Podcasts about Grand Street

Radhika Jones is the fifth editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. She previously held senior editorial roles at The New York Times, Time, and The Paris Review. She also was the managing editor at Grand Street, an editor at Artforum, and the arts editor of The Moscow Times, where she began her career. Jones holds a B.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in English and comparative literature from Columbia, where she has also taught courses in writing and literature. Born in New York City, she grew up in Cincinnati and Ridgefield, Connecticut. _________________________________ The Critic and Her Publics Hosted by Merve Emre • Edited by Michele Moses • Music by Dani Lencioni • Art by Leanne Shapton • Sponsored by Alfred A. Knopf The Critic and Her Publics is a co-production between the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University, New York Review of Books, and Lit Hub.

The Four Horsemen is a restaurant in Brooklyn. Have you been there? Have you drank some wine there? Had some of the restaurant's bread and cultured butter? It's an amazing place up on Grand Street in Williamsburg, and it has marked ten years in the game with an incredible new cookbook. In this episode, we speak with the restaurant's longtime chef, Nick Curtola. Nick is one of New York's most consistent and skilled chefs and a real culinary force. We talk about the restaurant's legacy and how its humble beginnings have led to greatness, and we dig into his own personal journey in the restaurant business.Also on the show, Aliza and Matt pay tribute to the iconic Williamsburg wine bar and share some favorite memories from dining there over the years.Do you enjoy This Is TASTE? Drop us a review on Apple, or star us on Spotify. We'd love to hear from you. READ MORE ABOUT THE FOUR HORSEMEN:Remembering Justin Chearno, Natural Wine Advocate [F&W]This Is TASTE 48: James Murphy & Nick Curtola [Apple]See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hazing Alexis: The most popular sorority, GGK; hazes Alexis.by  musicankane - listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories. Alexis had always been popular, it came with the territory of being good looking. In high school, being a girl, being hot, was like an automatic “in” with the popular crowd. It made life really really easy. Nobody gave you shit, nobody cared what you did or how you dressed (to an extent) because everyone wanted to be friends with the hot girls. She had always been an automatic entry into that club growing up. She had often been a part of the group that decided what challenge other girls had to go through in order to join the popular group, if they weren't hot enough to be automatically in. Some of the things they made people do made Alexis glad she never had to go through it.However college was a different deal entirely. Alexis foolishly thought that she could just join whatever sorority that she wanted. A flick of her shimmering long brown hair, a little shake of her narrow waist, and boom she would be hot enough to join whatever club she wanted. But this was college and things were different here. Everything was about being fair, and frankly the other girls were just as good looking if not even better looking than her. So she wasn't about to get out of her hazing.She supposed that she could always go to another sorority and try to join them, maybe there hazing trial wouldn't be as embarrassing. But Gamma Gamma Kappa was known as the hottest Sorority on campus, by a wide margin. Having seen the girls already in place, Alexis knew that this was the place to be to get invited to the best parties with the hottest guys. So if she wanted in she was stuck with this challenge.She twirled her iPhone in her fingers, the circular mount on the back of her pink case kept it from falling, the text message from Niece the Sorority leader staring back at her on the screen. Alexis' mission was to get a picture for Jake Farrow. Jake was absolutely the last person Alexis ever would have spoken too growing up. Perhaps that's why Niece selected him personally for her little mission. Jake was the head of the campus Dungeons and Dragons club. Nerd to the ultimate degree.Alexis sat not far from Jake now, observing him as she contemplated what she was to do. He didn't look that nerdy to be fair, or even that bad. His hair was long for a guys, combed back, his glasses weren't extremely thick or made of dorky plastic. From what she could tell he was just an average guy, nothing special one way or the other, his only downside was his choice of hobbies.Again Alexis thought about her goal. She was to seduce this guy, and take a picture of her holding his…special member. She didn't have to go through with anything beyond that, but part of her felt really bad about it. She would have to lie and charm her way into his pants and then leave him hanging after she got the picture she needed. It made her wonder whether this was a haze for her or for him.She debated about it for a long time, should she go through with this, should she not? Finally, she stood up and tucked her phone into her pocket to walk across the quad toward him. Fuck it, she figured, one embarrassing and awkward moment and then it would be over. She'd be in GGK and could spend the next four years forgetting it ever happened.Jake was leaning over a drawing pad as she approached, coming up from behind him so she could see over his shoulder as to what he was drawing. Turned out he could really draw, the picture on the paper was really detailed for just a pencil drawing. It appeared to be some knight of warrior in shining armor with a sword in on hand and a shield in the other which was raised to deflect or block some sort of attack that hadn't been drawn yet.Alexis was impressed and that gave her a conversation starter to talk to him. “Wow,” she said moving around to the other side of the table so she could stand in front of him. “That looks really cool.”Jake jerked as if she had shocked him. So into his drawing that he didn't expect someone to talk to him out of the blue. His hand jerked away quickly from the paper so he didn't mess something up. He glanced up at Alexis and blinked, clearly not expecting someone like her to start a conversation with him.He turned a little red and nodded, “Uh, thanks. I'm drawing it for somebody.” He told her.She gave an impressed look to him, “Not even doing that kind of work for a class. That's pretty cool, do you draw all the time then?” She asked.He shrugged, “Not all the time, but enough to keep improving I guess.” He glanced up at her, and Alexis saw his eyes take her body in quickly though she didn't show him that she noticed. He wasn't very good at hiding his gaze, but that was fine by her she found herself glad that he enjoyed what he was looking at.“I'm Alexis by the way.” She smiled, holding her hand out to him.Jake took her hand softly and nodded, “I'm Jake.” He said slowly.“So I have a confession to make.” She said, sitting down across from him. “I didn't come here to just tell you your drawing was cool.”Jake sat back from her and gave her a weary look, as if afraid she was about to do something to him. “Okay?”She shook her head, “Don't worry it's nothing bad. It's just that I am trying to get into the drama club, but I was told that my character acting sucked.” She lied. “So I did a little googling and I came across table-top roleplaying.” Which wasn't a lie, she had googled a bit about Dungeons and Dragons in order to help herself gain Jake's trust easier. The quickest way into a nerd's pants was through his hobbies. Unlike a jock, who's quickest way into their pants was to simply ask.She brought up the Dungeons and Dragons club page on her phone and showed it to him. “Turns out you run a little roleplaying game club on campus here already and I figured that maybe I could join for a while.” She told him, “You know to play a character work on my improv skills or whatever. Then I can take that back to the drama club and actually get into a play or something.”Jake leaned forward, again his eyes roamed over her body quickly, he was really bad at trying to do it low key. “You, want to play….Dungeons and Dragons?” He asked in disbelief.“Well I'd like to learn at least. Unless you have a better suggest for me to practice Improving a character.” She suggested.Jake shrugged, “I don't. I just, I don't know, I never thought in a million years that someone as…let's just say ‘un-nerdy' as you would ever try to sign up for a game.”Alexis shrugged, “It honestly wouldn't be my first choice either. But I don't exactly have the cash to take an extra acting class off campus, this was the best free option I could find.” She gave him a pout, “Are you saying that I can't play?”Jake shook his head quickly, “No not at all. It's just surprising, that's all.” He nodded and leaned back again, probably considering this unexpected turn of events. “Alright…well do you know how to make a character?”Alexis blinked, “A what?”Jake laughed softly, “You can't play until you make a character. I'm gonna guess you don't know how huh?”Alexis frowned, “No I don't. Is that a problem?”“Not really. I can teach you that on our own. When are you free next?” He asked, glancing at his watch. “I have class in thirty minutes so I can't do it right now. But maybe this evening around five thirty or six?”Alexis nodded, “I can do six. Where?”“The club normally meets in one of the rec rooms over in Grand Hall. Room 3, I can meet you there at six and we can build you a character. It's shouldn't take more than an hour or so.” He explained.“Okay that sounds good.”“Great, oh and if you can you should go get yourself a set of dice. There is a hobby shop like three blocks from campus on Grand Street that can get you what you need.” He told her. “If you can't do it today, no big deal but you'll need them for the actual game.”Alexis promised that she would try and then said goodbye. As she turned around she saw a couple girls from GGK watching her from the other end of the quad. She sighed and made her way over to where they were standing.Jessica was a beautiful Latina, with caramel skin and flawless features. She wanted to be a model, but her parents were forcing her to get educated first. Though thanks to Instagram, Jessica was doing both. Emma was as much of a Midwest girl as one could possibly be. Blonde, blue eyes, innocent looking with a body men would kill for.Both girls smirked at Alexis as she approached. “How goes the dick hunt Alexis, got a picture of the nerd-dick for us yet?” Jessica asked.Alexis shook her head, “Not yet, I had to sign up for his club in to give myself an excuse to be around him.”The giggled, “Seriously?” Emma asked, “Why didn't you just ask to suck his dick in the bathroom or something?”Jessica nodded, “Yeah why make it more complicated that it needs to be?”Alexis frowned, “I don't know, I just don't think he is the type for that.”“Please, every guy is that type, especially when a girl like you asks.” Emma said dismissively.Again Alexis shook her head, “Somehow I don't think so. A guy like that, probably used to getting bullied and would suspect a prank. I have to warm him up to me before pulling this stunt.” Alexis moaned and hung her head, “Oh God I have to learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons.”Jessica and Emma just laughed. “Tough shit girl. Get us the pic or find another Sorority.” They said and left.Alexis bit her lip and sighed, no use getting out of it. She was stuck with this, unless she gave up on GGK. No way in hell, Alexis wasn't a quitter and she certainly put other girls in High School through just as much shit as this, worse even.Begrudgingly, Alexis followed Jake's advice and went to the hobby shop he had told her about. It was a small store in the corner of a shopping center called Games, Dice, Action. The interior was much as she expected, walls of comic books, display cases filled with some kind of game singles, and then there were dice. Little boxes of dice with several different shapes.Alexis looked though the different colors for a while before a chubby man with a thick beard came up to her, “Can I help you?” he asked.Alexis glanced up and then pointed at the dice in the case. “Are those the dice I need to play D&D?” She asked.The man nodded, “They are enough to get you going yeah. One die of each side type used in the game.” He explained.“Great, can I get those pink ones?”Shortly before six Alexis was back on campus with her bag of goodies. The clerk had been nice enough to also print her out several pages that he called “character sheets” so that she would be ready to sit down and immediately start making a character with Jake. Along with a set of pink dice that had three different shades of pink in their color scheme.She actually beat Jake to the rec room and found herself an empty table near the back of the mostly empty room so set up. She laid out her sheets and took out her dice, laying them in a row based on their total number of sides, and a little mechanical pencil. While she waited for Jake to arrive she googled basic D&D character creation rules but was giving an online book with nearly 200 pages and her eyes went wide. Did she have to learn 200 pages of rules? Who the fuck would play a game that required so much work. Wasn't it just supposed to be a bunch of dorks playing pretend around a table?The door to the rec room opened and Jake walked in, holding a book under his arm. Alexis waved to get his attention and he began walking her way. “Wow,” he said, looking at the laid out paper and dice in front of her. “I gotta say, I didn't think you would go so far.” He told her, sitting across from her.She smiled and leaned toward him, purposefully giving him a glance down her top and get a good look at her cleavage. Alexis was proud of her perky just barely C-cups, and Jake took the chance to take the peek she offered. “Now why is that?” She asked teasingly. It was time to turn on the flirting. First meeting wouldn't have worked, but now that she had him mostly alone, she could start to give it to him and build not only his trust but his libido as well.Jake tore his eyes from her gapping shirt and blushed, “Look hot girls don't just ask to play D&D. It simply doesn't happen. I thought you were setting me up for a prank or something.” He explained.Alexis smiled, “I know you did. That's why I got all this stuff on my own. I want you to see I'm serious about at least giving this a try.” She gestured to her set up.Jake nodded, and set the book on the table. Alexis saw that it was the same book that the internet had proved her and the pit of her stomach dropped. Dread filled her as she began to fear all the rules he was about to dump on her.“Okay let's start by doing this….” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of scratch paper. Then he reached over and grabbed her six sided die. “Roll this four times…”And so began the process of Alexis making her first Dungeons and Dragons character. All her fear about the massive book turned out to be a waste because she ended up not needed more than like ten pages of the book in total. Jake made everything really simple and while she did roll her eyes a couple of times at the dorky terminology she found herself grasping it pretty easily.By the end of the sit down with Jake, Alexis' had her character sheet completely filled out. She had created a sneaky demon-like girl called a Trifling Rogue and named her Shadow Heartly. Working with Jake turned out to be a lot of fun, and it made Alexis forget how dorky she always thought this would be. He helped her create a back story for Shadow, together they crafted this back story of a demon born of noble blood who's demonic appearance forced her parents to give her up so she didn't hurt their reputation. Angry at being abandoned, Shadow began to steal mastering the art of pick-pocketing, before being grabbed by the thieves guild. The guild taught her to be unseen, and began using her for missions that asked her to sneak into dangerous locations. She learned to make herself valuable despite her demonic appearance.Alexis felt like she was going crazy, because she actually found herself eager to try playing Shadow in a real game. As they finished and stood up together, Alexis threw her arms around Jake and hugged him, purposefully pressing her chest tightly to his.“Thank you for this, truly.” She told him smiling as she stepped back. “I didn't think for a second it would be as interesting as you made it, but now I'm really glad I actually asked about this. I look forward to playing.” She paused and gave him a look, “When do we play?”Jake smiled, his face a little red after that hug. “I'm glad I was able to shatter your expectations. Let's see I have a new game starting with a group of players on Friday night at seven. So it's actually a perfect game for you to join in and try your hand at it.”Alexis groaned inwardly. Seven on a Friday night? Was he serious? She had a party to go to on Friday night. She didn't want to stay inside to play this game when she could be getting her party on. But she realized that she couldn't go to the party until she brought GGK what they asked for. So she smiled and nodded, “Alright Friday at seven. Where at?”“Oh we play in my dorm. I have a full ride and that came with a full sized dorm room with no roommate. So I have people come over there since its private and I have the space.” He explained.His place?Alexis grinned, it was too perfect. All she had to do was wait for the game to end and everybody to leave and Jake would be all hers. “Great!” She replied. “I'll see you then I guess.” She started to walk away, “Oh, what dorm number?”Jake smirked, “224.”“Thanks Jake. See you.” She smiled and darted off.First thing in the morning Alexis went to the sorority house and explained the situation. Niece, the sorority leader, a buxom fit girl with long black hair and haunting blue eyes, glared up at Alexis from the love seat. “I don't know what you are going through all of this for. He's a nerd and you are way out of his league, just seduce him and be done with it. Why torture yourself?”Alexis didn't have a good answer really. She explained that Jake was too nerdy for that, and he would assume she was up to something if she just tried to pounce on him right out of the gate.Niece just scoffed and gave Alexis a dismissive wave, “Oh please, look if you went to his dorm tonight wearing nothing but a sexy set of underwear or a robe with nothing underneath, there is no way in hell he turns you away. Unless he's gay, is he gay?” Niece asked questioningly.Alexis shook her head, “I gave him plenty of chances to look down my shirt today, he took them all, so I don't think that's a worry.”Niece smiled and nodded, “Great, then go get your picture. Why play games with him?”Alexis shrugged, she didn't have a good answer. Jake had been a really nice guy, and totally different than the dweeb she had expected him to be. She just couldn't bring herself to be such a bitch to him for no reason. She didn't want to just leave him with his pants down, so to speak.It was then she had a chilling thought. If she was warming him up to her, did that mean she intended to give him actual head or something? Would she go that far just for a simple dick pic? Surely that wasn't what she was prepping for? But if she wasn't then why not just take Niece's advice and go blue ball the poor guy?Alexis couldn't think of a true answer. And that worried her. She shook it off, figuring she was just horny. After all she hadn't gotten any since she and her boyfriend broke up over the summer. He didn't even want to try a long distance relationship, and frankly Alexis couldn't blame him. It had left her with an inch to scratch though. Not that she would consider scratching it with Jake. Hell no.Friday came quickly and Alexis decided to bring a couple of pizza's to Jakes dorm room for the game. It always nice to be a good guest, that's what her folks taught her, and being a good guest meant bringing snacks or drinks for whatever get-together you were going too.So there she stood at his doorstep with two hot pizza's burning into her palm. Still she stared at the door for a while. Was she really going to try this for real? To get Jake alone so she could take a picture of his ramrod? It shouldn't mean this much right? Why was she scared, the worse that could happen was she upset him and no big deal. Then again, why did she make sure to put a condom in her handbag. That probably worried her more than anything else.Finally she knocked, Jake opened the door quickly. He smiled as he saw her and the pizzas, “Hey you made it. And with pizza! Wow you are officially my new favorite.” He reached out and took the boxes from

