All the L³'s

The poem frames "him" as subordinate in several ways, not just to the narrator ("i fuck him on the floor": not that getting fucked is inherently subordinating, but the narrator has all the agency in the phrase, "he" doesn't decide what happens or where) but also to "his wife". She has filled the house with chintz, meaning it wasn't his decision or his actions. "Filled" is also a choice of words that suggests that there is no space for him in the home: the only place left for him, not already filled, is the floor. To me this framing invokes the trope of the henpecked husband, whose wife has taken dominion over the home and who has ceded its control to her because it, as the domestic space, is "supposed" to be hers.

This trope, of course, is misogynist in its normative rendition: it reinforces gender essentialism, it erases the significant material benefits such "henpecked" men derive from the domestic labor of their spouses, and it dismisses women's expressions of suffering and attempts at negotiating terms for their relationships as "nagging." In the narrator's dismissal of the wife's possessions as "chintz" (frivolous, feminine, contrasted with what is "real") we can see this same misogyny at play.

The narrator's misogyny, and the central fact of the poem which is that the husband is getting fucked by someone other than the wife, quite possibly flip the power dynamics of the poem on their heads. The wife is now subordinated: both by her social marginalization based on gender (a marginalization which drives her into the home and confines her there, like OP so cogently points out! As "he" has run out of room in the home and can only get fucked on the floor, so has she run out of room socially; the only place she can control and make decisions like filling it with chintz is the home), and by the narrator who is fucking her husband in her home.

There's an additional dynamic in reading the narrator as male, which most readers seem to have done: it invokes the particular, bitter misogyny that men-loving-men sometimes direct at women expressing femininity. There's an envy to it, of course--straight and straight-passing women get to (are forced to) express desire for men, have sex with men, marry men, love and be loved by men. His wife gets to be his wife: the narrator gets to fuck him, in their home. Straight and straight-passing women also get to (are forced to) perform femininity: they can buy chintz and decorate with it, without being devastatingly punished for it like people presumed to be men are from the time they're babies. The envy mixes with misogyny to produce disdain, disgust, dismissal. We can read the narrator fucking him on the floor of their home as an expression of power and dominance (again, not that the fucking has to mean the narrator is topping, or that topping is inherently dominant, but the phrasing is stark: "i fuck him", the narrator acts upon him as an object/recipient), not just over him but over the wife in absentia as well.

Noting that "to keep it real" is AAVE, we can also introduce race as a potential lens; is the narrator, despite their dominant language, subordinated based on race in this dynamic? Is the narrator not just claiming a dominant role, but perhaps also stereotyped and limited into it as a Black person? Is the disdain of the chintz also an expression of class difference, of a rejection of the display of white wealth on the part of the wife? This is pretty speculative, of course: the use of AAVE could also be appropriative, which would suggest another tactic by the narrator to lay claim to masculinity and toughness, since non-Black people often use AAVE to try to invoke racist stereotypes of strength, violence and resilience.

I think one of the things that makes the poem so compelling for being so short is the struggle at the heart of it, this complicated jostling for power between three people and their actions over time (the wife "has filled" the house, in the past: the narrator fucks him in the present, perhaps in the habitual). Who controls the house? Who controls "him"?

The doctor scraped out a bit of earwax to have a better look inside.

I was sent a bill for $200 PER EAR for this 5 second procedure which I did not give permission for them to do.

That was key- they did not ASK me if they could do this "procedure". And, as I OWN a medical practice (it's me. The medical practice is me, sitting in my house on video calls) I knew to call them when this bill came in to be like "You did not obtain informed consent for this procedure, and it was not en emergency procedure. You had full ability to gain my consent and didn't. I'm not paying."

And the massive hospital who owned the bill said "yuh-huh you do have to pay."

And I said "I own a practice. I know these laws. I do not owe you money for this."

And they conducted an "internal review" and SURPRISE! Decided I totally owed them money and they had never done anything wrong ever.

And so I called my state's Attorney General office, and explained the situation because, as I mentioned, I know the law. The AG got in touch within a couple days to say they were taking the case and would send the massive hospital conglomerate a knock it off, guys letter.

Lo and Behold, today I have a letter where said hospital graciously has agreed to forfeit the payment.

"How not to get screwed over by companies" should be part of civics class.

Know your rights and know who to call when they're infringed on. This whole process cost me $0 and honestly less effort than I would have expected.

Civics class wouldn't help most people in this case because the AG will not take on all these cases and most people cannot afford an attorney in this instance or more importantly, the hit to their credit.

Were they going to get into a lawsuit over my $400 bill? No obviously not. But they printed up a letter on fancy letterhead to say to stop and it worked. They followed up with me the next day to be sure, and so ask how much money they had saved me.

They use dinky cases like mine to track habitual misbehavior of large scale companies to build cases they could actually go to court over.

And because people are shocked- I never spoke to the AG of my state directly. He operates mainly by overseeing a whole crew of people. And this is what those people do.

This didn’t happen because I’m special because of my tiny therapy practice.

This happened because this is what the AG office is for.

