Footjob in latex stockings

So, I feel a duty to add my story as this site was my saviour during our “situation” as we like to call it. In February this year my husband started itching, the itching was so bad it kept him awake at night. A week or so later I finally had a look at his bare back and he was covered in spots and scabs. At first we thought it was chicken pox, scabies looks very similar but as he had already had chicken pox it was possible but not common to contract it a second time. I will ever forget when it dawned on me what he had, it was the absence of anything on his neck or face that led me to search google and discover scabies!! At first we were mildly amused, little did we know the nightmare that was about to begin. We had scabies confirmed by a private doctor who gave us a prescription for permethrin and off we went thinking ok, we will just apply this cream, it will be sorted and we will just get on with our lives. We managed to bypass the prescription and get permethrin for £10 a tube but as we had 2 teenage kids at home we needed at least 2 tubes each for the first round and another 8 for the second, supplies are hit and miss in our area so we had to ring various chemists for stock. We were already into the £100s after the private doctor and the permethrin but felt confident it would work. I stripped all the beds, bagged up our clothes, did the treatment expectantly and cleaned our home like a mad women. The following week we did the same again, every day in between i cleaned daily, vacumed and decontaminated our home Just incase there were any of the blighters Crawling about. By the way scabies will turn you into a paranoid cleaning Machine. I purchased a box of 100 latex gloves. You will need these!! 3-4 days after the second treatment I had new marks and so did my husband, we had followed the instructions to the letter but permethrin had not worked, we spent a further £160 and completed 2 more treatments a week apart then sure as eggs 3-4 days later it started again. It was as if we were just numbing the scabies then they would re-emerge after 3-4 days. I could literally time when I would see new evidence they were still on us. Our 2 kids (late teens) never showed symptoms and seeing as we don’t share a bathroom with them and our house is quite big we decided not to treat them further. We zoned the house so there were rooms just myself and my husband used and I wore gloves around the kitchen or if I needed to go into their spaces. Next treatment we tried was Derbac M. Again we followed the instructions to the letter and 4 days after last treatment there they were again!! I was beside myself with endless cleaning, washing, drying and stripping Bed sheets, it’s exhausting mentally and physically. It was while I was at the hairdressers following another, what I hoped was a successful treatment that I realised they were on my scalp!! Do not listen if anyone tells you they don’t go above the neck they do!! When my hairdresser added dye to my scalp it was incredibly painful, not a feeling I have ever had before and on further inspection I had track marks and burrows On my ears !! It made sense that most of my marks were on my neck upper back and arms now, they had infested my scalp. In frustration I searched this site for an alternative treatment, my doctor would not Prescribe ivermectin and offered me a dermatology appointment but I would have to Wait 6 weeks and still couldn’t guarantee ivermectin. I ordered in desperation benzyl benzoate from an online pharmacy, try to get the lotion rather than the oil, I bought a litre from Irish pharmacy for about £50 and I arrived in 4 days. We applied it head to toe, face, ears and scalp morning and night for 3 nights and 4 days without showering inbeween, everyday I stripped the bed, hoovered the mattress and the bedroom along with my normal decontamination cleaning routine I did every day. Right from the start I blasted all our dirty laundry in the tumble dryer on high heat for 30 minutes then washed on a normal wash cycle, I also tumble dried our pillows every day, we slept apart for 2 months so as not to reinfect each other on the off chance that one of us would be cured before the other. I also made a solution of vodka, water and tea tree oil that I sprayed on carpets, rugs and upholstery every day and after reading online decided to iron our mattress every day too. As I said this situation will drive you insane, the fear that you are never going to be rid of it is real and the fact you cannot see them makes it an unfair game. We waited 9-10 days before our second treatment of BB and again we did 3 nights, 4 days without showering inbeween, the BB cream stings a little in delicate areas but it soon wears off. I also bought cheap toothbrushes from the supermarket 25 pence for a pack of 2 for between toes and toenails. On day 4 I was checking for new marks but there were none, I have had in the last 4 weeks a few scratches and a peppering of tiny scabbed spots but I am happy to trust and believe it’s post scabies, neither of us are itching, we have not had post scabies itch but I think this is because we didn’t do multiple treatments of permethrin . We are now 4 weeks clear after a 9’week battle that almost broke me’ BB was the key to our cure just make sure you apply it literally everywhere. Sub note, our electric bill is over £1500, this has cost approximately £2000 due to 9 weeks of washing and tumble drying for hours, we still don’t know how my husband caught it we were in Egypt mid January but he also had a chiropractor appointment early Feb and he said there was no cover on the treatment bed so we can’t quite nail it down but was one of them. I never had it to the extent of my husband, he was covered head to toe in tracks but I did catch it from sharing a bed before his diagnosis. I hope my story helps someone as I in turn was helped enormously by the Reddit community.

Me and Lila always carved dozens of jack o’ lanterns every October, so they’d absolutely saturate our lawn on Halloween night. It was our thing. But looking back on it, now that I’ve lost her, I just feel bad for the pumpkins. I almost relate to them, somehow. The way they were carved up, had everything of substance inside of them torn out, and left as hollow, rotting shells with forced smiles.
Needless to say, I didn’t cope with her death well. I didn’t want to cope with it. I wanted the world to drown in the black sludge of my grief. I loathed the people I saw going about their lives, unaware that the world had already ended the moment Lila died. The Earth shouldn’t keep spinning. Life shouldn’t go on. Not without her.
Even my relatives bringing me along on a trip to Kauai only made it worse. The most gorgeous place on Earth, and it made me sick with hatred. Nothing that beautiful deserved to exist if Lila wasn’t ever going to get to see it. It wasn’t fair.
I thought I’d never enjoy or care about anything again. Then I discovered media preservation.
It started with taking some of Lila’s old VHS tapes to a video repair place to fix some issues with the footage before it’s digitized. The job fascinated me. In a universe based on entropy, where everything inevitably fades away and is forgotten… restoring something lost is like snatching it from the jaws of death, right? Like flipping the bird to the universe and its so-called ‘natural order’. People die, but information doesn’t have to.
Now, it doesn’t matter how small — be it some god-awful plug-and-play licensed game, or a cereal commercial from 80’s — it’s my mission to recover it in as high a quality as I’m able, and make sure it’s freely available online for as long as possible.
A couple weeks ago, I came across a big haul. Four boxes of old VHS tapes offered up on E-Bay for dirt cheap. Most of the tapes were just recordings of Cheers episodes already preserved in higher qualities, but one Maxell E-240 caught my interest.
First of all, I’d never seen one so melted. Sure, sometimes they were left in an attic too long, and the colors and audio start to degrade. But this one looked like it had survived a house fire. It was covered in soot and the smell of smoke, and had the overall shape of a chocolate bar left out in the sun a little too long.
Second was the label, which read in neat sharpie: ᴇᴘɪꜱᴏᴅᴇ 4,679,329 ᴍᴀʀ 8 2035.
The casing was so disfigured, I had to bust it apart just pull out the tapes and respool them in a fresh cassette. I tried to iron out the creases in the tape as best I could, but I had no illusions about it accomplishing much — the mylar surface had been irreparably warped in places by whatever fire had half-melted the thing.
Imagine my despair at the sight of that dreaded ‘ɴᴏ ꜱɪɢɴᴀʟ’. I could clearly see the tape wasn’t blank, yet no amount of adjusting the tracking or trying different TVs or VCRs accomplished anything. Just as I was about to give up, though, the thing just suddenly started playing properly at the exact instant the clock struck 3 AM, as if it had only now decided to work. My all-nighter had paid off.
I didn’t dwell on the fact that this ‘miracle fix’ had been impossible. If I’d had any sense, I’d have torn the horrid thing out of my VCR and buried it beneath holy ground. Instead, fool I was, I sat down and watched.
At first, the thing seemed unwatchable. The audio was so distorted that the show’s theme song emerged as a low, crackling, staticky wail that made my head throb, and the logo was completely indistinguishable through the flickering and interference. I thought it was a lost cause for a moment. But then a figure appeared and cleared away the static, like Moses parting the Red Sea.
It was the sight of the show’s host that hooked me. He was just… perfect. Perfect in every way. I knew it just looking at him. Infinitely handsome and likable and charismatic, and he always said the exact perfect thing. The only issue is, I don’t remember a single thing about him now, in the same way you can’t remember a dream that seemed so clear to you while you were experiencing it. He just appears in my memory as this abstract blur in a sharp suit. Yet at the time, I was awestruck, even before he said a single word.
I can’t even remember a word he said. It was like he was speaking another language, one I felt as opposed to heard. I’ll try and transcribe it as best I can into words, but know that it’s only a pathetic imitation.
“... for another night of laughs, prizes, and fun for the whole family, with your host, #####!” I noticed that the audio and visual distortion seemed to suddenly intensify the instant he said his name, rendering it completely illegible. Idiot I was, I figured that was a coincidence. “Tonight is a night of celebration, folks, because thanks to the support of loyal viewers like you, we have just been approved for, get this: two hundred thousand more seasons!”
The “live studio audience” went wild with applause. I put that in scare quotes because, as far as I could tell, besides the host, the studio seemed completely empty. As if he was standing on a plain white stage that extended outwards into infinite darkness on all sides.
“For those just joining us, the game here is simple…” He explained that this was some sort of a trivia show. Every time a guest got an answer wrong, it brought them a little closer to some sort of unspecified ‘punishment’. And if they got it right? He smirked. “Well, they get to delay the inevitable.”
I wondered what he meant by ‘inevitable’. I didn’t have to wonder long.
The host gestured to a curtain that hadn’t been there moments ago, which raised to reveal a middle-aged man. You know the type — bushy mustache, gray hair, round-rimmed glasses. Kind of guy you’d have doing your plumbing. He couldn’t look any more out of place stood up and restrained in that — what the hell is that?
I recognized that metal coffin-looking thing from a medieval torture museum I went to once. The iron maiden. The lid hung open, countless long, needle-like blades poking inwards, threaten to poke a million new holes in him if it was shut.
His situation was not lost on him. “Where… where am I? What the hell is this!?”
“Oh, lucky guess!” The host ‘joked’. More canned laughter. “I know you always loved watching those trivia shows, Malcolm? Weren’t you always sitting there, grinding your teeth, seething that it wasn’t fair? That you should be the one up on stage, winning big?”
The man paused. Even he seemed mesmerized by the unreal perfection of the host before him. “I… this is a… game show?”
“All you have to do is answer a few questions! Think you can handle that, Malcolm?” He pulled out a cue card without waiting for an answer. “And our first question! What were you doing the night of February 18th, 1998?”
The man seemed baffled. “Just… sat on my couch watching the NFL, I think? I’m not sure how I’m supposed to remember —“
He let out a startled squeal as a horrid buzzer sounded. On cue, the lid slid a third of the way closed, making him flinch. “Oooh, I’m afraid that’s the wrong answer, Frank! But you know what? I’ll give you one more chance. What were you —“
“Following a girl home!” The man cried out. “F-from the bar. There, are you happy?”
“Cor-rect!” The canned audience began cheering! “Such honesty! Now, our second question: just what were you carrying while you followed her?”
He hesitated for a little too long. And then the buzzer sounded again, and the lid slid so near to closing that its blades began poking uncomfortably against his skin. He tried to press himself against the back of the maiden as well as his restraints would allow. “Jesus! Okay! A knife, a knife!”
“Awww, if only you’d said that just a second earlier!” Another big question. “Our third question: why, Malcolm? Why did you do it?”
That set Malcolm off. He started thrashing, clawing, screaming. “Let me out of this thing, you maniac! You can’t do this to me! Do you know who I am? Is this some sort of sick joke? My lawyers will have your head for this, you—“
And then the buzzer. All of a sudden, the lid slammed shut full-force, and the man was utterly silenced save for an unnatural, drawn-out wheeze. “Another wrong answer, Malcolm! I’m afraid I was looking for: ‘because if I can’t have her, no one can’!”
I admit it. I laughed. Out of shock more than anything. How was this allowed on TV? I took it as some sort of dark comedy show, and it was kind of satisfying to see that freaky character get his comeuppance. Still, there was something unnerving to me, seeing the man’s eyes through the openings in the maiden. Wide and red and terrified. They just looked a little… too real.
But the maiden disappeared as quickly as it came, before I could dwell on it too much. “Oh, envy! Definitely one of my favorite sins.” More laughter. “Stay tuned, folks! We’ve still got a night of fun and games in store for you! But first… how’s about a word from our sponsors?”
Cut to a corporate logo which I again couldn't recognize.
“This segment was made possible by Buer Health, which has recently announced a brilliant new initiative to protect our citizens from skin cancer by removing their skin completely.”
The camera cut to a massive industrial building, resembling a solid concrete cube around 50 meters in width and height. Its surface bore arcane symbols etched using carvings of wailing, tormented faces. The host would occasionally be rendered inaudible by a deafening metallic scraping from within, though he didn’t seem to notice. The only protrusion from the building’s cubic shape was a single smokestack, belching a scarlet red smoke into the atmosphere. A queue of gaunt figures waited at the entrance, herded and coerced by their grim overseers, and there were no words to describe the procession of scarlet ghouls limping out the building’s other end.
“Owing to the nonlinearity of time, the brand new Grand Skinpeeling Machine has spontaneously appeared several years before construction deadlines, and indeed, before it was even conceived of by anyone in our timeline. People have rushed all the way from Malebolge just to try this miracle of technology out on opening day, and so far, the reviews have been stellar!”
He shoved his microphone in the face of a shambling thing that could only scarcely be called a human. Tatters of flesh clung to its exposed musculature, blowing in the wind. Its eyes were the only hint of color in that sea of bloody red, and they were wide, white and terrified. The thing screamed and wailed for as long as it could before the last tendons connecting its jaw to its face snapped, and it was left to choke and gurgle.
“An amazing wail! The results speak for themselves, folks. The Grand Skinpeeling Machine is a hit!”
So far, I was still laughing along and having a good time. The sight of the next ‘guest’, however, started making me nervous.
It was an old lady.
She couldn’t be a day younger than sixty, the sort of sweet elderly woman who in a just world would be cooking chocolate chip cookies for her grandchildren in a comfy cottage somewhere. But here she was, tied to a metal chair, eyes wide, shaking like a leaf. Unlike the last contestant, she seemed to know exactly what was happening.
“In exchange for our loving endorsement, they’ve agreed to loan us one of their star employees. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for: the Liqisma!”
Something slunk from the darkness far behind her — or perhaps it’d be more apt to say that the darkness birthed it whole-cloth. It was like a living shadow, and it took my eyes a moment to register what I was even seeing.
How do I even begin describing this creature? I could say it looked almost human, or at least like something that may have been human long ago. Or I could start with its skin, which was all black and shiny as latex and seemingly smooth on first glance, but if you looked closer you’d realize it was covered in a million tiny reptilian scales, almost like a shark. Its head was a bald man’s, utterly devoid of any distinguishing features, like the basic stock template for a human being. It was notable only for a complete lack of pupils and irises, its eyes a pure white.
Its body defied basic biology in so many key ways, I had to stare it at for what felt like an eternity just to wrap my mind around its physiology. It was at least five or six meters long, by my estimate, composed of multiple human torsos stacked one on top of the other like segments of a centipede, each melding with the ones around it at the waist and shoulders. Each torso sported a pair of short, stubby arms that propelled it with terrifying grace. It ended with a pair of human legs, perpetually bent on their knees, beneath a ‘tail’ that looked more like its coccyx was poking free from its body.
The old last could clearly hear it, and kept futilely trying to turn her head around enough to get a peek at what stood behind her. I mouthed uselessly, don’t. You don’t want to know.
“Glad you could join us again, Miss Wethersby! Judging by our ratings last week, you seemed to have been a fan favorite!”
Her voice was so soft, I could barely hear it below the static. “Oh, God. Please, why won’t you people let me go? I’ve told you, I’ve never done anything, never hurt anybody. There must be some sort of—”
He waved a hand over her, and it seemed to forcefully snap her mouth shut. “Please, Miss Wethersby, save your breath for our questions!” Another cue card. “Your first question, my friend: where did you and your husband buy your first home?”
She had to think about it for a long time. Eventually, she cried out, “Alabama! Tuscaloosa, Alabama!”
“Ding ding ding! Why, you’re already doing better than our first contestant! Next question: what breed of dog was your childhood pet?”
She had a pained look on her face as she thought. Eventually, a timer started ticking down. It wasn’t visible, so it wasn’t clear how much time she had left exactly, but the sound it made got more shrill and high-pitched with every second. “Miss Wethersby, need I remind you that we have a time limit on this show?”
A tear ran down her cheek. “I… I keep telling you people, I don’t know. I have dementia, I can’t remember, please—”
That buzzer again. “I’m afraid that was the wrong answer! Liqisma?” The old lady shuddered at the sounds of hundreds of feet drawing a little closer to her. “Now, your first grandchild. What did he look like? What color were his eyes? His hair?”
She was crying harder now, like it hurt her that she couldn’t remember something so dear to her. “I told you I can’t remember! Why are you doing this to me!?”
“If you don’t remember them, why would they remember you?” The host mocked as the buzzer sounded, and the beast drew a little closer. “Really, do you believe they still even think about you? Or do you think they’re glad that the old bag of bones isn’t there sucking up their inheritance?”
This went on for… God, it could have been an hour. I was glued to the screen all the while, frozen with terror, praying for this nightmare to just end, for her to make it out okay somehow. He poured over every little detail of the life she lived and the people she loved, delighting in how little of it she could still recall.
And the thing grew closer, and closer… until she finally felt multiple pairs of hands resting upon her shoulders. The thing was looming over her now, and a long, black tongue a few feet in length emerged from its mouth and ran trails of dark saliva over the back of her head. She looked broken down, eyes raw from crying, and I could tell by the dampness of her dress that she’d wet herself.
“Now, Miss Wethersby, our time here has been fun, but I do believe it is time for our final question. Tell me, what is the name… of your only son?”
She couldn’t even answer anymore. She just stared ahead, like her mind was a million miles away. He cackled as the buzzer sounded one final time, and threw his cue cards aside. “Thank you for playing, Miss Wethersby. Better luck next time.”
I would say the thing unhinged its jaw like a snake, but that’d be an understatement. The way the thing’s face malformed and wrinkled and stretched as it opened its maw, it no longer looked even remotely human. Its jaws must have parted at least thirty centimeters apart, revealing a second, pharyngeal pair of jaws that lashed out and gripped the woman’s skull, pulling her headlong into that darkness.
I could hear bones crunching and snapping as its throat constricted down around her body, peristaltic muscles compacting her into a meat slurry, bit by bit. Yet she just wouldn’t die. Even as her skull and upper body were already crushed and compacted, organs and muscles pressed into mulch, she still kicked her legs, twitched her fingers, let out a gurgling that must have been some attempt at screaming. She was squirming even as the beast snapped its jaw shut around the last of her, condemning her to whatever torments awaited her inside the creature.
And all the while, that horrible laughter. “Don’t worry, folks! She’ll be back next week! And the next. And the next…”
Needless to say, I wasn’t having fun anymore. In fact, I had to turn away and fight the urge to throw up. I stood, about to turn the TV off and —
“Ah, ah, ah! Don’t touch that dial, now!” I froze. There was something chilling about the way he said that, staring right into the screen as if reacting to what I was doing. I hated that grin on his face. “The real show is just beginning.”
And with the barely restrained excitement of a child on Christmas morning, he yanked back another curtain, and I recognized everything.
I recognized that crappy bootleg knockoff Always Sunny in Philadelphia jacket that was so gaudy and terrible it instantly became her favorite thing in her wardrobe. I recognized those subtle hints of slight acne she disguised as fake freckles. I recognized the way her gray eyes would remind me of those overcast mornings at the beach at Hilton Head and pointing out all the cannonball jellyfish washed up on the sands. I recognized that tattoo of the name ʀᴏᴄᴋʏ, how I’d held her all night long as she cried into my shirt after her childhood cat had died.
It was Lila.
I shuddered, gasped, fell from my seat as if I’d been punched in the stomach and the air had been knocked out of me. I couldn’t breathe. This couldn’t be real. I was dreaming right now. I must be. I just had to wake up.
But I couldn’t wake up. Nothing I could do dispelled the sight of her curled up in that… that thing. That bronze statue of a bull, horns jutting on either side of a head that roaring silently up at the heavens, all while the love of my life was locked in its hollowed out belly, visible only through a pane of glass. I could hear her cry out in shock at where she’d found herself, and every whimper felt like it drove a knife through my chest.
The host soaked in the moment. It was ecstasy for him, the suffering of it all. He stared dead into the camera like he was looking right at me as she called, “What is this? Where am I?”
“Why, I have good news, my dear Lila! You’re exactly where every American dreams of being: you’re on TV.” He pointed to the camera. “And we have a very special guest in the audience tonight. Your very own beloved Jackson!”
I shuddered, hearing my own name ooze from his fetid lips. His façade of perfection was slipping, and there was something so profoundly ugly beneath it. Her eyes snapped to the camera, confused, despairing. “Jackson? Baby? What — what’s happening? What is this?”
I don’t know, I thought, gripping the sides of the TV so hard my knuckles turned white, but I’m going to get you out of there, baby. I’m going to find whoever did this and I’m going to bury them all so far beneath that studio that they’ll never-
“I’m afraid Jackson hasn’t joined us quite yet, my dear. But if you truly love him, surely you’ll give him a show to remember, won’t you?” He taunted her. “All I want, after all, is to ask you a few questions! In fact, I’ll offer you a special deal: get even a single answer right, and I’ll let you go free! But get one wrong and, well…”
On cue, a fire was lit beneath her. Small, smoldering for now, but she whimpered as she noticed the heat. We both realized in that instant what this was. By now, I was screaming things I can’t repeat here, and slamming my hands against the TV screen as if I could reach through and save her.
She bit her lip and acquiesced. Not like she had any room to argue. The host grinned and readied a cue card. “Your first question: where are you, Lila?”
“I… I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?”
“You do know, Lila. You know exactly where you are.” He smirked at her. “Here’s a free hint: what’s the last thing you remember, before you woke up here?
She thought about it… and choked back a sob, visibly shaking as the realization slowly settled in. “But… but why? I… I…”
The horrible wail of the buzzer cut her off. “Oooh, too bad! I’m afraid you’ve run out of time!”
Seemingly as if on its own, the fire doubled in size. Sparks licked the belly of the bronze bull, and began to ever-so-slowly heat the surface. She pawed around in the tight confines, searching for any reprieve from the scalding heat all around her as the metal grew hot like it’d been left out in the sun on a summer’s day. “Please! Oh, God, let me out of this thing! It hurts! It hurts!”
The host seemed to breathe in her pain as if stealing a moment’s indulgence. “Now that there is no doubt about where you are, my dear, let us proceed to the second question.” He switched to his next card. “Did you believe in God, in the end?”
“O-of course!” She pled her case as if she was being tried in court. “My entire life… every day I gave to the poor, helped the sick, did whatever I could to honor Hi-“
“I’m afraid you misunderstood my question. I asked, did you believe in him at the end? The very moment your pitiful little life was snuffed out?”
“I always believed! I’d never forsake Him!”
“Yes, yes, I know. You lived a good and holy life, didn’t you?” He cackled. “But what of the very end? You and your little husband were so excited to deliver your first little baby boy. But o, tragedy! It all went wrong, didn’t it? Your precious little boy didn’t make it through childbirth… and you followed closely behind.”
“That whole business with the botched pregnancy, it was… what do you call it? Ah, yes. A ‘test of faith’. And I’m afraid you failed. In your final moments, you watched the light fade from your child’s eyes, and you assumed — wisely, in my humble opinion — that no ‘kind’ and ‘loving’ God would allow something like that to happen.” He laughed. “Funny how after a lifetime of dutiful service, all it takes is one little mistake at the end… to bring you here. To us.”
I’d never seen such depths of despair in a person’s eyes. Such emptiness. Like with every word, he’d been scooping out another piece of her until she was hollow. And then that buzzer roared again, more shrill than ever, and I could barely see her little window through the smoke and flames. The belly of the bull was turning orange in places, and I could hear her flesh start to sizzle like meat on a grill. There are no words for the noises she made. No words at all.
“And our last, final question,” he continued. “What were your last words to your poor, beloved Jackson?”
“I love you!” I called out the answer. Bloody fingerprints stained the TV screen from my slamming my hands against it, as I screamed the answer over and over. “I love you, I love you, I love you!” At some point, I forgot that there was ever a question. I was just screaming it at her as if hoping that she could hear it, that it could bring her a modicum of comfort in that place.
The buzzer sounded again. I couldn't bring myself to look. All I could hear was the roaring of the bull, and the steam rising from its bronze nostrils.
The curtain fell. Silence drowned the sound. The host dropped all pretense that he hadn’t been speaking directly to me. “Now, Jackson. You just might be one of my new favorite audience members this show had ever had. I know this must have been hard for you. But if you’ll just stay tuned, I have one more show I know you’re certain to love!”
I didn’t bother to touch the remote. After all, nothing could be worse than what I’d just seen, right?
Wrong. Horror wracked me as the curtain rose, and I saw the man chained to a chair. I pulled away like a caveman witnessing fire, cringing and stuttering, face wet with sweat. It was the sort of fear that worked its way into your bones like a bad chill, that left you shaking, teeth chattering.
It was me.
An older me, sure. But not by much. Ten years, maybe. A gaunt and hollow version of me, one twisted by ten years of depression and hard drugs. But it was unmistakable.
His eyes widened as he recognized the host. “Oh — oh God, God please no! It can’t be — oh Christ, let me out of this chair, you —“
“Come, now! We wouldn’t want to use the lord’s name in vain, would we? I mean, that would be a sin!” The host laid a hand on the other me’s shoulder. “It may have been a few years since you watched our program, but I’m sure you remember the rules, don’t you, old friend?”
The other me was wordless, on the verge of hyperventilating, just as I was. The host was giddy with delight. “Now! Our first and only question is one I’m sure our viewer will be very interested in: what sins, exactly, do you think landed you here?”
The other me tried to speak, but the words caught in his throat. I could see it in his eyes. The years of self-destruction, the bitter hopelessness, the whirlpool of nihilism and vice and decay. The suffocating depths of a man. The darkness. How could he put it into words?
The sound of the buzzer was like a pig’s squeal. “Mmm, I’m afraid that our viewer is going to have to figure that out for himself! In the meantime, your punishment? Well, we wouldn’t want to spoil anything…”
The curtains slowly began to fall just as a couple other of those black, grotesque monstrosities emerged from the darkness. The curtain covered them all before I could get a good look at their obscene, twisted, asymmetrical figures. All I could hear was the crunching, the sound of skin tearing like paper, the screaming that went on for longer and louder than a human throat or vocal chords could endure.
The image and audio were beginning to distort, glitch, burn away. The tapes were physically melting as they played. My VCR was starting to overheat, sparks pouring from its front panel. The host voice jumped around in tone, his voice fading into the static blur as the tapes bubbled and boiled and distorted. “But, my friends, I’m afraid that concludes tonight’s episode of our show! So, with a final farewell to our dear, beloved viewer, Jackson…”
Just before the image melted away, the camera seemed to jump forward until his face filled the screen, his eyes piercing into mine as he cackled in that singsong voice.
“See you sooooon~”