Lee Smith is a former senior editor at The Weekly Standard, the former Editor-in-Chief of The Village Voice Literary Supplement, and has written for such esteemed publications as The New York Times, The Hudson Review, Ecco Press, Atheneum, Grand Street, GQ, and Talk. Now, he joins Victoria to discuss his newest book, Disappearing the President: Trump, Truth, and the Fight for the Republic, as well as the continuing efforts in on the eve of Election Day 2024 to silence and hinder Donald Trump's candidacy to return to the White House. Purchase Disappearing the President on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-President-Trump-Social-Republic/dp/1641774576?tag=victoriataft-20 --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/victoria-taft/support

Hazing Alexis: The most popular sorority, GGK; hazes Alexis.by  musicankane - listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories. Alexis had always been popular, it came with the territory of being good looking. In high school, being a girl, being hot, was like an automatic “in” with the popular crowd. It made life really really easy. Nobody gave you shit, nobody cared what you did or how you dressed (to an extent) because everyone wanted to be friends with the hot girls. She had always been an automatic entry into that club growing up. She had often been a part of the group that decided what challenge other girls had to go through in order to join the popular group, if they weren't hot enough to be automatically in. Some of the things they made people do made Alexis glad she never had to go through it.However college was a different deal entirely. Alexis foolishly thought that she could just join whatever sorority that she wanted. A flick of her shimmering long brown hair, a little shake of her narrow waist, and boom she would be hot enough to join whatever club she wanted. But this was college and things were different here. Everything was about being fair, and frankly the other girls were just as good looking if not even better looking than her. So she wasn't about to get out of her hazing.She supposed that she could always go to another sorority and try to join them, maybe there hazing trial wouldn't be as embarrassing. But Gamma Gamma Kappa was known as the hottest Sorority on campus, by a wide margin. Having seen the girls already in place, Alexis knew that this was the place to be to get invited to the best parties with the hottest guys. So if she wanted in she was stuck with this challenge.She twirled her iPhone in her fingers, the circular mount on the back of her pink case kept it from falling, the text message from Niece the Sorority leader staring back at her on the screen. Alexis' mission was to get a picture for Jake Farrow. Jake was absolutely the last person Alexis ever would have spoken too growing up. Perhaps that's why Niece selected him personally for her little mission. Jake was the head of the campus Dungeons and Dragons club. Nerd to the ultimate degree.Alexis sat not far from Jake now, observing him as she contemplated what she was to do. He didn't look that nerdy to be fair, or even that bad. His hair was long for a guys, combed back, his glasses weren't extremely thick or made of dorky plastic. From what she could tell he was just an average guy, nothing special one way or the other, his only downside was his choice of hobbies.Again Alexis thought about her goal. She was to seduce this guy, and take a picture of her holding his…special member. She didn't have to go through with anything beyond that, but part of her felt really bad about it. She would have to lie and charm her way into his pants and then leave him hanging after she got the picture she needed. It made her wonder whether this was a haze for her or for him.She debated about it for a long time, should she go through with this, should she not? Finally, she stood up and tucked her phone into her pocket to walk across the quad toward him. Fuck it, she figured, one embarrassing and awkward moment and then it would be over. She'd be in GGK and could spend the next four years forgetting it ever happened.Jake was leaning over a drawing pad as she approached, coming up from behind him so she could see over his shoulder as to what he was drawing. Turned out he could really draw, the picture on the paper was really detailed for just a pencil drawing. It appeared to be some knight of warrior in shining armor with a sword in on hand and a shield in the other which was raised to deflect or block some sort of attack that hadn't been drawn yet.Alexis was impressed and that gave her a conversation starter to talk to him. “Wow,” she said moving around to the other side of the table so she could stand in front of him. “That looks really cool.”Jake jerked as if she had shocked him. So into his drawing that he didn't expect someone to talk to him out of the blue. His hand jerked away quickly from the paper so he didn't mess something up. He glanced up at Alexis and blinked, clearly not expecting someone like her to start a conversation with him.He turned a little red and nodded, “Uh, thanks. I'm drawing it for somebody.” He told her.She gave an impressed look to him, “Not even doing that kind of work for a class. That's pretty cool, do you draw all the time then?” She asked.He shrugged, “Not all the time, but enough to keep improving I guess.” He glanced up at her, and Alexis saw his eyes take her body in quickly though she didn't show him that she noticed. He wasn't very good at hiding his gaze, but that was fine by her she found herself glad that he enjoyed what he was looking at.“I'm Alexis by the way.” She smiled, holding her hand out to him.Jake took her hand softly and nodded, “I'm Jake.” He said slowly.“So I have a confession to make.” She said, sitting down across from him. “I didn't come here to just tell you your drawing was cool.”Jake sat back from her and gave her a weary look, as if afraid she was about to do something to him. “Okay?”She shook her head, “Don't worry it's nothing bad. It's just that I am trying to get into the drama club, but I was told that my character acting sucked.” She lied. “So I did a little googling and I came across table-top roleplaying.” Which wasn't a lie, she had googled a bit about Dungeons and Dragons in order to help herself gain Jake's trust easier. The quickest way into a nerd's pants was through his hobbies. Unlike a jock, who's quickest way into their pants was to simply ask.She brought up the Dungeons and Dragons club page on her phone and showed it to him. “Turns out you run a little roleplaying game club on campus here already and I figured that maybe I could join for a while.” She told him, “You know to play a character work on my improv skills or whatever. Then I can take that back to the drama club and actually get into a play or something.”Jake leaned forward, again his eyes roamed over her body quickly, he was really bad at trying to do it low key. “You, want to play….Dungeons and Dragons?” He asked in disbelief.“Well I'd like to learn at least. Unless you have a better suggest for me to practice Improving a character.” She suggested.Jake shrugged, “I don't. I just, I don't know, I never thought in a million years that someone as…let's just say ‘un-nerdy' as you would ever try to sign up for a game.”Alexis shrugged, “It honestly wouldn't be my first choice either. But I don't exactly have the cash to take an extra acting class off campus, this was the best free option I could find.” She gave him a pout, “Are you saying that I can't play?”Jake shook his head quickly, “No not at all. It's just surprising, that's all.” He nodded and leaned back again, probably considering this unexpected turn of events. “Alright…well do you know how to make a character?”Alexis blinked, “A what?”Jake laughed softly, “You can't play until you make a character. I'm gonna guess you don't know how huh?”Alexis frowned, “No I don't. Is that a problem?”“Not really. I can teach you that on our own. When are you free next?” He asked, glancing at his watch. “I have class in thirty minutes so I can't do it right now. But maybe this evening around five thirty or six?”Alexis nodded, “I can do six. Where?”“The club normally meets in one of the rec rooms over in Grand Hall. Room 3, I can meet you there at six and we can build you a character. It's shouldn't take more than an hour or so.” He explained.“Okay that sounds good.”“Great, oh and if you can you should go get yourself a set of dice. There is a hobby shop like three blocks from campus on Grand Street that can get you what you need.” He told her. “If you can't do it today, no big deal but you'll need them for the actual game.”Alexis promised that she would try and then said goodbye. As she turned around she saw a couple girls from GGK watching her from the other end of the quad. She sighed and made her way over to where they were standing.Jessica was a beautiful Latina, with caramel skin and flawless features. She wanted to be a model, but her parents were forcing her to get educated first. Though thanks to Instagram, Jessica was doing both. Emma was as much of a Midwest girl as one could possibly be. Blonde, blue eyes, innocent looking with a body men would kill for.Both girls smirked at Alexis as she approached. “How goes the dick hunt Alexis, got a picture of the nerd-dick for us yet?” Jessica asked.Alexis shook her head, “Not yet, I had to sign up for his club in to give myself an excuse to be around him.”The giggled, “Seriously?” Emma asked, “Why didn't you just ask to suck his dick in the bathroom or something?”Jessica nodded, “Yeah why make it more complicated that it needs to be?”Alexis frowned, “I don't know, I just don't think he is the type for that.”“Please, every guy is that type, especially when a girl like you asks.” Emma said dismissively.Again Alexis shook her head, “Somehow I don't think so. A guy like that, probably used to getting bullied and would suspect a prank. I have to warm him up to me before pulling this stunt.” Alexis moaned and hung her head, “Oh God I have to learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons.”Jessica and Emma just laughed. “Tough shit girl. Get us the pic or find another Sorority.” They said and left.Alexis bit her lip and sighed, no use getting out of it. She was stuck with this, unless she gave up on GGK. No way in hell, Alexis wasn't a quitter and she certainly put other girls in High School through just as much shit as this, worse even.Begrudgingly, Alexis followed Jake's advice and went to the hobby shop he had told her about. It was a small store in the corner of a shopping center called Games, Dice, Action. The interior was much as she expected, walls of comic books, display cases filled with some kind of game singles, and then there were dice. Little boxes of dice with several different shapes.Alexis looked though the different colors for a while before a chubby man with a thick beard came up to her, “Can I help you?” he asked.Alexis glanced up and then pointed at the dice in the case. “Are those the dice I need to play D&D?” She asked.The man nodded, “They are enough to get you going yeah. One die of each side type used in the game.” He explained.“Great, can I get those pink ones?”Shortly before six Alexis was back on campus with her bag of goodies. The clerk had been nice enough to also print her out several pages that he called “character sheets” so that she would be ready to sit down and immediately start making a character with Jake. Along with a set of pink dice that had three different shades of pink in their color scheme.She actually beat Jake to the rec room and found herself an empty table near the back of the mostly empty room so set up. She laid out her sheets and took out her dice, laying them in a row based on their total number of sides, and a little mechanical pencil. While she waited for Jake to arrive she googled basic D&D character creation rules but was giving an online book with nearly 200 pages and her eyes went wide. Did she have to learn 200 pages of rules? Who the fuck would play a game that required so much work. Wasn't it just supposed to be a bunch of dorks playing pretend around a table?The door to the rec room opened and Jake walked in, holding a book under his arm. Alexis waved to get his attention and he began walking her way. “Wow,” he said, looking at the laid out paper and dice in front of her. “I gotta say, I didn't think you would go so far.” He told her, sitting across from her.She smiled and leaned toward him, purposefully giving him a glance down her top and get a good look at her cleavage. Alexis was proud of her perky just barely C-cups, and Jake took the chance to take the peek she offered. “Now why is that?” She asked teasingly. It was time to turn on the flirting. First meeting wouldn't have worked, but now that she had him mostly alone, she could start to give it to him and build not only his trust but his libido as well.Jake tore his eyes from her gapping shirt and blushed, “Look hot girls don't just ask to play D&D. It simply doesn't happen. I thought you were setting me up for a prank or something.” He explained.Alexis smiled, “I know you did. That's why I got all this stuff on my own. I want you to see I'm serious about at least giving this a try.” She gestured to her set up.Jake nodded, and set the book on the table. Alexis saw that it was the same book that the internet had proved her and the pit of her stomach dropped. Dread filled her as she began to fear all the rules he was about to dump on her.“Okay let's start by doing this….” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of scratch paper. Then he reached over and grabbed her six sided die. “Roll this four times…”And so began the process of Alexis making her first Dungeons and Dragons character. All her fear about the massive book turned out to be a waste because she ended up not needed more than like ten pages of the book in total. Jake made everything really simple and while she did roll her eyes a couple of times at the dorky terminology she found herself grasping it pretty easily.By the end of the sit down with Jake, Alexis' had her character sheet completely filled out. She had created a sneaky demon-like girl called a Trifling Rogue and named her Shadow Heartly. Working with Jake turned out to be a lot of fun, and it made Alexis forget how dorky she always thought this would be. He helped her create a back story for Shadow, together they crafted this back story of a demon born of noble blood who's demonic appearance forced her parents to give her up so she didn't hurt their reputation. Angry at being abandoned, Shadow began to steal mastering the art of pick-pocketing, before being grabbed by the thieves guild. The guild taught her to be unseen, and began using her for missions that asked her to sneak into dangerous locations. She learned to make herself valuable despite her demonic appearance.Alexis felt like she was going crazy, because she actually found herself eager to try playing Shadow in a real game. As they finished and stood up together, Alexis threw her arms around Jake and hugged him, purposefully pressing her chest tightly to his.“Thank you for this, truly.” She told him smiling as she stepped back. “I didn't think for a second it would be as interesting as you made it, but now I'm really glad I actually asked about this. I look forward to playing.” She paused and gave him a look, “When do we play?”Jake smiled, his face a little red after that hug. “I'm glad I was able to shatter your expectations. Let's see I have a new game starting with a group of players on Friday night at seven. So it's actually a perfect game for you to join in and try your hand at it.”Alexis groaned inwardly. Seven on a Friday night? Was he serious? She had a party to go to on Friday night. She didn't want to stay inside to play this game when she could be getting her party on. But she realized that she couldn't go to the party until she brought GGK what they asked for. So she smiled and nodded, “Alright Friday at seven. Where at?”“Oh we play in my dorm. I have a full ride and that came with a full sized dorm room with no roommate. So I have people come over there since its private and I have the space.” He explained.His place?Alexis grinned, it was too perfect. All she had to do was wait for the game to end and everybody to leave and Jake would be all hers. “Great!” She replied. “I'll see you then I guess.” She started to walk away, “Oh, what dorm number?”Jake smirked, “224.”