in her chest painfully. But Avi watching Cal die wasn’t something that should’ve happened; he’s a kid, he doesn’t deserve to have that mental image ingrained in his head for the rest of his life. MC retracts her wishes almost as fast as she forms them. Cal wanted Avi to live a life devoid of the sinister life of being a demon hunter--he wanted him to grow up a way that Cal didn’t get to. Avi seeing Cal dead didn’t align with Cal’s moral compass or even his goals for Avi. The least MC and the troupe could do was carry on his intentions and raise Avi just the way he did; to be a kid without a care in the world. MC presses the heel of her hand against her closed eyes. If only I had enough time... I could’ve prevented this whole fiasco. I could’ve saved Cal and he could be with Avi right now, happy and safe. We could break the wall between him and I and spread our feelings out on the table--be truthful with one another. MC descends into a spiral of ‘what if’s’, picturing a life--a reality--where Cal and her could be together. Where everyone was happy--where no grief or loss or Cal-lessness existed. 

Then she bolts upward as she remembers the note Cal had left for her.

MC’s heart races and trips and stumbles in her chest. For an earth-shattering moment, MC isn’t weakened by her everlasting grief; there’s just anticipation and giddiness, a storm of butterflies whisking around her belly. The note! How could I have forgotten about the note?! She mentally slaps herself for her idiocy and then rummages through her pocket, producing the envelope with the tiny, pleading writing scrawled on the outside. He had been so adamant that I don’t open this if it does work... what did he want me to see? The curiosity fluttering through her heart becomes more belligerent as her fingernail shimmies under the flap of the envelope, sliding to the left and summoning a gentle ripping sound to fill the air. It’s most tense during the long and surprisingly robust sound; as if mirroring the rhapsody of patter her heart sings. The flap flutters loose, gifting MC with access to the contents within. A note with a yellow tinge peeks at her from over the ‘v’ of the envelope. There it is. The note Cal wants me to read now that he’s... MC’s internal monologue fades off as the knot in her throat tightens--how was she supposed to read the note and not break down? Just thinking about the deceased gunslinger has her heart aching like it did when he had passed--more specifically, when the four minutes passed on. 

She slips the note from its bed of ivory white paper and carefully unfolds it, her heart beating so fast as if it was about to break free from her chest. She had no idea what would be inside--what Cal would’ve wrote--and what exactly would it change? Unless it was some voodoo spell that could resurrect Cal if she recited aloud, MC doubted that the contents would do anything to heal the tear that still scathed her. The paper unfurls in her hands, inviting her eyes in, giving passage to the few words that were scrawled in big yet careful letters.

I want to kiss you.

MC doesn’t move. In fact, she stills, her brown eyes traveling over every curve and line like it would all disperse into something else--something she didn’t even know. The realization thwacks her once it comes and as soon as it does, MC’s mind whirls with the implications--the possibilities. Cal wanted to... kiss me? A roll of warm emotions uncurl within her--like a long elegant carpet stitched in the classic style of a quilt--and her hand instinctively rises to her chest. So he had feelings for her too. All along, Cal had-! MC wanted to punch something, preferably the gunslinger himself, for leaving her with a dream that would never be. A dream that died along with him that night. With a shaking sigh, MC laughs--first lightly, then louder, hoping that letting it out would alleviate the pain that crowded her rib cage. It doesn’t, to say the least; all it does is heighten the urge to cry to the point where she’s laughing and vigorously scrubbing the tears gathering in her tear ducts. Now she looked like some kind of lunatic from a generic horror film--laughing and crying like she’d never known what a normal emotion felt like. Of course Cal would leave me hanging like this; why did I expect any sort of relief? But there was relief--relief that the connection between them wasn’t just a thread visible to only MC (and the rest of the troupe), but was also tangible to Cal as well. Maybe she should’ve been content with that; able to melt into a sense of giddiness that they both had feelings for one another. That there was an understatement between them of more. Maybe that was enough. But it’s not enough--god, why can’t it be enough? She was selfish to not be happy with the last thing Cal left for her--that was her first instinct--but how could she? She had been shown a future that she’d never get but had always wanted. 

MC slumps. She didn’t know how to feel about this anymore. Should she cry out of joy or cry out of misery--out of grief? MC didn’t even know if there was a right answer to that. For a moment, MC stares at the note, unable to do anything else. Then, tentatively, MC raises the piece of paper up to her lips. She kissed the note gingerly as if it were Cal's mouth, her heart full yet so empty. In her mind, she wonders how the kiss would be between the two of them. How Cal reacted, how he tasted, how his breath smelled, how soft his lips were, how warm her chest would grow... The curse of his absence settles into her fantasies and her heart ripped apart again--torn. She’d never be able to kiss him--never, no matter how much she wished otherwise. All MC could do was hope that wherever Cal was right now, above or below, that he felt the kiss.

Heard her heart's mournful orchestra and knew that it played for him alone.

Knew that she felt the same as he did for her.

That Cal knew that she wanted to kiss him too.

And that she would if she could--a thousand times over until his mouth never knew what it felt like to be unkissed.

“I’m sorry,” She murmurs softly, that hope that he’d hear it a flower flourishing in the ecosystem of her heart.

“I’m so, so, sorry, Cal.”

~FIN~

The scene is interesting to me because it’s like a turning point. These characters are essentially strangers to each other. And this scene is just after they’ve reconnected. Tarell Alvin McCraney’s original piece, “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,” was kind of the starting point of this. Tarell wrote it as an undergrad at DePaul and passed it to me like a baton in a relay race. 

He had this scene where Juan (Mahershala Ali) teaches Little (Alex Hibbert) some self-sustainability. Miami is surrounded by water. It’s always present. And I felt like there needed to be a moment of spiritual transference between these two characters. This idea of a swimming lesson seemed like the right place to do it. 

Barry Jenkins on the water scene from ‘Moonlight’

Today’s Storytime

So. When I was in 9th or 10th grade -- 14 or 15 years old -- I had to take my P.E. credit during summer school so I could fit in other electives during the school year. This wasn’t unusual in my hometown; summer school was not punitive so much as it was a way to fulfill low-key requirements like Phys Ed, Driver’s Ed, Health & Wellness, etc. Most college-bound kids took at least one summer school term in high school so that there would be time for more academic electives during the school year.

Consequently, Phys Ed in summer school was always packed. I think there were probably 50 kids in my course, split pretty evenly between boys and girls. Summer Phys Ed was also WAY more fun than the in-school version. The class was two hours every day for six weeks. We got to be outside a lot, and we did fun units like Archery and Bowling and Martial Arts -- things that sometimes required a bus ride and couldn’t be done during the regular school day.

We also did a two-week Swimming unit in the high school pool at the end of the six weeks. The teachers split us up by skill level for that unit, so a small group of kids got basic swimming lessons from a couple of local swim teachers, the majority got water safety training from lifeguards, and the rest of us, the most skilled swimmers in the group, got to do basic lifeguard training with a Red Cross instructor without having to pay for an actual lifeguarding class.

I was/am a really good swimmer. We spent most summers of my childhood in northern lower Michigan and we had a boat, so my folks made darn sure we were all strong swimmers from a young age. I started swimming competitively when I was 7 or 8 years old and did so all the way through high school. There were two or three other Swim Club kids in my P.E. class that year, including one really unassuming guy who would go on to swim in college three years later.

At the end of the Swimming unit, the P.E. teachers decided we should have a simulated swim meet on the last day. Everybody got assigned to an event or two. Some of them were just for fun and geared toward the least experienced swimmers. Simple things like retrieving a weight from the deep end of the lap pool, which was only six feet deep. (We had a separate 14-foot diving well.) There were also traditional races for those of us who were good swimmers. I think I did a couple of those, probably 50-meter butterfly and 50-meter freestyle, which were two of my regular club meet events. The last event on the schedule was a 200-meter freestyle relay, with each of four kids doing a 50-meter leg.

Now, I have to backtrack here to say that also in my P.E. class that summer, there was a handful of campus jocks. You know the type: The three-sport athletes who wear their jerseys and letter jackets to school every day and are revered by the student body and the faculty alike. I grew up in central Indiana, so the most revered of those boys were basketball players, but the football guys were right behind. That handful of boys had dominated the P.E. class that summer. Just owned every contest, every game, every match. It was tiresome. Very, very tiresome. Some of us were a little better at the obscure sports, like Pickleball and Badminton, but one of these guys had never picked up a tennis racket in his life before and still won the tennis tournament at the end of the unit.