“The problem is systemic” doesn’t mean “and there’s nothing you can do”.

Then you've been trained well by "The System".

Yes, that System you say can't be fought? Where did you get that idea, huh? Who taught you that "small" acts of illegality don't matter? Who made you think that there's no point in fighting back because it will all come to nothing?

Might it be the same entities that benefit if you believe all that?

Gonna pause and let you ponder.

Never. Ever. EVER.

EVER.

Let companies or corporations or hospitals or organizations or any business big or small get away with screwing you over without a fight. Maybe you personally don't win every fight, but you lose 100% of the time you don't try. You'll win more often than you think you will. I know cuz I've done it.

So have others. Attorneys General offices bring lawsuits against businesses all the time. They do so because citizens contacted them to say "someone is doing a crime" and the crime doers did not stop when told and got into way more trouble than if they'd just stopped. FAFO. The Find Out can't happen if you don't even bother to report the Fucking Around.

On that note, as OP said, please know your rights! And, in a situation where you don't but suspect something is hinky, ask! The people of the internet can help! So can librarians! So can many others. Find out what is and is not okay for them to do. If it's not okay, report them! See something, say something.

Don't let the System win by default.

If you believe The System™️ is only for Them™️ and not you, it will only ever be so.

He was, in fact, very close to letting himself in whether I wanted him there or not.

I went down and locked the door, then took the video.

These flags indicate to me that there is more to this story that we aren't being told and/or someone along the line dropped the ball when it came to protecting this child.

Firstly, if her allergy was that severe was the flight a necessity for the family or was there a safer travel alternative? With nearly any other method of travel you can either completely control your environment (inside your own vehicle) or leave the enclosed space so you don't have to rely on the good will of others to protect your life.

A reaction so severe that even being in the same room as peanuts can trigger full blown anaphylaxis is incredibly rare. Usually it's contact with the oils or someone who has just eaten peanuts breathing directly into the person's face that account for a third party triggering the allergy. The proteins that trigger peanut allergies are quite heavy and don't tend to remain airborne long enough to travel any significant distance in a large enough quantity to trigger anaphylaxis in most people with peanut allergies.

Additionally, according to The Sleep and Sinus Centers of Georgia website's page about peanut dust as an airborne allergen, as of May 2026 no known cases of anaphylaxis due to airborne exposure alone have been documented in scientific literature. The filtering system on passenger airplanes is incredibly advanced and incredibly effective to the point that even people with allergies more commonly known to be triggered just by being in the same room as the allergen (ie dog/cat allergies) can be on the same flight with the allergen and never experience any symptoms if they are more than three rows away.

This leads me to believe that it wasn't simply opening the bag and eating the nuts 4 rows away that was the trigger. One possibility is that the scent of peanuts triggered a severe panic attack rather than anaphylaxis or that oils or other peanut residue was transferred close enough to trigger the allergy. This leads me to wonder how well the plane was cleaned before the passenger boarded to eradicate any contamination from nuts from previous flights. If not then she was at risk whether the man opened that bag or not. If so, who should be responsible for the cleaning fee? Would the cost be high enough to be considered undue hardship for the airline? These are important questions to consider when you're looking to assign fault and responsibility.

If the child was one of the very rare cases where the facts as presented are true, why wasn't she wearing a respirator for additional protection? Peanut particles are quite large and respirators capable of filtering them from the air are very reasonably priced. In fact a standard KN95 mask would be plenty to prevent breathing in any peanut allergens. There is still a risk of airborne peanut particles coming into contact with the skin but gloves and tight fitting clothing that covers large areas of skin would help mitigate that risk as well. All of which are very reasonable precautions to expect someone with severe allergies to take.

After doing some more research into this story I've learned the following:

The family was returning from a holiday (they chose to fly for leisure in other words)

This incident was the first time the girl had ever been injected with epinephrine (if her allergy was as severe as the reports of this story would like us to believe she absolutely would have had previous severe reactions requiring epinephrine)

The man who opened the bag of peanuts was from another country and "did not speak good english" so it's entirely likely he did not fully understand the three announcements that were made. The reason he was banned was not that he opened the nuts in the first place but that he didn't put them away despite being asked by flight staff on three separate occasions. It is likely the staff spoke to him in English so once again a language barrier can be assumed.

There were a total of three people with peanut allergies on the flight, including the little girl. The others did not have a reaction.

Something else I'd like you to consider. The passengers were only warned as they were boarding the flight. What if the man had a medical condition that required him to eat and the nuts were all he had with him? Assume he didn't have money to purchase something different from the airline snack cart or, if snacks were free, maybe he too had an allergy that meant he couldn't eat anything the flight offered? Even if he could afford to buy something else is it reasonable to expect him to spend his money to keep someone else safe when he was given no prior notice that he would be unable to eat peanuts? Did the airline offer him a different snack free of charge when they asked him to put the nuts away? If he needed to eat for his own medical safety where would his rights have ended and hers began? Whose rights take priority?

Accountability Keppet on duty and taking his apprenticeship seriously

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!