“Thanks Jake. See you.” She smiled and darted off.First thing in the morning Alexis went to the sorority house and explained the situation. Niece, the sorority leader, a buxom fit girl with long black hair and haunting blue eyes, glared up at Alexis from the love seat. “I don't know what you are going through all of this for. He's a nerd and you are way out of his league, just seduce him and be done with it. Why torture yourself?”Alexis didn't have a good answer really. She explained that Jake was too nerdy for that, and he would assume she was up to something if she just tried to pounce on him right out of the gate.Niece just scoffed and gave Alexis a dismissive wave, “Oh please, look if you went to his dorm tonight wearing nothing but a sexy set of underwear or a robe with nothing underneath, there is no way in hell he turns you away. Unless he's gay, is he gay?” Niece asked questioningly.Alexis shook her head, “I gave him plenty of chances to look down my shirt today, he took them all, so I don't think that's a worry.”Niece smiled and nodded, “Great, then go get your picture. Why play games with him?”Alexis shrugged, she didn't have a good answer. Jake had been a really nice guy, and totally different than the dweeb she had expected him to be. She just couldn't bring herself to be such a bitch to him for no reason. She didn't want to just leave him with his pants down, so to speak.It was then she had a chilling thought. If she was warming him up to her, did that mean she intended to give him actual head or something? Would she go that far just for a simple dick pic? Surely that wasn't what she was prepping for? But if she wasn't then why not just take Niece's advice and go blue ball the poor guy?Alexis couldn't think of a true answer. And that worried her. She shook it off, figuring she was just horny. After all she hadn't gotten any since she and her boyfriend broke up over the summer. He didn't even want to try a long distance relationship, and frankly Alexis couldn't blame him. It had left her with an inch to scratch though. Not that she would consider scratching it with Jake. Hell no.Friday came quickly and Alexis decided to bring a couple of pizza's to Jakes dorm room for the game. It always nice to be a good guest, that's what her folks taught her, and being a good guest meant bringing snacks or drinks for whatever get-together you were going too.So there she stood at his doorstep with two hot pizza's burning into her palm. Still she stared at the door for a while. Was she really going to try this for real? To get Jake alone so she could take a picture of his ramrod? It shouldn't mean this much right? Why was she scared, the worse that could happen was she upset him and no big deal. Then again, why did she make sure to put a condom in her handbag. That probably worried her more than anything else.Finally she knocked, Jake opened the door quickly. He smiled as he saw her and the pizzas, “Hey you made it. And with pizza! Wow you are officially my new favorite.” He reached out and took the boxes from her before stepping aside to let her in. “See guys this is how you impress your DM.” He said showing off the boxes.“You mean the food or the girl?” A male voice asked inside.Jake snapped at him, “Hey you better not start. I warned you, I want Alexis to feel welcome here.”There was a fairly small circular table with four people around it. Three of them were guys that very much embodied the typical guys that Alexis always pictured playing this game. Very overweight, thick glasses, beards that seemed to encompass their heads, they were total stereotypes. Alexis felt her stomach pitch with regret coming to this whole event.The other player at the table was a girl. But much like the boys she was far from what anyone would call attractive, overweight though not nearly to the degree the boys were, no sign of make-up, limp lifeless dirty blonde hair. She smiled at Alexis and waved her over, “Welcome Alexis, Jake told us you were maybe coming, glad you could make it.”Alexis smiled, “Thanks.”“Don't be nervous, it'll be a fun night. Jake is a great storyteller. I'm Nicole.” Nicole explained, taking Alexis' apprehension as nerves. But in truth it was Alexis fighting herself to come to terms with playing this nerd game all so she could seduce Jake enough to get a picture of his schlong so that she could then take it to GGK and be allowed full membership and regain her proper status as a “popular” girl.Holy fuck was she a shallow bitch or what?The next four hours turned into one of the best nights of fun Alexis ever had. Nicole had been right, Jake was an excellent storyteller, he told a story that made her feel like she and her character where actually in this fantasy world. Shadow and the other characters around the table found themselves stuck on a sinking ship. They rolled dice as they frantically tried to find some way to fix the boat, failing that they then tried to find pieces of the boat they could use to fashion a life raft of some kind. It was through sheer luck of the rolls that the party found themselves on an uncharted island, digging through a costal cave. Deep within they found a cavern of treasure, but guarding the treasure was a Manticore a flying lion beast with a human-like face. The party battled the creature, and Alexis managed to roll well which allowed her to get the finishing blow on the creature.All of it was exciting, and surprisingly engrossing which Alexis had never expected. As her character Shadow stood over the corpse of the beast, Jake stood up at the end of the table and said, “As Shadow pulls her dagger free from the Manticore's back, in collapses under her leaving her panting in victory over the beast.” He smiled at Alexis and she would be lying if she didn't get the tingle in her belly with arousal from his look. If ever she thought a nerd could be sexy it was in that moment. “And that is where we are ending this week.” Jake said, and Alexis clapped.She leaned back and ran her fingers through her hair. “Wow that was totally different than what I expected. Way more fun too.”Jake smiled, “I'm glad you enjoyed it. You did good as Shadow too, got into character pretty well for a first timer.” He told her. “Anyway thanks for coming guys, we'll see you all next week I hope.”The group packed up and Alexis spoke to them briefly thanking them for letting her join the group and playing with them tonight, Nicole was encouraging and told Alexis that she hoped to see her next week for the game again. As the group packed up Jake began to gather up the paper plates and napkins, the remains of the pizza's they all had crushed. Alexis got up and began to help him with the clean-up.She threw the trash into the bin, helped wipe the table up and put the cups that they had used for drinks into Jake's little mini dish washer. Once the rest of the group had left Jake moved next to her and helped rinse things out. “Well tell me what you thought. Was it as unbelievably nerdy as you thought it would be?” He asked her.She recalled the way he swung his arms as he described out they reached attacked the manicure, and how he had done voices of the many characters they had met along the way. She smiled at him, “Probably the nerdiest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. Unbelievably dorky.” She told him.Alexis turned to him and looked down at her hands, the nerves boiling inside of her again. “But,” she said softly before turning her gaze back up to his. “I'd be lying if I told you I didn't have an incredibly huge amount of fun either. If this is what it is like, sign me up.” She told him.Jake nodded with a smirk, “I'm really happy to hear that. Not many girls like you would give this game even the slightest chance. You were great.”Alexis blushed and leaned in to kiss him. Jake's lips were soft against hers, but a little stiff as he didn't expect her to kiss him. For a second she feared that he might be taken and she was making him cheat, but after a moment of shock Jake's hands found her hips softly and he began to kiss her back. She pressed her tongue out, tasting his lips. She felt her body react to being against his, and couldn't believe she was actually attracted to him.Jake broke the kiss lightly, taking a deep breath. “Wow that's umm…unexpected.” He chuckled. “I never thought my first kiss would be from being a good D & D player.”Alexis felt her heart burn for him. His first kiss? The poor guy hadn't ever been kissed before? He was over twenty, even as a nerd she didn't understand how that was possible. She gave him a pout, “First kiss? You've never made out with anyone before?” She asked sadly.Jake blushed and looked down before shaking his head, “No never really that popular with the ladies.”“Oh that's no good. We have to fix that.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him from the little kitchen towards his bed on the other side of the room. She smirked at him and shoved him back onto the bed, she leapt on after him, straddling his hips. She smiled and lowered herself down upon him, kissing him deeply. Her tongue pushed into his mouth to tease and play with him, her lips part as she invited him to do the same to hers. His lips were soft and wonderful to kiss, she felt like she could really enjoy doing this with him.Jake reached up to cup her face, she could feel his hands trembling as he touched her. Alexis broke the kiss and smiled down at him, “You nervous?” She asked.Jake let out a shaky breath, “Yeah, I just….wow this is incredible.”She smiled at him and rose herself on top of him, taking his hands in hers she gave him a wink. “You don't have to be nervous. It's okay.” She told her and pulled his hands to her breasts. Jake gasped as she held his palms against her chest, letting him feel the way her soft yet firm mounds dug back into his hands.“How's that?” She asked teasingly.“Incredible.” He whispered.She couldn't help but giggle, shifting herself on top of him. It was then that she felt it. Her eyes went wide, it wasn't possible, surely he had something in his pocket or something. The make out had made this poor virgin grow hard under her, she could feel his hardness pressing against her as she let her weight settle on him. But what pressed against her couldn't be possible, she wiggled on top of him gently trying to see if it was something else, but no, there was no mistaking it. The massive pressure under her was all him. Holy fuck.Jake was biting his lip and looking up at her expectantly, waiting to see what she would do next. Alexis smiled and leaning forward to kiss him again. After a moment she broke the kiss and whispered into his lips. “If you've never been kissed before, that means…you've never had a girl suck your dick then right?” She asked him playfully.He swallowed and shook his head. Alexis smiled and rose up, “Good, then this should be fun.” She shifted off of him, moving to his side. As she did so she took her phone out of her back pocket and set it on the mattress. Looking down at his crotch she could see the bulging area in his pants and her eyes couldn't believe it was real. There was a fucking monster in there.She smiled at him as she reached out to run her palm over his girth. He let out a loud breath as she did so and it brought a moan from her own lips. “Oh you poor thing, you are so big yet so trapped. This must be awful for you.” She told him.As Alexis reached for the button of his pants, Jake's hand were suddenly there to stop her. “Alexis wait.” He breathed, his desire was potent to the point where she could almost taste it on him. Slowly he pushed himself up onto his elbows to look at her. “Isn't this a little fast? I mean, I just met you the other day.”She blinked in disbelief. Was she hearing this right? Was he actually stopping her from going down on him? Never in the history of ever had she ever been stopped after getting to this point before. She knew he was excited for her, she could see the evidence of that. “What?” She asked softly.Jake frowned and sighed, “I don't know. I just never had anyone even consider this with me. I was the guy who couldn't get a date let alone…” He gestured to her hovering over his crotch, “this.”Alexis couldn't believe it. He was trying to talk her out of blowing him. He was actually considering her and her feelings. Or maybe he sensed that she had other reasons for what she was about to do, no that couldn't be right. He was just a good guy, a nerd to be sure, but a good guy and not bad looking.Smiling she crawled over to his face and gave him a gentle slap. Looking into his eyes she said, “Jake, when you give girls a good time, they like to return the favor. I had a blast tonight, and I wanted to kiss you.” She kissed him softly to accent her point. “When you told me it was your first I felt bad. So I want to do this for you, I wanna show you some fun like you've never felt before. Kinda like what you did tonight for me already.”She sat up beside him and let her hands move back to his jeans. “Besides it doesn't have to mean anything. It's just a little head, people hook up all the time for…I believe the term in D&D would be a ‘one shot'.” She gave him a knowing smile, as her fingers pulled open the fly of his pants.She snapped her fingers and pointed, “Alright tug these off.”Jake hesitated for a moment, looking at her as if still trying to decide if it was a good idea or not. Then he shifted and lifted his hips to tug his pants down, with a couple of kicks they went flying off somewhere on the floor.Alexis loomed over him and looked down at the massive lump in his briefs. “Alright now let's see the goods.” She teased, slipping her fingers into the pee-hole of the briefs and wrapping her fingers around…..Jesus what the fuck was this? A full Salami? Christ even as she wrapped her fist around him she could barely get her fingers to touch. She looked at him with wide eyes as she tugged him through the pee-hole and revealed the beast within.Alexis took a deep breath. “What the fuck dude?”Jake jerked and looked at her, “What?”“You're fucking gigantic, fuck dude look at this thing!” She cried, as her hand slowly caressed the length of him. She lowered herself and lifted his hardness before her face. It was bigger than her fucking head. “You're bigger than my fucking head man!” She gasped, her free hand reaching slowly behind her to grab the phone she had taken out.She rose up and unlocked her phone, “Hold the fuck on I have to see something here.” She handed him her phone with the camera on. “Take my picture, I'm gonna see if your dick will hide my entire face.” She dropped down and lifted him in front of her face again.Jake grimaced, “I dunno if I want to take a picture of my dick though.”“Oh come on dude, my face will be there too. I'll make sure to send it to you so you can jerk to it later.” She promised with a smile. “Please?” She then licked him, running her tongue along his entire length from base to tip. He had to be at least nine inches long, and thick as a brick. Fucking him must be like fucking an arm, she thought to herself.Her tongue upon him did the trick though as his shaft jumped with the pleasure and he grunted. Jake shook his head and aimed the phone again, snapping the picture before setting the phone down. “There.” He said panting.Alexis smiled and kissed the tip of his throbbing mushroom. “Beautiful.” She told him. “Now as I promised.” She opened her mouth and gently sucked his tip into her mouth. Jake moaned with it, his shaft pulsed warmly on her tongue. She felt her body react to it as well, after seeing his size she wanted him, she wanted to try him. But that was perhaps going too far, especially since she didn't think her condom would be of any use on this monster.So Alexis took more into her mouth, working him gently with her tongue. She kept it slow so that he wouldn't lose himself too quickly, she wanted him to enjoy this. Hell SHE wanted to enjoy this. Gone were the thoughts of shame of doing this just to be hazed, gone were the questions of her morality or ethics in doing something like this. Sure she had gotten her picture, but now she didn't have to feel bad about leaving him with blue balls because she wanted to suck him off. His size was a challenge that she wanted to tackle. Even just a few inches into her mouth and her jaw was already open wide. She couldn't take him like this, no fucking way, there was too much of him.Instead Alexis made good with what she could take, using her tongue to tease the underside of him, pulling him back to her lips so she could suckle his tip and then repeating. Jake would swell in her mouth and she would stop, instead rubbing her palm over the spit covered tip of him and using her saliva as lube to stroke him. Her gaze would go to his, enjoying the look on his face.“What do you think?” She teased.Jake struggling to catch his breath. “It's incredible.” He panted softly. “I don't know how much I can take, I'm sorry Alexis.” He warned her.Nobody that she could recall had ever warned her, they just came whenever they felt like it. She had gotten good at being able to read the signs of when her partner was about to finish, the panting, the change in movements, even the swelling of their size. Jake however was too thick for her to totally tell, she thought every throb was going to be the eruption but it wasn't.She smirked, “It's okay, I didn't expect you to have pornstar stamina baby. Don't worry I'll drink you all up.” Then her lips wrapped around him again.Her words and the return of her mouth around him must have been too much, because not a second after she had his smooth fluffy tip in her mouth did she feel his massive tool jerk almost out of her grip. Then a rush of his stuff flooded into her mouth. Alexis squealed in surprise, tightening her grip with her hands around his base, holding him as he continued to powerfully jerk in her hand. Waves of his juice pulsed into her mouth, her throat worked overtime just to keep up with all he gave her. Her eyes went wide as he passed the point where a normal guy would have been done. But Jake gave her more, and then a little more.Finally with a grunt, Jake slumped back onto the bed breathing heavily. Alexis sucked the last little bit from his tip and lifted her head taking a deep breath. “Whew!” She gasped, licking her lips a giving herself a few extra swallows to clear her throat. “Jesus not only is your dick huge but so is your load.” She exclaimed.Jake blushed, “Sorry?”She giggled, “No need to be sorry, that's intense is all. I really really want to fuck you, I just want you to know that.” She told him.Jake sat up, “What really?”Alexis frowned, “Yeah, but I can't.”Jake gave a deflated look, but Alexis grabbed his chin, “No I want to really. But I don't have a condom that will fit you Jake. I didn't expect you to have the fucking Titanic in your pants.” She explained. “So maybe we can set up a raincheck. Find some rubbers that'll fit, and then we can see if my tight little lady can handle your beast.” She smiled wide and kissed his forehead.To be continued, by  musicankane for Literotica