It was dead irritating. 

So we got to the end of the Swimming unit, which was the last unit of the summer, and the 200-meter relay rolled around. I looked at the relay teams that the P.E. teachers picked, and realized that they put the best of these campus jocks all on one team ... but there was also a team that had two really good swimmers on it, including the guy who went on to swim in college. I watched that guy, we’ll call him “Rick,” come to the same realization at about the same time. He sized up the competition, saw that the jock team captain, let’s call him “Eli,” had set himself up as the anchor on the jock team, and quickly refigured his own team so that he would swim the anchor against Eli. 

The other club swimmer on Rick’s team swam the first leg of the race. He got out to a respectable distance, which the two middle swimmers squandered because they weren’t strong swimmers to begin with. When the third swimmer headed into his turn, Rick climbed up on the block. He turned to Eli, who had also climbed his block, and Rick, this quiet, nondescript guy, turned to Eli and winked. Eli sort of flinched, and then they were both off.

It was a thing to behold.

For six solid weeks, Eli and his cronies had dominated everything we’d done in that stupid class, and done it with a smirk and a swagger that drove everybody kind of insane. My buddy Rick couldn’t throw a baseball or shoot a free throw or catch a football to save his life. But man, could he swim.

He did the first 25 meters on one breath. By the time he kicked into his flip turn, he was two body lengths ahead of Eli, who was spluttering and slapping at the water. Rick could have floated back to the finish line on his own wave momentum and won the race, but he went all out. He put his head down and cut through that water like a knife. Then he touched the wall, popped up and sat on the deck to watch that asshole Eli flail to a distant second place finish, while the rest of us cheered and jeered. When Eli finally touched the wall, he stood up and stared at Rick like he’d never seen him before. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe it took getting blown out of the pool by this kind of nerdy kid to make him actually see anyone other than himself in an athletic context.

And the point of the story is this: Just because you’re good at one thing, it doesn’t mean you’re good at an adjacent thing that requires a different skill set. And if you’re particularly young or inexperienced or stupid, or especially unaware of your own stupidity in a Dunning-Krueger kind of way, you might not understand that until it hits you in the face.

Eli and his buddies thought the years they had spent throwing and hitting and kicking and catching balls had made them skilled athletes rather than just good at their respective sports. That they could dominate anything that had anything to do with athletics in general. They were naive, to be sure, and inexperienced. It never occurred to them that someone who couldn’t throw or kick or catch could be a champion in their own right. They didn’t respect the work that Rick had put in in that very pool since he was five or six years old. They didn’t realize that his years of honing his skills in the water were just as rigorous as their years of honing their skills on the fields and courts. 

This is true in life, of course.

I worked in magazine publishing for a long time. Once my company brought in a CEO who came from the credit card industry and didn’t know anything about publishing. The first thing she did was try to push all of our subscribers into credit card auto-renewal. Those of us who’d been in publishing for decades knew it wouldn’t work. We’d tried it. Our subscriber base was very resistant to it. But because this woman had had amazing success in the credit card industry, she thought she was a skilled businessperson, not just a good credit card executive. She nearly drove the company into bankruptcy thanks to her ignorance.

So why am I telling you these stories?

Because we’re watching this play out on the global stage, and people are dying as a result.

The occupant of the White House and his dipshit followers are convinced that because someone has a bit of business success (and in his case, even that is debatable), they’re good at everything having to do with business. That’s why the moronic task force to open the country again is populated with sports owners and big business executives. Our idiot president thinks that success in one realm means that someone must be good at adjacent realms. It’s probably why he called Alex Rodriguez for business advice. A Major League shortstop (WHO CHEATED) must have business acumen, too. “Successful” means worthy of adulation and successful in all things, not just within the narrow confines of the field of success.

And this is why we’ve got all these people who want to treat government like a business. They’re too ignorant to realize that governing and business are two entirely different things, requiring different, narrowly focused and honed skills.

Just like throwing a 90-mph fastball, and swimming a blazing fast 50-meter free.

Glasses (Colton Parayko)

So I was just inspired with this one it wasn’t requested. I hope y’all like it anyway!

Up Next: Jimmy Vesey

Warnings: optometrists...baseball

Requests: Open!

“It’s not my fault, Colton! There is NO way that the average person could see that sign.”

“Y/N…” He smothered a laugh and then struggled to keep a straight face. “The average person can very easily see a giant sign that says ‘Enter Here’.”

You tried to remain indignant, though you were beginning to lighten up. It was extremely hard to have any sort of negative emotion directed at your lovable boyfriend, Colton Parayko. You kept up the act for your sake, though. “Do you have any proof that the average person can find it?”

“I found it. Vladdy found it. Hu-”

“You’re all NHL stars. It doesn’t count.” You interrupted.

He arched a brow. “The caterers all found it. So did the press.”

“Who even asked you?” But your smile negated the tone used.

He wrapped his arm around you and began leading you towards the building entrance. “Maybe you should consider getting your eyes checked?”

“Nope. My eyes are fine. This was just an off day for me.”

He caressed the hip where his hand was resting. “Whatever you say, Doll. Now let’s go eat some barbeque so we can get this charity ball game started.”

The late lunch consisted of things you’d expect at a traditional backyard barbeque, things like hamburgers, hot dogs, barbeque, potato salad, and various fruits and vegetables. The only difference was that this meal was catered and served on fancy plates, but hey, who were you to complain?

After everyone was finished and the plates had been collected, everyone was gathered together before being split into groups for the baseball game. Thankfully, Colton was on your team. After a quick exchange of trash talking, a bunch of pictures, and a coin toss, your team was up to bat.

Alex had been elected as pitcher for the opposing side and it was quickly evident as to why, when he struck out the first two batters with no issue. Then his wife came up to bat. As terrible as it was you were secretly wishing that Jayne would strike out so there would be no chance of you going this inning, but of course that didn’t happen. A gentle pitch was sent into the outfield by Jayne who made it all the way to second. Which meant you were up. Great.

“Good luck, Doll!” Colton called.

You swung the bat a few times as a warm-up and then got into position. You’d played softball for three years. This was nothing. Just keep your eye on the b-”

“Strike!” You whipped your head around to see the ball firmly in Jake’s catcher’s mitt (the baseball kind this time). You narrowed your eyes (ok squinted) and saw the blur of white coming at you this time. Swinging hard you shockingly caught a piece and sent it flying up in the infield. You ran for first just in case, but it was proved unnecessary when Carter caught it.

“Wow, Hutts!” You yelled. “I thought we were friends!”

“All’s fair in love and baseball, Y/N!”

Colton tossed you a glove, “That’s not how that quote goes.”

“Whatever college boy.”

Colton rolled his eyes and then pulled you into the outfield with him. “It was a good hit. I’m proud of you.”

“If it was a good hit, I wouldn’t have gotten out.” You pouted. It really wasn’t the end of the world, but you were extremely competitive...so it kinda was.

Colton gave you a quick kiss and then looked you in the eyes. “Stop being so hard on yourself. It’s just for fun.”

The next three innings went rather quickly and your team was up by three in the bottom of the fifth. There were supposed to be seven innings so not a shabby lead. You were in the outfield again when you heard the crack of a bat. You tried to focus on the ball but couldn’t see anything.

“Right, Doll. Right!” You heard Colton yell. You looked to the right just as the ball dropped about a foot from you. Refusing to be discouraged you quickly threw it to Yana who tagged out Carter as he tried to slide into second.

“Nice save Y/N!”

You were mad, though. “I should have caught that.”

“You can’t catch them all.”

You snorted. “Tell that to the Pokemon players. That’s the entire goal.”

Colton laughed loudly before leading you back to the dugout, holding your hand in his the whole time.

When the game was all said and done you had won by a solid one run. Not quite the victory you were looking for, but a victory nonetheless. After waving goodbye to everyone, Colton led you back towards his car.

“That was fun,” You admitted. “It was better because we won…”

He chuckled and then gave you a serious look, “Can we talk about something?”

“Yeah. What’s on your mind?” Your brain was racing with potential topics but coming up blank.

“When that ball fell-” You groaned. “Let me finish. When that ball fell, did you see it coming before I yelled?”

“Of course.” You gave an unconvincing laugh.

“Y/N...this is serious. If you can’t see things you need to go and see an eye doctor. First the sign and then the ball. If it continues you could end up hurting yourself.”