Hi, I'm trying to start making small latex things (fingerless gloves, gaters, skirts) and I think I have a good idea of what to do but I'm stuck on what type of ammonia based or water based glue I should use. mjtrends won't have theirs in stock for months and I would really like to start soon, I understand for solvent based glue best test is the glue to use and to use Bestine Thinner as the cleaner but what do I use for a water based/ammonia based glue?
Also is any roller acceptable to use as a seam roller? I would love to just grab everything I need at the blicks down the street from me.

Timestamp & Writing Samples
Paypal only. I ship fast (usually within 24 hours). Internationally shipping is available for an extra $20.
All 4 pens are restored.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. 1948 Sheaffer Triumph Vac Filler (Oversize) - Pen & Pencil Set with Original Box - XXF Accountant Nib - [A2]
This is a late production Sheaffer Triumph vac filler made in 1948.
Sheaffer Triumph pens came in several sizes each with a different model name. The largest / oversize model was called the Valiant, which is what this pen is. It's not a massive pen being 5.25 inch capped but it does have decent girth. Valiants are among the rarer & more sought after pens of Sheaffer's Triumph line.
Sheaffer called this Burned Umber. It's basically a brown.
The pen is made out of modern injection molded plastic meaning it's safe to use modern inks in it. Any ink you would use in a Pilot 823 is fine to use here.
These modern plastic Sheaffer vac fillers were only made for 1 year in 1948. After which the large triumph pens were discontinued and replaced with the thinner Touchdown and Snorkel line of pens.
I bought this set new old stock and had it restored by Gerry Berg who is widely considered to be the best restoror for Sheaffer Vac fillers. Since then I've inked it once with Pelikan Tanzanite and cleaned it out.
Nib is XXF aka Accountant. Very firm and very fine. Smooth with a hint of feedback.
[A2] Both the pen and pencil are in perfect condition with no scratches or any cosmetic flaws. The mechanical pencil with lead and original box are included and are also in perfect condition. The pencil lead moves in and out when you twist the barrel. See photos.
Close Up Photos
Price with US shipping: $175 SOLD
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. 1930's Sheaffer Balance Full Size - Red Vein Celluloid - F Waverly Nib - [B]
The Sheaffer Balance was the original cigar shaped pen. Before it, nearly every pen on the market was cylindrical with a flat top.
This particular pen was made some time between 1932 and 1935 based on the shape of the clip. Red vein is the 2nd rarest / most sought after celluloid color after Rose Glow.
Full size means it's the same length as the Oversize. Oversize Sheaffer Balances in Red Vein celluloid are quite rare with prices usually starting above $400 (if you can even find one).
I have restored the pen with a silicone sac to help protect the celluloid over time. I can swap to a latex sac on request as they are more practical (slower ink evaporation and such).
Nib is a smooth F with an upturned tip. A classic waverly nib from Sheaffer.
[B] Condition. There's a small shallow dent on the cap band you have to look for to see. I took a close up photo of it. There's a tiny bit of brassing on the top edge of the clip and some on the ball of the clip as you can see in the photos. Otherwise all good. No scratches, no brassing to cap band or lever tab. Lever works normalling with no issues. No celluloid discoloration and no signs of crazing. I shined a bright light on the pen and looked everywhere. There are no defects.
Close Up Photos
Price with US shipping: $165 SOLD
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. 1920's Wahl Gold Seal (Full Size) - Jade Celluloid - Flexible Fine Nib - [B-]
Some collectors call it the Wahl Gold Seal. Others call it the Wahl Personal Point.
Anyway, this is the full size model. The Oversize model is called the Decoband by collectors. These are made between 1928 and 1934 or so, when Wahl was ranked the #2 largest US pen manufacturer and was competing with Waterman.
The jade celluloid is discolored but not too bad. Too often these have turned brownish or yellow, as Jade celluloid is extremely prone to discoloration due to slow off gassing from the latex sac inside. I've fitted the pen with a silicone sac to preserve the color that remains. The grip section is ebonite.
The nib is stamped "Gold Seal Flexible" and is indeed flexible. It's even more flexible than the Waterman 52 1/2 below. These flexible wahl nibs are uncommon and quite prized by vintage collectors. See writing sample.
[B-] Overall the condition is pretty good considering how most jade Wahls look today. Usually they have cracks in the cap lip but this one looks good. No brassing either on any part of the pen. The jade celluloid has shrunk a tiny bit near a grip section showing off the thin aluminum tube the inner barrel is lined with (this is typical with this model). The cap screws on normally without any issues and no part of the pen is loose or wobbly. The gold seal has a little hole drilled through it which is what Wahl did to signify their Lifetime Warranty was no longer valid due to new FTC rules during that time period. It doesn't affect the value of the pen.
Fun fact: The nib and feed unscrew from the grip section same as modern Jowo nib units. This was an innovation from Wahl in the late 1920's. Feel free to unscrew it during cleaning.
Close Up Photos
Price with US shipping: $165 SOLD
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Waterman 52 1/2 - 9ct Gold Band - Fine Flex - [B]
This is a 1/2 size Waterman 52 with a 9ct solid gold band on the barrel.
1/2 size means it's the slim model. It's the same length as a normal Waterman 52 with the same size nib. The barrel and grip section are just slimmer. It was made in the late 1910's or the early to mid 1920's. It's about 100 years old.
Capped length is 5.25 inches. The body and cap are made of ebonite.
There is a 9ct gold band a bit below the threads with is stamped "9" and "375" which means the band is 37.5% gold. These were for adding personalization. The pen is unpersonalized.
I have fitted it with a latex sac and it's working normally. Cap screws on and the nib is moderately flexible. See writing sample.
[B] condition. No flaws to point out. Imprint is a little faded but visible. As is the chasing pattern on the ebonite. The ebonite has faded / oxidized to a very dark brown vs black, though I would say the oxidation is mild. Writes well, with a smooth nib, no issues.
Close Up Photos
Price with US shipping: $165 SOLD

Zuhause Verloren
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Mertvyy sah ziellos in den Kühlschrank. Äpfel, Salami und was noch; er hatte alles irgendwann selbst gekauft und sein Magen war leer, dennoch wusste er nichts mit den Sachen anzufangen.
​
Belanglos ging er ins Wohnzimmer und schaltete den Fernseher mit lediglicher Muskelerinnerung an und sah die Schauspieler so nah an wie er konnte. Sein Atem fegte den Staub von der Oberfläche weg als er innig auf die Personen. Die berührung seiner Nase am Fernseher lies ihn sich selbst hinterfragen, was er da tat. stammelte er und dachte an seinem Alter. Das hatte er und ne menge davon vom <... Alter> aber er konnte sich daran nicht erinnern, aber auf seiner Zunge lag etwas ähnliches. sagte er sich leise als er seinen Blick hinunter hängen lies und auf seine Jeans blickte. Seine Knie schmertzen nicht weil er auf dem Holzboden kniete, er ging mit seinen Finger über die Dielen und spürte das dumpfe Gefühl der Kanten. Als er erneut auf den Fernseher blickte, sah er seine eigene faltenlose Reflexion, dessen Haare ihm fast zu seinen erdig braunen Augen reichten. sagte er sich und ihm gefiel der Entschluss.
​
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
​
Er ging achtlos an seinem Auto vorbei und wunderte sich wie doch alle so viel schneller sind als er. Von hinten überholte ihm seine eng gekleidete Frau dessen Latex sich an ihren schmiegte wie ein Spanischer Tänzer. Sie schwengte ihre schwarze Lederhandtasche, die geformt wie ein Schuh war und auch einen solchen Absatz besaß kurvenhaft hin und her, als wäre es das hinterteil einer Katze. Auf keinen Fall wollte er aufhören auf ihr zu Gaffen und legte ein Zahn zu, aber aber er sah zu wie die Distanz zwischen ihnen wuchs. Seine Beine machten wie sie sollen, und ihm fiel kein atem aber machtlos die klaffende Entfernung über zuqueren schrie er so einige drehten sich nach ihm um, und Gottseidank die schmal äugige brünnete Dame. Ihre wimpern stemmten sich ineinander und sie breitete ihre Mundwinkel um etwas zu sagen und hielt es doch in sich. sie wandte ihren Blick ab um den Boden abzutasten und dann zu ihrem Täschen zu blicken, ohne ihre verzogene halb zum antworten geöffnetes Mund zu schließen.
​
Jeffrey ging auf ihr zu, und Gottseidank schrumpfte die Distanz. Für einen Moment hatte er den fiebrigen Alptraum dass er in einen Abgrund gefallen sei; und dann sah er in ihr Gesicht. Es war ein Mischbad aus diversen Gesichtsreaktionen und Emotionen aber das einzige was für Jeffrey wichtig war, war dass sie ihre Handtasche mit einem kleinen roten Lippensticker zwischen sich beide schob. sagte sie so tonlos und adrenalin gefüllt. Jeff starrte immer noch auf die Handtasche zwischen sich leckte sich seine glatte Oberlippe und sagte, mit einem faltenlosen Lächeln, sagte er stammelig. Er hob seine Hand winkend, und sah wie sie einen schritt zurück wisch als seine Hand sich hob und er sagte
​
Die Frau kam zu dem Schluss dass sie die ganze Situation falsch eingeschätz hatte, ohne aber sich entscheiden zu können, was die richtige Interpretation sein würde und bedankte sich. Nach dem sie nach einem höfflichen lächeln und danke bedankt hatte und ging, eine halbe straße drehte sie sich um und grölte wie ein Deutscher beim Fussball
​
Seine Hände schlungen in einander unmöglich zusagen wo welche anfing und welcher aufhörte. Seine klumpige Nase wuchs, als wäre eine Flut in seinem Gesicht statt gezogen die haut von seinem Gesicht hineinlaufen lies, und eine faltige mit furchen eingegrabene farblose Haut entblöste. Er blickte mit seinen Pupillen, die genau so gut erde sein könnten, auf seine Finger, die er an seinen ineinandergehaltenden Händen nicht finden konnte. Aus der ferne konnte sie nicht sehen wie ihm die Finger an seinen umschlungenden Händen fehlten aber sie konnte seine groteske Angst unter seinem zweiten hervorrutschendem Gesicht sehen.
​
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
​
Ein schrei hallte in seiner Erinnerung und er stolperte nach vorne. Sein Blick fing einen Opa auf einer Bus bank und wusste dass es seine beste und letze Chance ist. Verwesende Luft roch er in seiner klumpiger werdenden Nase. Seine rechte Hand riss er aus dem Klumpen vorsich heraus und sah wie an seinen kreidebleichen stock geraden Fingern weiter Finger hingen, die halbtransparent und rosarot im Schwung wedelten wie lose Klamotten. Er schrie zu dem rauchenden Opa aber Mertvyy wollte das nicht sagen. Seine Lippen bewegten sich wie seine Beine, wie seine zu einer Antenne wachsenden Nase, nicht von ihm gesteuert!
​
Die Flut seiner Haut wuchs und entblösste mehr und mehr seiner toten eingezogenen Haut, und formte etliche Pickel die sich wie Arme zu dem Mann entgegenstreckten die auf ihm zu gegangen war, lächelnd und nun vor schock erstarrt. Er war klein und brüchig, aber keine Leiche, dachte Es. Mertvyy biss in seine gefühllose Lippe, bahnte seine Zähne tiefer hindurch und spürte feine Bewegungen. Er hatte etwas dieser halbtransparenten Haut erbissen, die seinen Körper bedeckt hatte. Er saugte mit aller Kraft seine abgebissene Oberlippe und den elastischen Schlein und schlugte es herunter. Wie groteskte Spagetti sah er wie es weiter und weiter ging, als er daran saugte. Die Nase verlor halt und pendelte gegen seine Brust. Vibrierend durchzog Mertvyy eine Angst die nicht seine eigne Wahr. Und als er auf seine eigene Hand sah, die in der zweiten Haut einer gesunden Haut drinne steckte erinnerte er sich wie er schreiend Starb.
​
Seine Lieben hatte er zur Liebe zum Suff abgewiesen und schrie vollkommen alleine. Als Etwas was tausende von Schnecken hätte sein können, sich von seiner Decke fallen lies. Es schloss seine nach seiner Mutter schreienden Lippen und wartete wie sonst. Aber Mertvyy zerbrach eine Bierflasche und stach darauf ein, und erstach seine eigene Kehle. durchzog der Gedanke das Lippenlose Wesen, was einen Tentakel durch den Gehörgang von Mertvyy durchpresste um dann sein Mund von innen aufzubrechen. Und Mertvyy gab dem Opa eine Ohrfeige und schrie . Mertvyy´s Backenzähne bissen auf der Haut des Wesen´s herum und saugten mehr und mehr in sich hinein, ohne daran sich aufhalten müssen dass er Luft brauchte. Der Tentakel brach durch, schlug in Mertvyy´s Gehirn einmal alles zu Matsch, worauf er auf den Boden stürtze aber nicht seinen Biss lockerte.
​
Angst durchzog Mertvyy´s toten Körper; aber nicht seine. Er griff nach der Zigarre die der Mann fallen lies. Und hatte endlich etwas dass seine unbegründete Wut verdiente. Es schlug um sich und sah augenlos auf den wegkrübelnden Mann. Er hätte es hätte ihn noch einholen können wenn es, ihn hinter sich lassen würde. durchzog es es, das nicht mehr Gehirn hatte als der zerquillte Matsch in Mertvyy´s Kopf. Seine toten unbeweglichen Finger waren nicht mehr dazu zu gebrauchen seinen Flaschmann zu öffnen, aber er männerte darauf bis sein toten erstarrtes Fleisch und Handknochen brachen und der Wiskey aus lies. Ehe er es mit der Zigarre entzündete, und nicht einsam zur Hölle fahren würde drehte er sich zu der starrenden Frau.
​
schrie Mertvyy zu der schönen Frau

