a little book designer wwx au for the birthday

so he forgets his birthday every year because it's not like it's that big a deal, right,

and he knows wen ning will get bullied into getting a card and some rando candy to pass around the office for everyone to sign even though god knows no one in sales actually knows him by name so why are they even signing the CARD–– it's all kind of embarrassing, really
which! he's grateful for! he's very grateful, he sits through an off-chorus round of happy birthday every year. he nibbles at the teeth-aching sweet icing of the office cupcakes bought for him and pointedly does not think about feeling more and more divorced from his body
he's prepared for another round. it's not going to be special just because lan zhan asked him out a month ago! why would it? it'd be selfish to expect lan zhan's pampering to amp up for a silly birthday.

then the first email from editorial bounces back.
wei ying stares at an automated response he does not remember setting, face growing hotter with a weird fluttering, hesitant glee as he reads it:

Hello, I will be unavailable this afternoon and unable to answer emails. For emergencies, please contact Nie Huaisang. Thank you.
it's 11:59 am. lan zhan appears at his side as his desktop clock hits noon, soft leather satchel at his hip and camel colored autumn coat already on. he's holding wei ying's leather jacket and scrappy backpack with the care of an old-fashioned valet. he's beautiful.
wei ying stares. he doesn't even know when lan zhan snuck onto his computer. "i don't even capitalize my auto responses," is all he can get out.

lan zhan shrugs. as much as he ever does, anyways, just a suggestion of a movement. conceptual. "we have a reservation."
(nie huaisang's eyes don't even leave his screen––he's building a pinterest vision board for his next title, it's an important part of the process and he cannot be BOTHERED––but wei ying's phone pings with a text from him anyways.

it's three eggplants and a birthday cake.)
lan zhan waits patiently (how is he always so patient, wei ying is a mess, lan zhan can't even work if a single pen is out of place on his desk, it defies explanation) as wei ying saves things and shuts things down. he stands so close wei ying can hear him breathe in and out.
wei ying has spent his whole life blithely dancing around prickly people. he does not know what to do with laser-guided tenderness. the whole office gets to watch lan zhan hold out the battered leather jacket like the finest silk, gently coaxing it onto wei ying, face aflame
and, okay, maybe he feels a little dissociative as lan zhan refuses to let him carry his own bag, placing a large hand at the small of his back to guide him to the elevators as the bank of junior designers chirp HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIR as he passes. it feels like a dream.
he doesn't like thinking he might deserve something nice. it feels like hubris. it feels like setting up another thing that will be taken away and he'll have to learn to live without, a vestigial limb from homelessness that he'll never lose.

lan zhan kisses him in the elevator.
he is warm, and here, and his mouth tastes like wei ying's favorite cinnamon gum––he doesn't even care for that gum. but wei ying pictures him chewing it in his office, deliberately and slowly, counting down until noon.

surely, this time, he can have this.
later, after lan zhan shuttles them from lunch at hangawi to the whitney for an exhibit wei ying's been dying to see for months, after wei ying kisses him in front a painting because that serious and contemplative look on lan zhan's face was too much
later, after he begs lan zhan to cancel dinner because his whole body has oriented to lan zhan now, like magnetic north, every single cell desperate for him––

later, after lan zhan cancels the rest of his thoughtfully planned day to take him home––
later, after his hot skin is pressed chest-first into the cool granite of lan zhan's kitchen counter, a hand twined in his hair to bend his neck for lan zhan's teeth and lan zhan deep inside him and it's so so good––
later, golden hour light painting his lovely face, lan zhan will press a single kiss to his ear and say "i am thankful for you."

he won't even let go when wei ying cries.

More from Life

"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."


We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)

It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
TW: suicidal ideation.

At the darkest days of the abuse I was being subjected to I decided to attend a conference for women in Los Angeles. I convinced my mother in law to pay for it because I couldn’t afford it. @ChristineCaine was preaching. I was desperate...
1/


I wanted to die, I didn’t see a way out and I had tried everything. I imagined many ways to die daily. The most recurring one was throwing my car down a bridge I had to drive over every day. I never did it because my kids were in the car and I was afraid one of them would...

2/

survive or I’d kill someone on the way down.

Christine spoke about honoring your pastors even when they weren’t great, she spoke of us expecting too much of pastors and how wrong that was. She said God would use our testimony if we submitted to our pastors.

3/

She said “honor your pastors, God will honor you.” She said more about having disagreed with her pastors but she submitted and God honored her and now she’s blessed. How if they are faithfully serving God, we need to support them and not forfeit what God has for us.

4/

I felt my heart drop into my stomach. I got up and went to the bathroom because I couldn’t breath and I felt like I was going to faint if I didn’t scream. I now know I was having a panic attack. I sat on the toilet w/my head between my legs, breathed and wept..
5/

You May Also Like

Great article from @AsheSchow. I lived thru the 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980's/early 1990's asking myself "Has eveyrbody lost their GODDAMN MINDS?!"


The 3 big things that made the 1980's/early 1990's surreal for me.

1) Satanic Panic - satanism in the day cares ahhhh!

2) "Repressed memory" syndrome

3) Facilitated Communication [FC]

All 3 led to massive abuse.

"Therapists" -and I use the term to describe these quacks loosely - would hypnotize people & convince they they were 'reliving' past memories of Mom & Dad killing babies in Satanic rituals in the basement while they were growing up.

Other 'therapists' would badger kids until they invented stories about watching alligators eat babies dropped into a lake from a hot air balloon. Kids would deny anything happened for hours until the therapist 'broke through' and 'found' the 'truth'.

FC was a movement that started with the claim severely handicapped individuals were able to 'type' legible sentences & communicate if a 'helper' guided their hands over a keyboard.
I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x