Sup frugals! I'm getting married pretty soon, and wanted to share a brief story. Please note that I'm NOT a fashion snob or super experienced - I'm a blend of a "quality for high-use, and value for low-use" shopper, and I'm finding myself interested in clothing and footwear only very recently as a result of my process of shopping for my wedding and updating my wardrobe for summer.
The story begins over on malefashionadvice, as all good stories do. I posted some outfit ideas for my wedding, and was told to look at Allen Edmonds Park Ave Oxford cap toes as my go-to.
So, I ordered some. Turns out my feet are huge hobbit cones, and even in the E width my feet were feeling the squeeze. I finally went in to the nearest AE store, tried on the EEE, and that fit well and looked good.
Then, I walked into DSW, and found these Vince Camuto Lamson shoes that looked similar to what I wanted from AE. Now obviously, they're kind of apples and oranges - no goodyear welt, much cheaper materials, etc. But I was surprised at just how similar the wide model looked and fit to the EEE Allen Edmonds. And, at $90 instead of $400, I can't help but feel like I'm getting a better value since I plan to wear them only a few times a year.
TL;DR - for everyone except those with quite a bit of money, I think the Vince Camuto is a better deal for a nice oxford cap toe look. The reviews of the Park Aves (as of time of writing) are quite good, at 4.4 aggregate. But for the $400 price, I personally really want to see almost universally-happy customers. The Vince Camuto reviews sit at 4.8, and after trying them on, I think I see why. The reviews (unless juiced) offer some peace of mind that the $90 isn't going to be money that's quickly flushed. I plan to mostly shoe tree my Vince Camutos, and use the money I saved to get a nice pair of quality Grant Stone shoes that I'll wear with a lot of regularity.
Cheers!

Hi ladies I’m a 40 year old guy I am originally from England and currently living in another part of Europe for the last few years I’m not giving out my exactly location on this post.
I am a very well spoken guy you could say I sound a bit posh the way I speak I have a strong south English accent I am originally from Reading Berkshire and I later lived in Oxford England before moving to where I am now.
What I am looking for is a serious relationship that leads to marriage that’s based on love and friendship. I have very strong morals boundaries and standards I live by. I have never used dating apps at all I never will to be honest I don’t think there a good idea at all. I know I’ll be a good loyal man to you and a good father I won’t ever abandon my children and walk away from them.I know also be a really good lover to you too
I do not Watch Porn i have no addictions I don’t smoke I don’t drink heavily and I’ve never touched any illegal drugs. Porn is causing unrealistic expectations in relationships I have no unrealistic expectations for intimate things once I get in a relationship. I have no other addictions and I’m in very good health with no serious health conditions
Intimacy is something I only want to have with one woman and is something I also don’t want to rush into I want to take our time getting to know each other properly. I really want to be a father in the future very much so I want a woman that also wants children the same as me. Please be in your 20s & 30s
I want to be In a loving caring supportive relationship and marriage. I believe that being intimate should be very special between two people and it should also be gentle between two people. I am a Virgin and I am not interested In any kind of meaningless stuff.
I could never have an affair or cheat on someone as I say I only want to be with one woman and share my body with one woman. Ideally I’d also prefer to be with a woman that’s also a virgin.
I only want to be married once in my life this is why I haven’t settled yet I don’t just want to settle with just anyone. Another thing is I’m extremely family orientated family is very important for me in fact I actually live with my parents at the moment I have no desire to live by myself I’m not someone that likes living alone so you will have to be okay with that and also the fact I don’t work at the moment again you will have to be okay with that from the get go.
My interests include photography gym swimming nature beaches walking camping hiking travel reading music I love classical music I listen to classic FM uk during the day which is classical music 24/7. I also love food Im a big foodie! I also love animals especially cats and dogs! I love technology too. I also love eating in good restaurants and red wine is my favourite drink I know a few good eating spots! I am also a very strong swimmer I would love to hear from women that also love swimming as this is something I’d love to do together!
I am not vegan or vegetarian I love meat and dairy foods. I love Italian Indian Mexican food cooking from scratch is how I mostly roll and I don’t eat much sugary foods or processed or junk foods.
I am also not liberal and I don’t follow any liberal political movements including woks culture I’d like the someone who is the same as me on that.
I am 6ft 4 dark blonde hair hazel eyes rugby player build and Natural smooth body which means I’m naturally smooth chest back arms and legs. I have freckles on my arms and legs plus big hands and feet. I do havé a big frame to go with it. I have a very deep manly voice too which I’ve been told women really like and I don’t aspire to look like men on social media and reality tv I have a very natural body type I prefer Being natural basically I embrace being natural.
In a woman I like a natural body type and no heavy makeup fake tan fake nails fake hair extensions fake eyelashes. I do also like women that don’t show too much off that dress conservatively and modestly plus you don’t wear too skimpy bikini on the beach. You also don’t aspire to look like women on social media and reality tv. Basically I like women that have a completely natural body and are natural all over. I do find women that are feminine and embrace there feminine side extremely attractive can’t tell you how attracted I am to that.
Please also be kind caring sweet easygoing gentle supportive trustworthy genuine and You have never done any meaningless stuff at all and have never cheated or had an affair either ideally as I say I’d prefer you to also be a virgin.
Please mention the word milkshakes when you send me a message and tell me more about you your age location and what you are most passionate about please don’t just say hi or hey or hello I’m unlikely to respond to that at all.

Hi ladies I’m a 40 year old guy I am originally from England and currently living in another part of Europe for the last few years I’m not giving out my exactly location on this post.
I am a very well spoken guy you could say I sound a bit posh the way I speak I have a strong south English accent I am originally from Reading Berkshire and I later lived in Oxford England before moving to where I am now.
What I am looking for is a serious relationship that leads to marriage that’s based on love and friendship. I have very strong morals boundaries and standards I live by. I have never used dating apps at all I never will to be honest I don’t think there a good idea at all. I know I’ll be a good loyal man to you and a good father I won’t ever abandon my children and walk away from them.I know also be a really good lover to you too
I do not Watch Porn i have no addictions I don’t smoke I don’t drink heavily and I’ve never touched any illegal drugs. Porn is causing unrealistic expectations in relationships I have no unrealistic expectations for intimate things once I get in a relationship. I have no other addictions and I’m in very good health with no serious health conditions
Intimacy is something I only want to have with one woman and is something I also don’t want to rush into I want to take our time getting to know each other properly. I really want to be a father in the future very much so I want a woman that also wants children the same as me.
I want to be In a loving caring supportive relationship and marriage. I believe that being intimate should be very special between two people and it should also be gentle between two people. I am a Virgin and I am not interested In any kind of meaningless stuff.
I could never have an affair or cheat on someone as I say I only want to be with one woman and share my body with one woman. Ideally I’d also prefer to be with a woman that’s also a virgin.
I only want to be married once in my life this is why I haven’t settled yet I don’t just want to settle with just anyone. Another thing is I’m extremely family orientated family is very important for me in fact I actually live with my parents at the moment I have no desire to live by myself I’m not someone that likes living alone so you will have to be okay with that and also the fact I don’t work at the moment again you will have to be okay with that from the get go.
My interests include photography gym swimming nature beaches walking camping hiking travel reading music I love classical music I listen to classic FM uk during the day which is classical music 24/7. I also love food Im a big foodie! I also love animals especially cats and dogs! I love technology too. I also love eating in good restaurants and red wine is my favourite drink I know a few good eating spots! I am also a very strong swimmer I would love to hear from women that also love swimming as this is something I’d love to do together!
I am not vegan or vegetarian I love meat and dairy foods. I love Italian Indian Mexican food cooking from scratch is how I mostly roll and I don’t eat much sugary foods or processed or junk foods.
I am also not liberal and I don’t follow any liberal political movements including woks culture I’d like the someone who is the same as me on that.
I am 6ft 4 dark blonde hair hazel eyes rugby player build and Natural smooth body which means I’m naturally smooth chest back arms and legs. I have freckles on my arms and legs plus big hands and feet. I do havé a big frame to go with it. I have a very deep manly voice too which I’ve been told women really like and I don’t aspire to look like men on social media and reality tv I have a very natural body type I prefer Being natural basically I embrace being natural.
In a woman I like a natural body type and no heavy makeup fake tan fake nails fake hair extensions fake eyelashes. I do also like women that don’t show too much off that dress conservatively and modestly plus you don’t wear too skimpy bikini on the beach. You also don’t aspire to look like women on social media and reality tv. Basically I like women that have a completely natural body and are natural all over. I do find women that are feminine and embrace there feminine side extremely attractive can’t tell you how attracted I am to that.
Please also be kind caring sweet easygoing gentle supportive trustworthy genuine and You have never done any meaningless stuff at all and have never cheated or had an affair either ideally as I say I’d prefer you to also be a virgin.
Please mention the word milkshakes when you send me a message and tell me more about you your age location and what you are most passionate about please don’t just say hi or hey or hello I’m unlikely to respond to that at all.

Hi ladies I’m a 40 year old guy I am originally from England and currently living in another part of Europe for the last few years I’m not giving out my exactly location on this post.
I am a very well spoken guy you could say I sound a bit posh the way I speak I have a strong south English accent I am originally from Reading Berkshire and I later lived in Oxford England before moving to where I am now.
What I am looking for is a serious relationship that leads to marriage that’s based on love and friendship. I have very strong morals boundaries and standards I live by. I have never used dating apps at all I never will to be honest I don’t think there a good idea at all. I know I’ll be a good loyal man to you and a good father I won’t ever abandon my children and walk away from them.I know also be a really good lover to you too
I do not Watch Porn i have no addictions I don’t smoke I don’t drink heavily and I’ve never touched any illegal drugs. Porn is causing unrealistic expectations in relationships I have no unrealistic expectations for intimate things once I get in a relationship. I have no other addictions and I’m in very good health with no serious health conditions
Intimacy is something I only want to have with one woman and is something I also don’t want to rush into I want to take our time getting to know each other properly. I really want to be a father in the future very much so I want a woman that also wants children the same as me.
I want to be In a loving caring supportive relationship and marriage. I believe that being intimate should be very special between two people and it should also be gentle between two people. I am a Virgin and I am not interested In any kind of meaningless stuff.
I could never have an affair or cheat on someone as I say I only want to be with one woman and share my body with one woman. Ideally I’d also prefer to be with a woman that’s also a virgin.
I only want to be married once in my life this is why I haven’t settled yet I don’t just want to settle with just anyone. Another thing is I’m extremely family orientated family is very important for me in fact I actually live with my parents at the moment I have no desire to live by myself I’m not someone that likes living alone so you will have to be okay with that and also the fact I don’t work at the moment again you will have to be okay with that from the get go.
My interests include photography gym swimming nature beaches walking camping hiking travel reading music I love classical music I listen to classic FM uk during the day which is classical music 24/7. I also love food Im a big foodie! I also love animals especially cats and dogs! I love technology too. I also love eating in good restaurants and red wine is my favourite drink I know a few good eating spots! I am also a very strong swimmer I would love to hear from women that also love swimming as this is something I’d love to do together!
I am not vegan or vegetarian I love meat and dairy foods. I love Italian Indian Mexican food cooking from scratch is how I mostly roll and I don’t eat much sugary foods or processed or junk foods.
I am also not liberal and I don’t follow any liberal political movements including woks culture I’d like the someone who is the same as me on that.
I am 6ft 4 dark blonde hair hazel eyes rugby player build and Natural smooth body which means I’m naturally smooth chest back arms and legs. I have freckles on my arms and legs plus big hands and feet. I do havé a big frame to go with it. I have a very deep manly voice too which I’ve been told women really like and I don’t aspire to look like men on social media and reality tv I have a very natural body type I prefer Being natural basically I embrace being natural.
In a woman I like a natural body type and no heavy makeup fake tan fake nails fake hair extensions fake eyelashes. I do also like women that don’t show too much off that dress conservatively and modestly plus you don’t wear too skimpy bikini on the beach. You also don’t aspire to look like women on social media and reality tv. Basically I like women that have a completely natural body and are natural all over. I do find women that are feminine and embrace there feminine side extremely attractive can’t tell you how attracted I am to that.
Please also be kind caring sweet easygoing gentle supportive trustworthy genuine and You have never done any meaningless stuff at all and have never cheated or had an affair either ideally as I say I’d prefer you to also be a virgin.
Please mention the word milkshakes when you send me a message and tell me more about you your age location and what you are most passionate about please don’t just say hi or hey or hello I’m unlikely to respond to that at all.