I thought my Monday was rough. Until I experienced Tuesday. Those who believed that it was important for me to supplement my academic study of male masochism with first-hand experience — Luke, Paul, Brooke, possibly Neil as well — certainly were getting their wish. I less so, although there was no denying the authenticity of it.
I had to wait until Brooke and Luke were asleep to complete my punishment lines. When my alarm went off at 5 AM in Tuesday morning, after only four hours of sleep, I groaned.
As I was driving over to Kevin’s mom’s house, I received a text from him: Get me an Egg McMuffin from McDonald’s on your way here. Text me when you get here so you don’t wake up my mom.
I had dressed in a clean pair of yoga pants and plain black T-shirt (fortunately, at the time, my dresser wasn’t yet full of humiliating shirts, like it is today, and my cuckold horns shirt was filthy), so I was grateful for the drive-thru at McDonald’s. I resisted the temptation to order myself hash browns and instead limited myself to a banana and cup of coffee. I was determined to avoid more punishment on Saturday following my weigh-in.
Although it was to be another unseasonably hot day, the sun was just starting to rise when I pulled up to the house, so it was still fairly cool. Kevin was waiting for me on the porch. He didn’t thank me (let alone offer to reimburse me) for the sandwich, but rather ate it as he walked around his truck, inspecting the work I had already done. Finding fault with the cleanliness of his wheel rims, he instructed me to stop working on the interior of the car and to reapply myself to the wheels and hubcaps. I tried to explain that I had scrubbed these areas repeatedly yesterday, but that some of the blemishes simply could not be removed from the aging vehicle. He stood above me, supervising — as I worked on my knees — pointing to areas that he felt were not sufficiently clean.
“Sir, I can’t get this spot out. I’ve tried several times,” I said, as I strenuously, yet futilely scrubbed a black mark at the bottom of one of the rear wheels. It looked like it had been there for years. Kevin’s filthy plumber’s boots were right next to my face as I crouched down and scrubbed.
“Scrub harder.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m scrubbing as hard as I can. Some of these stains just won’t come off.”
“You’re not trying hard enough. Here, let me try.” He grabbed the sponge from me and bent over to scrub it. It took some effort, but sure enough, he was able to remove the spot.
“See, you’re not working hard enough. Luke will be disappointed.”
“Sir, I promise you that I’m trying as hard as I can. I’m just not as strong as you are, sir. You have really bulked up at the gym since the last time I saw you.” I thought a little flattery might help convince him not to complain about me to Luke.
He flexed his bicep and stared at it admiringly.
“That’s really impressive, sir. Look at mine, by comparison.” I flexed mine, and felt like Popeye without the spinach standing (or, in my case, kneeling) next to Brutus.
“I guess you’re right,” he said. “I’ll tell you what, if you clean my boots and tools, I might not say anything to Luke.”
Have you started to notice a pattern here? A slippery slope of submission. For example, if I hadn’t been forced to clean Luke’s truck that time I was caught by Kelly, I probably would never have met Paul and, therefore, wouldn’t later that day be going to his condo to work as his maid. It seemed that one act of submission and exposure begat another. Where would it end? Would it end? At the time I am making them, however, my concessions always seem like good ideas, given my lack of options.
And so it probably will not surprise you to learn that I replied, “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I think I can use the same soapy water and leather conditioner I’m using on your truck. If you remove them, I can get started right away.”
“Remove them? Why bother? Just do them here,” he pulled down the tailgate of his truck and sat on it. I filled a fresh bucket of soap and water and got back on my knees to begin my task.
“My boots are dirtier than usual. My last job was a real shit show. Literally,” he chuckled.
I tried not to think about how exactly his boots got so filthy, as I used a towel to wipe off the foul smelling, caked-on debris. Kevin had a relaxed, arrogant expression on his face, as if having a guy twice his age kneeling before him to clean his boots was the most natural thing in the world. I heard the unmistakable noise of a photo being taken on a phone and looked up to see Kevin’s iPhone pointed at me.
“What are you doing, sir?”
“I just wanted to text Kaylee. She’ll get a kick out of this.”
What could I say in response? Challenge him and likely face Luke’s wrath? I bit my tongue.
After cleaning them, I applied some of the leather conditioner I had used on the truck’s seats and began buffing his boots energetically with a microfiber towel. It was just at that moment, of course, that Kevin’s mom, Darla, walked out of the house in sweatpants and a jacket, a cup of coffee in her hand. I will confess that my cock began to stiffen the moment I got on my knees and looked up at Kevin; the pure act of submitting stoked my arousal, as usual. But it was when Darla arrived that my cock really began to push painfully against its restraints.
“Oh, it’s you again,” she said looking down at me.
“Wally didn’t have time to finish my truck before it got dark yesterday,” said Kevin.
“Good morning, ma’am,” I said.
Ignoring me, she said, “It doesn’t look like he’s cleaning your truck right now to me. I guess Luke’s new lackey is now your lackey too. I raised some smart boys.” She smiled proudly. “At least this one isn’t wearing a bikini like Luke made his first boss wear when the old guy used to clean this truck back before he gave it to you.” She laughed heartily at the fond memory of one of my predecessors’ humiliations at the hands of her older son. So nice to be participating in the family tradition, I thought.
“Well, it is December. It’s a little cold for a bikini,” Kevin laughed. “Walter, stand up and show my mom the pantyhose, or whatever it is, that Luke makes you wear.”
I did as directed, causing Darla to laugh. “Those are women’s work-out pants, honey. But I can see the bulk beneath them. One of Luke’s signature methods of dominating the husbands he cuckolds. As I’ve heard your brother say more than once, ‘If you really want to own a man, control his cock.’”
“Wally is a college professor. Luke said he studied at one of them Ivy League schools, out East.”
“You can see where that’s gotten him,” she said. “Well, it’s a little chilly out here, I’m going back inside. I have I feeling I’ll be seeing more of you,“ she said to me with a smirk as she walked back into the house.
After I finished cleaning his boots, Kevin directed me to go into his garage, bring his tools out into the driveway and wipe them down with soapy water before loading them into the bed of his truck. He watched me work the entire time, not lifting a finger.
When I finished, he paid me a compliment. A most unwanted one, as it tuned out. “Nice job with my boots and my tools. Now that I’ve got my license, I could really use an assistant. I’m gonna talk to Luke about letting me borrow you sometimes.”
I didn’t respond, hoping this thought was just a whim of his that would soon be forgotten. I hoped in vain; it was indeed the slippery slope again, a continuation of my descent.
After I finished with his tools, I spent another hour finishing cleaning the interior of the truck before Kevin headed off to his first job of the day and I headed off to campus. This time, I did change into my jeans in a fast food restaurant on the way, too wary of facing Darla again to go back into the house.
I still wore the leather choker that day, and was highly self-conscious as I lectured to the 24 students in my Chivalry and Courtly Love In Medieval Literature class.
I had to be and Paul’s and Anna’s by 4 PM, so after my lecture, I walked to the drugstore to buy the Johnsons’ furniture wax and a toothbrush. I was starving. Having only had a banana that day, and having eaten very little besides salads, fruit and low-fat cottage cheese since my disappointing weigh-in on Saturday, I decided to treat myself to lunch at my favorite Thai restaurant in town. Given how hard I had worked and how little I had eaten over the last couple of days (and thinking about the humiliation that lay in store for me that afternoon), I figured that I deserved this one small self indulgence. I ordered seafood Tom Yum soup and beef Massaman curry. A caloric dish to be sure, but how much could it possibly hurt after my spartan diet of the last few days?
I was still savoring my soup when the waitress brought my curry and rice to the table. Just at that moment, I saw Neil enter the restaurant with a female colleague, Annabelle Nash (she taught Shakespeare, mainly). They greeted me as they went to their seats, but I could see Neil scrutinize the dishes on my table and shake his head disapprovingly (if subtly). Self conscious as I was, I nevertheless cleaned my plate (grateful Neil’s back was to me at the table where he and Annabelle sat). After I paid my check, I walked over to say goodbye to them.
Neil said, “Hey, pal, would you mind swinging by my office at around 2:30 for a few minutes?”
“Sure thing, Neil. Nice seeing you, Annabelle.”
When I met him in his office later, Neil closed the door and asked me to sit down.
“Walter, I have a bit of a dilemma that I hope you can help me out with. Luke made me promise to tell him if I caught you cheating on your diet on campus.”
“The restaurant is not on campus,” I smiled, attempting a joke.
“You know what I mean,” he answered, with a serious expression. “Was that beef Massaman curry? Do you know how many calories are in that dish?! And all the carbs in the rice? You should always ask for brown rice instead of white, you know. And you had soup too, I noticed.”
“But I barely ate anything the past three days. And I only had a banana for breakfast.”
“You’re always making excuses. That’s why you’ve basically been stuck at the same weight now for the last few weeks. You’re at a threshold, and to lose more, you need to be super disciplined about what you eat, and exercise more. No more excuses, Walter.”
“You’re right, sir. Please don’t tell Luke,” I pleaded.
“Look, I know what my telling him means for you as a consequence. But I promised him I would. And his methods with you have been successful. I feel I have to honor my promise.”
“Please, don’t. Maybe I can make it up to you somehow. How about a foot massage?”
“Giving me a foot massage isn’t going to burn many calories.” He thought for a minute. “I tell you what. The four days a week that we’re on campus together, how about if you bring me a coffee each day in between my classes? I don’t think that will conflict with your teaching schedule, and the exercise of walking to the Corner Cafe each day will do you good. It’s 3300 steps there and back; I’ve measured it on my iPhone. That way, I won’t feel as guilty for not telling Luke about catching you cheating on your diet today.”
“Yes, thanks Neil. Sir, I mean. That seems more than fair.”
Neil got up and shook my hand. “Deal. And you don’t have to call me ‘sir’ here on campus, pal.”
“Thanks, Neil.”
“But I will take you up on that offer for your amazing foot massages on Wednesdays after my back-to-back classes. You can give me one tomorrow when you bring my coffee.”
“Of course, thanks again, Neil,” I said, as I left his office. And so that is how I came to be Neil’s coffee boy for the balance of the semester (and future semesters, even during my sabbatical). And his foot boy, or reflexologist, or whatever you want to call it. Notice how it went from me offering to give him one foot massage in return for his silence, to me getting his coffee four days a week and massaging his feet once a week. In an instant! I guess negotiation was not one of my strong suits.
As I drove to Paul and Anna’s condo — the next stop on my gauntlet of service and humiliation that day —the Paul Simon song Slip Sliding Away ran through my head, the refrain in particular:
Slip sliding away You know the nearer your destination The more you’re slip sliding away
If old Paul was correct, the further I slid down the slope, the closer I’d come to my true nature. I wondered how much further I had to slip. Would I be the slave to everyone by the time I finally reached the bottom of the slope?
As I parked my car, I did another mental inventory of what I needed for my second visit to the condo. Johnsons’s furniture wax, check. Toothbrush, check. Punishment lines, check. I was wearing sheer, black nylon panties under my jeans. Then I remembered: I had completely forgotten Anna’s directive that I research and practice how to curtsy. All I could do is hope that she had forgotten. If not, maybe I could wing it? Better yet, maybe she wouldn’t be there this time. But did I really want to be alone with Paul?
Carrying a bag that contained my punishment lines as well as the furniture polish and toothbrush, I entered the lobby to find the same obnoxious doorman as last Tuesday, sitting behind his desk.
“I’m here to see Paul Betz.”
“And you are?” He knew perfectly well who I was, but wanted to force me to say it.
“The maid.” I looked down at the floor, ashamed.
He picked up the intercom. “Mr. Betz, your maid is here to clean your apartment. May I send HIM up?” The prick just had to emphasize my gender.
“Mr. Betz said you may go up. Apartment 11B. The elevator is around the corner,” he said, as if I had never been there before, a smug smile plastered to his face.
“Yes, thank you. I remember.”
When I got to their door, I got down on my knees, as Paul had instructed me. Should I have rung the bell first? Should I knock? Or would that annoy them? I had been announced, so they knew I would be coming up the elevator. I waited there for several minutes. The longer I waited, however, it seemed to make less and less sense to ring the bell. Maybe they were busy and not ready for me yet, even though I was very punctual? Maybe they were….having sex? I didn’t want to risk disturbing them. And, so, I continued to wait.
I then heard the elevator door open, with dread. A woman, probably in her mid thirties, walked by me to her apartment across the hall, staring down at me with an amused expression. When she opened her door, I heard her yell to someone in the apartment, “It looks like Paul and Anna have a new one,” before the door slammed shut.
Just then the the door in front of me finally opened. I saw Paul’s feet first.
“You may enter. Remember, on your knees.”
I put my hands down to crawl into the apartment, before he snapped at me: “No! I didn’t say on your hands and knees. I said on your knees.”
I shuffled forward into the apartment, cursing myself for having not purchased knee pads, as Paul had suggested. I told myself that I would have to start taking notes from now on , so I wouldn’t forget things I’d later regret.
“Lines,” he said, simply.
I pulled the several loose leaf pages out of my bag and handed them to Paul. “Here, sir.”
As much as it hurt my hand to write all of those lines, the mental anguish of having to repeatedly write that I would no longer mention academic integrity — a subject that I was passionate about (ridiculous as it might seem to you, coming from a professor about to clean the apartment of two of his students) — was worse. Paul knew that, of course. I was to learn that, despite their many differences in style, like Luke, he was a natural sadist, with an impressive ability to zero in on areas of his victim’s vulnerability or sensitivity to exploit for maximum humiliation. Lucky me.
“I’ll count them and check the neatness of your writing later. Did you bring the Johnsons wax and toothbrush?”
“Yes, sir. Here.” I showed him the contents of my bag.
Anna then came into the living room from the kitchen, munching on an apple. Both were dressed similarly to last time, Paul in sweatpants and Anna in tight yoga pants. Anna was barefoot this time, her pretty, pedicured toes painted a metallic silver color. She caught me staring at her toes, and smiled.
“Don’t worry, Professor Rollins, you will get to know my feet very well. They will be your best friends before long.”
“More like his unattainable crush,” Paul snickered.
“Crushes,” Anna corrected him. “Professor maid will have a crush on both of my feet and on all ten of my toes. He will worship them and he will pine for them. And they won’t give him the time of day,” she said. Then she abruptly said to me, “Obeisance!”
“Excuse me, Princess Anna?”
“Obeisance means assume the position of respect and humility before your superiors,” Paul explained.
“Yes, sir. I know the meaning of the word, but I don’t know what position she means.”
“I don’t like your condescending tone. It reminds me of when you corrected me in class on Monday about the cucking stool. We’re going to teach you not to use that tone with us. Certainly not here, where you are nothing more than a slave. But not in class either. You will be very careful in how you interact with Anna, Kelly and me in class from now on. We are your special students.”
“We are the teacher’s pets, and the teacher is our pet,” giggled Anna.
I certainly didn’t intend to be condescending — I was on my knees, for fuck’s sake — but I guess that quality just naturally creeps into my tone at times, unconsciously. Perhaps an occupational hazard of being a professor? Or at least, a hazard in the situations in which I increasingly found myself.
“Strip,” ordered, Paul.
“Yes, sir. May I stand for a moment?”
Paul nodded his ascent. I quickly removed my shoes, socks, shirt and jeans, and stood before them in my panties and chastity cage.
“Obeisance here means you drop down onto your belly, you clasp your hands behind your back and you slither like the worm you are to your superior’s feet and kiss each one reverently. Obeisance!”
I was standing several feet away from them. I did exactly what Paul described, finding that the only way to propel myself forward from that position was to grind my crotch into the floor. Not only was it incredibly uncomfortable, but I feared that my chastity cage might scratch their hardwood floor. Fortunately, there was an area rug covering most of the space separating us, so I was able to slide myself — indeed, “slither” was the correct word — towards their feet. Figuring ladies first, I planted kisses on Anna’s lovely bare feet, followed by Paul’s socked feet.
Paul asked me, “Where is Luke today?”
Still prostrate on my belly, inches from their toes, I answered, “He is traveling today, sir.”
“Overnight?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What about your wife?”
“She is working tonight.”
“You didn’t say ‘sir.’ That’s one demerit. At the restaurant?”
I had never said anything to them about Brooke’s job, even during Paul’s initial interrogation of me at O’Riordans. His detailed knowledge of my life was unsettling.
“Yes, sir.”
“What time does she get home? Don’t lie, I have my ways of checking.”
“Usually around 10:30 or so, sir.”
Anna interjected, “Good, you can work longer than two hours, then. The condo is a disaster, and we’re having a little get together on Thursday. That little bitch, Chrissy, said her mother is sick. Supposedly. So she wasn’t able to clean on Sunday. You have your work cut out for you, professor maid. Where is your page uniform?”
Oh, no! Another order, I forgot. I didn’t hesitate to lie. “My wife wore the jacket today, princess. She occasionally likes to wear it.” Did Paul have ways of checking on that, too, I wondered.
“Bring it with you on Thursday. Fortunately, I picked out some other things for you to wear today. You’ll find your clothes on and next to the spanking bench in the dungeon. You can change in there and then present yourself to us before you start cleaning.”
“Yes, princess. Thank you.”
As I walked upstairs to the dungeon, I was still trying to process Anna’s extremely troubling remark a moment earlier. Not the fact that I had to work longer than two hours, nor that the condo was especially messy. Rather, it was the fact that they were planning on inviting guests on Thursday, the day I was to spend four hours with them, including preparing and serving them dinner. They had promised me that I wouldn’t be subjected to further exposure. Still, I had to risk asking, at some point, who they planned to invite to their “little get together.”
Expecting to find a maid’s uniform in the dungeon, I was not completely mistaken. Draped over the spanking bench were sheer black, thigh high stockings and a garter belt as well as a white lace maid’s cap. On the floor next to the bench were a pair of what appeared to be brand new, black high heels. Presumably, these were purchased specifically for me and would not painfully pinch my feet like Chrissy’s did.
The garter had a velcro clasp, so was relatively easy to put on. I initially struggled attaching the metal clasps to the thigh highs, but got those on as well. I then put the on the ridiculous cap. Finally, the most challenging part: the heels. They were my size, thankfully, but I was very unsteady in them, even partially twisting my ankle when I first tried to walk in them. Regarding myself in a large mirror hung inside the door to the dungeon, I looked utterly absurd, especially with my bare torso and rock-hard nipples.
Anna laughed loudly when I wobbled my way into the living room, where she and Paul were now reclining on the couch. My cock strained against its cage as I stood before my young monarchs, watching them scrutinize my ridiculously attired form.
“Don’t worry, professor. You’ll get used to the heels before you know it. Now let’s see you curtsy.”
The moment I was dreading. Should I confess to her that I had forgotten her instructions and beg her forbearance? Or should I wing it? I chose the latter, and chose unwisely. Not having a skirt to lift, I sort of mimicked lifting a phantom one and lamely bent my knees before standing straight again. There was no extending my right foot behind my left, no holding my position for two seconds when I bent my knees, no lowering my chin, no maintaining eye contact with my mistress. In other words, my improvisation was a dismal failure.
“That’s pathetic. Did you bother to practice at all?”, asked Anna, with a scowl.
“Yes, princess. Maybe I picked a bad how-to video.”
“You only watched one? You didn’t read anything about the different steps involved? It’s not hard to find instructions on Google. I checked myself. You either are lying to me or you’re a complete bimbo. Is it really true that we can’t leave marks on his ass?”, she asked Paul.
“For now, yes, unfortunately. But I think I’ve figured out some ways to punish him that won’t leave any long lasting marks.”
“Good. He deserves it. Maybe a little pain will help you remember to do what we tell you to do in the future, and to do it properly,” said Anna to me.
“Yes, Princess Anna. I promise to study how to curtsy very carefully before Thursday.”
“You better. Including a deep curtsy.”
“But that doesn’t get you off the hook for fucking up today,” said Paul. “Now get busy.”
I gathered up their dirty laundry first (scattered throughout the apartment), and started a load. The condo was indeed a mess. I later learned that Paul and Anna simply never picked up after themselves. Why should they when they had a seemingly ever increasing stable of menials to do so for them. However, when one of the servants fell ill or for some other reason failed to clean on their allotted days, the next one paid the price, as I did that day. It was quite challenging walking in the heels, but Anna was correct that I got used to them fairly quickly. By the end of the nearly four hours I was with them that Tuesday, I was managing to walk in them reasonably steadily.
As I worked, I caught snippets of their conversation.
Anna said, “It’s a bummer we don’t get to control his cock.”
Paul replied, “I know. But I’m working on that. It’s going to take a little time.”
“That’s good. Without control of his cock, it doesn’t feel like he’s truly our slave, you know what I mean?”
“I do. Just be patient.”
“How do you plan to do it?” Anna glanced at me. “Or don’t you want him to hear?”
“I don’t care if he hears or not. There’s nothing he can do about it. The key is to make friends with Luke. He was willing to lend Rollins to us at the Ren fair when we asked. My guess is he’ll be willing to share him again. And regularly. Besides, Professor Larson told me Luke built a huge pool at his house. I’d love to swim there when the weather gets nice. Indoor pools just aren’t the same.”
I knew that Paul had taken one of Neil’s classes last year, but hearing that they had been in touch since the Ren fair — bonding over their shared love of swimming, no doubt — was concerning. I hoped that there wasn’t anything else they were bonding over.
Anna instructed me to use the Johnsons wax I had purchased to polish the expensive looking coffee table and end tables in their large living room. They watched TV as I worked around them, ordering me as they did last time to serve them drinks. The toothbrush was for me to clean the crevices in the tiled bathroom floor of the master bathroom. Anna said that the crevices made it difficult to thoroughly clean with a mop. That may have been true, but I suspected this was more about humiliation than cleanliness. She supervised me as knelt down and scrubbed the first few tiles, urging me to pay particular attention to those closest to the toilet. She stood in the entrance way, as I bent over with my panty-clad ass sticking out. Although my cock fought against its confines almost the entire time I was there that day, there were certain moments such as this that the throbbing was particularly unpleasant.
As I was mopping the kitchen floor, I heard an alarm go off.
“Get your ass in here!”, I heard Paul yell from the living room. “It’s time for your punishment. Normally, I don’t administer correction until a servant has completed all assigned tasks for the day, but since we can’t leave any visible marks on you for the time being, I’m going to make an exception for you. Five demerits from last week plus one from today. Not to mention your compete failure to learn how to properly curtsy. Get over my knees.”
“But what about the punishment lines, sir?”
“You’re questioning me? They were to address a separate issue: your idiotic obsession with academic integrity.”
“But, sir, didn’t you say that you would address my demerits on Thursday when I would be here longer?”
“That was before I knew you could stay here longer today. I intend to take advantage of it. But I’m also happy to administer part of your punishment today and part of it on Thursday. I’m sure that our guests will enjoy it.”
“Uh, sir, I was meaning to ask you about that. You, you…you and Princess Anna promised you wouldn’t tell anyone or show anyone…” My tongue was tied.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist, professor. Our guests are Kelly and Archer,” said Anna.
“Archer, princess?”
“Archer is Kelly’s boyfriend. You two go way back. He saw you cleaning Luke’s truck in a speedo and you cleaned his muddy boots at the Ren fair. That was so much fun!, Anna giggled.
“What are you waiting for?,” Paul snapped.
I walked over to him and lay across his knees. Across the knees of my student, dressed as some fetishized maid. It was a truly surreal moment.
“The advantage of a hand spanking is that it can hurt quite a bit, but it won’t leave marks. The redness will fade in a couple of hours, and I think I know how to go right up to the edge of leaving bruises without actually leaving them. The key is lots of repetition. I’m going to give you twenty spanks for each demerit. Normally, it would only be ten, but that’s when I’m using a paddle, strap or crop. Or cane. We will inspect your cleaning when you’re done, and any additional demerits you earn today will be addressed on Thursday.” Paul rubbed my bottom with his hand as he spoke, a sensual exertion of control that I did not expect.
“Did you ever think you’d get to spank one of your professors?”, Anna asked her boyfriend with almost childlike delight.
“Great to check this one off the bucket list. Someday, I’d like to have a Senator or Governor over my knees.”
“How about the President?”
“You never know. There are submissive cucks and closet masochists in all walks of life.”
And with that observation, Paul’s hand came down hard on my panty-clad bottom. It came down again and again. The first strike hurt, but it was the cumulative effect that really turned this hand spanking into a tear-inducing punishment. I managed to be fairly stoic until about the 30th strike. By around the 50th, I was kicking my legs. Eventually I kicked with sufficient force that both of my heels came off. Although my sheer panties offered next to no protection, about midway through my punishment, Paul pulled them down and struck me on my bare bottom. Around the same time the tears came, I started squirming around on Paul’s lap.
“Stay still!”
I tried, but as the spanks kept coming, I continued to squirm on his lap. Paul then reached between my legs and firmly grabbed my balls. That certainly got my attention.
As he squeezed them, Paul said, “Do you think you can be still now?”
‘Yes, sir. I do!”
Through great exertion of will, I was able to remain still as Paul delivered the final twenty or strokes. He pushed me roughly off his lap onto the floor after he finished.
“Normally, I would now make you stand in the corner with your ass on display for 30 minutes or so, but I want to make sure you have time to finish cleaning.”
I wiped the tears from my eyes and replied, “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Anna sat down next to Paul on the couch and, inserting her hand into his sweatpants. said, “That was hot. Did it excite you as much as it did me? Oh, I can feel that it did! Let’s go fuck on our freshly made bed.”
“Sounds good, babe. If we’re quick, he can wash the sheets again before he leaves.”
Which is exactly what happened. Their inspection of my work only resulted in two additional demerits this time.
Before I left, Anna gave me detailed instructions for the meal I was to prepare on Thursday.
It was 9:30 PM by the time I got home. Given that Luke was away, I was hoping Brooke would release me when she got home and give me footjob or maybe even allow me to make love to her like she did on Thanksgiving. As exhausted as I was, I had been in a near constant state of frustrated sexual arousal throughout the day and its myriad humiliations, and I was dying to be released.
Unfortunately, Brooke had a difficult night at the restaurant (two men who hit on her, and one who stiffed her after she politely rebuffed him) and was in a foul mood. So instead of being released, I spent still more time on my now truly aching knees, giving her a long foot massage through her sweaty stockings as she silently watched TV.
That was still the highlight of my long, long day.