“I’m fine!” You shot him what you considered a convincing smile. “I’m just having an off-day. I don’t need glasses. My vision is perfect.”

“It would mean a lot to me if you would go and get it checked out, just in case. I’ll constantly worry otherwise.”

You groaned. “Colton! Why do you have to give a low blow like that?!”

“Please, Doll?”

“Fine. But I won’t like it.” He lifted your hands where they were clasped on the console and pressed a kiss to the back of yours.

“Thank you.”

Three days later you were unhappily seated next to Colton on the ugly floral sofa in the local optometrists office. You hated eye doctors. Their stupid eye doctor office smell. Their stupid need to shine bright lights and put drops in your eyes. Stu-

Your internal ranting was interrupted by the lady calling for you. You trudged over to her and looked back at Colton, who shot you a smile and a little finger wave before turning back to his book. What a supportive boyfriend.

The doctor had successfully trapped you in her chair of torture and after a few preliminary questions and tests brought out the big guns.

“One or two?” She flipped the slides back and forth a few times. “One or two?”

This continued on for far too long for your liking. But then she was shining what was basically the sun into your eye, so you would have gladly traded back to the slides. After what seemed like an eternity later, the bully had dropped a few drops of what you were sure was acid in your eyes, if the burning sensation told you anything.

“The sting should go away shortly.” She said briskly. She rolled her chair away from you before seriously looking at you. “What I’m about to tell you probably won’t come as a surprise, but you definitely need glasses. I’m actually really shocked that it hasn’t become a bigger issue than that by now. Let’s head out to the lobby and you can pick out some frames with the secretary.”

You followed her out of the room with your head hanging the whole way. The doctor handed the secretary a slip and after shaking your hand, headed back down the hall toward her office.

Colton came up to stand next to you. “How was it?”

You looked up at him with tear filled eyes. “I have to get glasses!” You whimpered.

“Doll…” He wrapped you in a hug. “I promise glasses aren’t that bad. Why don’t we pick out some frames and then we can go out to dinner at Bailey’s?”

“My pupils are dilated. I’m not supposed to expose them to bright light.” You muttered.

“We can ask them to dim the lights if they’re too powerful.”

“Fine.” You quickly chose a pair of frames and after giving the secretary your information, headed out.

It was very childish to pout about glasses, you knew that. You didn’t care though. Having perfect vision was the one thing you could hold over your siblings (and Colton). So you fully intended to be mad for at least another twenty minutes. Or until your food came out. Or Colton said something cute. Who knew what would come first, honestly.

A week later you received the dreaded phone call that your glasses had arrived and could be picked up anytime. You relayed the joyful news to Colton who offered to drive you over to the office.

“Your eyes may hurt a bit trying to adjust.” He explained on the drive over. He had also worn his glasses instead of the usual contacts in order to offer you support. “Also now you can just look out the window and enjoy seeing everything clearly.”

You wanted so badly to just be mad, but him saying sweet things like that made it so difficult! “I love you!” You blurted. He whipped his head around to look at you while you smacked a hand over your mouth.

“What?” This was the first time either of you had ever said the ‘L word’.

You took a deep breath and put it all out there. “I love you.” You nodded. “I seriously love you Colton. You’re such a genuinely good man. You put others before yourself, you deal with my petty attitude and mood swings, you are passionate about what you do…” You trailed off. “I don’t know how I didn’t realize it before now.”

He pulled into the parking lot and swung into a space. “You love me?” He had a shocked, almost blank expression...like his brain was trying to process everything.

“Yes. I love you.” You opened your door. “I’ll be back. I’m going to go get my stupid glasses.” You headed into the building with a bounce in your step. You were in love...what a wild concept.

After they made sure your frames fit and you were pleased with them, you headed back outside. Though you hated to admit it, you were shocked at how clear things really were. Busy admiring the signs for the restaurants across the street you were completely blindsided by Colton grabbing you.

Before you knew how to react you were pressed against the side of his car and his lips were prying yours open. You readily sank into the kiss, threading your fingers through his soft blond hair. You weren’t sure how long the two of you made out in the parking lot of your eye doctor, in plain sight of anyone who wanted to walk by or look out the window of their car...but it was irrelevant.

The kisses eventually tapered off and Colton pulled back to look at you. His cheeks were rosy and his lips swollen, which just made you want to kiss him again.

“Hi.” He said. “You look cute with your glasses.”

You giggled, “You look cute with yours on, too.”

He looked at you seriously and then took a deep breath. “I love you, too. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away. I just wasn’t really prepared for you to say it then and I-”

“It’s alright, Colton.” You interrupted. “I kinda noticed that you were surprised.”

“But I really do love you.” He said as the two of you got into the car. “I’m not just saying it because you did. I love you.”

You smiled at him and interlocked your hands. “Can we get milkshakes? You know as a, “We both declared our love for one another” and “Y/N just go glasses” kind of reward.”

“I don’t see why not. I love you.” He repeated.

You smirked. “I know.”

He groaned, “We are not starting that this early!”

Let me know if y’all see any blazin’ errors!!

2018 NCSA - Day 1

What better way to kick the National Group blog off again, than to do it at the NCSA Juniors meet in Indy. It’s always been a fun one for us, and this year is no different.

Let’s start by sticking to the TEAM. Even just to be here with 26 is a great step for the TEAM, but just being here is not the goal. Instead, in what can only be called a true TEAM effort, we currently sit 1st for Men’s, 4th Combined, and 9th in Women. This is a huge jump all around, great work TEAM.

While I nod my head for the guys, as we are off to a great start, I want to give a big shout out to our Women. One year ago we went through most of the meet looking for our Women’s points in hoping to post a combined score. Now the Women have 130 points on day 1! Awesome! #AthleteStrong 💪🏼

And then of course our relays. 😊 Relays will always mean the most to me, and to see our TEAM race the way they did, it was an fun night of racing to watch. So let’s see:

- Men - 200 Medley - 1st and 7th 😎

- Women - 200 Medley - 9th and 10th (2 Relays scoring in first event, crushed last year by the first event of the meet.

- Men - 200 Free - 3rd and 20th

- Women - 200 Free - 11th and 15th

I’m going to keep this one a little shorter at least, so let’s hit some of the individual performances that stand out to me: (this is Coach Jeff, Coach Kristine may have different ones)

- Braden Beagle - after qualifying for this meet only a couple weeks ago, in a time trial. Only to get here, drop another 1.5, made it back to finals, and posted his first Winter Jrs cut.

- staying along the rookie lines, Alex Syrkin crushed her 50 Fly and in her very first race at this level meet, made it back to finals. While the success is fun to watch, it’s really the mental piece of handling this type of meet and the pressure of the “taper” meet that I am highlighting here. Great job Alex, keep working that process and more races like that are bound to follow

- Top finisher of the night goes to Danny Syrkin with his 3rd place finish. It’s never easy to be racing at the top level, but learning how to handle every aspect is a crucial step in the process. Let’s all be taking advantage of the opportunities we have in front of us to become better athletes.

- Okay, I have to do one more here, as she’s a Senior for us and it’s been a long time coming. Grace Carey absolutely crushed her relay anchor swims. Coming in her best time is 27.5, but on both relays Grace stepped up to anchor us home in 26.0 and 26.1. That kind of racing comes from not giving up, pushing through those roadblocks ahead of you, and then just laying it all on the line for the TEAM. Amazing work Grace!