Cormoran Strike has been blessed in many ways:

• his intimidating size and boxing skill
• an amazing memory that allows him to master Latin, quote people and poems, and accurately remember details from years ago
• intellectual ability sufficient to gain entrance to Oxford University and solve difficult cases
• sex appeal so great that just standing there scowling makes beautiful women thirsty
• lifelong friendships including Polworth, Shanker, Ilsa and Nick
• enough maternal love to keep him from turning into a Donald Laing or Billy Knight
• a role model in Uncle Ted that leads to a career with the SIB
• determination and drive to succeed against the odds
• a wealthy, privileged, exquisitely beautiful woman on his arm and in his bed on and off for 16 years

Okay, that last was a mixed blessing since Charlotte is as unstable as she is gorgeous, but she was still a boost to Strike's ego in many important ways.
On the other hand, Strike has reason to feel like an inferior, neglected, painful accident. On his 39th birthday, he reflects:

His mother had sometimes forgotten to buy him anything when he was a child. His biological father had never acknowledged the date. Birthdays were inextricably linked with the knowledge, which had long since become part of him, that his existence was accidental, his genetic inheritance had been contested in court, and that the birth itself had been "fucking hideous, darling, if men had to do it the human race would be extinct in a year."

Add to that all the frightening, hurtful and unhealthy events of his childhood and the explosion that took his leg -- all circumstances that could lead to insecurity, self-loathing, deep resentment and a feeling that life has dealt him a crap hand. In fact, many of the killers in the series seem to have turned to murder for similar reasons.
Strike has had a confusing mixture of good and bad in his life, but one that seems to have done him more good than harm. After all, it's Robin, not Strike, who is plagued with feelings of inadequacy. Still, we're told that someone will recommend therapy to Strike in the next book. Do you think he needs therapy? Does he need therapy more than Robin? What issues do you think he needs to work on, and what would be the aim in terms of practical improvements in his life? If the bad stuff has "long since become part of him," and his coping methods ingrained over the course of forty years, what do you see as the outlook for Strike's emotional well-being in future books?
_______________________
*Sofi Tukker, "Good Time Girl"

Bundles Deals/Venmo get #1 Priority! TRACKING tonight! Over 1,550 items sold since last year so buy with confidence. Tagged photos below. Timestamp: https://imgur.com/a/nTxXIHX
 

$9 + Shipping

 
Japanese Blue Jeans from Taobao - Fits 30x28 - Bought from Taobao off of a seller specializing in Jeans. Outgrown them but used to be my dailies due to their quality and the nice slim/straight fit they had. - https://imgur.com/a/wv936xq
 

$15 + Shipping

 
Retail [email protected] Wyoming Tee - Fit Medium - Paid around 60 for it. Take for an absolute steal. - https://imgur.com/a/GtwbzPl
 
Retail D0ckers Pants Black and White - 30x29 - Paid 45 bucks for these brand new. Take for a steal. - https://imgur.com/a/AF528is
 
Retail Vintage Lev1 Jeans Light Blue - 36x30 - Bought off eBay for 45 bucks. Take for an absolute steal. - https://imgur.com/a/E6dvIUn
 
Retail Vintage Lev1 Jeans Light Blue - 32x29 (Fits 31x29) - Bought off eBay for 45 bucks. Take for an absolute steal. - https://imgur.com/a/jdZ0v5Z
 
N1ke Small Swoosh Blue Tee - Fits Large - XL - Brand new from haul. Quality is on point and embroidery is spot on to retail. - https://imgur.com/a/8cL3a0c
 
Vivienn3 Westwood Silver Planet Necklace - OOS - Brand new from last haul, have a few extra. Have one that I wear on and off for over three months and hasn’t tarnished but I make sure not to get it wet. Holds up nice and material is well made. - https://imgur.com/a/O0lgndh
 
Vivienn3 Westwood Gold Planet Necklace - OOS - Brand new from last haul, have a few extra. Have one that I wear on and off for over three months and hasn’t tarnished but I make sure not to get it wet. Holds up nice and material is well made. - https://imgur.com/a/XI69i4I
 
H3rschel Backpack Retreat Black/Brown - OOS - In used condition, a nice clean up would get this thing looking nice. Stores a lot of bags and still has a lot of life left. - https://imgur.com/a/eUSF08T
 
[email protected] Archer Tote Bag Cream - OOS - Amazing condition but light imperfections from storage. Always gets nice compliments and the color scheme is beautiful on this tote. - https://imgur.com/a/FOTmBm9
 
Retail Vintage Tennessee Titans Crewneck - Fits Large - Thrifted it and was gonna put it up on Grailed for 55. Repfam take this for a steal. - https://imgur.com/a/pc0XKhQ
 

$26 Items:

 
N1ke Bakin Air Tee - Fits Medium-Large - Brand new only tried on from UK. Take for a steal. - https://imgur.com/a/KHdlpFU
 
[email protected] Smiley Face Sweatpants - Fits Waist Size 30, Length 29 - Brand new from haul. Take for a steal. - https://imgur.com/a/pRtlIxi
 
St0ne Island T0pstoney Beanie Cream - OOS - Fits smaller-normal sized heads. Worn twice and washed. - https://imgur.com/a/5QQJQPI
 
St0ne Island Silver 3M Bucket Hat - OOS - Fits smaller-normal sized heads. Never worn. - https://imgur.com/a/urcOuxJ
 
[email protected] Lauren Navy Golf Bear Bucket Hat - OOS - Fits smaller-normal sized heads. Never worn. - https://imgur.com/a/7v4fwBa
 
Balenciag@ Bat Sunglasses Black - OOS - Brand new and few pairs remaining. Been using a pair for over 2 months now for driving and going out in the Cali sun. Doubt they are polarized but they are a solid pair of shades to darken your surroundings. - https://imgur.com/a/0Xgfzsm
 
0FF-WHITE Rectangle Sunglasses Black - OOS - Brand new never used. Few pairs remaining, fresh from my last Taobabo haul. Been using on and off for the past month and they are built really well but doubt they are polarized. - https://imgur.com/a/YNVF9GL
 
J.W. Ad3rs0n C0nverse - (Fits 8.5 Mens) - Not sure if this was retail or rep because I got it a while ago. Worn for just a few months and is in amazing condition. Such a sick shoe and always gets a lot of compliments. Take for a steal. Includes replacement insoles. - https://imgur.com/a/3cOaUb9
 
Retail D0minic Fike Last MInute Concert Merch Tee - TTS Large - Bought from last concert in LA. Take for a steal, I paid 45 I think originally and it sold at there. - https://imgur.com/a/MpJiKXo
 
L0uis Vu1tt0n Monogram Logo Tee Cloyad - Fits Small - Bought from Tao. Fits nice and slightly boxy. Tags and everything look on point but I have too many black tees at the moment. Bought from Cloyad and was only washed never worn. - https://imgur.com/a/7b6Opgv
 
Vilebr3quin Blue Floral Swimming Shorts - Small - Bought a while ago off Taobao. Quality is really nice and I’m selling as I already have the green one from Tao. - https://imgur.com/a/nuwWhHz
 

$40 + Shipping

 
Retail Vintage N1ke 3M SilveRed/White Windbreaker - TTS Large - Lightly worn but has been in my closet for a while. In amazing condition and repels water really well. Selling as I have other windbreakers that I daily. - https://imgur.com/a/O7vdR2b
 
R3venge x St0rms Blue Camo Shoes - Fits US Mens 8.5 - Only worn to try on. In near perfect condition. Take for a steal. - https://imgur.com/a/AoNCvNB
 
[email protected] of God Sk8-Hi Vans - Fits 8.5 Mens - Lightly used from last haul. Material seems on par with retail which goes for 750+ USD. - https://imgur.com/a/FmWPeVr
 

$50 + Shipping:

 
N1ke Dunk High SP Spartan Green - Fits 8.5 Mens - H12 batch. Best batch out at the moment as far as I know. Worn for around a month. - https://imgur.com/a/oQeQrqy
 
Ye3zy Season 1 Cargo Pants from B0und2 - Small (Waist Size 28-33, Length 30) - Nice space and should fit you if you around the 5’9 range. From Bound2 who is a goated seller, quality is so nice on these cargos. Take for a steal. - https://imgur.com/a/ZmBti4I
 
Repr3sent Green Sherpa Flannel - Fits Mens Large - Was hoping this would fit like a medium but this definitely fits like a large. In perfect condition and only tried on. Paid around 100 bucks shipped from overseas. Take for a steal. - https://imgur.com/a/KCT0FAa
 

$55 + Shipping:

 
[email protected] of God White Lows - Fits 8.5 Mens - From my haul and only worn twice. In near perfect condition and take for a steal. Best batch out afaik. - https://imgur.com/a/v0OSWpW
 
Retail Doc [email protected] 1461 White Oxfords - Size 8 Mens (Fits 8.5-9) - Bought for retail price which was around 150 in total (130 plus tax & shipping). Take this for an absolute steal. These boots are definitely built to last and everything about them is high quality - https://imgur.com/a/zevQBdc
 

$80 + Shipping:

 
Extra Butt3r x N0rthface “Technical Difficulties” Puffer Jacket - Tagged Small - Bought in a Tao haul a while back and has been sold out for a while now. Looking to trade for some designer loafers in 8-8.5 mens for my friend. Jacket is in amazing condition and quality is on point and keeps you easily warm in cold SF weathers. - https://imgur.com/a/7gq1C0R

It appears most minimalist capsule wardrobes on YouTube consist of some combination of jeans, t-shirts, hoodies, shorts, and lounge pants. It seems like sustainable brands are very loungewear-heavy and especially in women’s departments. Here are some sustainable alternatives for those who want to keep their wardrobe minimalistic and sustainable, but are in business casual or business professional environments, attend events, or simply like looking well-dressed. Of course, the most sustainable option is “no buy” and wearing what you already have, but here are options for those in the market for sustainable options beyond t-shirts and hoodies:
-Organic cotton polos from Superdry.
-Organic cotton jeans from Superdry or Everlane.
-Organic cotton chinos from Thought Clothing for both men and women (Quince as well, if a woman).
-Quince’s linen trousers if a man (their men’s chinos are polyester, so best avoided).
-Linen button-ups from Quince for men and women (Hope and Henry as well, if a man).
-Various button-ups and polos from Hope and Henry if a man.
-Organic cotton button-ups from Superdry or Everlane if a man and Quince or Everlane if a woman.
-The hemp, organic cotton, and linen button-ups and polos from Rawganique for both men and women.
-The Oxford shirts from Organic Basics for both men and women.
-The trousers from Rawganique for both men and women.
-Fair Indigo’s organic Pima cotton button-ups if a woman and polos if a man.
-Pact’s button-ups for women and button-ups and polos for men.
-Thought Clothing’s button-ups for men (I’ve purchased them to have tailored despite being a woman, due to the exceptional quality and price).
-Quince’s blazers and trench coats.
-Rawganique’s very versatile Oxford or RENO shoes.
-Linen suits from the tailor-owned Etsy shop mantaikotai.
-Organic cotton suits and classic coats from Will’s Vegan Store.