This is really an open question/prompt for discussion.
Under MMT's framework of understanding, sectoral balances must balance. I.e. in a closed two-sector economy (government G and non-government NG), any deficit or surplus in one sector must be reflected by a surplus or deficit in the other sector, respectively. This is encapsulated in the below accounting identity (I hate that Reddit doesn't seem to natively support Latex):
FA_{NG} - FL_{NG} = -(FA_G - FL_G)
which states that the financial equity of one sector must equal the negative of the financial equity of the other sector. I.e. if the non-government sector has net financial claims on the government sector, the government sector is in net financial debt to the non-government sector.
Likewise, the flows of these stocks are conserved between sectors, with the change in financial equity of one sector being the change in financial equity of the other. This change in net financial assets is also equal to the net government spending (spending G less any taxes collected T).
\Delta(FA_{NG} - FL_{NG}) = -\Delta(FA_{G} - FL_{G}) = G - T
And ultimately, across the entire economy of both sectors, all financial equities at any one moment sum to zero. The residual total Net Worth (NW) is then made up of only real assets that form the basis of our production and society.
----------
However, here's my question.
I believe the above accounting analysis is restricting the definition of financial assets and liabilities to state-issued credits and debts (base money (cash and reserves) primarily), and any state-issued debt instruments denominated in the state unit of account (i.e. Treasury securities). Do you agree?
But the entire world of stocks and shares - equities in companies - also constitute financial assets to the non-government sector without a corresponding increase in financial liabilities.
I could start a new company today using an invention or innovation of mine which uses a few inputs such as my labour and tools to transform a relatively useless selection of raw material into something useful to others. I could offer this product in exchange for state or bank credits and be profitable. I have created new real assets in the process that contribute to the material wealth and net worth of the society.
My products could become so popular that I would like to expand my operations. I need investment for this. So I offer a 50% ownership stake in my company in exchange for, say £1M of credits which I can use to purchase capital goods to increase my productivity.
I have now created a new financial asset, have I not? The 50% ownership stake is owned by someone who gave up state or bank credits to hold it as their new financial asset. There was no financial liability created at the same time to match it. That has a value as a financial asset, not a real asset. It certainly reflects the underlying value of my real production but as we know with the stock market, that's not the only determinator of its value.
What this equity stake can't do is be used as currency to redeem the investor's tax obligation to the government. But it is generally a highly liquid financial asset that can be sold to obtain the required credits to do just that.
This 50% equity stake financial asset, if the new equipment I purchased with the investment credits I was given improves production, could also well increase in value if a 3rd party fancies part of the action of potential future profits.
So not only have I created new net financial assets within the non-government sector without the need for a government deficit (G-T), but, like government debt instruments, it can fluctuate in value denominated in the state unit of account, potentially growing substantially over time.
I guess my main point is that we must be careful when defining terms and quantities, and statements such as "Only government deficits can create net financial assets in the private sector" is misleading since "financial assets" is too broad a term when used in this context since equity stakes in new companies certainly contribute to the net financial wealth of the private sector without government intervention.
I certainly still think the accounting identities above and the insight derived from them are still highly relevant to macroeconomic analysis, it's just that they refer only to "money" or "money-like" state-issued credits and not other types of important financial assets created internally to the private sector.
Do you agree? Disagree? Am I missing something or just overthinking it?

I ride a lot of road, and out of everyone I ride with, I get punctures 4 x - 5x as often.
Im 10 year+ experienced home mechanic. I check my pressure with every ride and pump up and when I do get a flat I always find the source.
I use the same tires as everyone GP5000.
I use a variety of tubes, butyl, latex, tubalito. Sort of depends on what the LBS has stocked.
Sometimes I run a little bit of sealant in rear tube and yes, this does reduce my flat frequency. Although im usually too lazy to do this and run no sealant in the tube.
I ride about 100 miles per week and I'd say I get a flat at least once per month, sometimes two or three.
Out of everyone I ride with, im the only one on a setback seat post (Thomson Masterpiece) . My rear tire (700x28c @ 90psi) has the look of much more "squish" than everyone else. In fact ive had multiple friends ask if my tire was flat, and its because more of my weight is on my rear tire when in the saddle so to the untrained eye can look low.
So it begs the question, Does a setback seat post cause more flat tires?
My bike handles great. It's a Columbus steel endurance road bike, carbon fork, i've got 100mm stem. I'm considering going to a straight post and putting a 120 stem but don't really want to mess with the fit because I love how my bike feels.
(PS - let's save tubeless discussions for another section. I run tubeless on gravel and MTB and totally understand the benefits.)
​

This week’s vintage batch features celluloid Parkers from the 1930s, including several pens from my personal collection, a couple surprising nibs, and a Vac Sr Max in one of the most desirable and hard to find colors in the catalogue. Nibs range from Firm to Superflex, with one Factory Stub in the mix. As always, all are fully restored and ready to write.
 
ALBUM & TIMESTAMP
 
Pastable link: https://imgur.com/a/RvAaBW1
 
Condition (n.b.): All pens listed below have been disassembled, cleaned and restored with new sacs installed in the last couple weeks. Each of these pens is guaranteed to fill and write as designed without leaks or other problems. Nibs have been adjusted when necessary to ensure that all lay down a smooth and consistent line.
THESE PENS HAVE NO CRACKS, CHIPS, PERSONALIZATIONS, LOOSE OR MISSING PARTS, BENT NIBS, MISALIGNED TINES, BROKEN/WORN OFF TIPPING, OR THREADING ISSUES.
 
Line Widths and Writing Samples: To provide buyers with as much information as possible, I have started to adopt the following line width standards: XXF (.1-.2mm); XF (approx .3mm); F (approx .4mm); M (approx .6mm); B (approx .8mm). Nib flexibility is determined by variation (max line width under pressure) and softness (amount of pressure). Flexibility designations based on variation generally run as follows for an XF/F nib: Semi-Flex (approx. 1mm); Flex (1.2-1.9mm); Superflex (>2mm). All line width measurements are taken with a digital caliper but should be considered approximations providing a general guide. Width may vary slightly depending on type of ink and paper used as well as amount of pressure applied. All writing samples are on Rhodia dot paper using Waterman Serenity Blue.
 
 
NOTE: All the grey pens (#2-4 and #6) in this batch come from my own collection and have been restored with silicone sacs to preserve their exceptional color. Some silicone sacs are known to cause ink to seep from the nib in certain conditions, e.g. when the pen is carried or isn’t stored nib-up. If this is a concern to you, I’d be happy to install a latex sac on request.
 
1. 1936-7 Parker Parkette Deluxe (black, celluloid, NPT, lever filler, 14k/SS? Two-Tone F nib). FP measures 5 1/16” capped. The Parkette Deluxe is an unusual and unusually scarce model. It’s essentially a Parkette with some dramatic changes to the design. First, the cap and barrel are of a faceted construction like Eversharp’s Doric. Second, it has a deluxe trim configuration with triple cap bands like a Vacumatic Standard as well as decorative metal bands on the ends. Finally, again like the Vac Std, it’s equipped with a two-tone nib – not sure if these were 14k or stainless steel. This example is made black celluloid with chromium trim. 14k two-tone Parkette nib lays down a smooth and consistent F line (see WRITING SAMPLE). Condition: excellent+ [B+]. A pen in time-capsule condition showing very little signs of use. Short of New Old Stock, the nickel-plated trim is as clean as you’re going to find it on these, having no brassing or other notable blemishes. Celluloid has a smooth, lustrous surface with no notable flaws. Manufacturer imprint and date code on barrel are deep and fully legible. Price: $160 SOLD
 
2. 1935 Parker Depression Set (grey pearl marble, celluloid, NPT, button filler, 14k XXF nib). This slender model measures 4 13/16” capped and 5 5/8” posted. During the Great Depression Parker made some curious pens that are unrecorded in extant catalogues. At a glance, this set looks like a Challenger. But closer inspection reveals some interesting differences. First, it has a “Parker Pen” barrel imprint instead of a “Challenger” imprint. It’s made of same grey pearl marble celluloid used on the regular Challenger but it has the triple cap bands of a Challenger Deluxe, which did not come in this color pattern. Most notably, the clip locks and blind cap sare a matching grey marble as opposed to black as they are on all Challengers. Lastly, these endpieces are contoured differently than on Challengers. Here is an old thread from Fountain Pen Board that delves into these Challnegeresque Depression, or Thrift Time, pens: LINK. This FP and MP set was likely purchased when the merchant had a surplus of older models in stock, because the FP has a 1935 datecode while the MP has a 1937 datecode as part of the barrel imprint. Note that their nickel-plated trim configuration is identical. The pen is a button filler. To fill simply unscrew the blind cap, submerse the nib, and depress the brass button once. 14k Parker Pen nib lays down a smooth and consistent XXF (possibly even XXXF) line – incredibly thin lines (see WRITING SAMPLE). Condition: This set comes from my own collection and is the fruit of foraging for some 20 years to the best example I could. Most of these show up discolored to green with corroded trim. The color of this set is superb – evenly grey across the barrels and caps. Trim is bright and clean with no notable blemishes aside from a thin sliver of brassing on the bottom edge of the lower cap band on one side of the pen’s cap and the typical slivers of brassing on the clip balls. Celluloid has a smooth, lustrous surface with no deep scratches or other notable flaws. Manufacturer imprints and date codes on barrels are deep and fully legible. MP is fully operational, gripping, expelling, and retracting lead as designed.*Price: $170 SOLD
 