What a start for our TEAM. 4 more days of fun to go. Remember:

- Adapt

- Manage energy and emotions

- Positivity

- Be the best TEAMmate

- REFUSE to give up

Go Rose Bowl! 🌹

Extraterrestrial Races: Andromedans (Swaruu - Galactic Extraterrestrial Pleiadian Communication)

Author: Cosmic Agency, Gosia 

Andromedans

Swaruu: A very old species or race with very few known variants. They are mainly one race and culture only, even though there are separate factions. They are not of Lyrian origin. They have more in common with the Arcturian - Dieslientiplex, Devonian and Korendian races. They are also related to the Blue Pleiadian race, Blue Pleiadian or Celestes. According to what they themselves explain, several millions years ago, during the primitive era of their spiritual evolution, they were in a similar position as the humans are in today. They ended up fighting among themselves, for lack of ethics and morals, and that resulted in the destruction of their own planet. They had the time to get out of it on board of ships of their own manufacturing. By the very definition of timelines, it necessarily has to exist, but the Andromedans of today have no connection or communication with that timeline. They have total temporal capacity, and they have even used it with the humans as Alex Collier testifies, as he was in contact with the Andromedans. Since the destruction of their planet, the Andromedans have no planet. It is a species and culture completely dependent on their space vessels. They are born, live and die in them, having their own cycles and dynamics of reincarnation onboard. Their ships are of three classes and shapes: • The grand sphere or biosphere base ships with several millions of inhabitants in them. They are of great size, an example of a ship of this class is the terrestrial moon that was one of their ships in the past, it is of their manufacturing. • The biosphere smaller triangular ships that they use because they are agile, and it is easy to move them from one place to another to assert their presence in some location. These ships too are self-contained, also named biospheres. They contain several thousand inhabitants onboard, and their regular size exceed 800 kilometers long. There is one in Earth orbit behind the moon at this moment. • Smaller agile vessels of various forms, predominantly of a disc shape. Their political structure is ancient and is called "Holographic Political System" due to its levels of councils (step councils), or also better known as "The Andromedan Holographic Political System" most often used by almost all the progressive advanced races, including Taygeta. The belief systems based on the concept of karma, as it is known in the East (of the Earth), comes from the Andromedans. In the same manner, the Sanskrit language is the humanized form of Andromedan. On Earth this is recognized in some circles in the area, as they have the legend that Sanskrit comes from the stars. The Andromedans have influenced the Earth for thousands of years, being that the most recognized Andromedan on Earth is the god Shiva. Their social system is one of total equity, even though one can observe a strong tendency towards patriarchy. The human representative who has had most contact with the Andromedans is Mr. Alex Collier. I recommend to study his works, as they relay the truth. The Andromedans have two genders, male and female, and the reproduction is sexual. When an Andromedan is born, it is always underwater, to minimize the trauma. And then the offspring is given all the resources of the entire civilization so that their development is the best possible, they don't spare anything for their young and they spend the major part of their lives dedicating themselves to studying and self-improvement. Physically they are very slim with a fragile appearance, between 2 and 3 meters tall with an average of 240 centimeters. A little less for the women. The men are very esthetic, and the women very beautiful. They do not have any kind of hair or body hair, neither males nor females alike. Their skin is sky or light blue, but there are variants. Longevity is said to be some 4 500 Earth years, but it is difficult to calculate because outside time is different and results impossible to make a true and credible calculation. When they die it is by their own decision, it is never by illnesses as they have already transcended this concept. It is not that they don't get sick, but that it is all solvable with the mind and with "Med-Pod" technology. They are very mental beings, logical. They are not temperamental nor are they emotional. They have a lot of curiosity about the reactions of the emotional races, because it is very difficult for the Andromedans to understand them. This has caused friction between races more than once, including differences with the Taygetan race - as the latter is a very emotional race, even more so than the humans. Robert: Don't they wish to establish themselves on a planet? Are they nomads? They have to be great constructors of spaceships. Swaruu: It is a nomad race, if you could describe them as such. They are great spaceship constructors. They construct them with the help of their closest friends, with whom they have had a cordial relationship for millenia: the three Arcturian races. The Andromedan ships are constructed on or near the planet "Pitoya" in the Bootes-region. It is under the control of the Dieslientiplex-Arcturians. They can recall their past lives without problems, and their children – if they so decide – can pick up where they left off in their former life, but with a new body. It does not present problems for the offspring. Nor are they classified as endangered. They do not want to settle on a planet because they would feel limited. They like to maintain their "mobile interests," by their own admission. They also insist that all planets that exists aren't theirs, and that settling on them causes karma - even if it is only inhabited by animals. The planet does not belong to them. With the high technology of the biosphere ships they don't need a planet. They have everything inside. They feel more secure, because inside the ships they have total control of everything that happens in them, and with them. The Andromedans are obsessive with perfection and control. They are members of the "Federation of the United Planets," of the Andromedan Council and the Sphere Alliance. Their technology is equal or on par with ours. However, the Andromedans tend to use solar portals, we don't. The sphere ships that can be seen coming and leaving through the solar portal are mainly Andromedan and Arcturian. Gosia: Since when are they there in the orbit, and what is their involvement in the liberation of the Earth? Swaruu: They now have been roaming around this area for about 12,500 years. But the large biosphere ship arrived to Earth orbit around 1952. Their involvement with Earth's liberation is mainly that of being advisors and of logistical support for the other races, thanks to their large ships. However, they also do observations and research work in the areas of terrestrial radiation, volcanology and seismology, which they then share with the other races. Gosia: How many ships do they have? And how many starseeds? Swaruu: The Andromedans have countless ships, countless large biosphere ships. They are among the races with most starseeds on Earth today.

Alex Goddamn Paknadel instructed us all to seek out your take on Rogue One and I have no idea where to look. Help.

It was in my newsletter (tinyurl.com/kierongillen) last year, and it’s not one that’s in the archive. Do sign up if you like this kind of thing.

***

I started Sunday Morning with the 11am showing of Rogue One at South London cultural institution that is the Peckham Plex. It was the last showing. It was one of the last showings in London. It's the first time I've seen a film twice in the cinema since Fury Road.

I like it a lot. My one-line tweet review ROGUE 10/10 captures my basic feelings, but second time through, things are always going to change. You can't cross that river twice. You change. The world changes. In the last month, more than most.

But I found it as effecting as first time, on average. Some bits more, some bits less, over-all similarly wet eyed. But it's lingered in a different way. First time, I came out in a giggly fanboy rush. Second time, I'm pretty much crushed.

Being a working writer, I'm unpacking and trying to reversely analyse choices, and doing my own rewrites to make what I think the effect it's looking for more efficiently. It's just something I do, and have done for the vast majority of my life. It's certainly true towards the end the tangle of game-logic makes it top heavy, and (as always happens when you explain so much) leads to even more questions . You can question the integration of all those fighter pilots into the final act, leaning into the "not a star wars film unless there's a dogfight at the end" (I felt them weakest bits of Force Awakens, but landed better here for reasons I'll go into...)

But underneath all that, I can't question it too much, as I see its point and the reasons for doing so. That's why we talk about choices, as it's really about what you choose to prioritise. It's all done to make the movie turn into a relay race, a chain of buckets. If any one individual doesn't do their small thing, it fails, and the future for a galaxy far, far away is the Empire's jackboot, forever.

This rebellion isn't about one kid getting a lucky shot . This rebellion is about all those individual choices and moments of heroism enabling the kid to get to a place to take that shot. It is many Bothans, writ large. None of the people who died knew that what they did made a difference. Some knew if they hadn't done it, it'd have failed... but none knew for sure. They went to their graves ignorant. It could have all been for nothing.

To that end, the ballooning of viewpoint characters becomes the point, those pilots as real as anyone else, the actors commitment to those fragments of time meaningful. And as we pull away from our cast, we come to the final scenes, with those nameless Rebellion troops being cut down by Vader, one by one. Look at the details as Vader looms out the dark. The half-lowering of the guns as each consider just not doing this.. and then raising as they decide they have no choice.

Any of them didn't slow down Vader for a half second, the Death Star survives. Any of them.

Which leaves me aware that's all we can do when facing fascism in the dark. We have no idea if what we do make a difference. But it may. You have to believe it may.

Imagine Sisyphus watches the boulder tumble back, time and time over. Imagine the centuries, millennia of frustration. Imagine taking a breath, stepping up to its familiar form, and rolling that boulder again.

You wonder why he does so.

He knows that, against all his history, one day maybe the boulder won't tumble back.

Hope is all we have, but hope - whether new or old – can be cruel.

Saagar Enjeti Rising

It’s about power, man,” Saagar Enjeti relays about an hour into a decathlon, Corona-spring phone call. 

It’s May, and I’m scrambling to interview the nationalist co-host of Rising with Krystal & Saagar, presented by the television arm of The Hill. Our conversation takes as many pit stops as Enjeti’s nascent, but impactful career: from Aggie country—he’s a son of Texas A&M faculty—to George Washington University to Georgetown to Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller to celebrated pundit before 30. Like his putative mentor, Enjeti has attracted some rubbernecking by insiders: for shifting his views. I think it’s going around, as you are reading an issue of a magazine titled “What is American Conservatism?” Or as Carlson told Elaina Plott (then of The Atlantic) last December: “I’ve made a complete break mentally with the world I used to live in.”

As for me, I am at least breaking one of my own rules. That is: I am writing a profile of a principal I haven’t seen in person in months. But I’m not going social-distance from a good story. 