Oh my! This post has a slur
Hey umm, might be worth mentioning that futanari is basically a slur, so it might warrant a tw.
​
*I recommend going to youtube or Spotify to play the song "curb your enthusiasm" before continuing now*
The replies:
"If the word that specifically means 'girl with dick penis' is a slur then the word used to describe gnc boys is a slur too idiot"
"lol you're stupid 😂"
"Its a fictional species/sex/whatever. Trans people (biological males), futanari (girls who happen to have dicks), and femboys (sex objects) are different things, and none of them are a slur if you don't misuse it." (/uj the biggest change I made to this one was the inclusion of the oxford comma lmao)
​
/rj NOOOOO!!!!! don't you understand is someone is futanari that means they're a REAL girl who just HAPPENS to have a penis!!!! NOO that isn't just saying "non-op transfem" I am saying REAL girl, they were never MEN like you filthy transexuals.
/uj there literally is no fucking way to argue that without looking like a cumpilled porn-brained freak. Every single fucking time I forget that 196 is primarily liberal cis white guys that know fuck all about trans people like the rest of the damn website. I just wish the didn't pretend to be actually supportive so I won't have to deal with the stress of being reminded that they really aren't every few months.

What's the difference between these 2, is it just the sole?
Strand with dainite sole (Factory Seconds) - $230
Strand with lug sole - $200
Looking to buy walnut strands for work but without the leather sole since I live in NYC.
Which one is the better buy? Is the color exactly the same? One is called "Walnut" but the other is "Walnut Brown".

Hi everyone! I’m headed off to flight attendant training in a few weeks and I’m starting on gathering all the attire I need, but I’ve got a question about my prospective foot attire.
I have become a pretty firm wearer of barefoot style shoes and don’t find anything else too comfortable anymore. Luckily it looks like Vivobarefoot makes an Oxford style shoe that looks pretty damn close to a standard dress shoe, but I wanted to get the opinions of well seasoned flight crew members.
Are these acceptable as far as appearance and non-slip-ness? If not, what suggestions do y’all have? Linked the shoes below for reference:
https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/ra-iii-mens

Hi everyone! I’m headed off to flight attendant training in a few weeks and I’m starting on gathering all the attire I need, but I’ve got a question about my prospective foot attire.
I have become a pretty firm wearer of barefoot style shoes and don’t find anything else too comfortable anymore. Luckily it looks like Vivobarefoot makes an Oxford style shoe that looks pretty damn close to a standard dress shoe, but I wanted to get the opinions of well seasoned flight crew members.
Are these acceptable as far as appearance and non-slip-ness? If not, what suggestions do y’all have? Linked the shoes below for reference:
https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/ra-iii-mens

Up To 54% Off Fossil Watches
40% Off JBL Tune 510BT Wireless On-Ear Headphones
39% Off Men's Leather Lined DressOxfords Shoes
35% Off Multiple Devices 3 in 1 Wireless Charger
11% Off Spinning Fishing Reel Sealed Carbon Fiber