3. c. 1934 Parker Challenger (grey pearl marble, celluloid, NPT, button filler, 14k M Flexible Factory Stub nib). This full-sized model measures 5” capped. The pen is a button filler. To fill simply unscrew the blind cap, submerse the nib, and depress the brass button once. This is an early example of a Challenger likely made in this model’s first production year. It lacks the “Parker” imprint on the ball clip and a date code with the barrel imprint, which reads “pat. pending.” Other than that, it’s your standard 1st-gen Challenger in grey pearl marble celluloid with nickel-plated trim. What isn’t at all standard for this pen is the nib, which is a Flexible Factory Stub. It lays down a smooth and consistent M line on the down-strokes and XF line on the cross-strokes under normal pressure. And the line widens to a 3B+ (approx 1.7mm) under moderate pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). Versatile variation, strong snap-back, and reliable flow over its full range of flex make it a great choice for shaded writing. Quite a surprise on a Challenger, which typically has a firm to semi-flex nib with no specialty grind. Condition: excellent+/near mint [B+]. This pen is another from my own collection, 20 years in the making. It’s been the nicest example I could find. Most of these crop up discolored to green with corroded trim. The color of this one superb – evenly grey across the barrel and cap. Trim is bright and clean with no brassing or other notable flaws – particularly rare for a grey Challenger. Celluloid has a smooth, lustrous surface with no deep scratches or other notable flaws - scarcely even any microscratches. Manufacturer imprint on barrel is deep and fully legible. A common pen with a highly uncommon nib in uncommonly clean condition. Price: $180 SOLD
 
4. 1939 Parker Deluxe Challenger (black w/ grey pearl chips, celluloid, NPT, button filler, 14k XF nib). This full-length, standard sized model measures 5 /8" capped. The Deluxe was second only to the Royal Challenger in Parker's Challenger lineup of the 30s. A step up from the base Challenger model, it featured triple cap bands, a larger nib, and a fetching celluloid pattern comprised of pearlescent chips of some color (in this case grey) that appear as if floating against a black backdrop. This pen has a visulated ink-view window in the section and the more modern blade clip instead of the ball clip, changes made in late 1937. It is a button filler. To fill simply unscrew the blind cap, submerse the nib, and depress the brass button once. 14k Parker pen nib lays down a smooth and consistent XF line (see WRITING SAMPLE). Condition: excellent+ [B+]. This pen is another from my own collection, 20 years in the making. It’s been the nicest example I could find. Near-perfect color. I can’t tell you how many of these I acquired before finally landing one like this – the grey pearl chips are extremely susceptible to showing discoloration to green. Nickel-plated trim is pristine with no brassing or other notable blemishes. Celluloid has a smooth, lustrous surface with no deep scratches or other notable flaws - scarcely even any microscratches. Ink-view window in the section is quite ambered and section has a couple short marks. Manufacturer imprint and date code on barrel are factory deep and fully legible. Price: $190 SOLD
 
5. 1936 Parker Deluxe Challenger (black w/ red chips, celluloid, GPT, button filler, 14k XF/ F Semi-Flex nib). This full-length, standard sized model measures 5 /16" capped. The Deluxe was second only to the Royal Challenger in Parker's Challenger lineup of the 30s. A step up from the base Challenger model, it featured triple cap bands, a larger nib, and a fetching celluloid pattern comprised of pearlescent chips of some color (in this case red) that appear as if floating against a black backdrop. This pen has the earlier, ball clip that was phased out in late 1937. The pen is a button filler. To fill simply unscrew the blind cap, submerse the nib, and depress the brass button once. Semi-Flexible 14k Parker Pen nib lays down a smooth and consistent XF/F line that widens to a 2B/3B (approx 1.4mm) under moderate pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). A nice nib for adding a little shading when needed. Condition: excellent+ [B+]. Gold-plated trim is exceptionally with no brassing or notable flaws apart from one 3mm sliver of plating wear on the tassie just above the clip and to the right. Celluloid has a smooth, lustrous surface with no deep scratches or other notable flaws apart from one minor scratch just below the imprint. Manufacturer imprint and date code on barrel are factory deep and fully legible. Price: $190 SOLD
 
6. 1937 Parker Royal Challenger (silver pearl herringbone, NPT, button filler, 14k F nib). This is the full-sized model, measuring 5 1/8” capped. The Royal Challenger is considerably scarcer and more desirable compared to other Challenger models; it was made in limited numbers for only 4 years and the stunning herringbone color patterns are like nothing else that Parker ever made. This one is made of celluloid in silver pearl with a black herringbone motif. Profile and trim configuration is similar to a Vacumatic Standard, with triple cap bands and double black jewels. Visulated ink-view window in the section. The clip is one of my favorites: a stepped Art Deco design that echoes the herringbone pattern of the celluloid. This pen is a button filler. To fill simply unscrew the blind cap, submerse the nib, and depress the brass button once. 14k Parker Pen nib lays down a smooth and consistent F line with a bit of softness (see WRITING SAMPLE). Condition: near mint [B+]. This is the last pen from my own collection. Perfect color. Like all grey Parkers, the vast majority of Royal Challengers in this color show discoloration, usually to green or brown. I’ve had 6-7 silver pearl herringbone examples over the years, and this has been the only one that shows no discoloration. Even the ink-view window in the section has mint transparency and color – not even any yellowing! Aside from a couple short scratches on the clip tassie, nickel-plated trim is also pristine – no brassing or other noteworthy flaws. Celluloid has a smooth, lustrous surface with no deep scratches or other notable blemishes - scarcely even any microscratches. Manufacturer imprint and date code on barrel are factory deep and fully legible. Short of New Old Stock and stickered, you’d be hard-pressed to find a nicer example of this pen anywhere. Price: $360 SOLD
 
7. 1934 Parker Vacumatic Standard w/ Longitudinal Striations (black w/ vertical striations, celluloid, Vacumatic Lockdown filler, 14k Two-Tone F nib). This full-sized model measures 5 1/16” capped. The horizontally-oriented transparent striations we identify with the Vacumatic were not introduced for black pens until late 1934. Earlier models were either opaque, entirely clear (“Crystal”), or had longitudinal striations like this one. Rather than being made of wrapped celluloid, like the longitudinally striated Vac Duofolds 10 years later, the barrel of this pen was bored from celluloid rod stock through what David Isaacson describes as a “butcher-block type process.” As he notes, “if one rotates a 1934-1935 "windows" pen, in one axis the 4-5 clarity stripes will show, but at 90 degree rotation the pen will look solid black (imagine looking at cube of butcher-block table material. Looking at it one way one sees the many sealed-together layers, at other axis one sees just the outermost lamination, losing the multilayer effect.” Such is the case with this pen, which appears striated when one rotates it until you get to the side with the barrel imprint, which appears opaque. The rest of the pen is what one would expect from Parker’s flagship Standard Vac: pre-Blue Diamond Clip, triple cap rings, double black jewels, and metal lockdown filler. To fill, simply unscrew the blind cap, depress the plunger while turning to unlock it, submerse the nib, and depress the plunger until the barrel is full. Two-Tone 14k Vac Arrow nib lays down a smooth and consistent F line (see WRITING SAMPLE). Condition: excellent [B]. Gold-plated trim is clean aside to brassing of the lower cap band on one side of the cap (see timestamp photo) and slivers of brassing to the sides of the clip arrow and cap tassie. A bit of wear to the rhodium plating on the left side of the nib, but honestly looks much better in person with higher contrast between the rhodium and gold arrow. Celluloid has a smooth, lustrous surface with no deep scratches or other notable blemishes apart from subtle marks on the barrel from where the cap was screwed on and posted. Excellent transparency with ink-level clearly visible when pen is held to light (DETAIL PHOTO). Manufacturer imprint and date code on barrel are factory deep and fully legible. An uncommon early Vac. Price: $240 SOLD
 
8. 1939 Parker Vacumatic Senior Maxima (Burgundy, celluloid, GPT, Vacumatic Speedline filler, 14k F Superflex nib). This 2nd-generation oversized Vac has a thick girth and measures 5 3/8” capped. Burgundy Pearl vies with Azure Blue as the scarcest and most desirable catalogued Senior Maxima color; this is the first I’ve ever owned or sold though I’ve sold a couple blues. Gold-plated trim includes wide chevron cap band, tassies for its double black jewels, and blue diamond clip signifying Parker’s lifetime guarantee – all features one would expect to find on a 2nd-gen Vac. Also unique to 2nd-gen models is the longer blind cap with aluminum Speedline filler, an innovation over the lockdown fillers of the 1st generation. But what truly sets this pen apart is its 14k OS Vac Arrow nib, which is a monster! The overwhelming majority of Vacs came equipped with nibs that are impeccable writers yet decidedly firm. This one yields Super-Flexible variation and softness, laying down a smooth and consistent F line that widens to a 4B+ (approx 2.3mm) under light pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). Easy variation, responsive snap-back, and reliably wet flow over its full range of flex make it a great choice for calligraphic writing styles such as Copperplate and Spencerian. Condition: excellent+/near mint [B+]. Gold-plated trim shows no brassing or other notable flaws – perhaps just some very minor wear on the points of the clip arrow and top feathers of the clip but it’s honestly hard to tell. Barrel transparency is out of this world! Near mint transparency that’s clear in color with just a hint of yellow, making ink level readily visible when held to light (LAMPLIGHT NATURAL LIGHT). Celluloid has a smooth, lustrous finish with no deep scratches or other noteworthy blemishes - scarcely even any microscratches. Manufacturer imprint and date code on barrel are deep and fully legible. A scarce pen to find to find in any condition with any nib, but in such immaculate shape and with this nib, it might just be the finest Vac I’ve ever offered. Price $680 SOLD
 
 
 
Shipping: Pens purchased on the weekend are mailed on Tuesday. Otherwise they are mailed within 2 business days of payment. All pens that do not come with their original boxes are packaged in PVC or thick plastic tubes to protect them in transit. To CONUS locations the following shipping options are available:

• USPS First-Class with tracking for $5 Due to the delivery delays that continue under postmaster general DeJoy, I strongly recommend that the Priority shipping option be chosen. All packages will include full insurance (covered by me). Rest assured that a full refund is guaranteed (issued through Paypal) in the event of a lost parcel and you will not have to wait until I receive a reimbursement from the USPS.
  
• USPS Priority with tracking for $9
  

International Customers: Please contact me for shipping quote if located abroad (delivery confirmation required). (Note: due to the issues stated above, my international shipping options are currently limited. PM for more info). Please do not ask me to commit mail fraud by altering the declared value of a pen for customs. Not only am I registered as a business but shipping insurance is based on declared value.
New York Customers: For tax purposes, I am now required to add an 8% sales tax on any sale made in the state of NY. If your shipping address is in NY state, please let me know before payment to receive an adjusted total. Discounted shipping is included for NY State residents to help defray the extra cost.
Ordering: Pens are placed on hold for the first person to reply to the thread and PM me with firm request to purchase (no chat DMs please). A request with the words “I'd like to purchase [pen number]” would be best to avoid confusion), to which I’ll reply with payment details. Please note that a message inquiring into a price discount does not suffice to place a pen on hold. If I haven't received Paypal payment within 24 hrs after a hold is placed, then pen(s) may become available to the next person.
Payment, & Guarantee: Payment by Paypal only. All pens are guaranteed to be in the condition in which I've described them. If I've missed something objectionable or the filling mechanism is not fully functional, the buyer may contact me up to 7 days after receiving the pen for a full refund (issued once I receive the pen back in the same condition as sold). Buyer must ship the return no later than 2 weeks after it was delivered to receive a refund. I've sold pens online for over a decade. Please check my past listings here as well as on the classifieds and historical sales forums on FPN (username: Estragon) and FPGeeks (popcod) for some of my previous offerings.
 
 
OTHER OPEN LISTINGS

• Superflex Waterman 0552 1/2 Overlay
  
• WA Hartline Self-Blotting Pen w/ Masonic Emblem
  
• Waterman Nurse’s Sets
  
• Off-Catalogue Sheaffer Stubby Balance Lifetime
  
• Psychedelic Bayard Excselsior
  
• Waterman Taperite Citation
  
• Conklin Enduras, Nozac
  

Background- 26M. FIRST RELATIONSHIP OF MY LIFE. ITS WITH MY FEMALE school time BEST FRIEND. (Same age) (I have been with women but it was never a formal thing. Just as close friends) I have had a history of having a bad image attached to this whole relationship concept. So it was a big step to finally get into one after struggling for years. I am a kind of person who is organised. Take health and wellness seriously. I like to read and stuff. Not very fun and full of life kind of guy. Can be termed boring sometimes. My gf is opposite of this - very lively and talkative.
Now, I have been with her in this relationship for about 2 months and arguments have increased. Turns out I am the controlling person and it’s cuz of that most arguments happen I think. I want to improve and also would like your opinion on my present situation and what is lacking in whom.
EXAMPLE 1 - she is a healthcare worker for past 5 years. And the management provides latex powdered gloves which are also thin. So I advised her to have good nitrile gloves as it’s for her own safety and in a way my safety too. (Latex also causes problem with her skin). To which she also agrees but never takes any step. She has a laidback attitude towards many things which I clearly don’t have. (PS - this is not the first time I told her this over the last two years I told her as friend very strongly on this). Now this annoys me. HER VIEW - she will get the gloves (which she always says and might as well get it but I don’t want to be the one to tell her that re stock them, which can surely happen given her laidbackness.)she says - she knows her work as she has been doing it for long. And she is not a kid. She is concerned about her well being more than anyone else. THIS ALL ENDS UP ON A BAD NOTE.
EXAMPLE 2- I have told her to consult gynaecologist get her PAP SMEAR test done which should be every 3 years. I also told her that vaccine is available which she should talk about with her gynaecologist as efficacy of it reduces if you delay in taking the shots. Ideally one should take it before being sexually active. ( WE BOTH ARE VIRGINS). Again she has a laid back attitude. SHE SAYS - she has known about it for years and has been planning to get it. ME- then why has she not gotten it. SHE- I know it’s important and that she has been lazy etc. she will do it at her own pace and I should not be forcing her to get these things done. She knows how to think and I should not be over protective about things cuz it is suffocating at times. ME- it’s been more than a year since I first told. Moreover it’s something she also wants. I fail to see any logic. TALK ENDED ON A BAD NOTE.
EXAMPLE 3 HER FEMALE BESTFRIEND - I do not simply have a liking for her. Which is fine. No issues with my GF. But her best friend triggers me and that ends up having an argument with my GF. Like - she drunk drove once after spending time at her best friend’s house. - they go on trips. Plan is made by her best friend. Now they are least concerned about safety. Rough mountainous roads travelling in bus at night in area known for accidents. ME - I say why don’t you plan your journey during day time.
1) However, I do accept my fault also lies when I sometimes get irritated or annoyed on things which I later realise were not so big. 2) I feel needy at times when she is not able to give time. 3) I feel left out when she is having fun with her friends. 4)I have a tendency of considering myself to be right most of the times. 5)I also overthink and get anxious by it and that really spirals into full on anxiety which leads me to say things I should not have and later on regret. 6) I have a bad habit of giving advice. No one needs me to give them advise. I have reduced that a lot. Someone tells me their problem my first reaction is to find best possible solution. But sometimes all the other person wants is you to hear and not give advise after that.
I have heard things about myself that I am not very emotional. And see things too practically. Finding logic in things.
She is really lovey and she loves me and tries her best. But it’s only been sometime together and the ride has been a little bumpy which raises questions how it will be in future. I want to take steps to improve myself.
TL;DR; - I need you guys to give your opinion AND also guide with your experience how to go about it. What do I need to do to save this relationship. Because if all these things happen too frequently relationship won’t be sustainable for long. I REALLY HOPE THAT SOME OF YOU RELATE WITH MY SITUATION AND TELL ME WHAT TO DO……

Background- 27M. FIRST RELATIONSHIP OF MY LIFE. ITS WITH MY FEMALE school time BEST FRIEND. (Same age) (I have been with women but it was never a formal thing. Just as close friends) I have had a history of having a bad image attached to this whole relationship concept. So it was a big step to finally get into one after struggling for years. I am a kind of person who is organised. Take health and wellness seriously. I like to read and stuff. Not very fun and full of life kind of guy. Can be termed boring sometimes. My gf is opposite of this - very lively and talkative.
Now, I have been with her in this relationship for about 2 months and arguments have increased. Turns out I am the controlling person and it’s cuz of that most arguments happen I think. I want to improve and also would like your opinion on my present situation and what is lacking in whom.
EXAMPLE 1 - she is a healthcare worker for past 5 years. And the management provides latex powdered gloves which are also thin. So I advised her to have good nitrile gloves as it’s for her own safety and in a way my safety too. (Latex also causes problem with her skin). To which she also agrees but never takes any step. She has a laidback attitude towards many things which I clearly don’t have. (PS - this is not the first time I told her this over the last two years I told her as friend very strongly on this). Now this annoys me. HER VIEW - she will get the gloves (which she always says and might as well get it but I don’t want to be the one to tell her that re stock them, which can surely happen given her laidbackness.)she says - she knows her work as she has been doing it for long. And she is not a kid. She is concerned about her well being more than anyone else. THIS ALL ENDS UP ON A BAD NOTE.
EXAMPLE 2- I have told her to consult gynaecologist get her PAP SMEAR test done which should be every 3 years. I also told her that vaccine is available which she should talk about with her gynaecologist as efficacy of it reduces if you delay in taking the shots. Ideally one should take it before being sexually active. ( WE BOTH ARE VIRGINS). Again she has a laid back attitude. SHE SAYS - she has known about it for years and has been planning to get it. ME- then why has she not gotten it. SHE- I know it’s important and that she has been lazy etc. she will do it at her own pace and I should not be forcing her to get these things done. She knows how to think and I should not be over protective about things cuz it is suffocating at times. ME- it’s been more than a year since I first told. Moreover it’s something she also wants. I fail to see any logic. TALK ENDED ON A BAD NOTE.
EXAMPLE 3 HER FEMALE BESTFRIEND - I do not simply have a liking for her. Which is fine. No issues with my GF. But her best friend triggers me and that ends up having an argument with my GF. Like - she drunk drove once after spending time at her best friend’s house. - they go on trips. Plan is made by her best friend. Now they are least concerned about safety. Rough mountainous roads travelling in bus at night in area known for accidents. ME - I say why don’t you plan your journey during day time.
1) However, I do accept my fault also lies when I sometimes get irritated or annoyed on things which I later realise were not so big. 2) I feel needy at times when she is not able to give time. 3) I feel left out when she is having fun with her friends. 4)I have a tendency of considering myself to be right most of the times. 5)I also overthink and get anxious by it and that really spirals into full on anxiety which leads me to say things I should not have and later on regret. 6) I have a bad habit of giving advice. No one needs me to give them advise. I have reduced that a lot. Someone tells me their problem my first reaction is to find best possible solution. But sometimes all the other person wants is you to hear and not give advise after that.
I have heard things about myself that I am not very emotional. And see things too practically. Finding logic in things.
She is really lovey and she loves me and tries her best. But it’s only been sometime together and the ride has been a little bumpy which raises questions how it will be in future. I want to take steps to improve myself.
I need you guys to give your opinion AND also guide with your experience how to go about it. What do I need to do to save this relationship. Because if all these things happen too frequently relationship won’t be sustainable for long. I REALLY HOPE THAT SOME OF YOU RELATE WITH MY SITUATION AND TELL ME WHAT TO DO……