Because he’s a social conservative who isn’t religious. Because he’s a foreign policy hawk who actually concedes the country’s recent mistakes. Because he’s launched a slightly absurd crusade against cannabis. Because he dresses like Alex P. Keaton, only he’s renounced Reaganism. Because Saagar Enjeti has, indeed, become kind of powerful.

Enjeti forms a duo with Krystal Ball—a former congressional candidate and MSNBC star. At 38, she is—as Jacobin magazine pointed out—the Millennial answer to Rachel Maddow. Therein lies the most glaring distinction between the two, by all appearances close friends. Ball is an antagonist of the liberal pantheon. Enjeti though—while no stenographer—is broadly at peace with the present trajectory of the Right. Ball has bashed Maddow. Enjeti loves Carlson.

Ball’s cri de coeur is for generational change. That’s a project pitifully on hold, as the donkey attempts to install the oldest president on record. She actually preferred an even older model—that traitor to his generation Bernie Sanders—before he withdrew from the race in a blaze of anonymity this spring. That landscape contrasts with the Right, where an outsider president is still dominant and fresh projects seeking to tear down the old religion—such as the Enjeti-aligned American Compass (“great work”) —bloom promiscuously. Enjeti thinks the movement to mint a populism with polish is right on track (and they two have a book to sell seeking to prove that). But Enjeti had tough words for Senator Sanders, who he characterized as a tragically inflexible figure in a chosen profession where to be limber is to live another day. 

I actually met Ms. Ball first—10 years ago—when she ran a quixotic campaign for Congress in the district of my alma mater in southern Virginia. The Tea Party juggernaut that year—combined with a frivolous, overhyped personal scandal from Ball’s well-spent youth (there aren’t that many trained accountant pundits)—doomed Ball’s bid in the already salmon-colored first district of the Old Dominion. She hiked over to The Atlantic and NBC cable but was an awkward fit for a liberal establishment licking its chops for a Hillary Clinton presidency. Like many women of our shared generation, she wasn’t quite ready for Hillary even if she was told to be.

The pair’s shared production is genuinely pathbreaking—for several reasons. 

It’s an internet television show that works. Rising is actually rising. The dominant media trend when I entered the industry was the vaunted switch to tablets. But that mindset was soon shown the door. It was spring cleaning all around—those middle 2010s, the same time the Republican Party chucked its “libertarian moment”—both utter fads. And America would soon give the heave-ho to much more. 

In 2016—as the country anointed its first cable news president—for industry captains, the conclusion was clear: more television—and let’s open new frontiers. For those seeking to court conservatives, streaming, internet television was considered a ruby-red, low-hanging fruit. Harvested right and you could even infringe on the primacy of Fox News. More broadly—especially on the Right—there had been rumors of elaborate new, “new media” ventures for years. The most legendary rumor (a plot which was actually real) was of a motley assembly: Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Roger Ailes, and then-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon would open up their own shop. This was still the early days of the Trump administration. But to the haters, a satanic quartet was forming.  

But in our desert of the real, only one oasis has been founded. Roger Ailes is dead, and Hill.TV is not.

But it was no fait accompli. Enjeti has a predecessor: the affable Buck Sexton, a CIA alum and a regular on both Fox and the not-so-underground drinking circuit at D.C.’s Trump Hotel. But after a year the organization passed on the Buck and signed Saagar. 

Sadly for Sexton, it’s been liftoff ever since. But as with Elon Musk, there have been a few questionable judgment calls. In particular, there was a strange interview a summer ago with Rudolph Giuliani—the president’s personal lawyer—that had nothing to do with that work. Rather, Enjeti interviewed America’s mayor on his work with the deeply controversial National Council for the Resistance of Iran—the American front porch of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or more notoriously, the MEK. Mayor Giuliani has been paid lavishly for his association, as have other leading Republican figures responsible—centrally, former national security advisor John Bolton—for the country’s imprudent war footing toward Iran’s regime. But the interview appears to have been part nine (!) of a series initiated and otherwise hosted by Sexton, as Enjeti was sliding into the job. The series is marked “sponsored content,” which isn’t a nice look. Most of foreign policy journalism has had brushes with the MEK, but it bears repeating the general view is that they’re emphatically fringe.

Not fringe: the show’s appeal with younger, online-first audiences. America’s anchor—the popular podcaster Joe Rogan—said on air that he follows Saagar and Krystal for his news. For the uninitiated, Rogan gets 190 million downloads per month and between 5-7 million listeners per day, which on some days is double even Tucker Carlson’s formidable traffic.  

“I just cover whatever I want,” Enjeti told me. That omnivorous attitude suits the clientele, who favor outside-the-box politicians with sweeping societal criticisms. The audience loves Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, Bernie Sanders, maybe Donald Trump, and apparently no one else. As my fellow guest Colin Rogero—of The Hill’s infamous “Most Beautiful” list, and who could honestly pass for Colin Farrell—learned when I appeared with him on the program in January: sorry, no one likes Pete Buttigieg.  

The show’s butterfly knife approach can produce a viewer experience as oscillatory as the 2020 campaign itself. Which is the point. In a news cycle that’s now truly unyielding—a depression, a pandemic, and mass rioting—Rising rises above. Like Kissigner and 50 Cent, Enjeti says he’s a stone-cold realist in a grinding turf war. “It’s about power, man,” Enjeti says. “This is about the fact that there’s actually a heterodox TV thing that exists, that is watched by actual people—and that’s the most important part. The donors don’t control this.” Enjeti gives away the secret sauce—telling me essentially that on YouTube it’s kingmaking to be what Jeff Bezos almost named Amazon but should have: relentless. Constant content must be produced or the axe falls from the hard-hearted algorithm.

Enjeti denies to me what I assumed was his goal: get this baby bought. In an era of the Frightful Five on America’s technology coast, the operating procedure of most new businesses is mere ambition to get sold. But Enjeti says he’s not waiting for a call up to the majors. He’s starting his own league. Television habits have been convulsed in the era of the smartphone—especially among the young (“our age is the number one demographic for the show, 25-35”)—and the thinking goes that cable news is the province of yesterday’s men, though that includes the sitting president of the United States. If the media short-sellers like Enjeti are right that cable news is at its peak, next up could be one giant, Boomer supernova. 

I agree,” Enjeti says as I rant about how the Middle East is no longer relevant to this country’s national interest. He and I got into foreign policy for a shared reason before Trump’s ascension: “Domestic politics was just boring. Second term Obama, there was just nothing happening.”  

There are signs of Enjeti’s true sympathies. For instance, Jake Mercier—the research assistant for his and Ball’s book (The Populist’s Guide to 2020) worked for Gabbard, perhaps the most restraint-minded Democratic presidential candidate in a generation. But he picks his spots. In January, for instance, he took an equivocal tone toward the risky assassination of Qassem Soleimani, a figure in Iran perhaps only second in prestige to the theocracy’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. On the third day of the decade, the guest Ball and Enjeti summoned to Monday morning quarterback the move was an official from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the home of D.C.’s most effective operatives for regime change. Enjeti countered that perhaps it would have been wiser to have taken Soleimani out earlier, in 2007—not firmly the stuff of a restrainer who sees de-escalation with a third-rate power in a tortured part of the planet as imperative.  

But despite that Blob-y national security degree from Georgetown, Enjeti shows he’s not uncomfortable thinking for himself. His ascent has been astonishing—and facilitated by outsider outfits. It was as White House correspondent at the Daily Caller that Enjeti got his break, but also where he began enterprising his way into the limelight. 

It was at the Caller that Enjeti first met the president, who he described to me as entertainer par excellence. But Enjeti began cutting away from the sometimes derivatively conservative nature of the site—he cultivated a more intellectual online persona and went all in on the age of realignment. That’s what he’s named his podcast—“The Realignment”—hosted by the Hudson Institute, a cornerstone of conservative Washington. 

Enjeti is an unabashed champion of anti-monopoly politics—he thinks the American state should step in to guarantee a baseline level of hard industry in this country, and he thinks gratuitous economic concentration is unstable. With his roots in foreign policy, he has his eye on rising China. Of South Asian descent, he lends powerful credibility to the argument that the United States should consider a cool-down period in immigration for reasons of national cohesion. In this regard, he joins the esteemed company of Reihan Salam, president of the Manhattan Institute, as well as the centrist writer Janan Ganesh of the Financial Times. 