Hazing Alexis: The most popular sorority, GGK; hazes Alexis.by  musicankane - listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories.Alexis had always been popular, it came with the territory of being good looking. In high school, being a girl, being hot, was like an automatic “in” with the popular crowd. It made life really really easy. Nobody gave you shit, nobody cared what you did or how you dressed (to an extent) because everyone wanted to be friends with the hot girls. She had always been an automatic entry into that club growing up.She had often been a part of the group that decided what challenge other girls had to go through in order to join the popular group, if they weren't hot enough to be automatically in. Some of the things they made people do made Alexis glad she never had to go through it.However college was a different deal entirely. Alexis foolishly thought that she could just join whatever sorority that she wanted. A flick of her shimmering long brown hair, a little shake of her narrow waist, and boom she would be hot enough to join whatever club she wanted. But this was college and things were different here. Everything was about being fair, and frankly the other girls were just as good looking if not even better looking than her. So she wasn't about to get out of her hazing.She supposed that she could always go to another sorority and try to join them, maybe there hazing trial wouldn't be as embarrassing. But Gamma Gamma Kappa was known as the hottest Sorority on campus, by a wide margin. Having seen the girls already in place, Alexis knew that this was the place to be to get invited to the best parties with the hottest guys. So if she wanted in she was stuck with this challenge.She twirled her iPhone in her fingers, the circular mount on the back of her pink case kept it from falling, the text message from Niece the Sorority leader staring back at her on the screen. Alexis' mission was to get a picture for Jake Farrow. Jake was absolutely the last person Alexis ever would have spoken too growing up. Perhaps that's why Niece selected him personally for her little mission. Jake was the head of the campus Dungeons and Dragons club. Nerd to the ultimate degree.Alexis sat not far from Jake now, observing him as she contemplated what she was to do. He didn't look that nerdy to be fair, or even that bad. His hair was long for a guys, combed back, his glasses weren't extremely thick or made of dorky plastic. From what she could tell he was just an average guy, nothing special one way or the other, his only downside was his choice of hobbies.Again Alexis thought about her goal. She was to seduce this guy, and take a picture of her holding his…special member. She didn't have to go through with anything beyond that, but part of her felt really bad about it. She would have to lie and charm her way into his pants and then leave him hanging after she got the picture she needed. It made her wonder whether this was a haze for her or for him.She debated about it for a long time, should she go through with this, should she not? Finally, she stood up and tucked her phone into her pocket to walk across the quad toward him. Fuck it, she figured, one embarrassing and awkward moment and then it would be over. She'd be in GGK and could spend the next four years forgetting it ever happened.Jake was leaning over a drawing pad as she approached, coming up from behind him so she could see over his shoulder as to what he was drawing. Turned out he could really draw, the picture on the paper was really detailed for just a pencil drawing. It appeared to be some knight of warrior in shining armor with a sword in on hand and a shield in the other which was raised to deflect or block some sort of attack that hadn't been drawn yet.Alexis was impressed and that gave her a conversation starter to talk to him. “Wow,” she said moving around to the other side of the table so she could stand in front of him. “That looks really cool.”Jake jerked as if she had shocked him. So into his drawing that he didn't expect someone to talk to him out of the blue. His hand jerked away quickly from the paper so he didn't mess something up. He glanced up at Alexis and blinked, clearly not expecting someone like her to start a conversation with him.He turned a little red and nodded, “Uh, thanks. I'm drawing it for somebody.” He told her.She gave an impressed look to him, “Not even doing that kind of work for a class. That's pretty cool, do you draw all the time then?” She asked.He shrugged, “Not all the time, but enough to keep improving I guess.” He glanced up at her, and Alexis saw his eyes take her body in quickly though she didn't show him that she noticed. He wasn't very good at hiding his gaze, but that was fine by her she found herself glad that he enjoyed what he was looking at.“I'm Alexis by the way.” She smiled, holding her hand out to him.Jake took her hand softly and nodded, “I'm Jake.” He said slowly.“So I have a confession to make.” She said, sitting down across from him. “I didn't come here to just tell you your drawing was cool.”Jake sat back from her and gave her a weary look, as if afraid she was about to do something to him. “Okay?”She shook her head, “Don't worry it's nothing bad. It's just that I am trying to get into the drama club, but I was told that my character acting sucked.” She lied. “So I did a little googling and I came across table-top roleplaying.” Which wasn't a lie, she had googled a bit about Dungeons and Dragons in order to help herself gain Jake's trust easier. The quickest way into a nerd's pants was through his hobbies. Unlike a jock, who's quickest way into their pants was to simply ask.She brought up the Dungeons and Dragons club page on her phone and showed it to him. “Turns out you run a little roleplaying game club on campus here already and I figured that maybe I could join for a while.” She told him, “You know to play a character work on my improv skills or whatever. Then I can take that back to the drama club and actually get into a play or something.”Jake leaned forward, again his eyes roamed over her body quickly, he was really bad at trying to do it low key. “You, want to play….Dungeons and Dragons?” He asked in disbelief.“Well I'd like to learn at least. Unless you have a better suggest for me to practice Improving a character.” She suggested.Jake shrugged, “I don't. I just, I don't know, I never thought in a million years that someone as…let's just say ‘un-nerdy' as you would ever try to sign up for a game.”Alexis shrugged, “It honestly wouldn't be my first choice either. But I don't exactly have the cash to take an extra acting class off campus, this was the best free option I could find.” She gave him a pout, “Are you saying that I can't play?”Jake shook his head quickly, “No not at all. It's just surprising, that's all.” He nodded and leaned back again, probably considering this unexpected turn of events. “Alright…well do you know how to make a character?”Alexis blinked, “A what?”Jake laughed softly, “You can't play until you make a character. I'm gonna guess you don't know how huh?”Alexis frowned, “No I don't. Is that a problem?”“Not really. I can teach you that on our own. When are you free next?” He asked, glancing at his watch. “I have class in thirty minutes so I can't do it right now. But maybe this evening around five thirty or six?”Alexis nodded, “I can do six. Where?”“The club normally meets in one of the rec rooms over in Grand Hall. Room 3, I can meet you there at six and we can build you a character. It's shouldn't take more than an hour or so.” He explained.“Okay that sounds good.”“Great, oh and if you can you should go get yourself a set of dice. There is a hobby shop like three blocks from campus on Grand Street that can get you what you need.” He told her. “If you can't do it today, no big deal but you'll need them for the actual game.”Alexis promised that she would try and then said goodbye. As she turned around she saw a couple girls from GGK watching her from the other end of the quad. She sighed and made her way over to where they were standing.Jessica was a beautiful Latina, with caramel skin and flawless features. She wanted to be a model, but her parents were forcing her to get educated first. Though thanks to Instagram, Jessica was doing both. Emma was as much of a Midwest girl as one could possibly be. Blonde, blue eyes, innocent looking with a body men would kill for.Both girls smirked at Alexis as she approached. “How goes the dick hunt Alexis, got a picture of the nerd-dick for us yet?” Jessica asked.Alexis shook her head, “Not yet, I had to sign up for his club in to give myself an excuse to be around him.”The giggled, “Seriously?” Emma asked, “Why didn't you just ask to suck his dick in the bathroom or something?”Jessica nodded, “Yeah why make it more complicated that it needs to be?”Alexis frowned, “I don't know, I just don't think he is the type for that.”“Please, every guy is that type, especially when a girl like you asks.” Emma said dismissively.Again Alexis shook her head, “Somehow I don't think so. A guy like that, probably used to getting bullied and would suspect a prank. I have to warm him up to me before pulling this stunt.” Alexis moaned and hung her head, “Oh God I have to learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons.”Jessica and Emma just laughed. “Tough shit girl. Get us the pic or find another Sorority.” They said and left.Alexis bit her lip and sighed, no use getting out of it. She was stuck with this, unless she gave up on GGK. No way in hell, Alexis wasn't a quitter and she certainly put other girls in High School through just as much shit as this, worse even.Begrudgingly, Alexis followed Jake's advice and went to the hobby shop he had told her about. It was a small store in the corner of a shopping center called Games, Dice, Action. The interior was much as she expected, walls of comic books, display cases filled with some kind of game singles, and then there were dice. Little boxes of dice with several different shapes.Alexis looked though the different colors for a while before a chubby man with a thick beard came up to her, “Can I help you?” he asked.Alexis glanced up and then pointed at the dice in the case. “Are those the dice I need to play D&D?” She asked.The man nodded, “They are enough to get you going yeah. One die of each side type used in the game.” He explained.“Great, can I get those pink ones?”Shortly before six Alexis was back on campus with her bag of goodies. The clerk had been nice enough to also print her out several pages that he called “character sheets” so that she would be ready to sit down and immediately start making a character with Jake. Along with a set of pink dice that had three different shades of pink in their color scheme.She actually beat Jake to the rec room and found herself an empty table near the back of the mostly empty room so set up. She laid out her sheets and took out her dice, laying them in a row based on their total number of sides, and a little mechanical pencil. While she waited for Jake to arrive she googled basic D&D character creation rules but was giving an online book with nearly 200 pages and her eyes went wide. Did she have to learn 200 pages of rules? Who the fuck would play a game that required so much work. Wasn't it just supposed to be a bunch of dorks playing pretend around a table?The door to the rec room opened and Jake walked in, holding a book under his arm. Alexis waved to get his attention and he began walking her way. “Wow,” he said, looking at the laid out paper and dice in front of her. “I gotta say, I didn't think you would go so far.” He told her, sitting across from her.She smiled and leaned toward him, purposefully giving him a glance down her top and get a good look at her cleavage. Alexis was proud of her perky just barely C-cups, and Jake took the chance to take the peek she offered. “Now why is that?” She asked teasingly. It was time to turn on the flirting. First meeting wouldn't have worked, but now that she had him mostly alone, she could start to give it to him and build not only his trust but his libido as well.Jake tore his eyes from her gapping shirt and blushed, “Look hot girls don't just ask to play D&D. It simply doesn't happen. I thought you were setting me up for a prank or something.” He explained.Alexis smiled, “I know you did. That's why I got all this stuff on my own. I want you to see I'm serious about at least giving this a try.” She gestured to her set up.Jake nodded, and set the book on the table. Alexis saw that it was the same book that the internet had proved her and the pit of her stomach dropped. Dread filled her as she began to fear all the rules he was about to dump on her.“Okay let's start by doing this….” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of scratch paper. Then he reached over and grabbed her six sided die. “Roll this four times…”And so began the process of Alexis making her first Dungeons and Dragons character. All her fear about the massive book turned out to be a waste because she ended up not needed more than like ten pages of the book in total. Jake made everything really simple and while she did roll her eyes a couple of times at the dorky terminology she found herself grasping it pretty easily.By the end of the sit down with Jake, Alexis' had her character sheet completely filled out. She had created a sneaky demon-like girl called a Trifling Rogue and named her Shadow Heartly. Working with Jake turned out to be a lot of fun, and it made Alexis forget how dorky she always thought this would be. He helped her create a back story for Shadow, together they crafted this back story of a demon born of noble blood who's demonic appearance forced her parents to give her up so she didn't hurt their reputation. Angry at being abandoned, Shadow began to steal mastering the art of pick-pocketing, before being grabbed by the thieves guild. The guild taught her to be unseen, and began using her for missions that asked her to sneak into dangerous locations. She learned to make herself valuable despite her demonic appearance.Alexis felt like she was going crazy, because she actually found herself eager to try playing Shadow in a real game. As they finished and stood up together, Alexis threw her arms around Jake and hugged him, purposefully pressing her chest tightly to his.“Thank you for this, truly.” She told him smiling as she stepped back. “I didn't think for a second it would be as interesting as you made it, but now I'm really glad I actually asked about this. I look forward to playing.” She paused and gave him a look, “When do we play?”Jake smiled, his face a little red after that hug. “I'm glad I was able to shatter your expectations. Let's see I have a new game starting with a group of players on Friday night at seven. So it's actually a perfect game for you to join in and try your hand at it.”Alexis groaned inwardly. Seven on a Friday night? Was he serious? She had a party to go to on Friday night. She didn't want to stay inside to play this game when she could be getting her party on. But she realized that she couldn't go to the party until she brought GGK what they asked for. So she smiled and nodded, “Alright Friday at seven. Where at?”“Oh we play in my dorm. I have a full ride and that came with a full sized dorm room with no roommate. So I have people come over there since its private and I have the space.” He explained.His place?Alexis grinned, it was too perfect. All she had to do was wait for the game to end and everybody to leave and Jake would be all hers. “Great!” She replied. “I'll see you then I guess.” She started to walk away, “Oh, what dorm number?”Jake smirked, “224.”“Thanks Jake. See you.” She smiled and darted off.First thing in the morning Alexis went to the sorority house and explained the situation. Niece, the sorority leader, a buxom fit girl with long black hair and haunting blue eyes, glared up at Alexis from the love seat. “I don't know what you are going through all of this for. He's a nerd and you are way out of his league, just seduce him and be done with it. Why torture yourself?”Alexis didn't have a good answer really. She explained that Jake was too nerdy for that, and he would assume she was up to something if she just tried to pounce on him right out of the gate.Niece just scoffed and gave Alexis a dismissive wave, “Oh please, look if you went to his dorm tonight wearing nothing but a sexy set of underwear or a robe with nothing underneath, there is no way in hell he turns you away. Unless he's gay, is he gay?” Niece asked questioningly.Alexis shook her head, “I gave him plenty of chances to look down my shirt today, he took them all, so I don't think that's a worry.”Niece smiled and nodded, “Great, then go get your picture. Why play games with him?”Alexis shrugged, she didn't have a good answer. Jake had been a really nice guy, and totally different than the dweeb she had expected him to be. She just couldn't bring herself to be such a bitch to him for no reason. She didn't want to just leave him with his pants down, so to speak.It was then she had a chilling thought. If she was warming him up to her, did that mean she intended to give him actual head or something? Would she go that far just for a simple dick pic? Surely that wasn't what she was prepping for? But if she wasn't then why not just take Niece's advice and go blue ball the poor guy?Alexis couldn't think of a true answer. And that worried her. She shook it off, figuring she was just horny. After all she hadn't gotten any since she and her boyfriend broke up over the summer. He didn't even want to try a long distance relationship, and frankly Alexis couldn't blame him. It had left her with an inch to scratch though. Not that she would consider scratching it with Jake. Hell no.Friday came quickly and Alexis decided to bring a couple of pizza's to Jakes dorm room for the game. It always nice to be a good guest, that's what her folks taught her, and being a good guest meant bringing snacks or drinks for whatever get-together you were going too.So there she stood at his doorstep with two hot pizza's burning into her palm. Still she stared at the door for a while. Was she really going to try this for real? To get Jake alone so she could take a picture of his ramrod? It shouldn't mean this much right? Why was she scared, the worse that could happen was she upset him and no big deal. Then again, why did she make sure to put a condom in her handbag. That probably worried her more than anything else.Finally she knocked, Jake opened the door quickly. He smiled as he saw her and the pizzas, “Hey you made it. And with pizza! Wow you are officially my new favorite.” He reached out and took the boxes from her before stepping aside to let her in. “See guys this is how you impress your DM.” He said showing off the boxes.“You mean the food or the girl?” A male voice asked inside.Jake snapped at him, “Hey you better not start. I warned you, I want Alexis to feel welcome here.”There was a fairly small circular table with four people around it. Three of them were guys that very much embodied the typical guys that Alexis always pictured playing this game. Very overweight, thick glasses, beards that seemed to encompass their heads, they were total stereotypes. Alexis felt her stomach pitch with regret coming to this whole event.The other playe