Background- 26M. FIRST RELATIONSHIP OF MY LIFE. ITS WITH MY FEMALE school time BEST FRIEND. (Same age) (I have been with women but it was never a formal thing. Just as close friends) I have had a history of having a bad image attached to this whole relationship concept. So it was a big step to finally get into one after struggling for years. I am a kind of person who is organised. Take health and wellness seriously. I like to read and stuff. Not very fun and full of life kind of guy. Can be termed boring sometimes. My gf is opposite of this - very lively and talkative.
Now, I have been with her in this relationship for about 2 months and arguments have increased. Turns out I am the controlling person and it’s cuz of that most arguments happen I think. I want to improve and also would like your opinion on my present situation and what is lacking in whom.
EXAMPLE 1 - she is a healthcare worker for past 5 years. And the management provides latex powdered gloves which are also thin. So I advised her to have good nitrile gloves as it’s for her own safety and in a way my safety too. (Latex also causes problem with her skin). To which she also agrees but never takes any step. She has a laidback attitude towards many things which I clearly don’t have. (PS - this is not the first time I told her this over the last two years I told her as friend very strongly on this). Now this annoys me. HER VIEW - she will get the gloves (which she always says and might as well get it but I don’t want to be the one to tell her that re stock them, which can surely happen given her laidbackness.)she says - she knows her work as she has been doing it for long. And she is not a kid. She is concerned about her well being more than anyone else. THIS ALL ENDS UP ON A BAD NOTE.
EXAMPLE 2- I have told her to consult gynaecologist get her PAP SMEAR test done which should be every 3 years. I also told her that vaccine is available which she should talk about with her gynaecologist as efficacy of it reduces if you delay in taking the shots. Ideally one should take it before being sexually active. ( WE BOTH ARE VIRGINS). Again she has a laid back attitude. SHE SAYS - she has known about it for years and has been planning to get it. ME- then why has she not gotten it. SHE- I know it’s important and that she has been lazy etc. she will do it at her own pace and I should not be forcing her to get these things done. She knows how to think and I should not be over protective about things cuz it is suffocating at times. ME- it’s been more than a year since I first told. Moreover it’s something she also wants. I fail to see any logic. TALK ENDED ON A BAD NOTE.
EXAMPLE 3 HER FEMALE BESTFRIEND - I do not simply have a liking for her. Which is fine. No issues with my GF. But her best friend triggers me and that ends up having an argument with my GF. Like - she drunk drove once after spending time at her best friend’s house. - they go on trips. Plan is made by her best friend. Now they are least concerned about safety. Rough mountainous roads travelling in bus at night in area known for accidents. ME - I say why don’t you plan your journey during day time.
1) However, I do accept my fault also lies when I sometimes get irritated or annoyed on things which I later realise were not so big. 2) I feel needy at times when she is not able to give time. 3) I feel left out when she is having fun with her friends. 4)I have a tendency of considering myself to be right most of the times. 5)I also overthink and get anxious by it and that really spirals into full on anxiety which leads me to say things I should not have and later on regret. 6) I have a bad habit of giving advice. No one needs me to give them advise. I have reduced that a lot. Someone tells me their problem my first reaction is to find best possible solution. But sometimes all the other person wants is you to hear and not give advise after that.
I have heard things about myself that I am not very emotional. And see things too practically. Finding logic in things.
SOME EXTRA DETAILS 6) I am a good listener. My GF is not. She tries her best though. 7) I usually get to know how she is feeling that day just by talking to her and I ask about it. But she is not able to get how I feel on a particular day at times. 8) I am not very expressive. It usually takes the other person to create the environment to share my distress. She creates that sometimes as opposed to me doing it every time for her. She is talkative and expressive so she just tells everything and has no problem expressing. So sometimes I just have to keep things inside. P.S. - This is my problem that I am not very expressive with my feelings good or bad I suppose, and it’s not my GF’s role to extract it out which I want her to at times cuz I do the same for her when needed.
She is really lovey and she loves me and tries her best. But it’s only been sometime together and the ride has been a little bumpy which raises questions how it will be in future. I want to take steps to improve myself.
I need you guys to give your opinion AND also guide with your experience how to go about it. What do I need to do to save this relationship. Because if all these things happen too frequently relationship won’t be sustainable for long. I REALLY HOPE THAT SOME OF YOU RELATE WITH MY SITUATION AND TELL ME WHAT TO DO……
Regards.

"There it is," I mutter to myself, unaware that I spoke out loud. The shine atop one of the sparse rocks floating far in the distance is completely absorbing my attention. My thoughts come to a stand still, and I begin to feel a chill run amok beneath my skin.
Only a moment earlier, I had been deep in thought, unable to pull my eyes away from the infinite stars that were visible through the window of the transport. To me, space always brought to mind endless possibilities, freedom, and escape from the doldrums of my every day life. Now, being engulfed in it, it made me feel fearful, frightened, and insignificant. Strange, really, how much you can yearn for something and the real experience can change your perspective so wildly.
I notice after a moment that several other passengers are now also looking out the windows with the same awestruck expression on their faces as on mine. When the captain beams excitedly over the intercom, half of us practically jump out of our skin. "Welcome to the Gresgarith Machine, ladies and gentlemen! You can glimpse the structure in the distance through the port window; that's to our left for those of you without nautical directional knowledge. We will have to navigate around a few smaller objects in order to arrive safely, and we expect to land in about five minutes. Further instructions will be provided when we land."
Nobody knows where the "Gresgarith Machine" came from, or who made it. After our scientists found it, about twenty years ago, there were all sorts of theories about its origins, its purpose, and why it was so far away from any living race. Some people have gone as far as to say that the chunk of rock it is attached to is a remnant of an ancient world that was destroyed by their own powers. Most professionals don't agree with this reasoning, of course, especially since you'd think there would be other pieces of technology attached or floating around the rest of the belt, but no such thing has ever been discovered despite the many billions of tax dollars spent on the effort.
The volume of the room becomes almost enough to block out my own thoughts as everybody begins talking. Most of them look as nervous as I do. Even my best friend, Walter, who convinced me to take the trip with him, can't keep from talking, though I'm not listening to a word.
The only information we have on the "Machine" is based around the script on four pillars surrounding it. Interesting curvatures, overlapping characters, and a few etched images were what the linguists had to piece through, and it took several years just to figure out what any of it meant. The script relates to unusual rituals done at the location, by placing citizens onto the eleven different tracks on the "Machine" to see who could survive to the ending. It also states that surviving was greatly rewarded, even though by our best estimates the death rate was fairly low. The name, "Gresgarith", was created by one of the linguists who became too absorbed in studying the language and created sounds for the text, even though we haven't a clue what it really sounds like.
I continue to stare out the window at the currently dormant mechanical monstrosity that we are moving towards. Seeing it this close does more justice than any picture, video or holo-projection ever could do for it. The "Machine" sits on top of an oblong shaped asteroid and is roughly cube shaped with the four aforementioned pillars sitting slightly away from its footprint's four corners. The "Machine" itself is fairly hard to describe with words due to the complexity of the design. It has a solid stone roof with eleven thin chute-like holes where up to eleven people may enter at once. The ceiling is held up by four inner stone columns at each corner that reach all the way down to the stone base. Everything else inside the "Machine" is made out of a metal very similar to steel. Practically covering the ceiling from the inside are mechanical arms, grippers, saws, and other unusual looking devices.
The chute tracks from the entrance drop down and the eleven paths separate out into a total of thirty three, three for each path that are reached from what are called the "Keys", ring-like breaks in the original paths that sway to and fro to drop riders onto three split tracks. From there, the tracks dip further into a large metal box known as the "Mystery Box" that contains mysteries we will soon be experiencing, but are not visible from the outside. About a third of the way through is a large gap known as the "Plunge", with an assortment of very craggy looking rocks at the bottom, the tops of which I almost think I can see spots of blood on, even though I know the "Machine" uses some sort of bio-matter cleansing after operating. After the gap and far above the rocks is where the tracks continue, now back down to eleven again. Unlike the first half of the "Machine", this half is completely open and leaves nothing to the imagination. Various machines are visible, currently resting but their meaning is definitely clear even in this dormant state. It looks like their namesake, the "Butchering Plant", and definitely does not look like something humans would normally willingly subject themselves to. After the exposed machinery, the tracks resemble eleven treadmills, five on each side and one down the middle with two big gaps on either side of the middle track. Once you reach the "Winners' 'Mills", you have survived the machine and can finally relax. The tracks lead to a platform at the end, a human-made addition, to allow extracting survivors.
The ship is now slowly making its descent to the roof. A long spiel from our representative commences, and I only halfway hear it due to the increased chatter in the room. Aside from letting us know they were "firing up the Machine", what he is saying doesn't sound terribly interesting anyways. Oddly enough, there is the option for people to be able to opt out of actually going in (no refund), even though we've coughed up our life's savings just to come this far. After waiting a minute for anybody to decide, which really resulted in a long, agonizing minute of not-so-calm silence, not a single person has decided to back out. With a particularly disturbing smile, the man leads everybody into another room on the ship, where we will shower and don our specially designed suits for our ride.
A decade ago, we humans decided to convert the "Machine" into our own thrill ride. From all accounts, it seems to be the most frightening experience a person could ever hope for, especially since it currently holds a death rate of over one tenth of visitors. Several of Earth's governments have tried to outlaw the "Machine", calling it things like "The Suicide Machine" and "The Human Blender", but private enterprises have continued supporting use of it, though of course they charge an exorbitant fee. I spent the money I had been saving up for the last three years for this trip, signed my liability waivers (there were at least twenty different kinds that all said about the same thing), and here I am.
I read that being nude is considered optimal, but so many customers complained about it that they started making skin-tight latex suits for each person that signed on. After all, it's okay to allow them to place us in a veritable death machine, but they'll have hell if we have to be naked! Sometimes I just don't understand my fellow humans, but there's really not much a single person can do given the circumstances.
After cleaning and suiting up, we are all being ushered into eleven different lines to line up with the entry chutes of the "Machine" in the lower cargo bay. I happen to be third in the second to the right line and only after craning my neck and looking very carefully do I notice Walter near the end of one of the left lines, which leaves me completely in the company of strangers. Directly in front of me is a rather plain looking woman, even in the skin-tight suit; behind me is a man that looks like he could be a lawyer or maybe a stock broker. Curiosity gets the best of me there, but just before I can ask, we all feel the shudder of the escape hatches beginning to open, which slowly gives us our first up close glimpse of the "Machine".
The dead air which slowly passes into the ship from the pseudo atmosphere around the "Machine" feels like a hot desert day that dries your skin and makes breathing difficult. As the doors complete their journey, the vessel shakes again briefly and I am forced to regain my balance. It is then that I notice the scent, not one emanating from the ominous structure before is, but of the fear that surrounds me and everybody else in the room. I can feel sweat building up on my forehead now, and my spine seems to have changed consistency in a matter of seconds, making standing difficult.
In front of us, not only has the metallic monstrosity been greatly increased in size visually, but it is also now alive. The mechanical arms are moving in an odd but methodical forward and back motion, occasionally opening and closing their grips. The eleven swing "Keys" that split the tracks into thirty three near the entrance are swaying back and forth. Just beyond them, we can see the red glow of the fires within the "Mystery Box" fluctuating. Farther in the distance, the "Butchering Plant" can be see running through motions, but they are too distant to see in any detail.
While we look on and begin doubting our having a future, the "Machine" then stops, poised for action. For the second time on this trip, everybody is startled from the captain's voice over the intercom. "The Machine has just completed warming up and is now in a ready state. Will everybody please walk forward and stand on the spots highlighted in front of you? The starting mechanism will not be switched until everybody is in place. After the ride, we will reposition ourselves on the other side of the Machine to pick you up. Have a fun ride, folks!"
For a while, nobody budges, afraid to be the one to take the first step. Slowly, however, we make our way forward, out of the safety of the human-made transport ship, and onto the entrance of the "Machine". It is really just a simple metal plane, like a floor made of metal, except for the eleven lines with eleven positions marked off that permit up to one hundred twenty one people to take this journey at a time. With every step, I can feel my heart pounding harder and harder, until it feels like it will save me the agony of the ride to come by bursting out of my chest. I realize as I reach my designated location that I have stopped breathing and have to concentrate to start again.
Straps come out of the ground on the space I am standing, latching onto my feet and holding me in place. As I stare, shocked at this occurrence, I hear a scream ahead of me as the first line of "riders" begins their journey, the metal sliding down with a long hiss. They're going to die, all of them, even me. There's nothing now, I can't turn back. Another hiss causes me to being sweating even more profusely as the lady in front of me disappears down the chute. I can hear someone nearby crying, others screaming, but their journey hasn't even started yet. I turn to see if there's someone who will stop it all, who'll let me change my mind now because I don't want to go on, and then the ground falls out below me.
Before I totally regain my wits, I can feel the metal behind me begin to level out, which starts me moving forward on the track, sliding on my back, my feet facing forward. I am crying, but I try not to flail or stop myself as that would mean certain death. I decide to look ahead toward my feet, at the wrong time, and see one of the "Keys" ahead. The path splits into two then reconnects, making a ring-like shape that has a huge gaping hole in the middle. This section sways back and forth to deliver riders onto three new tracks.
I start screaming uncontrollably, my heart is pounding so hard my head is hurting, and I feel my stomach turn to lead. Yet as soon as I feel I am definitely going to fly off into that gap, I feel my weight being shifted from the path below me, and I start rushing off to the left. There are no bumpers or anything to assure me my place on the path, but instead the edge only drops off to a stony demise, about a hundred feet down, doing little to calm me. Half way around the "Key", I could almost swear I saw bodies amongst the stones below, before I feel myself jerked the other direction to complete the circle. Looking forward again, I can see where the two sides connect and become a single path again, and see that it is transiting between the left and the middle path ahead. It won't make it to the next path in time! I'm going to fall!
Just as I get back onto the single path, it increases speed and connects with the middle track ahead, shifting my weight just enough so that I land on it without suffering any real injury. I begin picking up speed as this section descends into the "Mystery Box". As soon as I realize there are now walls on either side of me, I feel a little tension release from my muscles, until a spinning saw passes within a couple inches of my face. I see other machinery pass so closely that I can feel the air shifting from their movement, and what little comfort the walls gave me vanishes. Just before a drill-line apparatus could plunge into my belly, I begin to drop even faster and the walls on either side of me disappear. Inside I can see the tracks all are at different heights, mine being one of the lowest. Flames burst out at seemingly random intervals and since there is no other light in here, they also serve to allow me to see what little else I can see here. Then I feel a jet of fire just to the left of me, making my sweat dry and stick to my skin. The air is harder to breathe in here, and the constant screams around me cause me to practically swallow my tongue. I could swear I saw someone being burned alive a few tracks over, but before I could see any clearer, I feel myself falling into the "Plunge".
Unlike the previous times, I do not feel the same mind-numbing fear, almost calm, perhaps because I am indeed falling and the threat of it has passed. My head tilts backwards as I fall, allowing me to look up and see the stones below me quickly getting closer. Before I can make out any details, mechanical arms latch onto my arms and legs, yanking me to a stop rather uncomfortably, and begin lifting me upward. As I am slowing being brought up to the second portion of the "Machine", I can clearly see that there is a dead body below amongst the rocks, but I can see no details at this distance. As soon as my brain realizes what I am looking at, I can feel myself convulsing even though the arms gripping me don't allow me to move much. I close my eyes and start breathing in through my nose, out through my mouth, trying to calm myself. Just as I feel myself coming under control again, I am dropped onto the next track, far above the rocks.
Again sliding on my back, I look ahead and can see the "Butchering Plant" rushing toward me. What little calm I felt during my fall quickly disappears as I see blood pour out of the machinery on the track to my left. Before I even get the chance to blink, blades, razors, saws, drills and other devious tools fly at me from various directions. At one point, I feel a stab in my gut, followed by pressure, pain and moisture. I don't dare assess the damage, since moving would be my undoing, so I instead let my fear cause me to freeze. My vision starts to fade, the whirring of the "Machine" gets quieter, and I feel that I am losing consciousness, when I am suddenly jerked to my feet.
After shaking my head, I see that I have landed on the treadmill, the official calming, safety portion of the "Machine". I risk a glance at my belly where the stabbing occurred and see that I only received a tiny puncture, no more than a scratch really; the moisture seems to have been added by the "Machine" itself, a thin white pasty substance, perhaps to cause me to believe that I was going to die since that's certainly how I felt. Now that I realize I am going to live, a sort of hazy, uncertainty takes the place of the fear and despair that held me during the ride itself. I find that I have great trouble thinking or concentrating on anything at the moment; I am in a drifting, sedated state of mind.
I notice the woman ahead of me survived. While looking at her, she turns around with a forced smile and gives me a thumbs-up, her hand very visibly shaking the whole while. I just stare back for a brief moment, then start to glance about at the other survivors. Most of them seem as shook up and wobbly as I do, and a couple aren't even standing but are on their hands and knees, staring downward. Sitting and almost looking vaguely bored, Walter is busy talking to nobody in particular, though distance thankfully prevents me from hearing any of it. I don't know if his random prattling would even be remotely coherent after what we just went through.
I think far enough to try counting, to see how many people did not make it so far when I notice some motion directly above me. Looking up, I can see the ends of some of the mechanical arms connected to the roof, at least a hundred feet over our heads. The arms seem to be keeping themselves busy behind us when I notice three red dots that seem rather out of place up above. As I squint to try to discern what they may be for, I see that one of the arms is moving in my direction and I can hear it coming from behind me! Instinctively, I duck just in time to see it whiz past me. Two large fingers latch onto the head of the woman in front of me and begin to lift her off of the "Winners' 'Mill".
Completely dumbfounded, I simply stare as she is carried faster and faster upward while thrashing and screaming. After only a few seconds, her head meets up with one of the red spots on the ceiling without so much as an audible sound. The momentum in her body, now free of the mechanical arm, first bounces off the roof, then begins spinning awkwardly as it starts falling back downward. In no time it breaks free of the gravity field around the "Machine", still spinning, and begins drifting out of sight.