PODCAST: https://ayearofwarandpeace.podbean.com/e/ep1567-hail-and-farewell-george-moore-vale-chapter-72/
PROMPTS: Nah
Today's Reading, via Project Gutenberg:
Lady Gregory is a Persse, and the Persses are an ancient Galway family; the best-known branch is the Moyaude branch, for it was at Moyaude that Burton Persse bred and hunted the Galway Blazers for over thirty years ... till his death. Moyaude has passed away, but Roxborough continues, never having indulged in either horses or hounds, a worthy but undistinguished family in love, in war, or in politics, never having indulged in anything except a taste for Bible reading in the cottages. A staunch Protestant family, if nothing else, the Roxborough Persses certainly are. Mrs Persse and her two elder daughters were ardent soul-gatherers in the days gone by, but Lady Gregory did not join them in their missionary work, holding always to the belief that there was great danger in persuading any one to leave the religion learnt in childhood, for we could never be sure that another would find a place in the heart. In saying as much she wins our hearts, but our intelligence warns us against the seduction, and we remember that we may not acquiesce in what we believe to be error. The ignorant and numbed mind cannot be acceptable to God, so do we think, and take our stand with Mrs Persse and the elder sisters. We are glad, however, though we are not sure that our gladness on such a point is not a sign of weakness, still we are glad that Sir William chose Augusta rather than one of her elder sisters, either of whom would certainly have fired up in the carriage when Sir William, on his way to Coole, suggested to his bride that she should refrain from pointing out to his tenants what she believed to be a different teaching of the Bible from that which they received from the parish priest. He would probably say: You have made no converts—(we have forgotten Mrs Shaw Taylor's Christian name, but Agnes will serve our purpose as well as another)—you have made no converts, Agnes, but you have shaken the faith of thousands. The ground at Roxborough has been cleared for the sowing, but Kiltartan can wait. Which Path Should Agnes Have Followed? is clearly the title of a six-shilling novel which I pass on to my contemporaries; meanwhile I have pleasure in stating here, for my statement is implicated in an artistic movement, the Abbey Theatre, that the Gospels were never read by Lady Gregory round Kiltartan. I should like to fill in a page or two about her married life, but though we know our neighbours very well in one direction, in another there is nothing that we know less than our neighbours, and Lady Gregory has never been for me a very real person. I imagine her without a mother, or father, or sisters, or brothers, sans attache. It is difficult to believe, but it is nevertheless true, that fearing a too flagrant mistake, I had to ask a friend the other day if I were right in supposing that Mrs Shaw Taylor was Lady Gregory's sister, an absurd question truly, for Mrs Shaw Taylor's house (I have forgotten its name) is within a mile of Tillyra, and I must have been there many times. We may cultivate our memories in one direction, but by so doing we curtail them in another, and documentary evidence jars my style. I like to write of Lady Gregory from the evening that Edward drove me over to Coole, the night of the dinner-party. There is in the first part of this book a portrait of her as I saw her that night, a slim young woman of medium height and slight figure; her hair, parted in the middle, was brushed in wide bands about a brow which even at that time was intellectual. The phrase previously used, if my memory does not deceive me, was high and cultured; I think I said that she wore a high-school air, and the phrase expresses the idea she conveyed to me—an air of mixed timidity and restrained anxiety. On the whole it was pleasant to pass from her to Sir William, who was more at his ease, more natural. He spoke to me affably about a Velasquez in the National Gallery, which was not a Velasquez; it is now set down as a Zurbaran, but the last attribution does not convince me any more than the first. He wore the Lord Palmerston air; it was the air of that generation, but he did not wear it nearly so well as my father.
These two men were of the same generation and their interests were the same; both were travelled men; Sir William's travels were not so original as my father's, and the racehorses that he kept were not so fast, and his politics were not so definite; he was more of an opportunist than my father, more careful and cautious, and therefore less interesting. Galway has not produced so many interesting man as Mayo; its pastures are richer, but its men are thinner in intellect. But if we are considering Lady Gregory's rise in the world, we must admit that she owes a great deal to her husband. He took her to London, and she enjoyed at least one season in a tall house in the little enclosure known as St George's Place; and there met a number of eminent men whose books and conversation were in harmony with her conception of life, still somewhat formal. One afternoon Lecky the historian left her drawing-room as I entered it, and I remember the look of pleasure on her face when she mentioned the name of her visitor, and her pleasure did not end with Lecky, for a few minutes afterwards Edwin Arnold, the poet of The Light of Asia, was announced. She would have liked to have had him all to herself, and I think that she thought my conversation a little ill advised when I spoke to Sir Edwin of a book lately published on the subject of Buddhism, and asked him what book was the best to read on this subject. He did not answer my question directly, but very soon he was telling Lady Gregory that he had just received a letter from India from a distinguished Buddhist who had read The Light of Asia and could find no fault in it; the Buddhist doctrine as related by him had been related faultlessly. And with this little anecdote Sir Edwin thought my question sufficiently answered. The conversation turned on the coloured races, and I remember Sir Edwin's words. The world will not be perfect, he said, until we get the black notes into the gamut. A pretty bit of Telegraphese which pleased Lady Gregory; and when Sir Edwin rose to go she produced a fan and asked him to write his name upon one of the sticks. But she did not ask me to write my name, though at that time I had written not only A Modern Lover, but also A Mummer's Wife, and I left the house feeling for the first time that the world I lived in was not so profound as I had imagined it to be. If I remember the circumstances quite rightly, Sir William came into the room just as I was leaving it, and she showed him the fan; he looked a little distressed at her want of tact, and it was some years afterward that I heard, and not without surprise, that she had shown some literary ability in the editing of his Memoirs. The publication of these Memoirs was a great day for Roxborough, but not such a great day for Ireland as the day she drove over to Tillyra.
I was not present at the time, but from Edward's account of the meeting she seems to have recognised her need in Yeats at once, foreseeing dimly, of course, but foreseeing that he would help her out of conventions and prejudices, and give her wings to soar in the free air of ideas and instincts. She was manifestly captured by his genius, and seemed to dread that the inspiration the hills of Sligo had nourished might wither in the Temple where he used to spend long months with his friend Arthur Symons. He had finished all his best work at the time, the work whereby he will live; The Countess Cathleen had not long been written, and he was dreaming the poem of The Shadowy Waters, and where could he dream it more fortunately than by the lake at Coole? The wild swans gather there, and every summer he returned to Coole to write The Shadowy Waters, writing under her tutelage and she serving him as amanuensis, collecting the different versions, etc.
Thus much of the literary history of this time has already been written, but what has not been written, or only hinted at, is the interdependence of these two minds. It was he, no doubt, who suggested to her the writing of the Cuchulain legends. It must have been so, for he had long been dreaming an epic poem to be called Cuchulain; but feeling himself unable for so long a task he entrusted it to Lady Gregory, and led her from cabin to cabin in search of a style, and they returned to Coole ruminating the beautiful language of the peasants and the masterpiece quickening in it, Yeats a little sad, but by no means envious toward Lady Gregory, and sad, if at all, that his own stories in the volume entitled The Secret Rose were not written in living speech. It is pleasant to think that, as he opened the park gates for her to pass through, the thought glided into his mind that perhaps in some subsequent edition she might help him with the translation. But the moment was for the consideration of a difficulty that had arisen suddenly. The legends of Cuchulain are written in a very remote language, bearing little likeness to the modern Irish which Lady Gregory had learnt in common with everybody connected with the Irish Literary Movement, Yeats and myself excepted. A dictionary of the ancient language exists, and it is easy to look out a word; but a knowledge of Early or Middle Irish is only obtained gradually after years of study; Lady Gregory confesses herself in her preface to be no scholar, and that she pieced together her text from various French and German translations. This method recommends itself to Yeats, who says in his preface that by collating the various versions of the same tale and taking the best bits out of each the stories are now told perfectly for the first time, a singular view for a critic of Yeats's understanding to hold, a strange theory to advocate, the strangest, we do not hesitate to say, that has ever been put forward by so distinguished a poet and critic as Yeats. He was a severer critic the day that he threw out Edward's play with so much indignity in Tillyra. He was then a monk of literature, an inquisitor, a Torquemada, but in this preface he bows to Lady Gregory's taste as if she were the tale-teller that the world had been waiting for, one whose art exceeded that of Balzac or Turgenev, for neither would have claimed the right to refashion the old legends in accordance with his own taste or the taste of his neighbourhood. I left out a good deal, Lady Gregory writes in her preface, I thought you would not care about. The you refers to the people of Kiltartan, to whom Lady Gregory dedicates her book. It seems to me that Balzac and Turgenev would have taken a different view as to the duty of a modern writer to the old legends; both would have said: It is never justifiable to alter a legend; it has come down to us because it contains some precious message, and the message the legend carries will be lost or worsened if the story be altered or mutilated or deformed. And who am I, Balzac would have said, that I should alter a message that has come down from a far-off time, a message often enfolded in the tale so secretly that it is all things to all men? My province, he would have continued, is not to alter the story, but to interpret it, and we have not to listen very intently to hear him say: Not only I may, I must interpret. There can be little doubt that Yeats is often injudicious in his noble preface, and he exposes Lady Gregory to criticism when he depreciates the translation from which Lady Gregory said she worked. She might have written: Which I quote, for she follows Kuno Meyer's translation of The Wooing of Emer sentence by sentence, and it is our puzzle to discover how Kuno Meyer's English is worthless when he signs it and beautiful when Lady Gregory quotes it. A clear case of literary transubstantiation, I said, speaking of the miracle to a friend who happened to be a Roman Catholic, and she gave me the definition of the catechism: the substance is the same, but the accident is different. Or it may have been: the incident is the same and the substance is different; one cannot always be sure that one remembers theology correctly. A little examination, however, of Lady Gregory's text enabled us to dismiss the theological aspect as untenable. Here and there we find she has altered the words; Kuno Meyer's title is The Wooing of Emer; Lady Gregory has changed it to The Courting of Emer (she is writing living speech); and if Kuno Meyer wrote that Emer received Cuchulain in her bower, Lady Gregory, for the same reason, would certainly change it to: she asked him into her parlour. The word lawn in the sentence: and as the young girls were sitting together on their bench on the lawn they heard coming toward them a clattering of hooves, the creaking of a chariot, the grating of wheels, belongs to Lady Gregory; of that I am so sure that it would be needless for me to refer to Kuno Meyer's version of the legend.
No light diadem of praise Yeats sets on Lady Gregory's brow when he says that she has discovered a speech, beautiful as that of Morris, and a living speech into the bargain. He continues, that as she moved among her people she learnt to love the beautiful speech of those who think in Irish, and to understand that it is as true a dialect of English as the dialect that Burns wrote in. But when we look into the beautiful speech that Lady Gregory learnt as she moved among her people, we find that it consists of no more than a dozen turns of speech, dropped into pages of English so ordinary, that redeemed from these phrases it might appear in any newspaper without attracting attention. And she does not seem to have inquired if the phrases she uses are merely local or part of the English language; she writes again and again a phrase which we find in The Burial of Sir John Moore, evidently under the impression that she is writing something extremely Irish:
That the foe and the stranger should tread o'er his head, And we far away on the billow.
It would seem that in the opinion of many the line: And we far away on the billow, marks the poem as having been written by an Irishman, a careless criticism, for it is certain that the turn of speech referred to is to be found in Shakespeare, in Milton, in Morris, even in Dickens. It is heard in England in everyday speech, though not so often as it is heard in Ireland, but it is heard, and it was a mistake on Lady Gregory's part to accept it as characteristically Irish. And her mistake shows how very little thought she gave to the question of idiomatic speech. She writes: he, himself, instead of omitting the parasitical he as she might very well have done. The omission would have suggested Ireland without any violation to the English language; and her attitude toward the verb to be is quite unconsidered and commonplace. She does not seem to have realised that in Ireland the verb to be is used to imply continuous action; and it seems to me very important to have noticed that Irish English and Provincial English preserve a distinction that has disappeared from English as spoken in polite society and taught at Oxford and Cambridge. Everybody in Ireland and a great many among the English middle classes still say: I shall be seeing So-and-so tonight and will tell him, etc., and everybody in Ireland and a great number among the English middle classes still say: Will you be having your letters sent on, which is surely richer English than: Will you have your letters sent on? My parlourmaid always says: Will you be dressing for dinner tonight? and: Will you be wearing your silk hat tonight? thereby distinguishing between a simple and a continuous future action. It is our parlourmaids and their likes that carry on these subtleties of tense, a much more important point than the aspiration of the letter h. I have heard of something called Extension Lectures at Oxford and Cambridge, but, without having the least notion of what is meant by extension lectures, I would suggest that some of the yeomen of Oxfordshire should be sent for to teach the professors, learned, no doubt, in the Latin and Greek languages, but who have no English.
But the efforts of the uneducated to teach the educated would be made in vain; the English language is perishing and it is natural that it should perish with the race; race and grammatical sense go together. The English have striven—and done a great deal in the world; the English are a tired race, and their weariness betrays itself in the language, and the most decadent of all are the educated classes. We say in Ireland: I am just after feeding the birds, and this is a richer phrase, faintly different from: I have just fed the birds. All these delicate shades have dropped out of modern English; they still exist in the language, but they are no longer used, they are slightly archaic today, or provincial; and the source wherefrom the language is refreshed—rural English—is being destroyed by Board-schools. God help the writer who puts pen to paper in fifty years' time, for all that will be left of the language will be a dry shank-bone that has been lying a long while on the dust-heap of empire.
The difference between rural and urban speech should have been studied by Lady Gregory, but we fear she has not given a thought to it; she was just content to pepper her page with a few idiomatic turns of speech which she very often does not use correctly. It is what I think, said Ferogain, that it is the fire of Conaire, the High King, and I would be glad he not to be there tonight, for it would be a pity if harm would come on him or his life be shortened, for he is a branch in its blossom. To my ear—and I come from the same country as Lady Gregory—this is not living speech. What the Galway, and I may add the Mayo, peasant would say is: And it's glad I'd be if he wasn't there tonight. We read on and at the end of about ten lines we come upon: What use will it be I to speak to him? And then her pen fills up another page before she thinks it necessary to drop in: A welcome before you, a pretty phrase which may be idiom, though I have never heard it in either Mayo or Galway. We turn the leaves and catch sight of: And it's you have what all the men of Ulster are wanting in. If we continued a little further it is quite possible we should come upon: And they do be saying, and: It is what I think, but we should not meet anywhere in the book an attempt to make, to mould, or to fashion a language out of the idiom of the Galway peasant, and it is astonished I am altogether that Yeats could have brought himself to compare this patchwork to the beautiful speech of Morris or of Burns, and to speak of the manuscripts that were consulted, for Lady Gregory says herself in her preface that she cannot read the manuscripts, but has translated from the French and German versions of the stories. And it is mighty hard to know how he could have reconciled himself to the adaptation of barbaric tales to the drawing-room. He must have often said to himself: She wouldn't bowdlerise the Bible in the interests of the drawing-room. And the constant repetition of a phrase like: And it wasn't a chair they gave him but a stool, and it not in the corner, must have ended by boring him, for no one is so easily bored by the repetition of a phrase as Yeats; it must have been that phrase that drove him out of Coole and sent him off again in pursuit of the golden-haired Isolde, whom, perhaps, the poet missed or found in Brittany or in Passy.
