Leonard Cohen, from The Book of Mercy (1984)

[Text ID (added paragraph breaks): "Israel, and you who call yourself Israel, the Church who calls itself Israel, and the revolt that calls itself Israel, and every nation chosen to be a nation—none of these lands are yours, all of you are thieves of holiness, all of you at war with Mercy.

Who will say it? Will America say We have stolen it, or will France step down? Will Russia confess, or will Poland say, We have sinned? All bloated on their scraps of destiny, all swaggering in the immunity of superstition.

Ishmael, who was saved in the wilderness, and given shade in the desert, and a deadly treasure under you: has Mercy made you wise? Will Ishmael declare, We are in debt forever? Therefore the lands belong to none of you, the borders do not hold, the Law will never serve the lawless.

To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation's sweetest dreams of itself. The Covenant is broken, the condition is dishonored, have you not noticed that the world has been taken away? You have no place, you will wander through yourselves from generation to generation without a thread.

Therefore you rule over chaos, you hoist your flags with no authority, and the heart that is still alive hates you, and the remnant of Mercy is ashamed to look at you.

You decompose behind your flimsy armor, your stench alarms you, your panic strikes at love.

The land is not yours, the land has been taken back, your shrines fall through empty air, your tablets are quickly revised, and you bow down to hell beside your hired torturers, and still you count your battalions and crank out your marching songs.

Your righteous enemy is listening. He hears your anthems full of blood and vanity, and your children singing to themselves. He has overturned the vehicle of nationhood, he has spilled the precious cargo, and every nation he has taken back.

Because you are swollen with your little time. Because you do not wrestle with your angel. Because you dare to live without God. Because your cowardice has led you to believe that the victor does not limp."]

daddy has to be honest kitten. i think we're going to have to sublease and turn the sex dungeon into a bedroom again. the rent is going up and your asmr slime youtube isnt taking off like we thought it would

#the edgeworth icon is drastically changing how i read this

I can’t state enough how beneficial it was to work at the sex shop as my first retail job. We were encouraged to practice shutting down inappropriate behavior and it became a well practiced skill set. I had a flat stare, icy tones of disapproval, and a demeanor of untouchable scorn to back it all up. I could get the most hardened of perverts to back off or leave in a matter of sentences if they harassed staff or other customers.

When I moved on to selling mattresses I came prepared to handle pretty much any situation with the unruffled calm of someone who has asked Santa to stop touching himself and leave. To my vast surprise it was a skill I needed on the regular at the mattress store. For whatever reason men thought it was the height of entertainment to sexually harass me because I was young and cheerful.

They would always quickly learn they’d picked the wrong target.

One day a man strolled in, sizing me up as he came. He saw a young, tiny, afab person alone in the store and came to a stop way too close. He used his height to leer down at me and said, “I’m looking for a new headboard. Which ones are the best for sex?”

It was so stupid. He looked down at me with half lidded eyes and the grin of a man who owns an unmarked white van. He probably expected me to laugh uncomfortably or act flustered. He wanted to feel tall and powerful or maybe even sexy.

He was not expecting what he got. My face stretched into what could technically be described as a smile but was more accurately a threat display. The temperature in the room plummeted as I dropped all warmth in my demeanor. He took a half step back, suddenly aware that he was alone in a room with me.

“Well, sir, that depends on what kind of sex you’re having. If you are looking for a headboard that is grippeable, I suggest this model. The metal is rounded and wouldn’t hurt a hand gripping it tightly. However if you want something that you can secure with restraints, I recommend this wooden one as the slats are wide and quite sturdy.”

He looked liked I’d hit him over the head with a board and stared down at me blankly, taken aback by the authoritative way that I discussed the merits of his lackluster sex life. I met his eyes, a veiled threat in mine, and said, “Which one will you be purchasing?”

He tucked his tail between his legs and bought the metal one. I pulled up a thin layer of friendliness as I rang him up but he had the chastened air of a man who just ran straight into an iron pole.

Another time a man crawled up onto a tempurpedic and thrusted into an invisible partner. He gave a cocky look over his shoulder, sure that he was going to discomfit me as he asked, “How are these babies for fucking?”