In this digital age, a lot of folks won’t have much—if any—experience of what it’s like editing old-skool on yer actual film, so here’s a little trip down memory lane and a glimpse into the Jurassic Age of film editing.
I started as an assistant editor doing corporate documentaries and promos for some fairly decent clients, like London Transport and British Aerospace, shot on either 16 or 35mm film. Most mornings, I’d troll into the cutting room around 9:30am bearing coffee and bacon sarnies, which would be promptly administered to the editor (it is essential to keep your editor fed regularly as otherwise they tend to drift off while working and get rather grumpy). Suitably caffeinated and replete, I would then lace up the cutting copy onto the Steenbeck.jpg), sharpen up a handful of chinagraph pencils and lay out a fresh white cotton glove for the guvnor.
I’d then look at what material had come in from the labs overnight. OK, today I’ve got four cans of film (1200’ if it was 16mm and 4000’ for 35mm) and maybe a couple of reels of ¼” audio. First job is to hoof it a few minutes into Soho to the little transfer facility on the second floor of a faintly seedy tenement building, where my man can transfer the audio to perforated mag stock. That’ll take a couple of hours so back to the cutting room to watch the rushes with the editor and director. Once we’ve gone through everything mostly to make sure we’ve gone everything that was supposed to have been shot and it’s useable stuff, I now have to log all the footage shot by shot into the cutting room logs. If you have a nice camera crew, you’ll also have the camera logs which will show slate numbers, footage count and shot description. I stick the reel onto a PicSync and go through each shot in the list, transcribing it to the log along with the shot’s start and end edge number. This is like a little serial number printing along the edge of the film emulsion during manufacture; part remains static (unique for every roll of film) and part is an incrementing number every few frames, and is what the negative cutter will use to match-cut the neg to the cutting copy.
I’ll pick up the sound transfers from round the corner and then get on with syncing the rushes. I won’t bore you with a detailed description but as long as you remember a few basic principles you’ll be fine. Never cut picture; bring sound up to picture, right-hand side of thePicSync is in sync, the left-hand side isn’t—lather, rinse, repeat. A reel of film would generally take me around half an hour to sync. Quite often the sound recordist will have also recorded some wild tracks along the way so these need to be split out and filed and logged separately
Finished up syncing and now it’s off to be rubber-numbered. This involves visiting another little facility in another faintly seedy Soho tenement where the gnome behind the counter will imprint an eight-digit code all down the film and soundtrack every sixteen frames. The first four are fixed and unique to each roll, like AD02 or B2D7 that we specify for our own internal purposes. The other four are numbers that increment by one every sixteen frames. These numbers are what we’ll use in-house, so when the editor calls for “four frames past BR17 0244” you know exactly where to go to find it. You could even get the numbers printed in a range of natty colours, which also provided a useful way of categorising material in-house. BTW, it’s called rubber-numbering because the ink used to print is a latex-based compound.
The film is duly printed up and collected an hour later and then you go back through each pair of reels transcribing the start and end rubber numbers for each shot into the cutting room logs. Then it’s slice-and-dice time: each shot is cut off the reel and hung up in a trim bin. This is a tall rectangular metal frame on wheels with both sides of the top bar holding lots of little wire hooks and a capacious black canvas bag extending from about half-way up down to the floor where you hang up these clips.
Now let me go back a moment: at the start of the day while the editor and I have been stuffing our faces with bacon goodies and java, we’ll have been working out a plan of action for the day. For example, if what the editor wanted to start with was already prepared material, I’d get a list of shots to pull before doing the donkey work so he could get on and rough-cut the next sequence while I was playing silly buggers with the various facilities houses. If what he wanted to cut next was what I was prepping, he’d noodle away fine-tuning earlier sequences.
Come the afternoon (and after a tincture or two in the local hostelry at lunchtime) we’d get a kind of a groove going in the edit. I’d sit over his shoulder while he edited. This is an interesting dynamic: since I was already so familiar with the material by dint of having prepared it, and having a pretty good memory model of where it was in our filing system (gotta love those cutting room logs) I could either lay my hands on the shot he wanted, or suggest alternatives.
Frequently I’d get asked to find a suitable piece of music to go with a sequence. I’d pop next door to our recording studio with shelves groaning with 12” vinyl from the major music libraries like KPM and Bruton, thumb my way through the catalogues and look for a few choice pieces. I’d record these onto ¼” and again pop over to my little man to get them transferred to mag.
Occasionally, when the sequence was a music montage, I’d be asked to cut a little segment together which, after a suitable polish by the editor, would end up in the edit—bonus!
So this is pretty much the daily grind of a lowly assistant editor, and thus it continues until…
Bang! You’ve finished the edit—smoked salmon canapés and trebles all round! Your picture reel is now locked, the client has signed off on completion of picture edit and content and now you can get up to the next stage of the shenanigans.
The cutting copy can now go to the negative cutter—except for one last vital step. You have to check every single crossfade or fade in/out, marked up on the cutting copy, for sufficient handles at either end. Let’s assume that you’re at 25fps and need a two second crossfade. Since a cutting copy only contains cuts (for what should be obvious reasons), how do you indicate to the neg cutter that this particular cut is actually a crossfade? Simple: in the case of a two second crossfade at 25fps you start at the cut and count back twenty five frames. At this point draw a vertical line with your trusty chinagraph pencil. Now go back to the edit point: draw a diagonal line connecting the top of cut point to the bottom of the vertical line drawn earlier. Repeat going twenty five frames the other way from the cut point.
What this all means is that the original media for outgoing shot needs an additional twenty five frames past the cut point, and the incoming shot consequently needs the same. So how do we actually create that crossfade?
Let’s start with an observation: throughout the history of film, the two most common transitions to use are the cut and the crossfade. 99.95% of all films throughout history rely on these two fundamental storytelling techniques. We can do this with the classic A/B negative cut. Essentially the neg cutter starts out with two reels: referring to the cutting copy, he finds the first piece of negative and puts that on the A reel with an identical length of opaque black leader in parallel on the B reel. At the cut point, this second shot is put on the B reel and a corresponding length of the aforesaid black leader on added on the end of the first shot on A reel. Again; rinse, lather, repeat.
Why?
Unlike the cutting copy, where shots are literally sticky-taped together, the joints in the neg are cemented to their companion leader by overlapping the joint by one frame. This becomes important when the reels go through the optical printer as the stresses imposed by the printer during the process would rip apart the joins if they were simply taped together.
The optical printer takes the two reels of negative and through a series of mirrors and prisms combines the two light paths and projects them onto a fresh roll of negative film. When it comes to the crossfade, this is actually achieved by varying the printer light intensity for the duration of the overlap on the A and B rolls.
The two rolls of neg will then go off to the lab for printing and from that comes what’s called the answer print, usually a low-contrast projection print to facilitate colour-grading and transfer to its eventual master format, 1” C-format video.
Then comes tracklaying: this is where we add is all the extra sound like background atmos and spot SFX. Most edit decks like the Steenbeck only have two audio heads. One is obviously for sync sound and the other is usually music. For this job we’ll go back to the PicSync which has four audio heads. By this stage I’ll have gone through the film with the editor making a list of what additional audio we’ll need, and arranged for all of that material to be transferred to mag track. Then we’ll go through and cut in the additional sound four tracks at a time while writing out the dubbing charts: this is a graphical representation of every additional track with the in and out footage count for every piece of mag track we’ve cut in, and drawing in crossfades, fade-ins and out etc on big sheets of paper marked out in columns—it's a bit like a musical score but for audio. For some sounds, like wind and rain that are continuous and have no obvious start or end point, we’ll make big 20 or 30 second loops out of which will then go up on one of the loop machines in the dubbing suite so the dubbing editor can just spin these in as necessary.
Most times we’d end up with 18-24 tracks of audio, plus a bunch of loops. Then it’s off to the dubbing suite where the wizard behind the desk will read the charts and mix down all those tracks to a single stereo strip of mag track—we call this the M&E, or music and effects track.
Next it’s voice-over recording. Once that’s done, the ¼” tape is again transferred to mag stock and then back to the dubbing theatre to mix that with the M&E track to produce the final audio master.
Now we have a finished answer print and the mixed audio, so it’s off to colour-grading and transfer to 1” C-format video. So we should be done, right? Well not quite: quite often, some of the material we’ve used has been sourced from video. These segments need to be telerecorded to film with in-vision timecode which we use to edit into the cutting copy. This means we end up with several sections in the answer print that are blank—when the neg cutter comes across segments with in-vision timecode, they know to lay in black leader for these sections. To finish off, we now have to go to an on-line video edit suite to reinsert these segments from the original video source into the final video master. One memorable on-line edit took 26 hours straight for a one hour programme. Fortunately we had comfy sofas and excellent in-house catering facilities to keep us fed and watered.
Finally, after many months of work, we have our final film. Phew!
While the above is reasonably indicative of mid-level documentary-style filmmaking, feature films were even more involved and even more labour-intensive.
The modern NLE provides a vast range of tools in-situ that previously would have required the services of multiple third-party facility houses. Whilst this affords some huge advantages in terms of cost and turn-around time, there is nothing quite like the physicality of editing on film. That tangible and physical hands-on approach teaches the process of editing in ways that digital editing can’t emulate. Would I ever go back to editing on film? No, but it taught me how film is put together and its legacy is an essential part of my editing process to this day.
Weirdly, the thing I almost miss the most is the smell of cracking open the latest rush print from the lab.

Brooke and I took full advantage of Luke’s absences, such as his Sunday morning football practices, to have candid conversations with one another. To do that, and other things. The conversation we had on the Sunday after the Ren fair was one of the more difficult ones.
After Luke left, Brooke walked up to me and gave me a big, long hug. I would be less than honest if I didn’t admit that I started to weep. My ego was bruised as was my ass, and I was worried about losing my job. I was already feeling very vulnerable, but Brooke’s expression of sympathy pushed me over the edge.
She guided me onto the couch and tenderly wiped the tears from my eyes with a tissue, saying, “I know that yesterday was incredibly difficult for you. I’m sorry.”
“What am I going to do? Should I submit my resignation on Monday to Benkins?”
“Are you crazy? Of course not. I know you’re upset, but it’s important not to overreact.”
“But you saw what happened, Brooke. You were there! Three of my students saw me shining Neil’s boots on my knees, dressed in tights. I cleaned their shoes! Like a submissive fool. I’m sure they took photographs. Then they saw me in the stocks. I’m pretty sure at least one of them hit me with that damn tawse. It still hurts to sit down.”
For whatever reason, I had not yet decided whether to tell Brooke about Paul Betz’s threat of exposing me. I wasn’t sure if that was because it was too humiliating to share even with her, or because I wasn’t yet sure if the threat was real. I had no idea what he expected from me in return for his silence, and hoped he was just joking around. I sincerely doubted that, however.
“My reputation will be completely destroyed. I’ll be the laughingstock of the entire campus,” I persisted.
“Wait a minute. Think this through. First of all, we were all at a Ren faire. It’s all about fantasy, playing a part. In medieval times, there were the powerful and the powerless, just like today. You know this better than anyone. So you were playing a submissive part. Big deal. The key word here is ‘play’. The fact that you don’t have such a huge ego that you allowed yourself to play a submissive part is to your credit, if anything. And I’m sure Neil would back you up on that, if it ever did get back to other faculty members or students.”
I groaned, but, as always, Brooke made a lot of sense, and I found it difficult to argue against her coherently. Nevertheless, I was convinced that real damage, likely irreparable damage, had been done yesterday and I wasn’t ready to let it go that easily.
“But I was on my knees shining their shoes! And I’m pretty sure they saw my erection. They were laughing their asses off at me.”
“No one cares about your little erection, Walter.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Think of it like playing a part in a play, a period piece. That’s really all it was. You think actors and actresses don’t have embarrassing moments in dressing rooms and on stages every day, including people seeing erections? It’s really not that big a deal. If anybody ever brings it up, which I doubt, just make a joke out of it. Humor is a pretty potent neutralizer.”
“I think I may have lost my sense of humor. Permanently. Something else he’s taken from me.”
“Oh, come on. I know that’s not true. You’re just upset, and understandably so. Sometimes the game is more fun than other times. Yesterday wasn’t fun for you, I get it. But I had a lot of fun, for what it’s worth.”
“Laughing at my expense, you mean.”
“Well, not just that. The whole day was fun. It was fun losing myself in another era for a little while; I quite enjoyed being Lady Guinevere. I really enjoyed hanging out with Neil and Laura. Neil’s a great guy. He and Laura seem to be really into each other. And, surprisingly, he and Luke have really hit it off. I’m glad he’s going to be around more. But, yes, I have to admit that it was pretty funny watching your reactions yesterday. You should’ve seen the expression on your face when Luke agreed to loan you out to your students. And when he locked you in the pillory. And you were so cute in your costume. I meant what I said about your buns getting tighter. They’re super spankable, now.” As she said this, she reached under my sweatpants and caressed my bottom through my mesh panties. I started to throb in my cage.
I wanted to continue our discussion, to continue to make my argument that a line had been crossed with respect to my reputation at the college and in the community, but Brooke had succeeded in completely distracting me. Part of the issue was that I hadn’t been granted sexual release in over two weeks – not since the morning of the day of the dinner party, when Luke literally beat my meat with a wooden spoon. I wondered to myself how many times Neil had had sex with Laura over that same period of time. Five? Ten? And real sex. Not submitting himself to some guy punishing his cock, while Laura abused his nipples. How pathetic was I?
I answered my own question with a question. “Would you unlock me and spank my bottom, please? Or did he take your key?”
Sometimes, when he was feeling particularly dominant or was annoyed with one or both of us, Luke would remove my chastity key from Brooke’s anklet and put it on his keychain next to his own copy. I’m sure that his primary motivation, as usual with him, was simply to demonstrate who was really in control of my cock. Not Brooke. Certainly not me. If you haven’t had the experience of having another person—especially another man—control your orgasms, control your cock, let me tell you, it makes you feel owned. It brings you to your knees. Or at least it brings me to mine. Luke took (and still takes) great delight in making me beg for release. Sometimes I have to lick the lint from between his toes or give him an extended foot massage. Other times I have to compose some ridiculous poem celebrating his feet, athletic prowess, business acumen, whatever. Still other times, I have to perform some chore, like raking the leaves in his enormous lawn or detailing his enormous truck. I know he is from Ohio not Texas, but if Texas were a man, it would be Luke. Everything about him is big: his house, his truck, his pool, his lawn, his ego, the chip on his shoulder, his muscles, his feet, and…you know what else. Big Luke, indeed.
“Why don’t you get on your knees and pull my socks off, and we’ll see.”
I knelt before her and started to remove the sock from her right foot. She said, “Uh uh, not with your hands. Clasp your hands behind your back and use your mouth.”
I was happy to see the key dangling from the chain around her pretty ankle.
“You’re in luck! I think you’ve earned a release for what you endured for your lady yesterday.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
“But before you remove it, make sure you kiss every toe.”
I did as directed and then began to remove the key from the chain with my clumsy fingers.
“Wait. My other foot is feeling neglected. Remove the sock, and kiss each toe on my left foot first.”
“Yes, my lady.”
After I handed her the key, I said “But I didn’t ask him for permission. Remember how he said last month that we both have to ask him for permission before you release me to masturbate…or for you to…help me? Every time, he said.”
“You know how I love watching you beg him to let you masturbate. There’s just something so incredibly sexy about that. But he doesn’t have to know about it this time. It’ll be our little secret.”
“But what if he comes home? What if he finds out somehow?”
“How’s he going to find out? He won’t be home for another two hours at the earliest.”
After she unlocked me, she pulled my sheer panties back up. Free at last, my cock grew instantly hard. Brooke gently squeezed my balls and giggled. “It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?”
“Yes, miss. Too long.”
“Three hours would be too long for you, wouldn’t it?” She smiled.
“Very funny. It’s been much too long. The day of the dinner party. I was starting to go a little crazy.”
“Even professors think with their cocks, I guess. Look how excited your baby carrot is to be out of its tiny prison! Wait a minute.”
She ran upstairs for a moment and then sat back down on the couch. She then pulled a pair of nipple clamps and a blindfold out of the pocket of her sweatpants. “Come closer.” First, she put the blindfold on me. Then she squeezed my nipples until they were hard, put on the clamps and tightened them until I winced.
“Too tight?”
“Ow, ah, yes. I mean, maybe.” I waited a few seconds to get used to the pain. “No, they’re okay.”
“Good. Now lay across my knees.” She pulled down my panties. I heard her doing something and the next thing I know I felt something cold and damp press against my anus. Except for rectal/prostrate examinations during annual checkups with my doctor, I hadn’t had anything inserted there since I was a kid when my mom used a rectal suppository a couple of times (heaven only knows why) to treat a high fever.
I flinched. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t sound so panicked. Just relax. Try to enjoy it.”
“Enjoy what? What are you doing? It’s cold and wet.”
“It’s a butt plug. That’s lubricant.”
She started to push it slowly inward.
“Ow, stop. It hurts.”
“Please. Don’t be such a baby. It’s a starter size. It’s smaller than your baby carrot. Try to think about what it’s like for me when Luke takes me from behind. His cock is at least five times larger than this little thing.”
“But YOU like it.”
“Yes, but it still hurts. You’ll like it too, if you just learn to relax.”
“I feel so full.”
“Exactly. I might just start you making you wear one of these around the house when you do your chores. Maybe even out in public. We can gradually work our way up to larger and larger ones. Your anus will stretch out over time, like mine has. You’ve heard the phrase tight pussy? Well, right now you have a tight anus.” She smacked my ass sharply with her hand. “You’ll learn to love it! From what I understand, men can actually have a prostate orgasm from wearing a butt plug. It can open up all kinds of new possibilities for you!”
“Don’t I get any say in this?“
“Not really, no. Now, do you still want that spanking? Your ass is still pretty bruised“
“Yes, please. But not too hard, please.”
“You really are a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?”
She pulled up my panties and began striking me (not too hard) with her hand, alternating between my right and left buttocks.
“So how do you feel now, my little knight errant? Your nipples are burning, your ass is full and now I’m warming it up for you. You better not come all over my sweatpants.”
“I’ll try not to, but I can’t promise.”
“Get up for a minute.” After I did, Brooke removed her sweatpants and ordered me to lay back over her bare legs. She then resumed spanking me.
“Yup, your buns are definitely getting tighter. Those hip thrusts and squats Luke makes you do are having an effect. I might just have to buy a strap-on and really fill you up.” She hit me harder. “Would you like that, sweetie?”
“Ouch. I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“Think about it. I’ll make you wear a corset with thigh high stockings and a garter belt, and I’ll take you from behind like a little slut. Maybe even Luke will want to nail you. Then you’ll really know what it’s like to be filled up”
“No, please. Not that. I’m not gay.”
She laughed. “Not gay? You’re over my knees in panties and I’m spanking you with a butt plug up your ass. What do you call that, then?”
“I call it submissive. Or sissy. But I want to be your sissy, not Luke’s.”
“We’ll have to see about that.“ She smacked me sharply again. Just then I heard a car door slam.
“Oh my god, is it him?!”, I asked, terrified.
Brooke practically pushed me off her lap and ran up to the window, peeking behind the curtains.
“It’s Kevin. Quick, get dressed!”
Kevin, as you may recall, is Luke’s teenaged half brother who works in his company. He, in fact, had done much of the work on the half bathroom – now my bathroom – in the basement. I had probably met him another four or five times over the last several months since the bathroom was finished. Most of those times were at Luke’s house and our interaction had been limited. I did not know how much Luke had shared with Kevin about the unconventional nature of his relationship with Brooke and me (quite a lot, I suspected), but clearly he was aware that I was in a subservient position. That much was apparent from the very first time I met him when Luke ordered me to serve him and his coworker sweet tea. He had since seen me dressed in yoga pants, as I was now, and generally spoke to me with few words and regarded me with barely disguised contempt.
“Thank god it’s not Luke. Can’t we just pretend we’re not home?“
“Your car and my car are both outside. Besides, he may have seen me looking out of the window. Just get dressed. Hurry!”
Kevin was already knocking on the door by the time I was pulling my yoga pants back on. I didn’t even have time to remove my nipple clamps, so just pulled my T-shirt over them, hoping he wouldn’t notice. The butt plug was still inside me as well.
“Hi, Kevin,“ said Brooke. “Luke’s not here. He’s at football practice.”
“Hey, Brooke. Walter.” He nodded at me. “I’m not here to see Luke. I think I may have left some tools down in the basement. Mind if I take a look?”
“Not at all, be our guest.”
“Thanks. Okay if I help myself to a drink first? Do you have any sweet tea in the fridge?”
“Of course. You know Luke. There’s always sweet tea in the fridge. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I’ll get some for you.”
“Thanks, Brooke. How you been, Walter?” Kevin sat down in the recliner across from me on the couch.
I noticed with alarm that my chastity cage was lying next to where I was sitting on the couch. I smiled at Kevin, trying hard to maintain eye contact as I surreptitiously tipped a nearby throw pillow over it, hoping like hell he didn’t notice.
“I’ve been well. How about you? How’s your work coming?”
“Great. I turn 18 next month and then I can sit for my plumbing license exam. I already have more than the 4000 I need as a journeyman.”
“That’s terrific.” These were the most words Kevin and I had ever exchanged, and everything about his presence that Sunday morning was making me suspicious. Meanwhile, my nipples were burning and I still had a hard-on beneath my yoga pants. I knew I had to get the clamps off.
After Brooke handed him his tea, she started to sit down next to me on the couch right where the pillow was covering the chastity cage.”
“Honey, why don’t you sit next to me here,” I said, patting the other side of the couch, “so you can be closer to Kevin.” I tried to make eye contact with her but she wasn’t paying attention.
“Okay,” she said, sitting where I directed her.
“Could you please excuse me for a moment?”, I said, as I went to the first floor bathroom, moving quickly so that Kevin hopefully wouldn’t see my erection pushing through the stretchy, synthetic fabric. One would think my nervousness would have caused my erection to subside; it seemed to have the opposite effect, unfortunately.
When I removed the clamps, my nipples were on fire. I knew the pain would subside in a couple of minutes. After I urinated, I returned to the living room. I couldn’t have been gone more than three or four minutes, but I when I entered the room, I was very distressed to see that Kevin was sitting alone there. I simply had to hope that he hadn’t noticed me tipping that pillow over earlier, or didn’t take notice of my trying to get Brooke to sit in a different place on the couch.
I sat back on the couch just as Brooke walked back into the room with Kevin’s refilled glass of sweet tea.
“Thanks. I guess I’m really thirsty today,” Kevin said, smiling. I thought I detected a trace of smugness in his smile, but possibly he simply took after his brother and smugness was his default expression.
“Well, I better go look for my tool downstairs,” he said.
“I’m pretty sure you didn’t leave any tools down there,” I said.
“I think I might have left my spud wrench down by the washing machine. I don’t use it very often and the last time I remember using it was here. I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find it anywhere else.”
Brooke said, “I sure hope you find it. Let me know if you need a flashlight or anything.”
When he went downstairs, I whispered to Brooke, “Do you think he’s spying on us?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “It does seem strange that he wouldn’t have missed a tool for all these months,” she whispered.
“Did you notice how he said plural ‘tools’ when he first got here, and just now he said singular ‘tool’? I have a bad feeling about this.”
“But he didn’t see anything.”
“Unless, he saw this.” I said moving the pillow and revealing the cage. “I covered it with the pillow. I don’t think he saw it, but I can’t be sure.” Meanwhile, I put the cage in my desk drawer.
Kevin came back upstairs, empty handed.
“No luck?”, Brooke said.
“Nope. I guess I’m just going to have to buy a new one. Well, I better go to the supply store. Thanks again for the tea.”
“Anytime,” said Brooke. “Don’t be such a stranger.”
When he left, I said, “What if he saw my cage? Or my clamps? What if he tells Luke?”
“I really doubt he saw anything. Chill out. Luke won’t be back for at least another hour. If you still want to me to get you off, we’d better hurry.”
“Kevin kind of spoiled the mood.”
“Come over here.” Brooke kissed me on the lips with some passion, and rubbed my cock through my yoga pants. I got instantly hard again. “Mood unspoiled now?”
“Yes,” I said breathlessly.
She sat on the couch. “Lie down.” She then proceeded to give me a footjob through my mesh panties, efficiently rubbing both sides of my cock, but also pressing her toes against my balls. Sensing when I was close, she placed one of her feet over my nose. Within seconds, I erupted through my panties.
Looking down at me, she said, “I really do appreciate the sacrifices you make for me. I want you to know that. You’re really my little foot page, not Luke’s. But we won’t tell him that. You know how he is about his feet.“ She laughed. Her dimpled smile is so contagious, I even laughed a little too. My sense of humor may have been in the ICU, hooked up to a respirator on the bed next to chivalry, but it wasn’t entirely dead.
Then she said, “Okay, we better clean up. Then take a shower, and I’ll lock you back up.” She removed the butt plug.
Right after she locked me back in the cage, both of our phones pinged simultaneously. We looked at each other. Brooke was the first to grab her phone.
“Shit.” She handed me the phone. There was a group text from Luke to her and me. It was a photo of my chastity cage on the couch, accompanied by the words: Disobedience = punishment.
“That little fucking little snitch,” said Brooke.
“Oh, no. I had a bad feeling. What are we going to do?”
As if in answer to my question, our phones pinged again: “By the time I get home, house better be spotless and both of you naked and on your knees to greet me at the door.”
“Clean.” said Brooke. “We’re going clean faster than we ever have in our lives. That’s what we’re going to do.”