And it was on one of those journeys that he discovered Synge, a man of such rough and uncultivated aspect that he looked as if he had come out of Derrinrush. He was not a peasant as Yeats first supposed, but came, like all great writers, from the middle classes; his mother had a house in Kingstown which he avoided as much as possible, and it was in the Rue d'Arras that Yeats found him, dans une chambre meublée on the fifth floor. He was on his way back to Ireland, and might stay at Kingstown for a while, till his next quarter's allowance came in (he had but sixty pounds a year), but as soon as he got it he would be away to the West, to the Arran Islands. Yeats gasped; and it was the romance of living half one's life in the Latin Quarter and the other half in the Arran Islands that captured Yeats's imagination. He must have lent a willing ear to Synge's tale of an unpublished manuscript, a book which he had written about the Arran Islands; but his interest in it doubtless flagged when Synge told him that it was not written in peasant speech. Synge must have answered: But peasant speech in Arran is Irish. Yeats remembered with regret that this was so, for he would have preferred Anglo-Irish; and he listened to Synge telling him that he had some colloquial knowledge of the Irish language. He had had to pick up a little Irish; life in Arran would be impossible without Irish, and Yeats awoke from his meditation.
This strange Irishman was a solitary, who only cared to talk with peasants, and was interested in things rather than ideas. In the Rue d'Arras it must have been Yeats that did all the admiration, and Synge must have been a little bored, but quite willing that Yeats should discover in him a man of genius, a strange experience for Synge, who, however convinced he was inly of his own genius, must have wondered how Yeats had divined it, for Yeats had not pretended to feel any interest in the articles on French writers that Synge had sent round to the English Press, adding thereby sometimes a few pounds to his income, but only sometimes, for these articles were so trite that they were seldom accepted; John Eglinton confesses once a year that he could not stomach the article that Synge sent to him for publication in Dana; and they were so incorrectly written that Best, who knew Synge in the Rue d'Arras, tells that he used to go over them, for Synge could not write correctly at that time. Only one out of three was accepted, and the one that came to Dana no doubt came with all the edges worn by continual transmission through the post. It is Best that should write about Synge, for he helped him to furnish his room in the Rue d'Arras; Synge was very helpless in the actual affairs of life; he could not go out and buy furniture; Best had to go with him, and they brought home a mattress and some chairs and a bed on a barrow, and then returned to fetch the rest. There was a fiddle hanging on the wall of the garret in the Rue d'Arras, but as Synge never played it, Best began to wonder if Synge could play, and as if suspecting Best of disbelief in his music, Synge took it down one evening and drew the bow across the strings in a way that convinced Best, who played the fiddle himself; and, as if satisfied, he returned the fiddle to its nail, saying that he only played it in the Arran Islands in the evenings when the peasants wanted to dance. They have no ear for music, he said, and do not recognise a melody. What! exclaimed Best. Only as they recognise the cry of a bird or animal, not as a musician. Only the beat of the jig enters their ears, Best replied in a voice tinged with melancholy.
In Yeats's imagination, playing the fiddle to the Arran Islanders, and reciting poems to them, are one and the same thing, and he recognised instantly in Synge the Gleeman that was in himself, but had remained, and would remain for ever, unrealised; and his imagination caught fire at the conjunction of the Rue d'Arras and the Arran Islands. And whosoever has followed this narrative so far can see Yeats leaning forward in Synge's chair, getting more and more interested in him at every moment, his literary passions rising till they carried him to his feet and set him walking about the dusty carpet from the window to the table at which Synge worked, crying: Come to Ireland and write folk-plays for me. A play about Arran.
But the play I've shown you—
Is of no account. The language will help you to know your own people.
And, better than any description, this dialogue represents the meeting of Yeats and Synge in the Rue d'Arras, Synge's large impassive face into which hardly any light of expression ever came, listening to Yeats with a look of perplexity moving over its immobility, and Yeats's passion, purely literary, steadily mounting. You must come back and perfect yourself in the language; you must live among the people again, he reports himself to have said. You must come to Ireland. A theatre is building in Dublin for the production of folk-plays, or soon will be building; and he told Synge how Miss Horniman, a lady of literary tastes and ample income, had decided to give to Dublin what no other city in an English-speaking country possessed—a subventioned theatre. Write me an Arran play. We will open the theatre with it; and he began to speak of Synge's immediate return to Arran. I should die, Synge is reported to have answered. Not before you have written the masterpiece, Yeats answered, and he continued day after day to subjugate Synge's mind, till one Saturday evening, after a talk lasting till long past midnight, Synge declared his adherence to the new creed of living speech.
When a man's mind is made up, his feet must set out on the way, Yeats replied. Synge acquiesced, and when he had received two little cheques which were due to him for articles, he folded his luggage according to promise, and a few days after presented himself at the Nassau Hotel, and was introduced to Lady Gregory, who encouraged him to confide in her; and he told her the story of his health, and she very kindly took his part against Yeats, who was all for Arran, not for the middle island, for there only Irish is spoken. And the dialect is what we want. That may be, Mr Yeats, but Mr Synge may not be able to stand the climate in the autumn. And she turned to Synge, who told her that the best time would be a little later, when the people would be out digging in their potato fields. Lady Gregory agreed that this was so, and after some demur Yeats yielded, as he always does to Lady Gregory, and the three were of one mind that the mild climate of Wicklow was suitable to Synge's health, and also to the study of living speech, for the tinkers met in Wicklow in the autumn, Yeats cried. You mustn't miss the gathering. And a few days later Synge wrote that he had been fortunate enough to fall in with a band of tinkers. He had heard a tall, lean man cry after a screaming girl: Black Hell to your sowl! you've followed me so far, you'll follow me to the end! And driving their shaggy ponies and lean horses up a hillside, the tinkers made for their annual assemblage, exchanging their wives and arranging the roads they were to take, the signs to be left at the cross roads, the fairs they were to attend, and the meeting-places for the following year. But this was not all the good news. Synge had gained the good-will of a certain tinker and his wife, and was learning their life and language as they strolled along the lanes, cadging and stealing as they went, squatting at eventide on the side of a dry ditch. Like a hare in a gap he listened, and when he had mastered every turn of their speech he left the tinker and turned into the hills, spending some weeks with a cottager, joining a little later another group of tinkers accompanied by a servant-girl who had suddenly wearied of scrubbing and mangling, boiling for pigs, cooking, and working dough, and making beds in the evening. It would be better, she had thought, to lie under the hedgerow; and in telling me of this girl, Synge seemed to be telling me his own story. He, too, disliked the regular life of his mother's house, and preferred to wander with the tinkers, and when tired of them to lie abed smoking with a peasant, and awake amid the smells of shag and potato-skins in the sieve in the corner of the room. In answer to an inquiry how the day passed in the cottage, he told me that after breakfast he scrambled over a low wall out of which grew a single hawthorn, and looked round for a place where he might loosen his strap, and when that job was done he kept on walking ahead thinking out the dialogue of his plays, modifying it at every stile after a gossip with some herdsman or pig-jobber, whomever he might meet, returning through the cold spring evening, when the stars shine brightly through the naked trees, licking his lips, appreciating the fine flavour of some drunkard's oath or blasphemy.
Yeats was at this time in the hands of the Fays and a Committee, and the performances of the National Theatre were given in different halls; and when Synge came up from the country to read Riders to the Sea to the company, Yeats, who did not wish to have any misunderstanding on the subject, cried: Sophocles! across the table, and, fearing that he was not impressive enough, he said: No, Aeschylus! And that same afternoon he said to me in Grafton Street: I would I were as sure of your future and of my own as I am of Synge's. Irishmen, he said, had written well before Synge, but they had written well by casting off Ireland; but Synge was the first man that Ireland had inspired; and I asked if he were going to find his fortune in Ireland, his literary fortune, for The Well of the Saints had very nearly emptied the Abbey Theatre. We were but twenty in the stalls: the Yeats family, Sarah Purser, William Bailey, John Eglinton, AE, Longworth, and dear Edward, who supported the Abbey Theatre, though he was averse from peasant plays. All this sneering at Catholic practices is utterly distasteful to me, he said to me. I can hear the whining voice of the proselytiser through it all. I never will go against my opinions, and when I hear the Sacred Name I assure you—You mean the name of God, Edward, don't you? I never like to mention it. The Sacred Name is enough. But if you are speaking French you say Mon Dieu at every sentence. If it isn't wrong in one language, how can it be wrong in another? A smile trickled across Edward's face, round and large and russet as a ripe pumpkin, and he muttered: Mon ami Moore, mon ami Moore.
He was in the Abbey the first night of the Playboy, and on my return from Paris he told me that though the noise was great, he had heard enough blasphemy to keep him out of the theatre thenceforth, and next morning he had read in the papers that Ireland had been exhibited in a shameful light as an immoral country. And oddly enough, the scene of the immorality is your own native town, George. He told me that the hooting had begun about the middle of the third act at the words: If all the women of Mayo were standing before me, and they in their—He shrank from completing the sentence, and muttered something about the evocation of a disgusting spectacle.
I agree with you, Edward, that shift evokes a picture of blay calico; but the delightful underwear of Madame—
Now, George.
And then, amused at his own folly, which he can no more overcome than anybody else, he began to laugh, shaking like a jelly, puffing solemnly all the while at his churchwarden.
The indignation was so great that I thought sometimes the pit was going to break in. Lower the bloody curtain, and give us something we bloody well want, a crowded pit kept on shouting. And looking at Edward I imagined I could see him in the stalls near the stage, turning round in terror, his face growing purpler and purpler. All the same, he said, though the pain that Synge's irreverent remarks caused me is very great, I disapprove altogether of interrupting a performance. But Yeats shouldn't have called in the police. A Nationalist should never call for the police.
But, Edward, supposing a housebreaker forces his way in here or into Tillyra?
He said that that was different, and after wasting some time in discussion regarding the liberty of speech and the rights of property, he asked me if I had read the play, and I told him that on reading about the tumult in the Abbey Theatre I had telegraphed from Paris for a copy, and that the first lines convinced me that Ireland had at last begotten a masterpiece—the first lines of Pegeen Mike's letter to Mr Michael O'Flaherty, general dealer, in Castlebar, for six yards of stuff for to make a yellow gown, a pair of boots with lengthy heels on them and brassy eyes, a hat as suited for a wedding day, a fine-tooth comb. Never was there such a picture of peasant life in a few lines; and at every sentence my admiration increased. At the end of the act I cried out: A masterpiece! a masterpiece! Of course, they felt insulted. The girls coming in with presents for the young stranger pleased me, but a cold wind of doubt seemed to blow over the pages when the father came on the stage, a bloody bandage about his head, and—Edward—you're asleep!
No, I'm listening.
So clearly did I see disaster in that bloody bandage that I could hardly read through the third act. But you see nothing in the play.
Yes, I do, only it's a little thing. Shawn Keogh is a very good character, and the Widow Quinn is not bad either.
But the language, Edward?
You have made up your mind that this play is a masterpiece, but I am not going to give in to you.
But the style, Edward?
It isn't English. I like the Irish language and the English language, but I don't like the mixture; and then puffing at his pipe for a few seconds he said: I like the intellectual drama.
The conversation turned upon Ibsen, and we talked pleasantly until one in the morning, and then bidding him good night I returned to Ely Place, delighted at my own perspicacity, for there could be no doubt that it was the bloody bandage that caused the row in the Abbey Theatre. The language is beautiful, but—I had admitted to Edward that I had only glanced through the third act, and Edward had answered: If you had read the whole of it you might be of my opinion. It wasn't likely that Edward and I should agree about the Playboy, but it might well be that I was judging it hurriedly, and it would have been wiser, I reflected, to have read the play through before attempting to explain why the humour of the audience had changed suddenly, and I resolved to read the play next morning. But my dislike of reading is so great that I overlooked it, and when Yeats came to see me, instead of the praise which he had come to hear, and which he was craving for, he heard some rather vain dissertations and only half-hearted praise. Again my impulsiveness was my ruin. The play would have been understood if it had been read carefully, and the evening would have been one of exaltation, whereas it went by mournfully, Yeats in the chimney-corner listening to suggestions that would preserve the comedy note. He went away depressed, saying, however, that it would be as well that I should write to Synge about his play, since I liked the greater part. But he did not think that Synge would make any alterations. And the letter I sent to Synge was superficial. I hope he destroyed it. He was glad that his play had pleased me, but he could not alter the third act. It had been written again and again—thirteen times. That is all I remember of his letter, interesting on account of the circumstances in which it was written and the rarity of Synge's correspondence. It is a pity his letter was destroyed and no copy kept; our letters would illuminate the page that I am now writing, exhibiting us both in our weakness and our strength—Synge in his strength, for if the play had been altered we should have all been disgraced, and it was Yeats's courage that saved us in Dublin. He did not argue, he piled affirmation upon affirmation, and he succeeded in the end ... but we will not anticipate.
But if Dublin would not listen to the Playboy, Dublin read the text; edition after edition was published, and we talked the Playboy round our firesides. How we talked! Week after week, month after month, the Abbey Theatre declining all the while, till at last the brothers Fay rose in revolt against Yeats's management, accusing him of hindering the dramatic movement by producing no plays except those written by his intimate friends. Yeats repelled the accusation by offering to submit those that he had rejected to the judgment of Professor Tyrrell, a quite unnecessary concession on the part of Yeats, for Willie Fay is but an amusing Irish comedian, and it was presumptuous for him and his brother to set themselves against a poet. They resigned, and one night Yeats came to me with the grave news that the Fays had seceded.
I feel I must talk to somebody he said, flinging himself into a chair.
AE is the only man who can distribute courage, but Yeats and AE were no longer friends, and I was but a poor purveyor. It is true that I told him, and without hesitation, that the secession of the Fays was a blessing in disguise, and that now he was master in his own house the Abbey Theatre would begin to flourish, and it would have been well if I had confined myself to pleasant prophesying; but very few can resist the temptation to give good advice. One thing, Yeats, I have always had in mind, but never liked to tell you; it is that the way you come down the steps from the stage and stride up the stalls and alight by Lady Gregory irritates the audience, and if you will allow me to be perfectly frank, I will tell you that she is a little too imposing, too suggestive of Corinne or Madame de Staël. Corinne and Madame de Staël were one and the same person, weren't they? But you don't know, Yeats, do you? And so I went on pulling the cord, letting down volumes of water upon poor Yeats, who crouched and shivered. The water, always cold, was at times very icy, for instance when I said that his dreams of reviving Jonson's Volpone must be abandoned. If you aren't very careful, Yeats, the Academic idea will overgrow the folk.