Mike recalls more memories from living in New York City and San Francisco in late 1999. Topics discussed include: Working at East Side Inc, staying with Nalla, Zoe, freelance writing, The Vault, Dom scene, Barmacy and Beauty Bar, Deb Parker, Saoirse, Henna patterns, subletting apt on Grand Street in Williamsburg, after hours club, artist John Copeland, Juice Design, Bob Kissinger, Jason Noto of Morning Breath, sleeve on older fellow, solidarity with granddaughter, martial arts instructor, evidence of personal exploits, hand/throat tattoos, Mormon hardcore kids, The Cock, dance contest winner, Stars girl, client love connection, Elio's art night, huge Eddie Deutsche snake tattoo, fully suited, Chris Garver, Kaz, weekends in Poughkeepsie, reconnecting with an ex-gf, Pepe Rosso, Two Boots pizza, Benny's Burritos, MaryAnne's, Indian Row, Polish diners, Bliss Cafe, return to 214 Clara Street, Paco Excel, weekends at Newskool tattooing walk-ins, commuting to San Jose on CalTrain with a bicycle, Adrian Lee, Jason Kundell, Ron Earhart, Adam Barton, Eric Ross, Brent Patten, Frankenstein bong, buck-toothed panthers, finger waves, being the least skilled tattooer in a shop, Ron's bagged dually, Uneekbilt box truck, South First Street, Cholas, fist fights, Iguana's, Michelle, Eklectik, rock climber, tattooing Charles (Charles Atlas) and Xmas tattoo trip to NYC.

