40,062 words! Some familiar faces in a new setting...

Writing today was fun. Again, I allowed myself to just write about whatever amused me. The plot is still moving along, and since I just hit 40,000 (woo hoo!!!!) I will allow myself to let the climax happen. Maybe tomorrow. It's hard to say because I have a few things that need to happen by then... Molly's still trying to get Nicky to come back, Kiefer's still trying to seduce her, and Nicky has just recently joined a queer prison abolition group and is starting to make new friends. It's been strange...

I think you'll enjoy today's excerpt. Nicky is writing from a retreat center where she is at activist boot camp with the Queer Justice Coalition. She writes Molly a long letter (too long to post) in which she describes some new folks she just met. I think you might recognize them.



And then when we got to this part of the meeting, they opened the floor for questions. And who should get up immediately but the guy who had been pissing me off all day. It turns out his name is Brett Hall, and he seems like the kind of guy who comes from money but has now vehemently turned his back on it and doesn’t pay rent on principle. You know, the kind who couchsurfs and mooches off you because he doesn’t want to give any money to ‘the man’ and who in fact has no money because then he’d have to pay taxes to ‘the man.’ But he sure doesn’t mind eating all your food, staying on your couch, and scaring away all your other guests. And he sure doesn’t mind passing judgment on your every move.

Sure, he was attractive – probably mid-twenties, just graduated from college. He probably majored in finance but he’d never admit there was a time before he was born again as a socialist. He kept trying to ask me out for coffee and giving me free issues of his little newsletter from the International Socialists. I would have been flattered – it’s not everyday that I’m asked out by a guy with abs that could cut you if you get too close – except I’m all too familiar with the IS’s recruiting methods. They get you with the coffee and all of a sudden you’re on some committee doing the grunt work while they argue amongst themselves for hours on end. (You might wonder how I knew that Brett’s abs were so magnificent. He kept ‘stretching’ and yawning and letting his shirt ride up a little, then a little more. Then he’d accidentally pull it up to his nipples (pierced, by the way) when he’d ‘absent-mindedly’ scratch his stomach. (I realize I’m using waaay too many quote marks here, but he’s just that kind of guy. It’s easy to see that every move he makes is a performance.))

ANYWAY, getting to the point, when question period started, Brett was right there, halfway up the aisle (that seemed to have materialized just so he could stand there). You know he wished there were a microphone – he still looked like he was speaking into a microphone that was adjusted to be slightly too low for his statuesque height. He was kind of hunched over and he’d turn his head awkwardly to the side so that all of us (his audience) could appreciate what he had to say. He then proceeded to ask a ‘question’ that turned out to be a five minute speech about his own views on prison abolition and of course, the International Socialists’ views on prison abolition, and it ended with a pathetic nod to the fact that this was question period: “would anyone care to comment on that?” Puh-lease. The guy was a pro at taking over question period. There was a pause while people caught their breath, tried to figure out what the hell he had just said, and then the facilitator made a few half-hearted remarks and looked around the room to see who would be next.

Brett was still standing in position though, and he held out his hand to interrupt just as the facilitator started to point to the next speaker. And he went into another little monologue, this time at least seven minutes, followed by “would anyone care to comment on that?” At which point, another dude in the audience (oh, these white dudes and their question period confrontations!) stood up and started asking his own question. And the two of them just kept asking questions in louder and louder voices, talking over each other, while the rest of us just watched. The facilitator kept trying to interrupt, but the wouldn’t stop talking, and she eventually just held up her hands, shouted, “The session’s over! Time for a coffee break!” and we all trooped out of there. Brett and Paul (the other guy) continued to talk over one another as they walked out of the room. They were side by side but wouldn’t even acknowledge one another’s existence.

** You may be asking yourself why I posted these three pictures. These are the first three images that pop up when you do a Google image search for 'angry activist drunk.' (I was obviously following Jackie's principle of just adding 'drunk' to every single image search I do.) That's right - the first three images are: elephants, Dakota Fanning and Queen Latifah, and Angry Harry, men's rights activist.