Hi everyone!
This is a question for English teachers- we are moving to Edexel from OxfordAqa this year and we need to change our texts as To Kill A Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men is prohibited at our school. Have been looking into teaching Things Fall Apart and I was just wondering if anyone has any experience teaching it in the UAE, and whether the subject matter is doable? Very keen to teach it but trying to think about whether some of the themes (religion, violence) are tricky to teach out here.
Thank you 😊

The boy in the bow tie
It was the family business.
George had wanted none of it, and that was why he did so well in school. He wanted to be something respectable and dreamed of going to an Ivy League college and being a member of a Glee Club. (He had no idea what a Glee Club was, it’s just that it was the sort of club that sounded like it produced men who were dentists and doctors and who spent their weekends around country club swimming pools and church lunches.)
But it was the family business, and Ralph (George’s father) expected his son to do no differently than he’d done and his father before him had done.
That was why George never filled out any of the college applications that came in from Swarthmore, Middlebury, and Dartmouth after he graduated from high school (Ralph had wanted George to drop out at age sixteen but George begged him to let him at least finish and Ralph gave in). So that he could pick up the family business.
“Come on, George,” his father said to him after he drove past the high school where George graduated only the day before. “Our family’s been doing this for years. And for Christ’s sake, take off that goddamn bow tie!”
George did as he asked, though reluctantly. Once it was off the collar of his heavily starched white oxford shirt with mother-of-pearl-accented buttons, Ralph yanked it out of his hands and tossed it out the window.
Seeing his Rachel Wyatt line bow tie fly out the window and down onto the filthy paved street littered with trash horrified George no less than if his father had tossed a screaming baby out the window.
“Don’t say a word to me!” Ralph shouted at his son’s face with its mouth agape in shock. “Not only do I have to teach you how to take over the family business, I’ve got to teach you how to dress! You’ve got to learn how to dress the part, George. Pimps don’t wear bow ties! You can’t smack some bitch around when you’re wearing a bow tie! She’ll laugh her ass off at you when you give her orders! Especially the women we’ve got to work with.”
Ralph said nothing more for a few blocks while George slowly recovered from the loss of his bow tie. He had so many daydreams of being confirmed as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He bought the tie after a summer of mowing lawns and picked it out because it looked just like one he’d seen his hero, the conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, wear in a photo.
“The first thing we’ve got to do is get you a nickname, George. Every good pimp has a nickname. Now me, my nickname is Horsecock. Your Uncle Lenny’s nickname is Greaseball. Your Cousin Tony – the one who’s doing twenty years in Folsom – his name was Steelballs. But now that he’s in prison for killing one of his whores…well I heard that the inmates at Folsom gave him another nickname because he’s such a small guy.”
For a moment George brightened. A nickname – well that changes everything. All kinds of people he admired had nicknames, and having one was part of the dream of going to an Ivy League school. He’d always wanted to be surrounded by people with nicknames like Muffy, Skippy, and Randy (pronounced with a long a). George Bush, when he was in Skull & Bones at Yale, was nicknamed Poppy. Abraham Lincoln had the nickname of the Railsplitter. Andrew Jackson had the nickname Old Hickory. Having a nickname might make this whole pimping business much more palatable, he thought.
Running a list of all the names through his head that he knew, he decided on one and then spoke.
“What about Toothy?”
The question struck Ralph like a hammer and he swerved the car into the opposite lane of traffic and then back into his lane after he regained control of his thoughts.
“Toothy? What kind of a cocksucker nickname is that?”
“Well, when people see my smile they always comment on what nice teeth I have-”
“Toothy? How about something tougher like Mad Dog?”
“Pippy?”
“Barracuda?”
“Felix?”
“Snatch hunter?”
“Connie?”
“Bitch smacker?”
“Georgie?”
“Whale dick?”
“Jamie?”
“Tit grabber?”
“Tammy?”
“Alright!” Ralph shouted and swerved the car off the road into the parking lot of a McDonald’s. “I’m sick of you coming up with these candy-ass faggot names! From now on your name’s gonna be Coconut Balls! And that’s fucking final! I did not raise a son to walk around the streets running hos and calling himself Tippy or Gussy or whatever the fuck faggot names you’re coming up with! You’ve got a lot to learn, you little bastard, and what you’re showing me is that it was a big fucking mistake to let you finish high school. I see that I’m going to have to show you how fucking wrong all of those faggot gym teachers were who asked you to suck their cocks on a fag vacation. And that you’re supposed to be a man in this world, not some cocksucker who bends over for every man who comes along and calls him ass muncher!”
He pulled the car out of the lot and back on to the road.
“It wasn’t the gym teachers and they never asked me to…” When George spoke again he wore a look of distaste that he might have worn as if he were regurgitating bleach. The words he spoke were so uncouth to him that they tasted worse than bleach. “….provide them with….fellatio. It was my history teacher and he asked me to accompany him and the class debate team to the United Nations for a field trip.”
“Same fucking thing!” Ralph shouted back. “They’ve turned my son into a double-barreled cocksucker. And to go to the U.N.? Why, there are so many fags at that place it’s more packed than a gay bar at Saturday night. I hear that after they’re done debating about how to get more guys to turn gay they turn that big stage into a ballroom dance floor and all the guys waltz with each other. I knew a guy who used to mop floors there. He said every time you opened up an office to clean it you’d see two guys going at it. The U.N.’s every fag’s dream come true.”
George, whose new name was Coconut Balls, sighed and leaned back in his seat.
After a while they pulled up in front of an apartment building. Ralph parked, turned off the engine, and turned to face George.
“Take off your seatbelt. You’ve got to learn that pimps don’t ride around with seatbelts on. Pimps are tough guys. They don’t need seatbelts.”
“But Ralph Nader’s book says that they’re necessary.”
“Another fag. He’s just trying to make the rest of us faggots just like him.” He gave George a long, hard look. “Get rid of the letterman’s sweater. I don’t know why you wanted to wear that.”
“But I had to perform all sorts of charity work to get entrance into the Letter Club. When people see it they’ll know that I’m a good citizen. And I want people to know I’m a good citizen.”
“George, good citizens don’t slit some girl’s throat because she swallows too soon. You’re not a good citizen anymore. You’re Coconut Balls the pimp. If the girls see you in that they’ll eat you alive.”
Slowly George took off the sweater but kept his eyes on his father. Once he’d removed it he delicately folded it up as if it were a sacred object and slid it underneath his seat where his father couldn’t grab it and throw it out the window. “And another thing, stop shaving every day. Cut it back to two or three times a week. When you do shave, use an electric razor. It doesn’t give you a very close shave and keeps the rough look you need to look serious.”
George couldn’t even comprehend the thought of not shaving everyday. He’d been shaving every day since he was age six and he bought a plastic toy razor and a can of shaving cream. By practicing at such an early age, he had attained a shave so smooth and so close that everyone from the priest who supervised his group of altar boys to the mayor who he’d met several times for being a student of the year noticed his shave and said they admired it.
“On the way up, if you can find some dirt or grease or something, rub it on your face. It’ll make you look like the real deal.”
George’s stomach turned at the idea of rubbing dirt onto the skin he cleaned so fastidiously three times a day. And grease! Once you get grease under your fingernails, he thought to himself, it simply never comes out no matter how long your soak your hands.
Ralph climbed out of his car, a gaudy bright cherry red Trans Am with a pair of fuzzy pink dice hanging from the rearview mirror. Across the top of the windshield, in five-inch high gold reflective letters, read “Hot Son of Bitch.” The license plate on the back of the car read “BigDick.”
George climbed out also and watched his father walk to the apartment. Ever since he climbed in the car with him an hour ago, George had prevented himself from shuddering at the sight of Ralph’s suit. It’s color, red, wasn’t what made it so revolting. The fact that it was a Tommy Hilfiger suit was what made him so sick from being close to it. Didn’t his father know about Harris Tweed or good British wool? Even something churned out by those awful Italians would be acceptable compared to Tommy Hilfiger. Well, he said to himself with a sigh as he followed Ralph to the apartment’s entrance, it could be worse -- his father could be wearing something by Polo. The mere idea of having to sit close to anything made by Ralph Lauren sent a new wave of shudders through George.
Once inside, they walked to the elevators.
“Couldn’t we take the stairs?” George asked. “It’d be good exercise.”
“You’ll get all the exercise you need when you’re either fucking these bitches or working them over because they didn’t give you all of their money. You’ve been listening to those fags again. All this exercise shit. It’s just their way of telling people they need to be skinny – which would make the fags happy because then everybody would look like they do.”
They stepped into an elevator, which they had to themselves. Ralph hit the button for the twentieth floor and then faced George. “The first bitch we’ve got to see today is Nipples. They got nicknames, too, by the way. Just like we do. I’ve been getting some complaints about her. A lot of guys who are her regulars have been telling me that she just don’t do her job as good as she used to. We’re going to go in there and set her straight.”
The elevator dinged, came to a stop, and opened. A tiny, frail old woman with glasses that were as big as her face smiled at them. “Excuse me,” she asked them. “Do you happen to be going up?”
George smiled at her. “Yes ma’am. We sure-”
“Fuck off grandma,” Ralph snapped at her and then pushed the button to close the doors on her face.
At the twentieth floor they stepped out of the elevator and walked down a long, dim corridor. When they reached the door of the apartment they sought, Ralph held his hand up to knock. “Let me do all the talking.” Then he knocked twice.
“Who is it?” came a voice from behind the door.
“Horsecock.” Hearing the word spoken out loud in a public place, even though it was empty of other people at the moment, sent a blast of embarrassment into George’s face that turned it a deep red.
The biggest set of breasts George had ever seen opened the door. (Which wasn’t much of a scale since the only breasts he’d ever seen were in Anatomy textbooks – he was still a virgin and because he thought it violated school policy hadn’t even joined other boys to look at naked women in National Geographic magazines.) The nipples at the center of the breasts were as big as silver dollars and the breasts behind them jiggled.
For a moment George thought he was looking at a pair of painted watermelons.
Ralph’s hand shot into the gap between the door and the doorway and grabbed something. George heard a mangled gasp from somewhere inside the apartment behind the breasts. Then Ralph walked inside, still holding onto something, and the enormous breasts receded ahead of him. George followed.
After closing the door behind him, George saw that his father’s hand was wrapped around the throat of a bleach blonde woman who belonged to the breasts that had greeted them at the door. She looked like she was in need of a bath and reeked of nicotine. She wore a tight pair of short athletic shorts that wrapped around her waist and her rear end and stood on a pair of black high heels. To George she looked like the type of woman who he might meet in an unemployment line (a place he intended to avoid his whole life – only degenerates and wastrels frequented such lines).
But there was something about the woman that began to nag at him from the moment he saw her full body and not just her breasts. She suggested something, and that something that she suggested became even more potent when he saw his father pull a straight razor out of his back pocket and hold it to her muscular throat.