Rudy has a show up and we are releasing this episode for 2016 on the occasion. KATES-FERRI PROJECTS is delighted to present Rudy Shepherd's first solo exhibition with the gallery, THE GOLDEN AGE, from April 3 to May 5, 2024, with a reception on Friday, April 5, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM at their 561 Grand Street space. This collection of acrylic on canvas paintings evolves from Shepherd's ongoing portrait series and delves into the visual culture of the golden age of hip-hop in the 1980s and 1990s, a period of tremendous innovation and stylistic experimentation in the genre. The artist renders intricate portraits of legendary musicians from iconic publicity photos and album covers, crafting massive 3' by 4' and 4' by 4' works that display the bravado and opulence of hip-hop while also interrogating it, prompting the viewer to reflect on the many meanings embedded in hip-hop imagery and music. Rudy Shepherd received a BS in Biology and Studio Art from Wake Forest University and an MFA in Sculpture from the School of Art Institute of Chicago. He has been in solo exhibitions at Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, CT, Latchkey Gallery, NY, Mixed Greens Gallery, NY, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY, Regina Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA and group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, NY, The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, Bronx Museum of Art, NY, Art in General, NY, Triple Candie, NY, Socrates Sculpture Park, NY, Cheekwood Museum of Art, TN, Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, CT, Southeastern Center of Contemporary Art, NC, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, IL, Tart Gallery, San Francisco, CA and Analix Forever Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland. He has been awarded Artist in Residence at PS1 National/International Studio Program, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY, Artist in Residence Visual + Harlem, Jacob Lawrence Institute for the Visual Arts, New York, N, Emerging Artist Fellowship, Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY, Artist in Residence, Location One, NY, Process Space Artist in Residence Program Governors Island, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York, NY. He has done public art projects on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, Penn State University, PA at Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY, First Street Green Art Park, New York, NY and the Three Rivers Arts Festival, Pittsburgh, PA in 2015 and in Harlem in collaboration with the Studio Museum in Harlem.

¿Cuántas cosas se pueden decir a través de la historia de un objeto? Y más, si ese objeto, esa cosa destinada al olvido, pasó por las manos de personas importantes, ¿qué recuerdos guarda? Como si se tratara de un arcón, la narradora de este texto recurre al atuendo amarillo de su primera infancia para narrar el vínculo con su madre y la manera en que ella le presentó el mundo. “Biografía de un vestido” fue publicado por primera vez en 1992 en la revista literaria Grand Street. Esta versión traducida fue tomada del sitio web de Granta en español. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Editó este episodio: DANY FERNÁNDEZ para Activando producciones Seguilo: https://www.instagram.com/danyrap.f/ https://www.instagram.com/activandoproducciones.proyecto/ La ilustración es de Federico Raiman Seguilo: https://www.instagram.com/federicoraiman/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ¿Te gustaría patrocinar POR QUÉ LEER? Conocé cómo en https://porqueleer.com/patrocina ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Soy Cecilia Bona y creé Por qué leer para promover el placer por la lectura. ¿Ya me seguís en redes? ⚡https://instagram.com/porqueleerok ⚡https://twitter.com/porqueleerok ⚡https://www.facebook.com/porqueleerok/ Qué es POR QUÉ LEER Por qué leer es un proyecto multiplataforma que promueve el placer por la lectura. La idea es contagiar las ganas de leer mediante recomendaciones, reseñas y debates. ¡Cada vez somos más! CECILIA BONA Soy periodista, productora y creadora de contenidos. Trabajé en radios como MITRE, VORTERIX y CLUB OCTUBRE. Amo leer desde pequeña, incentivada especialmente por mi mamá. En Por qué leer confluyen muchas de mis pasiones -la radio, la edición de video, la comunicación- y por eso digo que está hecho con muchísimo amor.

Introducing our new podcast all about the future of magazines — and the magazines of the future. Check out episode 1, our interview with Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Radhika Jones.—Radhika Jones was named editor in chief of Vanity Fair in November 2017, the fifth editor in the magazine's storied history. Her hiring was met with some surprise, and more than a little skepticism. The Guardian called her bookish, as if that's an insult. She arrived at Vanity Fair from a path that included stints at The New York Times where she was the editorial director of the book section and Time magazine where she managed the Time 100, as well as The Paris Review, Art Forum, Book Forum, and Grand Street.Now, more than six years later, Jones sits at the center of a massive media ecosystem that encompasses digital, social, print, video, and experiential platforms. The magazine has been called the curator of American culture, and sits under the flagship of Condé Nast. The good news is the numbers, including print, are not just good, they're up across all platforms.We caught up with Jones after she had put Vanity Fair's flagship Hollywood issue to bed, but before the whirlwind of events that culminates in the very famous party the magazine hosts once the Oscars are done. The Hollywood issue is out today. Print Is Dead (Long Live Print!) is a production of Magazeum & MO.D ©2021–2024

Radhika Jones was named editor in chief of Vanity Fair in November 2017, the fifth editor in the magazine's storied history. Her hiring was met with some surprise, and more than a little skepticism. The Guardian called her bookish, as if that's an insult. She arrived at Vanity Fair from a path that included stints at the New York Times where she was the editorial director of the book section and Time Magazine where she managed the Time 100, as well as the Paris Review, Art Forum, Book Forum, and Grand Street.Now, more than six years later, Jones sits at the center of a massive media ecosystem that encompasses digital, social, print, video, and experiential platforms. The magazine has been called the curator of American culture, and sits under the flagship of Condé Nast. The good news is the numbers, including print, are not just good, they're up across all platforms.We caught up with Jones after she had put Vanity Fair's flagship Hollywood issue to bed, but before the whirlwind of events that culminates in the very famous party the magazine hosts once the Oscars are done. The Hollywood issue is out today.  ©2024 The Full-Bleed Podcast is a production of Magazeum & MO.D. Visit magazeum.co for more information.

The Radix Ecological Sustainability Center in Albany's South End is holding a paw paw tasting on Thursday Oct 12 at 6 PM. The paw paw is a tree native to North America that produces large fruits that taste like a blend of banana, mango, and vanilla custard. Uncommon in upstate New York and resistant to commodification, Radix has produced a large crop of this "anticapitalist fruit" this year. Scott Kellogg of Radix talks with Mark Dunlea of Hudson Mohawk Magazine. Radix is located at 153 Grand Street in Albany.

Paul Rabinowitz is a novelist, poet, photographer, founder of ARTS By The People and an adjunct professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University. His works appear in The Sun Magazine, New World Writing, Burningword, Evening Street Press, The Montreal Review, and elsewhere. Rabinowitz was a featured artist in Nailed Magazine in 2020, Mud Season Review in 2022 and Apricity and Woven Tale Press in 2023. He is the author of The Clay Urn, Confluence and Limited Light, a book of prose and portrait photography, which stems from his Limited Light photo series, nominated for Best of the Net in 2021. Rabinowitz is creator and co-writer with Brittney Bertier of the TV pilot called Bungalow, and author of the book of poems called truth, love and the lines in between and a chapbook of auto-fiction called Grand Street, Revisited (both with Finishing Line Press). His poems and fiction are the inspiration for 8 award-winning experimental films, including Best Experimental Short at Cannes, Venice Shorts Film Festival, RevolutionME, Oregon Short Film Festival, and The Paris Film Festival. This month his photograph appeared on the cover of Press Pause Press Magazine and inside Glint and Burningword Literary Magazine. His latest prose poems “Netflix Thriller” will appear in Sonora Review and “In The Original Language” in Talking River Review.