Other views are more eclectic. He’s issued a semi-facetious fatwa against cannabis. He’s joined other figures with a right-wing audience—such as Ann Coulter, Peter Hitchens, and the ex-New York Times writer Alex Berenson—in slamming the assumption of the age that pot is harmless. Mr. Enjeti’s pronounced social conservatism is perhaps more interesting because he’s openly irreligious, something he shares with a constituency lacking belief in the Holy Spirit but suffering from spiritual ennui.

“They cheered on rioting—and looting—and crime,” an indignant Enjeti told Carlson on his show in early June, as heinous riots swept America. It’s the only show he likes to do besides his own. “I think you put it together perfectly earlier today on your show…the first uprising against the working class.”

What is American conservatism? Well, you could certainly do worse than tuning into the talented Mr. Enjeti in the morning to try to find out.

  Related: Introducing the TAC Symposium: What Is American Conservatism?

See all the articles published in the symposium, here.

The post Saagar Enjeti Rising appeared first on The American Conservative.

Coronavirus Lockdown UK homeschooling day 7

I have noticed that the things that we find funny or interesting are changing, and my bar has certainly lowered for humour and amusement. When making a Thai red curry for dinner last night I cut the ginger into this amusing shape purely by accident and had to take a photo of it giggling. It actually isn’t that funny at all in the cold sober light of day. But last night after 4 drinks and a really boring day it was strangely a high point.

We knew when we woke up at 10.48am this morning that Day 7 was not going to be the most productive and “get up and go” days of the quarantine — it had already “got up and gone”. Although a strange feeling of satisfaction and consistency in missing every single one of the 9am work outs, and being able to sleep a solid 10 hours. We have marked it as biology morning to boost the immune system.

I could tell by the strange crunching noise from downstairs of cereal underfoot that the boys had gone and made themselves a nice breakfast of Coco pops. Almost half of the milk and cereal was in the bowls, bless them! Already ahead of the parenting game with survival skills and home economics before I had even got up!

First thing in the morning (before even putting the ice cube bags and tonic in the fridge…) we now subject ourselves to a form of compulsive and probably mentally damaging torture that leaves you with a sense of self loathing before you have even made it down the stairs. This event is the morning weigh in. Not on normal scales that you can just twiddle the dial of, or say they are off, or lean on the windowsill so you are lighter. On no, that would be too easy! These are on the new scales that Derek has bought so we can plot our improvement (or not…) of health during the quarantine. The App really helpfully bings at you to weigh in if you forget and try to dodge it for the day in a bid to curb the depression slightly. And when you give in and step on it then tells you that you should take your shoes off (my shoes are off you bastarding wanking sarcastic scales, I am just fat and have layers of hard skin on my feet alright!?!? SO FUCK THE FUCK OFF!)

And it weighs you inside your body and outside your body, and gives you graphs to also emphasise in different mediums how fat you are — should you still have a shred of self esteem left in you. Rather than being motivational they invoke a mixture of feelings that I will also need therapy (as well as a. nutritionist apparently) to work through. It is complicated. I can’t NOT just stand on them.

You would think this would give motivation for us to do some keep fit, maybe set the alarm for tomorrow for the 9am gym class, eat less… Well yes, that is an option, but if it was as easy as exercise and eating less then everyone would be healthier! So we chose to just put sports clothing on whilst baking cakes — so we could eat cakes as we were so pissed off about getting fatter. I feel we are kind of halfway there though. It’s the thought that counts.

We did add some health and safety in and tried to explain to Alex why you should not put your head into a food mixer. I would rather not go into how that lesson turned out in print in case it can ever be used against me in a court of law. But it did lead us seamlessly and with relevance into our First Aid in the home section of home schooling….

We sort of lost momentum then and all dispersed to our own activities, I had to go for a lay down with an eye mask on just to stop the noise in my head. All of a sudden it is like the walls are closing in on me and I need to use what little freedom of movement I have to take myself off somewhere else in the house. I like to class that as meditation and self discovery.

The boys did a few token minutes of maths on the computer just so we could say we did “something”. We face timed my brother in Spain, who also has guinea pigs and we thought they may like to see each other — the Guinea pigs really didn’t give a shit, Janet can be a little aloof at times.

And we thought we could possibly train the Guinea Pigs to come to their names when called, or have them working out a maze, or maybe even race them and spend the lockdown days cheering on the alpha pig, maybe having a league table — in years to come introducing relay races with little carrot batons! We could travel the world! Team work! United Goal! Epic fail actually… but it killed a few minutes!

The entrants were not keen, Janet just wanted to sniff Captain Americas Bottom. Everyone decided to call it a day then, Alex asked me “Is school finished for the day now?!?” And was very excited when I said that it was so that he could continue to hide under a blanket and wait with excitement to see if we would forget he was there and sit on him thinking he was the sofa (like I said, the bar for things we find funny, amusing and interesting has DEFINITELY lowered quite a few notches!).

And Emily has helped me set up a Tiktok account — it seems to be the current thing to do. I am apparently a “Boomer” which means “Old person” in Tiktok speak, and she has excitedly told me she will throw me a line and like some of my videos as she has lots of followers. And that Boomers ALWAYS get popular really quickly with pity votes as “normal age” tiktok users think Boomers are so cute and sweet trying to give the young people technology a go, and are all “Awwwwwww! Bless” about us. Which now puts the pressure on as I can only imagine worst than a popular boomer is an unpopular boomer and I could bring angst into my daughters online world!

Although I have been banned from posting anything until I can work out the filters, and understand that this is NOT the beauty filter that I originally thought it was.

It was a good day today, eating cake and burnt biscuits in my sports kit, cheering guinea pigs on, cleaning cake mix out of a 6 year olds hair, sleeping. And that leads us neatly onto Gin o Clock! In my sports kit! So exciting!

Stay safe everyone!!

Fear And Groaning At The Hellbender 100

     [photo by White Blaze Productions]

[NOTE: 2020 is the tenth year of my blog at Semi-Rad.com, and since I started it, I’ve been fortunate to get to do some pretty wonderful adventures. Throughout this year, I’ll be writing about 12 favorite adventures I’ve had since I started writing about the outdoors, one per month. This is the fourth in the series. The other stories in the series are here.]

Somewhere around Mile 62 around 2:30 in the morning, I realized I hadn’t seen another light in about an hour: no other runners, no houses, no car headlights, nothing besides the little headlamp bubble of light in front of me. I had kept my headlamp dimmed to conserve the battery, just chugging along through the forest, jogging with my trekking poles in my hands. The entire trail had been covered in fallen leaves for miles, and it occurred to me a few times that I could be totally lost, but every time I started to worry, another little orange course marker flag would pop up. I was totally alone, and would be unless I sat down for an hour and waited for another runner to show up.

It was dead quiet, no wind, no sounds besides my feet shuffling through the wet leaves, and my breathing. If an animal had stepped on a stick 80 feet away, I would have heard it. I had been moving for 22 hours, and I felt OK, besides my soaking wet feet and the beginnings of fatigue that starts to set in when you’ve been going that long. I started thinking about the completely dark, dead quiet forest, and being totally alone. For a half second, my brain flashed to an idea, completely out of nowhere: This was a horror movie scene, and a crazed killer with an axe or other implement of destruction would come rushing at me from the dark forest to the left or right, totally surprising me because my headlamp was so dim. Then, as quickly as the thought appeared, I said to myself, “What the fuck are you doing?” and pushed it out of my mind, choosing to focus on the joy of moving through the forest in solitude instead.

I never watch horror movies, so the thought felt like it came out of nowhere. But then again, running through the mountains in the dark, slogging through a 100-mile course with 21,000 feet of elevation gain in order to get a “free” belt buckle is borderline psychopathic behavior according to most sane people. So maybe thinking about fictional movie psychopaths isn’t that out of line.

The Hellbender 100, set in the Black Mountains of North Carolina, billed itself as the “hardest and highest 100 on the East Coast,” with five climbs of 3,000 feet or more. In order to sign up, you’re required to have completed at least one other 100-mile race, and the 2019 race was only the second year of the event, so it would be hard to end up running in the Hellbender by accident. But I kind of did. My friend Forest had signed up, and I was supposed to pace him for the last 30 miles, so I’d planned a whole trip around it: pace Forest in the Hellbender, meet my dad in Atlanta a couple days later to catch a Braves game, then head to Alabama to tour the music studios at Muscle Shoals. Then Forest injured his foot and it wasn’t healed a month before the race. I half-joked to him that I could just run in his place:

Of course, a half joke is also half not a joke, and a couple emails later, I was signed up for the race myself, with 80 other people. Including Forest’s brother, Canyon, who is much faster. To say I was running the Hellbender 100 with Canyon is similar to saying that, if you happened to be somewhere on El Capitan when Alex Honnold free soloed Freerider, that you climbed El Cap with Alex Honnold.

