A lifetime ago some fake female friendly acquaintances tried to set me up to appease a guy I’d washed my hands of due to his bullshit.

They kept inviting me into things in nyc. Events. Activities. Etc. With the intent of getting me kicked out of those things. Velvet roped by the parcels and powers that tended to be in these things. Not by them, of course. They were trying to phony cunt/mean girl out for a guy they were all pining to fuck, swimming in strange currents for the climb.

The whole dumb bruhaha over this guy had been that …okay. I’d loved him initially, platonically, then it’d turned. To pure dumb love. But thankfully, not enough to fuck. Then I got “saved.” & it didn’t turn…enough. Or better, it overturned. Lots of demonic rage ensued when I disengaged from that crew completely. N̈ot out of put upon piety. Once you actually meet God motherfuckers prancing around being tricked into believing they Are God by folks feeding off of them as they dance usually want you dead. Dude’s harem loved me though. &knew I loved him.

Shit just…changed. It all became AC/DC. Which is what made it messy. The phony cunts were jockeying in the vacuum my departure online from the terroir had been. The ones who really liked me were witnesses to the dumb shit tried by the power hungry cunts always supernaturally going sideways, who reported back in hushed tones about the heavenly overturns that’d popped off.

I was lowkey off the grid smackdab in nyc. Writing . Regular jobbing. A lil commercial modeling testing.Quietly on exclusive with a publisher for the first grievechronic books, but not retainer. IYKYK.

Lived simply near union Square. Lot of cool people lived there. Some I grew up moony-eyed over. Like Rutger Hauer lol. Was gobsmacked seeing that dude. Lots of the Male Supermodels I’d gotten into menswear for did too. But I was on the far side of having walked away from all that. So they were sheepishly just neighbors I’d absently see over apples at grocery stores.

I was out of everything fashion, everything underground/clubland that had defined me in new york. Wasn’t even painting again yet.

Minime was pleased because in Ohio she knew those people were in her tale, and to my inner child jockeying me as I learned to write…it counted.

… She was chilling. Easy-peasy. All the time.

Exception? The Last Dragon.

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I used to write in a small café around the block from my haus( a hotel. Was always more comfortable in those, seen in Hindsight). And because it was a good one, and it was nyc, everybody would be holed up there. It’s walls sung with the Empyrean for me, and I’d give them my last dime to be left alone over a lukewarm latte for hours on end at one of their always packed tiny tables. I looked up from scribbling in a bubble one day from the entire place acting like it’d lost it’s mind to see a grown up and gorgeous to the fucking BONE Mr. Taimak Guarriello decimating Every One in sight by sheer, sweet presence alone. &went blank. Pure dee Blacked the fuck out. Minime and I both. When I came to he was still there lol. & f ureaking catacorner to me across tables. It was a grab the seat you could kinda place.

This man was (one of) my childhood husband[s].

& This man… who looked exactly the f ureaking same except ‘cue the brawn’ was not only cool with me ( losing my fn sweet tarts in his face), he was cool with everybody. Conversational, polite, lightly gregarious, even. Just… actual good people. He was one of the first folks I learned to talk about grievechronic professionally to in passing, too. Like, where I was a …writer.

This man’s movie is why Eutaxis opens as it does. It was the movie theater From the Last Dragon that all my-grievechronic Ulterior Angels were hemmed up in. That Khystos jumped out of. This dude’s ouevre was as integral to me as D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths as an arthead.

& just as suddenly, it became a norm. Seeing the f ureaking Last Dragon in passing, being like “Hey Taimak😬,” and getting back to the words. & having said it correctly because we’ve all been butchering that dude’s name since Berry Gordy discovered him. & he will Correct you in a Heartbeat lol. Instantly. I lived in that nyc and loved it, frankly. Roared through my drafts.

Time churned on as it does in nyc. Years. I’d moved away from that cafe onto other places. Head watering holes. But he’d been a norm for me coming up for air in writerhead a good three years.

Then those event invites started popping off. To work. What many don’t realize in nyc is alot of BOH stuff connects there. Even i hadn’t known how much until things started trying it, but back of house is back of house, production-wise. You wore all black to help out at one, ya kinda had at them all.

One of them was a movie set up near the cloisters these chicks had implored me to pitch a hand into. I’d ambivalently been happy to. Made the trek, which was alot-I was a Manhattan chick… but Lower Manhattan. & I had arrived to the utter nonsense of said chicks trying me in the cluster of harem-ites who’d also agreed to lend whatever hands they could.

They’d basically invited to try to sundown me in front of ‘everyone.’ Mean girl you can’t sit with us petty chick BS. They’d seen me casually chatting with a set dresser or costume dept assistant ( that I can’t even recall if I knew from former fadhist life or not at the moment)& in outrage that their ostracizing hadn’t worked, tried to lobby to get me branded as a troublemaker to Somebody and then ceremonially booted from the set. Empty people crave tinny spectacle.

The problem? Mid their nonsensical attempt, in sailed the Last Dragon. In police uniform. Megawatts mode. On the job. & Åctually like… happy to see me, both of us surprised to cross paths on the other side of the world, Manhattan wise.

I don’t even know if he knew what was up when he’d shown up.

I do know an “oh, she’s about to leave( tight, terse, bewildered smile)” of sorts was uttered. That he waved away and plucked me straight out of the nonsense afoot.

Because it was his. He wasn’t just in it, the movie was somehow his. Tossed me into wardrobe, made me an extra, let me stay all day alongside the set, watching after my surprise ‘work’ was done.

The harem all bashfully bug-eyed “how the fuck ?” Mode, the mean girls faces twisted up in… what they tend to twist up to.

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I always appreciated that. Happening the way it did.

That ‘event’… helped me cut all those folks off 100% for good. Triggered a true culling.

Because all parties looked at the same person doing the same thing. Me.

I was the same with everybody. Some processed me being me with hate. Others with affable love.

& everyone gets to choose the kind of person they’ll be to you. They will live and die on that choice, too. Maybe down the road, maybe then & there. But it’s none of your business.

You just do you.

Lol because wasn’t that lowkey a great summation of the heart of the Last Dragon too?