In August of 1969, Dorothy Miller, the only female real estate agent in the city of Burlington, Iowa, received a call from a man named Robert Clark, asking to see the for sale property at 118 Grand Street. Dorothy agreed to show it to the man that evening, but made sure her husband, Fred Miller, came along for safety purposes. The next day, the man called Dorothy and asked to see the property again, and this time, Dorothy went with the man alone. She was found dead at the property the next day, with multiple stab wounds to her head and back and she had been sexually assaulted. 42 years later, in West Des Moines, Iowa, a 27-year-old real estate agent by the name of Ashley Okland was set to attend an open house at a new model home property in an upscale part of town. Ashley, who had not an enemy in the world, was targeted in broad daylight, by a gunman who came through the front door of the town home and shot her twice, killing her. Both cases remain unsolved to this day. Show Notes:https://iowaunsolvedmurders.com/https://iowacoldcases.org/https://popculturecrime.medium.com/https://theamericangenius.com/https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/cults-crimes/iowa-ashley-okland-y983vX_mFNY/ Ashley Okland information: Polk County Crime Stoppers at (515) 223-1400This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5659010/advertisement

In episode 56, Scott's topics include: The proposed changes to Grand Street are changing again, and the reactions are mixed, Mia Bonta updates the City Council on her accomplishments and looks ahead to the future, Alameda cafes join an innovative reusable cup program, Island High School's Fab Lab creates a project to help deaf and hard of hearing children, an Alameda High School Alum gets called up to the bigs, baseball and basketball are in full swing on the island, and the return of the Sand Castle and Sculpture contest. Plus, additional weekend events of interest.Support the show• AlamedaPost.com • Podcast • Events • Contact • Facebook • Instagram • Reddit • Mastodon • NextDoor •

Containing Matters of The Worms Timestamps: introductions (0:00) E.M.Forster background, non-spoiler discussion (12:38) spoiler plot summary, spoiler discussion (49:59) Bibliography: Lago, Mary - "Forster on E. M. Forster", Twentieth Century Literature, Summer - Autumn (1985) Moffat, Wendy - "A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster" (2010) Rau, Santha Rama - "Remembering E. M. Forster", Grand Street , Summer, 1986, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Summer, 1986) Stone, Wilfred and Forster, EM - "Some Interviews with E. M. Forster", Twentieth Century Literature , Spring, 1997, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Spring, 1997)

In Episode 54, Scott's topics include: The planning board approves a 478-unit development on Alameda Point, the proposed Estuary shuttle is dead in the water for this year, changes may be coming to the dining parklets along Park and Webster, the public workshop on changes to Grand Street is Wednesday, Chevron cleans up their act, EBMUD celebrates 100 years, congratulations to a few local sports teams, baseball comes to Alameda,  ways to pay your respects this Memorial Day, and weekend events.Support the show• AlamedaPost.com • Podcast • Events • Contact • Facebook • Instagram • Reddit • Mastodon • NextDoor •

In Episode 53, Scott's topics include: The city is looking for your input on the proposed changes to Grand Street, South Shore Renters get a reprieve, Studio 23 celebrates 10 years, The FoodBank Players continue their tour of Alameda's parks, congratulations to Faction Brewing on a couple of big wins, and Alameda is set to welcome a 116-year old guest. Plus, events of interest this weekend.Support the show• AlamedaPost.com • Podcast • Events • Contact • Facebook • Instagram • Reddit • Mastodon • NextDoor •