At the starting line of the race at Camp Grier, at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, Canyon and I posed for a quick photo together, and I said, “Canyon, I was thinking. Do you want to run the first 15 …

…

… feet together?” He laughed, and when we were called to make our way to the starting arch, went to the front of the pack. I went to the back of the pack, futzing with my headlamp to turn it from the red light setting to white light, and failing. Hilary, my wife, finally handed me her headlamp and I jogged off, in 81st place out of 81 runners. I’m not sure if it’s the right strategy or not, but I figured if I was going to make it through all 100 miles, it’d be best not to take off too fast, or, really, fast at all. We jogged along a dark asphalt road for the first five miles, and I passed a few people, but mostly just shuffled along, hoping it wouldn’t rain all day.

A couple miles later, the rain started, as runners started to spread out on our climb up to The Pinnacle, 4,000 vertical feet up in the first 12 miles of the race. It drizzled, then poured rain, so we were totally soaked, as well as socked in by clouds, so no views. I settled into a rhythm of hiking uphill at a conversational pace, then jogging downhills and flats where I could—and finding that the course was quite technical. The rain let up, and so did the climbing, sending us down a wide dirt road for a six-mile descent into the aid station at 23.5 miles. As I started climbing up the next section, a 3,300-foot climb to the Blue Ridge Parkway, I thought of my joke about “we have to switch to ultrarunning now” whenever I crossed the 26.2 mark, from marathon distance to ultramarathon distance. I could see one guy about 100 feet ahead of me, but other than him, no one was around to laugh at the joke, which was OK, because it’s not that funny, and certainly much less funny when you’re hiking straight uphill and still have 73-point-something miles to go.

—

I had never considered myself much of a runner, especially not a distance runner. On my high school track team, the distance guys were built like deer—lean, long, and able to grit out the pain of running the mile at a blistering pace. I had a different relationship with suffering at that point, telling my coach that anything over 200 meters was long-distance, at least to me. He put me in the 400-meter run a couple times and I think realized there were probably much better candidates for the job when I kept up with the other runners respectably until about 250 meters, when my lane appeared to fill with invisible quicksand and the pack ran away from me as I struggled to keep my legs moving until the finish line. I rode out the rest of my track career running 4 x 100 and 4 x 200 relays, and then went to college, eventually giving up running for partying, and then a pack-a-day smoking habit for six years.

I tried to quit smoking more than 25,000 times, as smokers do, and eventually decided to enter a marathon in 2006 to motivate myself. It worked: I trained for the race for six months, I quit smoking, and after the marathon, quit running marathons too, giving myself a nice nine-year break from distance running. Aside from the occasional trail run, I climbed, hiked, and backpacked and managed to stay in shape.

In 2011, I happened to interview alpinist Kelly Cordes for an episode of the Dirtbag Diaries called “What is Hardcore?” Kelly was, in my opinion, pretty hardcore, having pulled off many long days in the mountains on first ascents all over the world, including a couple of situations on never-before-done routes that most sane people would call “near-death experiences,” what with the running out of food, chopping ropes, running out of water, and hallucinations. Kelly was not so sure that he was hardcore, but said something like: You know who is hardcore? My friends who run ultramarathons. Quitting on a mountain climb often meant you were just going to die out there, so it was easy to stay motivated to keep moving. In ultrarunning, he said, quitting means you get to stop, safely.

“Once you start hurting halfway through, and everybody hurts, there’s no way anyone feels good for 100 miles—why not just quit?” Kelly asked. “Why not just call it good at the aid station, sit down, snap your fingers and call for a beer and a bag of chips and say, ‘I’m done, my legs are tired’?”

A few years after our interview, what Kelly said had stayed with me. I was curious about the people who ran 31 miles, 50 miles, and 100 miles or more. What was that like? I had done a few trail runs with my friend Jayson, sometimes as long as 15 miles. I had spent some long days in the mountains, moving with a backpack on my back for 10, 12, 14 hours. In 2015, Jayson signed up for a 50-mile race. Inspired, I ran 10 miles around my neighborhood the next day, and feeling OK about it, I signed up for the race too—just the 31-mile one, though. But it was only 23 days away. I took it easy during the race, pacing myself in order to hopefully finish. Aside from some IT band pain at Mile 26 that almost made me quit until I massaged it out and was able to gradually walk and then jog to the finish, it went well. Almost fun.

Jayson and I signed up for more races, doing a couple 50-milers, surviving, and then signing up for the 2017 Run Rabbit Run in Steamboat, Colorado. I foolishly pitched the idea of making a film about Jayson to REI, and when they said yes, I had to not only train for and run my first 100-mile race, I had to produce and direct a film about it. Other than the last 12 hours of the race, during which both Jayson and I felt like we were going to die for different reasons, it was a success—we finished 32 minutes before the final cutoff. In the months after the race, I made that typical transition from “I’m never going to do that again” to “I wonder what it would be like to try that again” to “I think I want to try that again sometime.”

I was 36 when I did that first ultramarathon, 38 when we finished our first 100-mile race, and by that time, had spent more time in the mountains than I ever could have dreamed. I hadn’t learned so much about trail running, but a lot about how to keep moving when everything hurt, how to take care of myself, and how to get home safely. I looked at ultramarathons not so much as opportunities to race against other people, but as a way to test my limits with some support—with a marked course, some food and water stops along the way, and a pacer for the final miles, you could shut off parts of your brain and just go, focusing on moving forward and seeing what you learn from grinding it out when things get really bleak.

It was right around mile 40, walking through the woods on the Black Mountain Crest Trail between the summits of Mt. Mitchell and Mt. Craig, that I felt all of the time I’d spent climbing, hiking, running, and faffing around in the mountains paid off. I had my trekking poles tucked under one arm, was eating a thawed but not warm burrito with both hands, and I had to use the bathroom. Except the bathroom was at the last aid station, a mile backwards and uphill and in my past, which is not an ideal location for a bathroom when you’re running a 100-mile ultramarathon you’re not sure you can finish. Also not ideal: being halfway through eating a burrito you really want to finish when you have to go No. 2. But I was prepared for this situation.

I ducked off the trail, walked 100 feet into the woods, stuffed my burrito in my vest pocket for afterward, pulled out a half-buried rock, dug underneath it with a stick, and did my thing. Two minutes later, I was back on the trail, eating my burrito, and here is how that’s not gross: I always keep a single latex glove and an individually-wrapped wet wipe in the glove. When situations like this pop up and I’m trail running, I pull the latex glove on, take care of things, and hold the used wipe with the gloved fingers as I pull the glove off by turning it inside out. Then I knot the inside-out glove, trash sealed safely inside, and tuck it back in my vest to throw in the trash later. In events in which handwashing opportunities are nonexistent and you have to eat once or twice an hour, I highly recommend this method to help keep you from getting sick.

I jogged into the Colbert Creek aid station at Mile 48 just as the last light of the day was disappearing around 8:20 p.m., feeling good after jogging some big sections of the trail for the previous five miles, as opposed to walking. Although it had been slow going (the slowest 50-mile split I’ve ever recorded), I reminded myself that these things always take way longer than I assume they’re going to, while I changed my socks and packed a wind jacket, rain jacket, and liner gloves into my vest for the next 24 miles into the night. A guy I ran with a little bit on the last section had said the second half of the course was easier, and the lady parked next to Hilary said it was “more runnable,” but I was not counting my chickens before they hatched. Even if it was all flat terrain for the second half of the race, I was pretty sure I would find a way to feel like shit at some point. Hilary walked me partway down the road to the next section of trail, another 3,000-foot climb up the Buncombe Horse Trail.

In the thick trees, under the clouds, without many stars visible, I settled into an almost complete darkness, pacing myself uphill, not knowing where the top of the climb would actually be. I didn’t see another headlamp for over an hour on the way up, then finally started catching a few folks on a set of switchbacks. One guy asked as I passed, “that next aid station’s gotta be coming up pretty soon, doesn’t it?” I told him I couldn’t say, and I tried to keep myself thinking the same thing he’d asked. I could drive myself crazy straining to locate for signs of an aid station up the trail: the tiny dots of headlamps, the faint din of music, maybe the glow of a fire if they had one going? It was best not to think about it, because if I started wishing it was there, I’d start wishing every minute, then feeling sorry for myself.