“Nipples, meet my son. Tell her your name,” he said without looking over his shoulder.
“Co-” he couldn’t get the words out. It was like spitting up something foul. “Coconut Balls,” he finally managed to squeeze them out from between his lips.
“Hi,” she choked out.
“Nice to meet you,” he said back and smiled, guessing that this was the right way to meet someone when your father was trying to kill the person he was introducing you to. After he did it Ralph turned around and gave him a look of disbelief.
Then he turned around to face the woman whose throat he was threatening to cut. “I’ve been getting some complaints about you, Nipples. People are saying that you’ve forgotten what you’re supposed to do.” He unwrapped his hand from her throat and let it drop to beneath her left breast. Once there it cradled the breast and squeezed it from underneath, as if he were guessing its weight. Then he began to pull on the silver-dollar-sized nipple and smacked it lightly a few times with his palm between pulls.
Slightly, so as not to give the razor at her throat an excuse to slice it open, she shook her head of short bleach-blonde hair in disagreement and tears slipped down her face.
“Well, I’m here to make sure that you don’t fuck bad anymore. I’m going to give you a remedial lesson on fucking.”
George couldn’t tell what was worse – his father’s actions or his grammar.
Nipples shook her head in agreement.
Releasing his grip on her nipple, George’s father lowered his hand further and pulled down Nipples’ black athletic shorts. Beneath it was a tiny pair of black panties so thin they were transparent. They were so small they were practically nonexistent and formed a tight triangle across her pubic hair. George watched his father’s free hand slide beneath the panties and begin to massage her vagina.
Nipples kicked off her shorts and then raised one leg and set it on a table behind Ralph. She then began to slide up and down on the wall behind her as Ralph massaged her vagina.
“That’s right, you dumb fucking cunt. This is how it’s supposed to be,” Ralph told her as he kept the razor to her throat. “This is how you act to let them know that you like what they’re doing.”
Between hushed groans, Nipples nodded in assent.
George wanted to take his eyes off of his father and the woman against the wall with the knife to her throat, but was unable to. Then he watched as the straight razor pulled away from Nipples’ neck and slid down along her belly and then under the thin, narrow black waist straps of the panties. With a flick of the wrist the tight piece of fabric fell away from her body to reveal the thick patch of shaved pubic hair, inside which was one of his father’s fingers.
Pulling his hand out of her vagina and away from Nipples’ crotch, Ralph grabbed a handful of hair and pulled on it. Nipples dropped her leg from the table and relaxed so that she could bend backward with the yank of her hair. Ralph bent her over the same table where her heeled shoe rested only a moment before and then unzipped the crotch of his red slacks.
Now George was able to pull himself away and he looked around the small apartment that smelled of the nicotine that Nipples smelled as if she bathed in. Thick blue velvet curtains hung over the windows and small rays of clouded light crept in beneath them.
A shout of pain brought his eyes back to the scene he didn’t want to look at: his father’s forced copulation with Nipples.
“Shut up, bitch! If you weren’t fucking costing me business we wouldn’t have to fucking do this!” Ralph barked at her. Her breasts were so big they acted as a cushion between her body and the table. He hit her twice in the back of the head and then ploughed forward into her body with his penis.
Nipples looked up to George in desperation but he looked away and back to his father’s suit.
“This is how you give it to them!” Ralph snarled.
“Okay, baby,” Nipples said in agreement.
This is where wearing Tommy Hilfiger gets you, George said to himself sardonically. If Tommy Hilfiger took you this low in life, he shivered to think of where wearing Ralph Lauren might take him.
Ralph reached forward, slid his hand underneath Nipples’ chin, and then yanked up on it and to the side so that she could see him out of the corner of her eye. “Do you like those Nipples of yours?” he asked her mockingly as he continued to pound away at her.
She nodded.
“Then you’ll fuck right or I’ll be coming here to cut both of them off. Do you fucking understand me?”
Nipples nodded again.
Stepping back, Ralph zipped up his pants and nodded to George. Nipples collapsed on the floor and rolled onto her back, her breasts shuddering with each gasp of air she took in.
George stepped over her body and walked out the door after his father. “It was nice to meet you,” he said after turning back inside at the doorway. His father smacked him in the head.
Neither said anything to the other on the way down to the ground. The only words spoken in the elevator were by Ralph.
“She got my fucking suit dirty.”
George, once again noting to himself that nothing on earth could make a Tommy Hilfiger suit look worse, said nothing and smothered a potential smile before it could spill over his lips.
“Did you learn anything?” Ralph asked him.
“Uh, sure,” George said, feeling that after seeing his father rape a prostitute the membership form to every Glee Club on earth would be out of his reach forever. Perhaps though, he hoped, all would be forgiven if he stayed away from Tommy Hilfiger’s wares. Maybe that would be the best way to show where his heart was.
With a fart of exhaust the Trans Am started up and Ralph pulled it back onto the street after they climbed in.
“Next we’re going to see Spikes. This time, when I introduce you to her, don’t tell her ‘It’s nice to meet you.’ And when we leave, don’t pull that shit of telling her goodbye. You go in there, smack them around, fuck them and then you walk out of a room and don’t even bother to shut the fucking door.”
The idea of leaving the door to an apartment wide open behind him was even worse to George than the idea of smacking some woman around and raping her.
Before he knocked on the door of the next apartment, Ralph faced his son and told him what to expect. George only heard a little of it. He was still numb from seeing his father kick in the head a Girl Scout who approached their car to sell cookies. Then, when they were walking up the stairs to the apartment complex, George tried to help an old man using a walker reach the top of the stairs. His father, seeing what he was doing, kicked the old man’s walker out from under him and then pushed him down the stairs.
“We don’t have time for this shit,” Ralph said as George watched the old man roll down to the bottom of the marble stairs. As he watched him fall he thought of the community service project he’d done to get one of his Boy Scout badges – visiting a senior center for six weeks and talking with the people there. George grew to like it so much he kept his visits up for two years. He had especially liked the people suffering from senility – they were so unpredictable.
“The bitch we’re about to see is Spikes. She can be pretty hard to handle – SO DON’T FUCK IT UP FOR ME! KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!” Ralph spat at him.
George nodded and said nothing. He was still unable to shake the image of the man falling down the marble steps and his aluminum walker following him down to the bottom.
Ralph knocked twice.
“Who is it?” George noticed that the voice this time was surlier than Nipples’.
“Horsecock.” Once again the burst of embarrassment flared on George’s face and he prayed to God that this time he would be spared the disgrace of having to introduce himself of having to give anything besides his Christian name. Maybe he would be lucky and his father would just blow this one’s head clean off and save him a lot of trouble. Time in prison would be preferable to having to call himself Coconut Balls.
The door opened slowly and a high-high heeled shoe with a sharp spike of a heel was thrust into the space between the door and the doorway. The shoe was a simple high heel shoe with a flat toe (no wedge beneath it, which made it unlike many of the shoes that George saw when he took blind people to the grocery store for volunteer work). A broad piece of checkered leather wrapped over the first digits of the toes and the front of the foot, but the nails of the toe and the rest of the foot was exposed. Two pieces of leather twirled up from the back of the shoe and snaked around the ankle, above which the two leather straps were held together by a small gold buckle. He was amazed at how smoothly the foot bent and its arch curved to slide into the inclined sole.
A face appeared in the door. It was a face smeared heavily with makeup. The lips were deep red. The eyes, bright green, weren’t covered with much makeup at all. The hair on the head above the green eyes was sandy brown and curled tightly.
“What do you want? I ain’t done nothing.”
“I got somebody here I want you to meet.”
Spikes looked over at George, who bit his tongue to keep from smiling, and gave him an unimpressed look.
“So what?”
Ralph looked away from her face to George, who he smiled at, and then back at her. With a quick right hook he knocked her back into the apartment and shouted after her, “So he can see what I do to bitches who hold my money from me.”
He then kicked open the door with his foot and walked in. George followed and knew that his father probably wanted him to leave the door open, but to do so would be worse than anything his father might do to the prostitute on the floor and wearing shoes that would give a chiropractor nightmares.
Pulling the door shut, quietly, behind him, George walked into the apartment after his father.
This time the woman was face down on the floor and her legs were kicking up and down. She wore a small, tight leather bikini and her body was much firmer and tighter than Nipples’. Ralph sat on her back and one of his hands was sunk into her curly hair and yanking upward as his other hand repeatedly struck the tight, firm ass above the struggling legs.
“You had sixteen Johns last week,” he shouted at her as he continued to smack at her ass.
“So fucking what?” she indignantly shouted back at him as she continued to kick.
“You only paid me for thirteen! Now cough up my money bitch, or I’m gonna shove those spikes up your ass!”
In a way almost identical to how Nipples’ had made him feel, the sight of Spikes’ shoes and the way her feet looked as she kicked in frustration and fright against his father caught George’s eyes and held them. He couldn’t look away and within minutes was worried that this was a sign that the world of Hilfiger suits, open doors and pushing old men down marble stairs was changing him and erasing all the good deeds he’d done as a young man to escape this world of his father’s.
Ralph stood up off Spikes’ back, allowing her to struggle to her feet. As soon as she stood, unsteadily, once again on her heels he reached forward and slapped her twice, fast. For a moment she hung her head down and George wondered if perhaps her neck was broken. He knew absolutely nothing about the female body and had planned on saving himself for marriage. He’d been tempted to touch a few girls in high school in anything besides a group hug, but his abstinence support group at school helped him avoid all of that. And the closest he ever came to kissing a girl was the time he gave mouth-to-mouth on a female respirator doll during CPR class.
Spikes raised her head, slowly, and George noticed now that there was a thin line of blood running down out of her left nostril and a thicker stream of blood running out of the right side of her mouth. Seeing the blood running down her face filled him with fright and he could think of only one thing: he was now the kind of person that gave Miss Manners nightmares. Even if he didn’t wear Tommy Hilfiger suits, he was pretty sure that Skull & Bones would never admit him. But then he told himself to keep hoping – they had let in William Buckley, hadn’t they? There still might be hope.
Ralph thrust his two hands deep into Spikes’ head of hair and pushed her down to her knees. “If you don’t want to give me the money, then I’m going to work the shit out of you.” Once again George heard the barbaric voice of American fashion – Ralph’s zipper ripping open.
“That’s right! Swallow it fucking all!” Ralph shouted as he stuffed his penis into Spikes’ mouth. The sight made George want to vomit. The act of fellatio, even if he hadn’t had stuffed his penis in Nipples’ vagina a little while ago, was a dirty act. Thousands of germs hid in the crotch and testicular area, and George doubted any sane woman would give it to a man even if he’d doused his penis and testicles with eight quarts of bleach and rinsed them in ammonia. That area would simply not be clean enough.
