IC contact for maskormenace

[devoutish]

You've reached Alfie Solomons. Leave your name and state your business.

Alfie can be reached via the imPort network, or via a home phone and answering machine. He does have a cell phone, but it's not publicly available.

Comments

[trouvaille]

Yeah, no one calls themselves 'suffragettes' any more. And there's less handcuffing to things, more getting your tits out and saying it's a political act. Which, fine.

( she's thinking of FEMEN, probably. )

Not that it isn't important, or anything, but I'd be a terrible activist.

( mainly due to her incredible disinterest in the lives of people outside of her sphere of influence, frankly. gwen is a clever, observant young woman who can identify and discuss the things she sees, who has suffered the stigma of mental illness and knows what it is to be afraid to speak up; she is also spoiled, selfish, unempathetic and has been permitted a long and coddled adolescence.

mostly, the things she cares about find their way under her skin by impacting her in some way. and the things that don't-- )

I mean, I have no tits.

[devoutish]

[Alfie snorts, half amused and half disbelieving.]

And talking about this sort of thing to a stranger - that's part of it, too?

[trouvaille]

Well - yes, I suppose. I mean, someone could very well go, Gwen, that's inappropriate, please stop talking about your flat chest, everyone has eyes and they don't need to discuss it, but no one under the age of about a hundred and five--

( we'll call that one a slight exaggeration )

--is going to clutch their pearls that hard, I mean, in sort of general conversation. Now, say I went on the record and said it to a journalist, suddenly it's a think piece about how I'm what's wrong with women today, with their tits and their opinions and their inability to shut the fuck up about either.

[devoutish]

But it's not general conversation, is it.

[Or maybe it is in the future. See previous note about the future and weirdness.]

[trouvaille]

( her eyebrows rise, in illustration. )

Isn't it? We're two people having a conversation that's neither completely private nor especially intimate.

( granted, she wouldn't have wanted people overhearing some parts of it earlier, but - )

[devoutish]

Yes, and you're talking about--

[He gives a vague wave of his hand.]]

Fucking strange.

[trouvaille]

Tits.

( helpfully. )

And politics, I think I was mostly talking about politics. Do you not believe in pre-marital political discourse?

[devoutish]

I believe in pre-marital all sorts of things.

[trouvaille]

( a sharp laugh; there are some remarks she wants to make about beards and women's pubic topiary in the olden times (and the likelihood of the two getting tangled, among other things), but if this conversation is strange, those jokes are definitely going to be balked at.

see, she is at least marginally aware of the concept of a time and place. )

You look like you do, ( is what she settles on. )

[devoutish]

Well, I'm an old man, aren't I.

[He's like forty.]

[trouvaille]

Oh, compared to what, a toddler? I own things older than you.

( some of those things, older than his age would be if he'd lived to modernity. her cello is from the 18th century. it's also not with her now, but that's neither here nor there. )

[devoutish]

And you're, what? Sixteen?

[He knows she's older than sixteen.]

[trouvaille]

I'm twenty-four.

( better not to too closely examine what she was up to at sixteen, all told. )

I'd probably be married with children by now if I were born earlier. Imagine.

( or don't, it probably wouldn't be pretty )

[devoutish]

Yeah. Yeah, you would be, actually. Most likely.

[trouvaille]

That would be a very poor choice on someone else's part, honestly.

( which is a more articulate answer than her first thought, which was 'bollocks to that'. )

[devoutish]

The idea would be that marriage would settle you down, I think.

[trouvaille]

That idea has been floated to me, and I'm not convinced. My father was once married for three months when I was sixteen, and then when they finally sobered up, they annulled it on the grounds of having been too thoroughly wasted to legally consent.

( she's still tight with her stepmother, though, even though in legal terms hasibe has never actually been her stepmother, technically speaking. )

I mean, it looked like fun, but it didn't look restful.

[devoutish]

I'm surprised they found a priest to have it done, while they were in that state.

[trouvaille]

They can really hold their liquor. ( in the way alcoholics do, yes. ) I was a bridesmaid, it was a bit of a laugh. Something fun for her to do while she was filming in Italy of a summer.

( that's a terribly dismissive (if affectionate) way of describing her father. )

Are you married?

[devoutish]

No. Married to the job, I'm afraid. But I've got family at home - parents, cousins, brothers and a sister.

[trouvaille]

I don't think I'll ever get married. I want to have a house on a river and write poetry and drink wine and not be bothered by anyone.

( if she had it, the kind of peaceful existence she imagines, she'd get bored. it wouldn't even take long.

but she's never had it, to know, so it sounds like heaven. )

[devoutish]

Ah, I could never do that. I'm from the city. The quiet would drive me mad.

[He's used to familiar hustle and bustle - which is part of why he hates it here so much. He's lived his entire life in the same neighborhood, around the same people. Being torn away from that is hard on him.]

[trouvaille]

I grew up outside of Florence - like an hour's drive? Nothing crazy. But everything as far as I could see when I was a little girl was ours.

( sure, paris was a different story, but she doesn't remember much about being a child in paris; she'd been a toddler for most of it. )

It was quiet. London is ... you know, not.

[devoutish]

Everything I can see is mine, too.

[In a different sort of way, but.]

Not so here.

[trouvaille]

( that's some criminal talk, that right there. )

I never miss London, but I sort of miss London.