I caught up to Ryan, a guy from Raleigh, and we jogged and hiked as the steep climb flattened out. Any relief at the end of the steep climbing was dashed when we discovered that the trail had, thanks to rain, become a trough of mud and standing water. At first we tried to hop around the wet sections, and then, realizing it was unavoidable, just walked through it, as it soaked our shoes. Here’s the point where if I could give myself advice, I’d say, “Hey, while you’re putting that rain jacket in your vest, pack an extra pair of socks to change into,” because immediately, the moisture started causing blisters on the bottoms of both feet.

We separated after the aid station, and I ran and hiked alone for a long time, still feeling like I had a lot left in the tank even though I was moving more slowly than I had hoped. Around 2:30 in the morning, I had my psycho-killer-coming-out-of-the-woods daydream, but besides that, I just kept trucking down the mountain, stopping at the aid station at Mile 65 to eat some avocado rolls and potatoes. Six miles, I reminded myself, and I’d be done running by myself—Hilary was in the rental car at the next aid station and would pace me for the last 28 miles. The six miles, as I fantasized, was not all downhill, and trudging through a short climb, I started to feel my morale dip. I told myself I’d ask Hilary to let me sleep for 15 minutes at the next aid station, and that would help. Then I realized I hadn’t ingested any caffeine in several hours, and popped a few caffeinated Clif Bloks into my mouth, almost instantly feeling a little bit better, or at least not on the verge of curling up in the fetal position on the side of the trail to have a good cry and a nap.

—

Leaving the Neals Creek aid station at Mile 71.5, after 24 hours, I joked to the volunteer checking me out: “How far am I off the lead runners?” Obviously a guy who was very used to sarcasm, he acknowledged the joke with a nod and no laughter, replying, “Well, they finished two and half hours ago, so …” Canyon had finished a half-hour earlier, despite having bonked at Mile 70 and struggling to finish, still taking third place. He would, by my calculations, be able to have a leisurely meal, a nice long night of sleep, and another leisurely meal before I crossed the finish line.

Hilary and I hiked up the road and onto singletrack as I shoved huge bites of pizza into my mouth, hoping the 1,000-foot climb up to the Blue Ridge Parkway would fly by. We had talked about the strategy for this part of the race, and it had been pretty simple: 1) make me jog as much as possible, even if we’re “running” 17-minute miles; 2) make me eat; and 3) don’t let me sit down. The sun started to rise as we climbed.

After we crested the Blue Ridge Parkway, my feet really started to hurt, in a way that was brand-new to my experience: I had blisters on the balls of my feet where they met my toes, and on some of the bottoms of my toes, and the movement of walking and running started to shoot pain from my feet up into my legs.

I had done little research on the individual sections of trail, only focusing on the big climbs: 4,000 feet here, 3,000 feet there, 1,000 feet, 3,500 feet, et cetera. When we started up the Leadmine Gap Trail about Mile 77, we were greeted by a series of three climbs you could interpret as “Haha, surprise!” or “Fuck you”: only 100 or 150 feet each, they were 25 percent grade, which my feet and legs felt like, to be honest, was asking a bit much at this point. Hilary led and I tried to follow as closely as possible now gritting my teeth as the pain in my feet became almost constant. Surrounding us: panoramic views of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which I promised myself would be there to enjoy more fully some other time, or just to enjoy at all some other time.

  At the Curtis Creek aid station at mile 80.1, they had pancakes, and let me tell you, if you ever forget how fucking great pancakes are, I cannot recommend highly enough running and hiking 80 miles as fast as you can, and then having some very nice person who has stayed up all night or gotten up early of their own volition serve you a couple very basic pancakes with syrup on a disposable plate. Even if you are the type of person who likes to go out to a restaurant just waiting and hoping for something, anything, to be slightly wrong so you can write up a shitty Yelp review when you get home, I believe pancakes at Mile 80 will turn you from the Grinch into a true believer. They may bring you back from the dead for a few minutes.

However, you still have 20 more miles to cover, so the joy is fleeting. Hilary and I jogged down two miles of road before the next climb, 2600 feet up to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Midway up the climb, I was starting to let out audible grunts as I exhaled, as it seemed to make the pain in my feet a little less intense. As the dirt road ended and singletrack began, we started chatting with another runner. He was a bit dismayed that the last aid station was out of cheese for quesadillas, and that someone had said to him that this was the easiest part of the race, and how could it be the easiest part of the race if there was this big climb that we were now headed up and then following that, a very long and technical downhill section …

At this point, I noticed Hilary had shifted gears and was beginning to pull away. I dug deep and tried to catch her, and within a few minutes, we were out of earshot. Hilary said, “Sorry, I just think we should get away from—”

“Yup,” I said. I already had enough negative voices in my head; I didn’t need one more. We stepped over a guardrail, crossed the Blue Ridge Parkway, and jogged a brief downhill to begin the last half-marathon of the race.

—

In February 2020, the New York Times Magazine published a story about ultrarunner Jim Walmsley, who had qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials, and whether he could transfer his dominance of longer distances on trails to a road marathon. In the piece, Joseph Bien-Kahn writes:

“Because athleticism is only part of the equation in races that are just as much about your tolerance for extreme mental and physical strain, mainstream runners often look down on the ultra­runner. They still see a field of eccentrics and seekers, pushing their bodies and minds, which is well and good but certainly not a sport. (Some people in the distance-running community derisively refer to ultra­runners as ‘hobby joggers’ or ‘glorified fast-walkers.’)”

I had never heard those terms before, but laughed when I read them, as well as a couple other terms Bieh-Kahn used to refer to ultrarunners in the piece—“masochistic oddballs” and “amateur challenge-seekers,” which I can’t argue are untrue descriptions. When I first started running ultramarathons, I looked around at the starting line, and sure, there were a few ultra-fit looking folks, but the rest of us sure don’t look like we’re going to hoof out a sub-3-hour marathon. But I guess if we wanted to run a marathon, we would do that. And lots of us do: the same year I ran the Hellbender 100, I ran three other ultramarathons and three road marathons, including the New York City Marathon. I had fun at all of the races, ultramarathons and marathons alike. All of them sucked at times. In one race, I was running with 53,000 other people, with thousands of people cheering, and music playing every few miles. In another race, I was in a dense, dark forest in the mountains of North Carolina, trusting myself not to trip on tree roots and rocks, and not seeing another person for an hour or more. I love trail ultramarathons, and road marathons, but I have to say, when you all of a sudden find yourself in urgent need of a restroom, it’s pretty nice not to have to wait in line at a port-a-potty while the clock is ticking, and just hop off into the trees somewhere.

I came into ultrarunning not from road running, but climbing and mountaineering, which can also be endurance sports, but come with a completely different set of hazards. After several years of climbing, I wanted to take a break from the feeling of danger and just push myself in the outdoors, so ultrarunning was an easy transition. I often joke that ultrarunning is all the pain and suffering of mountaineering without the fear of death, which I think is mostly true. In mountaineering, you spend a lot of time thinking about the ways you could die and utilizing techniques and equipment to minimize the odds of death. In ultrarunning, not very many people die, but lots of people feel like they’re going to die, for a not-insignificant portion of the time they’re ultrarunning.

I’ve realized that I like being out on a trail for 20 miles during a training run, or 30 miles, or even 50 miles. I mostly don’t pay attention to how long it takes me, unless I’ve promised to be home at a certain time. I just go out and move for several hours, never looking at my phone, and when I finish running, I have burned enough calories to justify eating half a deep-dish pizza. Masochistic? Sure. Oddball? That’s fair, too. When you show up at an ultramarathon, though, you feel less like an oddball, with all the other masochistic oddballs around.

—

Hilary kept me moving, up the final climb across the Blue Ridge Parkway, and down the technical descent to the finish line. I kept searching the trees below for a sign of the finish arch, a little bit of red somewhere, and of course it seemed like it was never going to appear. The last seven miles was almost completely downhill, dropping 3,000 feet, and it took us two hours. I had told myself there was no need to run the final few hundred feet through the finish arch—I mean, after 36 hours, what was the point of rushing to shave off a few seconds? But then, we stepped off the trail onto the grass, and I said to Hilary, OK, we can jog. So we did.

—Brendan

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