As Ralph slid her head back and forth on his penis by keeping a tight grip on her hair, Spikes’ waved her arms around in protest and a small pool of blood gathered on the dusty hardwood floor after it was dribbled off her chin by the back and forth motion of her face. The blood caught George’s eye more than her tight, firm body did, and he couldn’t take his eyes off of it.
“Alright bitch,” Ralph asked her after yanking her head back and away from his penis, which sort of sagged out of the open fly of his red suit. “Are you gonna give me the money you owe money?”
“I-I-I” Spikes’ gasped and shook her head.
“I take that as a no, then,” Ralph said. Standing up he grabbed a handful of her hair and dragged her back into a dark open door. Her spiked heels scrabbled and clacked across the floor to keep up with him and she moaned with the pain from her head. George decided that he was by now beyond salvation, William Buckley or not, and followed.
He heard the sound of running water when he approached the door and nearly tripped over the leather bra and thong that Spikes wore over her body only minutes before. Ralph now had her on her knees and bent over an old-fashioned (though webbed with rust) clawfoot bathtub which was quickly filling up with water. He was kneeling behind her on the knees of his suit. He was also shoving his penis into her. In watching his father rape a woman for the second time today, George decided that no longer could bleach and ammonia adequately clean his father. He would need gasoline and a match to get rid of all the germs he was picking up, and when they got back in the car George thought that it might be a good idea to ride in the trunk next to the spare tire, grease covered jack and the other trash his father kept back there. It would be much more sanitary than sitting next to his father who was now as hygienic as the strain of the Ebola virus that favored wild swine.
George noticed that his father was reaching forward and holding something, perhaps Spikes’ chin, with his right hand. With his left hand, in mid-pound with Spikes, he reached over and turned off the faucet. Then he yanked his right hand away from wherever it was. George immediately saw that it was covered in blood and Spikes started to scream for help. His father had stuffed his hand in Spikes’ mouth to shut her up.
With his bleeding hand Ralph grabbed a handful of the curly brown hair and shoved her face down into the tub beneath the water.
“Now maybe you’ll learn who’s in charge,” he shouted as he held her head underwater but continued to pound away at her. After about a minute Ralph yanked her soaked and sopping head out of the water. Her makeup apparently wasn’t waterproof and it streamed down her face. George thought she looked like a cheap nightmare. She spat out water back into the tub and sucked in a long, choked gasp before Ralph shoved her head back down underwater.
George watched her legs kick around and once again felt himself drawn to the sight of them struggling. He continued to watch as their struggling slowed to just more than a few weak kicks, and then Ralph yanked her head out from under the water but he didn’t stop shoving his penis into her. It reminded George of one of the stories he’d heard about group sex in the locker room at school while eavesdropping on a group of football players. Up until now, Paul always considered having to change for gym in the locker with Visigoths like the football players had been the most disgusting moment in his life.
Ralph’s hand dropped down to the back pocket of his pants and suddenly it held the straight razor. It slid around Spikes’ throat, where it stayed, and then he yanked the choking, gasping, spitting prostitute who looked as if she no longer had the balance and composure standing up in her shoes demanded to her feet.
Keeping the razor to her throat, Ralph turned her so that she was facing George.
“This was the slut who was gonna rip us off, Balls.” For a second George turned his head to the side to see whom Ralph was talking to. Then he realized that he meant him and was referring to him by his new nickname.
“I’m talking about you, you dipshit!” Ralph snarled at him.
George said nothing. Most of the makeup had washed from Spikes’ face, which he considered an improvement. He could now see just how thick the stuff had been on her face and he wondered if Ralph had found out, by accident, the way Spikes always used to take off her makeup.
Ralph took the knife from the naked, wet throat which stood atop a naked, wet body. Spikes then fell face forward onto the hardwood floor. For a moment George was unsure of what to do and stood still, one leg hanging in the air over the near dead prostitute. Then he remembered that he was supposed to step over her and walk out the door, leaving it wide open. But before he could take a step Ralph reached back, grabbed him, and dragged him out of the apartment.
Forty-five minutes later his white shirt was soaked through and George was bent over, vomiting into a corner of the cement stairwell on the twelfth floor of an apartment building.
“Her name is Straps. She’s new so I haven’t broken her yet. She’s going to be your first bitch and you’re going to go up there and work her over until she does everything you say,” Ralph had told him after he had threatened to rip out the heart of some poor handicapped man in a wheelchair who told them they really shouldn’t be parking in a handicapped spot.
George knelt in a corner of the stairwell, where he went after walking off the elevator. His knees were cold and he looked down after he finished dry heaving and saw that he was kneeling in his own vomit. The slacks he wore, the ones with the knees dipped in his own bile, were ones he’d bought in a Washington D.C. mall when he took part in Presidential Classroom. The people in his section had predicted that he’d be the first one among them to be elected to office. His section leader, a Marine, had predicted that someday George would live in the White House.
Now he was kneeling in his vomit and about to go smack some woman named Straps around. To smack her, he’d have to touch her, and after seeing the previous two women who his father had actually touched, George felt just as queasy about touching them as he did slapping them. Both Nipples and Spikes had looked no cleaner than the people he saw go into the young Democrats meetings.
He wanted to run away, to take the elevator down to the first floor of the apartment complex, go out the backdoor and run from his father and the family business. But, as his father had pointed out to him hundreds of times before, his father was a pimp, as was his father, as was his father, as was his father. His mother had been one of his father’s bitches, and her father was a pimp, as was his father. And now all of those cold, uncouth men who walked around with ridiculous names like Bowling balls and Tent Peg Tom were all watching his movements from Hell, as was his father from the parking lot, to see if he would be the same kind of man they were.
Standing up, he thought of the letterman’s sweater underneath the passenger seat in Ralph’s car (if he hadn’t thrown it out, that is). But he no longer felt like he could hide behind the big M that had stood over his heart this morning, that there was no hiding from his father and Straps and his horrifying new nickname.
Walking up a few stairs, he walked out of the stairwell and into the corridor. Then he followed the doors down to twelve-fifteen. There he knocked.
“Who the fuck is it?” The voice sounded even cockier than Spikes had.
“Co-coconut Balls.”
“Who in the hell is that?” From the increased arrogance in her voice George could tell that she’d sensed he was uncertain.
“Horsecock’s son.” He forced the words out. Watermelons would have been easier to spit up.
“Oh. Hold on a sec.”
George heard clacks similar to those Spikes’ shoes had made. Then he heard a latch on the door slide open.
The girl on the other side, a woman with long brown hair dressed in what George supposed was called a bustier with straps leading from it to a pair of stockings, stared at him. “You look way to clean to be Horsecock’s son. Maybe you’re just somebody out for a free piece of ass.”
“Sure.” It was the only thing he could say because he had never spoken with a prostitute before and didn’t know what to say. The only girls he talked to in what might remotely be considered a sexual situation were the ones in his abstinence club, and they went to church twice a week. The woman in front of her looked as if any church she walked into would collapse the minute she entered.
She smiled at him, a smile that could have cut him if she was close enough. “Come in.”
George did.
“What’s that smell?” she asked.
“What smell?” he turned to face her, and saw her looking down in the direction of the floor. Suddenly he realized that she was referring to the vomit on his knees.
“Work her over until she does everything you say,” was what his father had said. He, the boy who was going to be president and wear bow ties for the rest of his life and sing in church choirs. He was going to work this whore over and then fuck her.
“Come here,” he said to Straps, and something in his voice cut the smile off her face. She looked at him uncertainly, and then took a step forward.
“Why do they call you Straps?”
“Well,” her voice was now the one that was uncertain. “I wear straps – garters and stockings – all the time. It’s my trademark.”
Thrusting his hand into her mane of thick hair, he grabbed hold of all he could and pulled her to him so that her upturned face breathed onto his chin. He glared down at her, at this woman who was to be his first. “You don’t do anything else besides wear straps? Nothing?”
“I make noise,” she squeaked out between excited puffs of fear.
“What?”
Yanking the hair hard, he pulled her closer so that her body and the silk undergarments she wore touched his own body. George looked down and saw her shoes were like Spikes’.
“I make noise. I scream. Guys like that.”
“Well,” George said. “Do it for me now.”
“But I have to be-”
“I said do it now!” he barked. His soul was in agony, trying to forget about that sweater in the car and how long it had taken him to earn it. With a push he sent her back, unsteadily on her heels, into the kitchen where she struck a wall.
“Okay,” she gulped. Then she began to moan, first low but then higher in pitch and longer in length. Soon the whole apartment was filled with excited moans and Straps got into it, closing her eyes and running her hands through her hair.
As she did, George walked into the kitchen where she stood. Next to her, on the wall, hung a magnetic rack filled with kitchen knives. As he listened to her moan and tried to take his mind off the body, the breasts and the legs of the woman in the next room, his eyes wandered across the cleaver, the paring knife, the meat carving knives, and the bread knives.
A moment later Straps opened her eyes as she felt the tip of a carving knife slide up the front of her tight bustier.
“Don’t stop,” he shouted at her and at himself.
She didn’t and continued, but this time her voice was filled with worry. A second later he pulled forward on the top of the bustier and cut it down the front as Straps continued to moan. It fell to her sides and revealed the large, loose breasts beneath. Then the knife slipped down to beneath the straps, which he cut away. Then it slid upward to the straps of the tiny lace thong and cut them away as well, so that all she had on was her stockings and her spiked heels.
Sliding his arm under her left thigh, he raised it up and unzipped his fly. Straps kept making her noise and George was thinking that he’d never see the inside of the White House. Then he leaned forward and shoved his prick inside her, up in her, and the pitch of her voice climbed as she wrapped her left leg, clad in silk and standing on a spike, tightly around his waist tightly and drew him in like she did all the other men who wanted to fuck her standing up. With one hand he shoved a hand over her mouth and caught one last thought of his bow tie flying out the window. A bow tie he would never have been able to wear because he now knew that he could never escape from where he was from and what he was.
Then he plunged the knife up under her breast and into her heart. As her life slid out of her he didn’t stop fucking her and continued even after her eyes had dulled and her body grew heavier. Finally he let her fall to the floor and turned, picked up the phone, and dialed nine-one-one.
“I’ve just killed someone. You need only send over one officer. I won’t cause any problems.”
He hung the phone up, zipped up his pants and sat down. He knew he would get the death penalty. In high school, during the debate club meetings, he’d often argued that young people who committed murder should be given the death penalty. And he still believed it, even as he sat with a dead prostitute’s blood on his hands.
“Well,” he said to the dead woman who stared up at the ceiling, “it ends here. There won’t be anymore after me.” And when he got to prison they’d give him a uniform – which meant he would die never having worn Tommy Hilfiger.