still crazy after all these years

Colleagues and namesakes:

Sir Humphrey the Permanent Secretary and cat Humphrey the Chief Mouser

After more than thirty years in the benighted South, I can “do” RP with the best of them, but you’ll always catch me out if you get me to say “fair hair” or “school”.* I have to put on my Scouse mouth to speak Irish, too, and my vowels are still flat.

The Ottolenghi - it is vital that you use 1g of this very expensive ingredient. It comes from a 500g bag with a one-week shelf life.

The time machine - 15-minute recipe! First, leave to marinate overnight...

The dishwasher - one-pot recipe! Now decant your ingredients and wipe out your pot. And again. And again. And again.

The optimist - cook the onions until caramelised (2 minutes).

The kindergarten teacher - get one nommable little tree of broccoli and bosh that into boiling water. Delish!

The brand names only - ingredients: Ritz crackers, Philadelphia cheese, Cool Whip, orange Jell-o...

The 1950s palate - use one (1) clove of garlic and a small pinch of chili flakes (omit if preferred).

It’s Pride, and also the first anniversary of my uncle’s death, so I want to type up a story about him. (NB: my aunt, his wife, is equally cool, but she’d want this story to be about him too.) So here goes.

I skipped town when I was 16. Nothing interesting about that part; just standard queer kid in a conservative place in the 1990s stuff. I’d just gotten my driver’s license (this took a while; I’m good at other things), it was the beginning of summer break, and my parents had recently bought a new car and were planning to fix up their old one to sell. In the meantime, the old car (whom I’d named Harold Godwinson because one of his headlights kept exploding) was sitting all by himself in a corner of the driveway, and I thought he might be down for a little adventure. So, one night, I threw some stuff in my backpack (documents, journals, a few changes of clothes, my $235 in babysitting cash) and snuck out after everyone else in the house had gone to sleep.

Harold Godwinson and I hit the highway. The thing about him was that he started shaking violently at speeds over 57 mph, but in fairness so did I – I’d driven on the interstate in driver’s ed, but, like, twice, and for 5 minutes at a time instead of several consecutive hours – so we made a good pair. We were lucky enough (seriously: I cannot stress enough how lucky we were in this) to have a destination in mind, and we reached it just as the sun was coming up.

My uncle was in the kitchen making breakfast for my aunt, who’s not a morning person, and he did not look surprised at all to see me coming up the path with my luggage. He met me at the door and said, “Well, hey there babygirl, we were just thinking you might want to come and stay with us for a while, and I’m so glad you read our minds.” I ate my aunt’s breakfast and then faceplanted in the attic bedroom while he called my parents to tell them where I was and that I’d be staying. (I could hear the yelling even through the adrenaline crash; I think that’s the only time I ever heard my uncle yell and, believe me, I did a LOT of dumb shit in front of him over the years.)

The next week my uncle and I went out to run an errand. I’d thought we were just going to the hardware store – we were forever putting up shelves together – but instead we drove 45 minutes to the state’s only “alternative” (plausible-deniability term for “gay and lesbian”) bookstore. He walked me inside, poked his head into every room while I watched, confused, from the entrance hall, and then came back over. “Okay, babygirl. Here’s a twenty, you should, uhhhhhh, buy yourself some, uhhhhhh, alternative books. Back in one hour, I gotta go to the grocery.” At this point he looked around and realized that the cashier (who, I was about to learn, was permanently cosplaying Mo from Dykes to Watch Out For) and a nice middle-aged lesbian couple were trying very hard not to stare at him. He bowed slightly toward them, said “Ladies,” and then backed out the door in what might have been the most awkward little shuffle ever.

We were all hanging out at my aunt’s house earlier this month to celebrate my uncle. We drank a toast – cheap scotch, his favorite – and after a while of telling stories about him I asked something that should’ve occurred to me a lot sooner: how did he find out about the queer bookstore? It was so obviously not his natural habitat.

My big cousin swallowed his scotch the wrong way and my aunt said, “Oh, you’re going to love this. He asked around at church.”

Back up for a second: most of my side of the family is Catholic, but through various plot twists in her life my aunt became a member of one of the earlier groups of women to be ordained in the Episcopal church. Not one of the Philadelphia Eleven or anything, but pretty early on. Of course, not everybody – particularly in more conservative parts of the US (like, say, the south) – was cool with women priests right away, and things could get a little hostile at times. My uncle never had much truck with any form of religion or philosophy whatsoever, but he did believe in my aunt, so he would periodically show up at whatever church she was assigned to and stare down anyone who was looking at my aunt in a funny way.