I gave him a deadpan look and and said, “That depends on if you’re someone who has to rely on the bounce of springs for your thrusts. Memory foam beds are nicer on knees and joints for positions like doggy style but they absorb a lot of kinetic energy.”

He visibly deflated and got down off the bed with a vaguely ashamed air.

He bought a spring mattress.

ace dyke erotica is some of the hottest and emotionally twistiest writing on the face of the planet

I think you have to read it to understand how to write erotica to begin with.

Look, we joke a lot, but really, "you were born evil, wretched, worse than the scum of the earth, and it took killing a god to make you salvageable, so now you'd better be grateful to that god and thank him 10,000 times a day for it and fill your thoughts with him 24/7 and abide by the letter of his every word, lest you suffer unimaginable torture for all of eternity" is a truly horrendous thing to believe about yourself and other people

lets give it up for pleasures of the flesh !!

girl I hope ur okay. I hope ur frolicking under the spring sun despite it all

I'm not even kidding I think food service jobs are the hardest customer service jobs that exist and if you have them on your resume long enough that it's clear you could maintain them people should be begging on their hands and fucking knees for you to work for them.

Do you have any idea how much goes into any given food service job. Not only is it customer service, it's usually heavy machinery operation and maintaining, sanitation work, handling of money, awareness of allergens and chemicals and EXACTLY where they are and where they go, intense memory games for menu items and all of their ingredients... You deal with some of the absolute worst rushes doing multiple tasks, you can basically never sit down, most of your cooking equipment is extremely dangerous and can hurt you very badly if you lose focus for any amount of time, you deal with insane temperature fluctuations constantly, food service is always understaffed because it's less expensive to pay you to do the jobs of four people, everyone is incredibly mean to you all the time, and you get paid like absolute fucking shit because people think it's "unskilled" entry level labor anyway.

Average sixteen year old working minimum wage at McDonald's is actually a more respectable and skilled worker than any person working a salaried desk job on the planet.

Two of our foremost experts conducted a careful examination of the available data, and pronounced spring to have sprung.

THE LEGEND OF SHEN LI 与凤行 2024 ✧ dir. Deng Ke ✧ episode one

[“Eight months into transitioning as far as I could get from male, I developed a strange interest in power tools and short hair. But I was too scared to say I was butch. I learned otherwise by dating a femme.

We’d met years before in student organizing, but only shared tea after I’d started transition. She was a big bi femme; a broad who fucks who and how she wants. Her mum and dad thought that it would be kind and freeing to raise her as they would a son. She disagreed and out-femmed this attempt. But even though her femininity was, from the start, a rebellion, in queer spaces, it started the process of her erasure; the men she dated finished it. Consigned to the “quiet ally” seat, she was left dating bi-curious women, whose curiosity she offered to satisfy, sans underwear. Her dates declined, remaining bi-curious rather than bi-informed. She remained frustrated.

Dating a tranny—a girlfriend with stubble and a necktie—made her smirk. She clarified my doubts and explained to me that I fuck “like a girl.” She was my anchor in women’s circles where I would not be welcome were she not beside me, calling bullshit. Dancing with her, fisting in washrooms, it felt right, intimate, honest. Together, we were bold. We were femme and butch.

Still, I was scared to call myself “butch.” Wouldn’t that be a contradiction? An Eddie Izzard joke? But she saw the butch and named it. I owe her.

I encounter femmes who shepherd friends and lovers through the FtM spectrum. When they see the butch and smell the trans on me, they discreetly offer a rolodex of gentlemen and genderqueers, friends and exes, to whom I can talk if I, y’know, need to talk. I explain that I am changing the other way. They are happy to hear this, to know that I can honestly be myself right now.

I see how many butches lean on femmes, whether we know them romantically or platonically. I feel like a bulldagger Lois Lane to their Superwomen. Escorting us through everything from washrooms to transition, I wonder and marvel at how femmes save us over and over and what they get in return. Visibility? Help moving boxes? Someone who is not femme who will say, “People see butch and expect male, but I am not. People see you and expect conventional, and you are anything but.”

I wonder what we can do so that they could openly lend their help at dyke gatherings, rather than catching our ears in private.”]

amy fox, from changed sex. grew boobs. started wearing a tie, from persistence: all ways butch and femme edited by Ivan Coyote and zena sharman

The Isobel / Aylin epilogue in my heart