​
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/cold-weather
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/furry-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/faux-fur-outfits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/alice-in-wonderland-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/black-prom-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/plus-size
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/v-wire
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/plus-swimsuits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/plus-size-bikinis
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/plus-size-bathing-suits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/thigh-high-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/creative-halloween-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/easy-halloween-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/plus-size-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/cosplay-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/cinderella-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/adult-halloween-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/discounted-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/wigs
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sexy-disney-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/rave-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/couples-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/firefighter-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/exotic-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/skeleton-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/dominatrix-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/supergirl-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/captain-america-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/minnie-mouse-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/online-shopping
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/geisha-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/faux-leather-fashion
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/see-through-lingerie
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/work-outfits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/thanksgiving-outfits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/jumpsuits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/casual-jumpsuits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/hipster-outfits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/poison-ivy-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/star-wars-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/stormtrooper-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/princess-leia-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/darth-vader-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/jedi-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/belly-dancer-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/pink-romper
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/edc-outfits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/clown-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/cheerleader-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/gladiator-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/spring-outfits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/back-to-school-outfits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/jumpers
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/tight-jumpsuits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/dressy-jumpsuits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/retro-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/lace-mesh
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/leopard-print-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/pink-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sexy-panties
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/fishnet-stockings
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/chemise-lingerie
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/pirates-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/necklace
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/school-girl-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/corsets
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/waist-trainer-corset
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/waist-trainers
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/booties
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/clear-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/ankle-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/nude-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/yellow-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/mid-calf-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/purple-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/pumps
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/beige-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/velvet-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/pink-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/velvet-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/costume-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/loafers
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/purple-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sock-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sneakers
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/black-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/wedding-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/cowgirl-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/beige-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/nude-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/lace-up-booties
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/lace-up-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/leopard-print-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/gold-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/t-strap-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/gold-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/gold-strappy-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/green-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/neon-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/green-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/orange-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/platform-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/pink-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/pink-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/cheap-watches
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/blue-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/fuschia-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/watch
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/fuschia-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/pink-wedges
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/gold-wedges
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/orange-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/ankle-strap-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/yellow-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/orange-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/yellow-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/fringe-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/beige-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/flats
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sneaker-wedges
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/nude-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sandals
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/daisy-corset-swimsuit
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/expanded-assortment
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/junior-clothes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/daisy
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/daisy-corsets
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/daisy-corset-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/plus-size-corsets
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/red-corsets
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/fairy-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/black-corsets
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/purple-corsets
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/timberland-style-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/edm-outfits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/rain-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/embroidered-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/gold-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/embroidered-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/foldable-flats
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/stripper-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/pleaser-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/pleaser-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/hooker-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/shoebuy
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/demonia-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/white-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sequin-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/silver-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/silver-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/white-wedges
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/floral-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/red-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/black-pumps
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/mule-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/white-pumps
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/black-wedges
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/silver-wedges
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/glitter-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/glitter-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/forever-link-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collectionsriding-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/flat-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/combat-boos
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/red-wedges
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/silver-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/fuzzy-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/fur-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/black-suede-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sequin-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/mary-jane-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/queen-of-hearts-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/gladiator-sandals
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/roman-sandals
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/nerd-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/suede-ankle-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/purple-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/red-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/gogo-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sequin-high-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/red-pumps
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/pleaser-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/liliana-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/little-black-dress
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/chiffon-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/valentines-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sheer-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/gothic-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/black-bodycon-dress
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/black-dresses-for-juniors
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/clothing-sexy-dresses-prom-dresses-black-prom-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/black-cocktail-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/pants
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/leggings
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/bug-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/batgirl-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/circus-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/dressy-romper
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/romper
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/fancy-rompers
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/cruella-deville-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/mens-halloween-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/scary-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/cute-rompers
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/unicorn-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/hello-kitty-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/creeper-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/body
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/review
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/gangster-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/wedge-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/steampunk-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/embroidered-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/brown-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/embroidered-wedges
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/floral-wedges
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/floral-boots
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/holographic-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/rose-gold-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/rose-gold-heels
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/prom-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/homecoming-dress
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/cut-out-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/vacation-clothes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/pastel-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/cut-out-dress
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/solid-color-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/prom-dresses-under-100
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/derby-outfits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/top-shirts
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/outfit
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/date-outfits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/eskimo-costume
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/tie-dye-swimsuit
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/rave-top
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/overalls
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/crop-top
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/maids-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/crop-tops
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/rave-shorts
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/snakeskin-clothing
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/outerwear
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sequin-romper
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/snake-print-outfit
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/blue-romper
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/off-the-shoulders-romper
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/little-red-riding-hood
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/black-romper
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/denim-shorts
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/high-waisted-shorts
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/pink-outfits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/tops
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/rave-bras
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/red-cocktail-dress
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/neutral-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/grey-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/red-bodycon-dress
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/purple-cocktail-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/purple-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/wow-couture
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/back-to-school-styles
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/teal-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/one-shoulder-dress
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/blue-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/blue-cocktail-dress
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/undergarment
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/animal-print-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/plus-outfits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/bloggers
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/high-inventory
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/activewear
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/qupid-shoes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/knee-length-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/bedroom-costumes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/loungewear
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/two-piece-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/matching-sets
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/two-piece-outfits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/long-sleeve-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/long-sleeve-cocktail-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/long-sleeve-bodycon-dress
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/long-sleeve-homecoming-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/hat
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/statement-necklace
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/cyber-monday-deals
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/tote-handbag
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/socks
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/surf-bikinis
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sweater
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/earrings
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/short-prom-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/cardigans
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sexy-trench-coats
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/plus-size-skirts
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sweaters
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/plus-size-prom-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/cozy-sweaters
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sweater-dress
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/knit-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/beige-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/ruched-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/plus-size-party-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/plus-size-formal-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/plus-size-club-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/winter-trends
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/bralettes
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/all-handbags
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/black-purses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/miscellaneous
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/eyelash-extensions
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/all-beauty
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/tassel-bikinis
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/crop-top-swimsuit
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/fringe-purses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sexy-sheer-swimwear
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/coachella-outfits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/flannel
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/beauty-cosmetics-wigs
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/hair
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/a-line-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/holiday-clothing
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/ugly-christmas-sweater
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/onesie-pajamas
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/pajamas
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/adult-onesie-pajamas
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sexy-ugly-sweaters
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/valentines-accessories
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/backpack
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/wallet
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/skater-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/yoga-pants
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/stockings
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/lace-panties
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/long-sleeve-romper
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/latex-outfits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/backless-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/black-jumpsuits
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/holiday-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sequin-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sequin-bodycon-dress
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/sequin-cocktail-dresses
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/high-waist-jeans
https://amiclubwear.com/collections/short-cocktail-dresses
​
​

PART NINE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-EIGHT
[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2]
Saturday
For the second time in nearly thirty years, Helen had to endure a cab ride back to her apartment. But this one wasn’t as bad as the first.
Oh, who was she kidding? They were both horrendous! Their beaded seat covers and disease-covered paraphernalia hanging off every surface were enough to give her a rash just thinking about it.
But the one thing she couldn’t get past was that awful man impersonating her daughter. He was evil and dangerous. She’d seen that same look in Donald and Thomas’ eyes, but something about his took it to the next level. And that disguise! It was insane how realistic they made latex masks these days! She’d been right in front of a man and still thought it was Geraldine!
Sure, an argument could be made that it was at night, and she hadn’t seen the latex seams in the half-light, but it was still scarily impressive. And those short blond curls of his made it easy to hide under a wig attached to the same mask. In a single move, he went from Geraldine to himself and back again, just like in the movies and TV shows.
It wasn’t fair that he could take Geraldine’s place like that! Geraldine was the only thing that could save their family, and now Helen couldn’t even trust her own eyes on the matter! She needed Geraldine! Those assholes at Tucker’s office may have been able to turn him against her, but they’d never be able to sever the bond between Tucker and his daughter. That was her in! But how was she supposed to achieve it when she didn’t know who she was dealing with?!
Wait … that faker called her ‘Mom’. Geraldine would never do that. She’d been raised to call her ‘Mother’. Never ‘Mom’. So, while he may look like her, he only knew whatever he’d been privy to over a short period of time.
That’s how I’ll tell them apart. She could lay verbal traps that only the real Geraldine would know to avoid. She could reflect on things that never happened or draw Geraldine into a conversation about the past. The impersonator would dodge the past like the plague, and she would know.
She sat forward in the seat, not wanting her back to touch whatever filth was embedded in the substandard material, which was anything but leather.
As much as Helen wanted to get a jump on things with Tucker before they worsened, that awful man had said Geraldine had gone to bed. That might also explain why none of her calls had been answered. When next they caught up, she would put her phone beside Geraldine’s and call it to see what the problem was. After all, what if it was a true emergency? Not that this wasn’t, but there was no excuse for Geraldine not to take her call, day or night. She knew better.
That brought her thoughts back to the way that horrible man had laughed at her. At her! There was no question that the Nascerdios loved her! Barris had gifted her a life-sized marble statue of herself, for goodness’ sake! It was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he commissioned it just for her!
The faker was an imbecile and a bully. Probably a spy; some government agent who got his thrills out of scaring the one percent.
The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became of being right.
The hideous cab ride finally ended when the idiot driver pulled up outside her apartment block. She saw the shocked look on the doorman’s face as she paid the exact fare and climbed out onto the sidewalk.
The cab took off as soon as the door was shut, and she whirled on her heel, levelling a dark glare at the doorman.
“Mrs Portsmith,” he said, swallowing hard. He reached for the front door and opened it for her. “Your lawyer and a Mister Slay arrived about ten minutes ago together. You gave Mister Kitikan the authority to go upstairs, but I have to assume he’s standing in the hallway, awaiting your return.”
Ainsley.
And just like that, Helen felt like she could breathe once more. She hadn’t remembered calling him, but she’d been in such a daze on her flight from Pensacola that it was quite possible she’d reached out to him for support. And speaking of being in a daze and forgetting things; her statue was still in Pensacola. She’d have to get onto someone and have them ship it back to New York City.
She grunted at the doorman and headed for the elevators.
When the doors opened a minute or so later, Ainsley was the first person she saw, and she beamed happily at him. “Ainsley, thank God!” she cried, going to the smaller, older man and throwing her arms around his shoulders. He matched her hug with his usual stiffness, and after an acceptable length of time, she stepped back from him. You have no idea how happy I am to see you. Everyone at the office has gone insane, and they’ve kidnapped Tucker!”
Her hands waved as she tried to explain the situation to him until a white envelope was suddenly pressed against her chest. The second for the day. She instinctively slapped her hand against the envelope just as the assistant in the business suit released it and took a step back. “You’ve been served, Mrs Portsmith,” the horrible man said, snapping a photo of the paperwork in her hands with his phone. His smile was cold and calculating as he pocketed his phone and dipped his head at her before moving to stand in front of the elevator.
“Ainsley, what—?”
“Tucker is divorcing you, Helen. The settlement he’s prepared to offer you if you agree to leave quietly is all spelled out in that paperwork. Trust me when I say he is being exceptionally generous given your many years together, and I recommend you consider them carefully…”
“Ainsley, you’re my lawyer!”
“I am also your husband’s lawyer, and in this regard, he has retained my services first. I came in person to tell you this and also to let you know that I’m not in any way playing dirty to win as much as I can for my client. That’s not to say I won’t. Should whoever you hire engage those tactics, keep in mind they'll be up against me, and you know what I’m capable of better than most.”
“You-you can’t even come in and talk me through it?”
Ainsley shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Helen. It would be a conflict of interest. That’s why I had Joel here serve you with the divorce papers instead of bringing them here myself. He’s the son of an associate of mine, who is far enough away from me to make the serving legitimate. For everyone’s sake, I have made the terms as transparent as possible, so your lawyer will have no trouble seeing the offer as the best possible deal for you.”
“This can’t be happening…”
“I’m afraid it is, Helen. The only thing I will add is you need to agree to the terms by midday tomorrow to get the full benefit of the settlement. So, don’t toss the envelope on the table and ignore it for a week or two. That mistake will cost you billions.”
“I need to see Tucker!”
“He doesn’t wish to see you, Helen.” Looking past her to the front door, he added, “In case you haven’t already noticed, Tucker took Mrs Kendrick and Chef Rawlins to his new residence. They signed a termination agreement this morning, which you will find under your bag on the coffee table, and re-signed with Tucker alone, so again, there’s no misunderstanding about who they work for. The only thing Tucker took from the apartment when he left were his personal belongings and his kitchenalia.”
“Then he stole them because…”
“He has left you everything else, Helen, and you have never cooked. Even the apartment is to be yours, provided Tucker or one of his representatives receives that paperwork signed before the ascribed time. If you agree, I’ll file the Uncontested Divorce paperwork with the courthouse first thing Monday morning to finalise everything.”
“I can’t find a lawyer and read over the paperwork by tomorrow afternoon!”
“Of course you can. As I said, I have made it very transparent about what is on offer.”
“But I own half of Portsmith Electronics!”
“You own twenty-five-and-a-half percent of Portsmith Electronics,” Ainsley corrected her. You may put your shares on the market if you wish; however, the sale won’t occur until the stock market opens on Monday, and your buyers will still be limited to the same background checks that everyone wishing to purchase more than five percent of the company has to go through.”
Helen started to do the math in her head. Not just because she would walk away with billions, but she would torpedo Tucker’s company by flooding the market with shares that would cause their value to plummet. Meanwhile, she would be free to have a relationship with any of the Nascerdios men who were all vying for her attention.
She would move up, Tucker would fall, and all would be good in the world.
“When this is all over, you and I can go back to the way we were, correct?”
“It has always been a business arrangement, Helen. Whoever retains me becomes my client for as long as they can afford my fees.”
Helen nodded, her former daze giving way to the depth of her resolve. If Tucker wanted out of their marriage that fast, maybe it was time to cut the strings and be done with him. He turned his back on their son fast enough, and he was worth ten of Geraldine. He was an officer in the Navy!
She rubbed her jaw thoughtfully. Geraldine’s connection to the Nascerdios was nothing to be sneered at, though, and until Helen decided which Nascerdios would have the pleasure of marrying her, Geraldine’s relationship with Sam was social media gold. And many doors would be opened for her just by mentioning the Nascerdios name.
Speaking of the Nascerdios name, they were sure to know a good divorce lawyer. Especially if she told them about how horribly Tucker had been treating her lately, ending with this divorce from nowhere to run off with his secretary.
And all because she was worried about their missing son. By the time she was finished milking this for all it was worth, there wouldn't be a dry eye in the room.
“I’ll be in touch,” she said, holding the envelope close.
“Until then,” Ainsley said with a professional smile, joining the other man at the elevator who’d been holding it for him.
[Next Chapter]
* * *
((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))
I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here
For more of my work, including WPs: Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.
FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!