Fast forward again to just before I showed up at their house: my aunt and uncle figured they might ask me to come stay with them, and my uncle, in preparation for this, decided to find some places I might like to hang out. He didn’t find anything in the immediate neighborhood, so one Sunday he tagged along with my aunt, who was then working in a church about 45 minutes from their house. During the coffee hour he approached a group of random church ladies and this happened. (Bear in mind that these ladies saw my uncle only once a month or so, when he showed up for his periodic glaring at the conservatives.)

My uncle: Morning, ladies! What a nice service that was. [Pause while they all stare blankly at him.] We hope that our niece will be coming to stay with us soon. [More blank stares from the ladies. Uncomfortable pause.] She has always been a tomboy, and –

One of the ladies, who was about to become my friend Amelia: OHH!!! Okay. [Turning toward the coffee urn.] HEY! POLLY! WE NEED YOUR EXPERTISE AND GUIDANCE!

Polly – imagine the woman from “Ring of Keys” and you’ll have it – came right over and said: Oh, a tomboy? Okay, I’ve got you. Let me just get some paper.

They take him home. They give him the Hebrew name Kal-El and the American name Clark so he will fit in. They know what it is to be different. There is no Hebrew school in Smallville so they teach him at home, and study Torah together. When he shows special abilities, they wonder to each other if he is the Moshiach. Not for the strength of his body, but for the strength of his kindness. He always seems to be helping others, delivering them from harm, as he was delivered to them. They never tell him this, but they teach him about the obligations without measure. He's a natural.

At school, he is side-eyed for being different. When he displays eccentricities, the villagers shrug and say "maybe it's a Jewish thing." The Kents make sure he values his education, and is always home for Shabbas dinner.

His is bar-mitzva'd at the nearest shul, a few towns over. They didn't know his birthday, so they chose one near Parshat Shemot. Now they worry that was too on-the-nose, but he gives a moving d'var about the obligation to speak truth to power.

As he comes into his own and tries to be a hero, he hides his identity from the public, not out of shame, but to keep his adopted parents safe. They've been persecuted enough.

When he moves to the big city for a job at a newspaper, Pa is so proud he cries. Clark uses his journalistic skills to expose corruption, give voice to the neglected and oppressed, and research his own origins. When he learns the truth about Krypton and his birth parents' desperate bid to send him to safety, Ma and Pa are not at all surprised that they were right.

When Clark brings Lois home, he assures his parents she is a nice Jewish girl, but they're just glad she's a mensch. They step on a glass to remember the destruction of Krypton, and stand under a chuppah quilted by Ma.

A white billionaire spews lies about him, trying to spread fear of the stranger in their midst. He comes out in public and says "There's nothing more American than being an immigrant."

When the government turns against immigrants, he stands on the side of the protestors and protects. Tear gass does nothing to him. He makes himself a shield. He writes article after article in the Daily Planet, making sure the public knows what their government is doing, that immigrants know their rights, that the powerful are put on notice. When they start rounding people up, he says "Never again."

They were! Superman was created in 1938 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two Jewish boys, sons of immigrants.

She stared at him for a long time and then said “How do you know I’m from Brooklyn?”

And he said “You have a Brooklyn accent.”

So we were at a restaurant once and my mom started interpreting for someone who was trying to order and she was like “oh you’re from the south!”

And they were like “how did you know that?”

And she said “you sign with a drawl.” And they were really surprised that it came through that much.

garak tells himself that this is Fine, even though julian hasn’t bothered to learn kardasi. in the five years they’ve known each other. even though julian and martok are laughing and joking together in the runabout back. it’s good to know more languages, of course. what is not Fine is julian insisting from that point on that they only read klingon stories for their book club. ”they’re so engaging”, julian says. ”so romantic and muti-facetted! so much better that that last play you forced on me-”

I finally wrote the Jimmy/Duncan slow burn.

slung from the mast, a lantern (6075 words) by raven Fandom: Shetland (TV) Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Duncan Hunter/Jimmy Perez, Alison McIntosh & Jimmy Perez Characters: Jimmy Perez, Duncan Hunter, Sandy Wilson, Alison McIntosh, Cassie Perez (Shetland) Additional Tags: Slow Burn, why is "co-parents to lovers" not a canonical tag Every few minutes Jimmy’s feet leave the ground, and it’s only Duncan’s weight that keeps him down. It’s terrifying, every time it happens. All of this, suddenly, is terrifying.