The most popular sorority, GGK; hazes Alexis. - listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories Alexis had always been popular, it came with the territory of being good looking. In high school, being a girl, being hot, was like an automatic “in” with the popular crowd. It made life really really easy. Nobody gave you shit, nobody cared what you did or how you dressed (to an extent) because everyone wanted to be friends with the hot girls. She had always been an automatic entry into that club growing up. She had often been a part of the group that decided what challenge other girls had to go through in order to join the popular group, if they weren't hot enough to be automatically in. Some of the things they made people do made Alexis glad she never had to go through it. [[MORE]] However college was a different deal entirely. Alexis foolishly thought that she could just join whatever sorority that she wanted. A flick of her shimmering long brown hair, a little shake of her narrow waist, and boom she would be hot enough to join whatever club she wanted. But this was college and things were different here. Everything was about being fair, and frankly the other girls were just as good looking if not even better looking than her. So she wasn't about to get out of her hazing. She supposed that she could always go to another sorority and try to join them, maybe there hazing trial wouldn't be as embarrassing. But Gamma Gamma Kappa was known as the hottest Sorority on campus, by a wide margin. Having seen the girls already in place, Alexis knew that this was the place to be to get invited to the best parties with the hottest guys. So if she wanted in she was stuck with this challenge. She twirled her iPhone in her fingers, the circular mount on the back of her pink case kept it from falling, the text message from Niece the Sorority leader staring back at her on the screen. Alexis' mission was to get a picture for Jake Farrow. Jake was absolutely the last person Alexis ever would have spoken too growing up. Perhaps that's why Niece selected him personally for her little mission. Jake was the head of the campus Dungeons and Dragons club. Nerd to the ultimate degree. Alexis sat not far from Jake now, observing him as she contemplated what she was to do. He didn't look that nerdy to be fair, or even that bad. His hair was long for a guys, combed back, his glasses weren't extremely thick or made of dorky plastic. From what she could tell he was just an average guy, nothing special one way or the other, his only downside was his choice of hobbies. Again Alexis thought about her goal. She was to seduce this guy, and take a picture of her holding his…special member. She didn't have to go through with anything beyond that, but part of her felt really bad about it. She would have to lie and charm her way into his pants and then leave him hanging after she got the picture she needed. It made her wonder whether this was a haze for her or for him. She debated about it for a long time, should she go through with this, should she not? Finally, she stood up and tucked her phone into her pocket to walk across the quad toward him. Fuck it, she figured, one embarrassing and awkward moment and then it would be over. She'd be in GGK and could spend the next four years forgetting it ever happened. Jake was leaning over a drawing pad as she approached, coming up from behind him so she could see over his shoulder as to what he was drawing. Turned out he could really draw, the picture on the paper was really detailed for just a pencil drawing. It appeared to be some knight of warrior in shining armor with a sword in on hand and a shield in the other which was raised to deflect or block some sort of attack that hadn't been drawn yet. Alexis was impressed and that gave her a conversation starter to talk to him. “Wow,” she said moving around to the other side of the table so she could stand in front of him. “That looks really cool.” Jake jerked as if she had shocked him. So into his drawing that he didn't expect someone to talk to him out of the blue. His hand jerked away quickly from the paper so he didn't mess something up. He glanced up at Alexis and blinked, clearly not expecting someone like her to start a conversation with him. He turned a little red and nodded, “Uh, thanks. I'm drawing it for somebody.” He told her. She gave an impressed look to him, “Not even doing that kind of work for a class. That's pretty cool, do you draw all the time then?” She asked. He shrugged, “Not all the time, but enough to keep improving I guess.” He glanced up at her, and Alexis saw his eyes take her body in quickly though she didn't show him that she noticed. He wasn't very good at hiding his gaze, but that was fine by her she found herself glad that he enjoyed what he was looking at. “I'm Alexis by the way.” She smiled, holding her hand out to him. Jake took her hand softly and nodded, “I'm Jake.” He said slowly. “So I have a confession to make.” She said, sitting down across from him. “I didn't come here to just tell you your drawing was cool.” Jake sat back from her and gave her a weary look, as if afraid she was about to do something to him. “Okay?” She shook her head, “Don't worry it's nothing bad. It's just that I am trying to get into the drama club, but I was told that my character acting sucked.” She lied. “So I did a little googling and I came across table-top roleplaying.” Which wasn't a lie, she had googled a bit about Dungeons and Dragons in order to help herself gain Jake's trust easier. The quickest way into a nerd's pants was through his hobbies. Unlike a jock, who's quickest way into their pants was to simply ask. She brought up the Dungeons and Dragons club page on her phone and showed it to him. “Turns out you run a little roleplaying game club on campus here already and I figured that maybe I could join for a while.” She told him, “You know to play a character work on my improv skills or whatever. Then I can take that back to the drama club and actually get into a play or something.” Jake leaned forward, again his eyes roamed over her body quickly, he was really bad at trying to do it low key. “You, want to play….Dungeons and Dragons?” He asked in disbelief. “Well I'd like to learn at least. Unless you have a better suggest for me to practice Improving a character.” She suggested. Jake shrugged, “I don't. I just, I don't know, I never thought in a million years that someone as…let's just say ‘un-nerdy' as you would ever try to sign up for a game.” Alexis shrugged, “It honestly wouldn't be my first choice either. But I don't exactly have the cash to take an extra acting class off campus, this was the best free option I could find.” She gave him a pout, “Are you saying that I can't play?” Jake shook his head quickly, “No not at all. It's just surprising, that's all.” He nodded and leaned back again, probably considering this unexpected turn of events. “Alright…well do you know how to make a character?” Alexis blinked, “A what?” Jake laughed softly, “You can't play until you make a character. I'm gonna guess you don't know how huh?” Alexis frowned, “No I don't. Is that a problem?” “Not really. I can teach you that on our own. When are you free next?” He asked, glancing at his watch. “I have class in thirty minutes so I can't do it right now. But maybe this evening around five thirty or six?” Alexis nodded, “I can do six. Where?” “The club normally meets in one of the rec rooms over in Grand Hall. Room 3, I can meet you there at six and we can build you a character. It's shouldn't take more than an hour or so.” He explained. “Okay that sounds good.” “Great, oh and if you can you should go get yourself a set of dice. There is a hobby shop like three blocks from campus on Grand Street that can get you what you need.” He told her. “If you can't do it today, no big deal but you'll need them for the actual game.” Alexis promised that she would try and then said goodbye. As she turned around she saw a couple girls from GGK watching her from the other end of the quad. She sighed and made her way over to where they were standing. Jessica was a beautiful latina, with caramel skin and flawless features. She wanted to be a model, but her parents were forcing her to get educated first. Though thanks to Instagram, Jessica was doing both. Emma was as much of a midwest girl as one could possibly be. Blonde, blue eyes, innocent looking with a body men would kill for. Both girls smirked at Alexis as she approached. “How goes the dick hunt Alexis, got a picture of the nerd-dick for us yet?” Jessica asked. Alexis shook her head, “Not yet, I had to sign up for his club in to give myself an excuse to be around him.” The giggled, “Seriously?” Emma asked, “Why didn't you just ask to suck his dick in the bathroom or something?” Jessica nodded, “Yeah why make it more complicated that it needs to be?” Alexis frowned, “I don't know, I just don't think he is the type for that.” “Please, every guy is that type, especially when a girl like you asks.” Emma said dismissively. Again Alexis shook her head, “Somehow I don't think so. A guy like that, probably used to getting bullied and would suspect a prank. I have to warm him up to me before pulling this stunt.” Alexis moaned and hung her head, “Oh God I have to learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons.” Jessica and Emma just laughed. “Tough shit girl. Get us the pic or find another Sorority.” They said and left. Alexis bit her lip and sighed, no use getting out of it. She was stuck with this, unless she gave up on GGK. No way in hell, Alexis wasn't a quitter and she certainly put other girls in High School through just as much shit as this, worse even. Begrudgingly, Alexis followed Jake's advice and went to the hobby shop he had told her about. It was a small store in the corner of a shopping center called Games, Dice, Action. The interior was much as she expected, walls of comic books, display cases fill with some kind of game game singles, and then there were dice. Little boxes of dice with several different shapes. Alexis looked though the different colors for a while before a chubby man with a thick beard came up to her, “Can I help you?” he asked. Alexis glanced up and then pointed at the dice in the case. “Are those the dice I need to play D&D?” She asked. The man nodded, “They are enough to get you going yeah. One die of each side type used in the game.” He explained. “Great, can I get those pink ones?” Shortly before six Alexis was back on campus with her bag of goodies. The clerk had been nice enough to also print her out several pages that he called “character sheets” so that she would be ready to sit down and immediately start making a character with Jake. Along with a set of pink dice that had three different shades of pink in their color scheme. She actually beat Jake to the rec room and found herself an empty table near the back of the mostly empty room so set up. She laid out her sheets and took out her dice, laying them in a row based on their total number of sides, and a little mechanical pencil. While she waited for Jake to arrive she googled basic D&D character creation rules but was giving a online book with nearly 200 pages and her eyes went wide. Did she have to learn 200 pages of rules? Who the fuck would play a game that required so much work. Wasn't it just supposed to be a bunch of dorks playing pretend around a table? The door to the rec room opened and Jaked walked in, holding a book under his arm. Alexis waved to get his attention and he began walking her way. “Wow,” he said, looking at the laid out paper and dice in front of her. “I gotta say, I didn't think you would go so far.” He told her, sitting across from her. She smiled and leaned toward him, purposefully giving him a glance down her top and get a good look at her cleavage. Alexis was proud of her perky just barely C-cups, and Jake took the chance to take the peek she offered. “Now why is that?” She asked teasingly. It was time to turn on the flurting. First meeting wouldn't have worked, but now that she had him mostly alone, she could start to give it to him and build not only his trust but his libido as well. Jake tore his eyes from her gapping shirt and blushed, “Look hot girls don't just ask to play D&D. It simply doesn't happen. I thought you were setting me up for a prank or something.” He explained. Alexis smiled, “I know you did. That's why I got all this stuff on my own. I want you to see I'm serious about at least giving this a try.” She gestured to her set up. Jake nodded, and set the book on the table. Alexis saw that it was the same book that the internet had proved her and the pit of her stomach dropped. Dread filled her as she began to fear all the rules he was about to dump on her. “Okay let's start by doing this….” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of scratch paper. Then he reached over and grabbed her six sided die. “Roll this four times…” And so began the process of Alexis making her first Dungeons and Dragons character. All her fear about the massive book turned out to be a waste because she ended up not needed more than like ten pages of the book in total. Jake made everything really simple and while she did roll her eyes a couple of times at the dorky terminology she found herself grasping it pretty easily. By the end of the sit down with Jake, Alexis' had her character sheet completely filled out. She had created a sneaky demon-like girl called a Tiefling Rogue and named her Shadow Heartly. Working with Jake turned out to be a lot of fun, and it made Alexis forget how dorky she always thought this would be. He helpped her create a back story for Shadow, together they crafted this back story of a demon born of noble blood who's demonic appearance forced her parents to give her up so she didn't hurt their reputation. Angery at being abandoned, Shadow began to steal mastering the art of pick-pocketing, before being grabbed by the thieves guild. The guild taught her to be unseen, and began using her for missions that asked her to sneak into dangerous locations. She learned to make herself valuable despite her demonic appearance. Alexis felt like she was going crazy, because she actually found herself eager to try playing Shadow in a real game. As they finished and stood up together, Alexis threw her arms around Jake and hugged him, purposefully pressing her chest tightly to his. “Thank you for this, truly.” She told him smiling as she stepped back. “I didn't think for a second it would be as interesting as you made it, but now I'm really glad I actually asked about this. I look forward to playing.” She paused and gave him a look, “When do we play?” Jake smiled, his face a little red after that hug. “I'm glad I was able to shatter your expectations. Let's see I have a new game starting with a group of players on Friday night at seven. So it's actually a perfect game for you to join in and try your hand at it.” Alexis groaned inwardly. Seven on a Friday night? Was he serious? She had a party to go to on Friday night. She didn't want to stay inside to play this game when she could be getting her party on. But she realized that she couldn't go to the party until she brought GGK what they asked for. So she smiled and nodded, “Alright Friday at seven. Where at?” “Oh we play in my dorm. I have a full ride and that came with a full sized dorm room with no roommate. So I have people come over there since it's private and I have the space.” He explained. His place? Alexis grinned, it was too perfect. All she had to do was wait for the game to end and everybody to leave and Jake would be all hers. “Great!” She replied. “I'll see you then I guess.” She started to walk away, “Oh, what dorm number?” Jake smirked, “224.” “Thanks Jake. See you.” She smiled and darted off. First thing in the morning Alexis went to the sorority house and explained the situation. Niece, the sorority leader, a buxom fit girl with long black hair and haunting blue eyes, glared up at Alexis from the love seat. “I don't know what you are going through all of this for. He's a nerd and you are way out of his league, just seduce him and be done with it. Why torture yourself?” Alexis didn't have a good answer really. She explained that Jake was too nerdy for that, and he would assume she was up to something if she just tried to pounce on him right out of the gate. Niece just scoffed and gave Alexis a dismissive wave, “Oh please, look if you went to his dorm tonight wearing nothing but a sexy set of underwear or a robe with nothing underneath, there is no way in hell he turns you away. Unless he's gay, is he gay?” Niece asked questioningly. Alexis shook her head, “I gave him plenty of chances to look down my shirt today, he took them all, so I don't think that's a worry.” Niece smiled and nodded, “Great, then go get your picture. Why play games with him?” Alexis shrugged, she didn't have a good answer. Jake had been a really nice guy, and totally different than the dwebe she had expected him to be. She just couldn't bring herself to be such a bitch to him for no reason. She didn't want to just leave him with his pants down, so to speak. It was then she had a chilling thought. If she was warming him up to her, did that mean she intended to give him actual head or something? Would she go that far just for a simple dick pic? Surely that wasn't what she was prepping for? But if she wasn't then why not just take Niece's advice and go blue ball the poor guy? Alexis couldn't think of a true answer. And that worried her. She shook it off, figuring she was just horny. After all she hadn't gotten any since she and her boyfriend broke up over the summer. He didn't even want to try a long distance relationship, and frankly Alexis couldn't blame him. It had left her with an inch to scratch though. Not that she would consider scratching it with Jake. Hell no. Friday came quickly and Alexis decided to bring a couple of pizza's to Jakes dorm room for the game. It always nice to be a good guest, that's what her folks taught her, and being a good guest meant bringing snacks or drinks for whatever get-together you were going too. So there she stood at his doorstep with two hot pizza's burning into her palm. Still she stared at the door for a while. Was she really going to try this for real? To get Jake alone so she could take a picture of his ramrod? It shouldn't mean this much right? Why was she scared, the worse that could happen was she upset him and no big deal. Then again, why did she make sure to put a condom in her handbag. That probably worried her more than anything else. Finally she knocked, Jake opened the door quickly. He smiled as he saw her and the pizzas, “Hey you made it. And with pizza! Wow you are officially my new favorite.” He reached out and took the boxes from her before stepping aside to let her in. “See guys this is how you impress your DM.” He said showing off the boxes. “You mean the food or the girl?” A male voice asked inside. Jake snapped at him, “Hey you better not start. I warned you, I want Alexis to feel welcome here.” There was a fairly small circular table with four people around it. Three of them were guys that very much embodied the typical guys that Alexis always pictured playing this game. Very overweight, thick glasses, beards that seemed to encompass their heads, they were total stereotypes. Alexis felt her stomach pitch with regret coming to this whole event. The other player at the table was a girl. But much like the boys she was far from what anyone would call attractive, overweight though not nearly to the degree the boys were, no sign of make-up, limp lifeless dirty blonde hair. She smiled at Alexis and waved her over, “Welcome Alexis, Jake told us you were maybe coming, glad you could make it.” Alexis smiled, “Thanks.” “Don't be nervous, it'll be a fun night. Jake is a great storyteller. I'm Nicole.” Nicole explained, taking Alexis' apprehension as nerves. But in truth it was Alexis fighting herself to come to terms with playing this nerd game all so she could seduce Jake enough to get a picture of his schlong so that she could then take it to GGK and be allowed full membership and regain her proper status as a “popular” girl. Holy fuck was she a shallow bitch or what? The next four hours turned into one of the best nights of fun Alexis ever had. Nicole had been right, Jake was an excellent storyteller, he told a story that made her feel like she and her character where actually in this fantasy world. Shadow and the other characters around the table found themselves stuck on a sinking ship. They rolled dice as they frantically tried to find some way to fix the boat, failing that they then tried to find pieces of the boat they could use to fashion a life raft of some kind. It was through sheer luck of the rolls that the party found themselves on an uncharted island, digging through a costal cave. Deep within they found a cavern of treasure, but guarding the treasure was a Manticore a flying lion beast with a human-like face. The party battled the creature, and Alexis managed to roll well which allowed her to get the finishing blow on the creature. All of it was exciting, and surprisingly engrossing which Alexis had never expected. As her character Shadow stood over the corpse of the beast, Jake stood up at the end of the table and said, “As Shadow pulls her dagger free from the Manticore's back, in collapses under her leaving her panting in victory over the beast.” He smiled at Alexis and she would be lying if she didn't get the tingle in her belly with arousal from his look. If ever she thought a nerd could be sexy it was in that moment. “And that is where we are ending this week.” Jake said, and Alexis clapped. She leaned back and ran her fingers through her hair. “Wow that was totally different than what I expected. Way more fun too.” Jake smiled, “I'm glad you enjoyed it. You did good as Shadow too, got into character pretty well for a first timer.” He told her. “Anyway thanks for coming guys, we'll see you all next week I hope.” The group packed up and Alexis spoke to them breifly thanking them for letting her join the group and playing with them tonight, Nicole was encouraging and told Alexis that she hoped to see her next week for the game again. As the group packed up Jake began to gather up the paper plates and napkins, the remains of the pizza's they all had crushed. Alexis got up and began to help him with the clean-up. She threw the trash into the bin, helped wipe the table up and put the cups that they had used for drinks into Jake's little mini dish washer. Once the rest of the group had left Jake moved next to her and helped rinse things out. “Well tell me what you thought. Was it as unbelievably nerdy as you thought it would be?” He asked her. She recalled the way he swung his arms as he described out they eached attacked the manticore, and how he had done voices of the many characters they had met along the way. She smiled at him, “Probably the nerdiest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. Unbelievably dorky.” She told him. Alexis turned to him and looked down at her hands, the nerves boiling inside of her again. “But,” she said softly before turning her gaze back up to his. “I'd be lying if I told you I didn't have an incredibly huge amount of fun either. If this is what it is like, sign me up.” She told him. Jake nodded with a smirk, “I'm really happy to hear that. Not many girls like you would give this game even the slightest chance. You were great.” Alexis blushed and leaned in to kiss him. Jake's lips were soft against hers, but a little stiff as he didn't expect her to kiss him. For a second she feared that he might be taken and she was making him cheat, but after a moment of shock Jake's hands found her hips softly and he began to kiss her back. She pressed her tongue out, tasting his lips. She felt her body react to being against his, and couldn't believe she was actually attracted to him. Jake broke the kiss lightly, taking a deep breath. “Wow that's umm…unexpected.” He chuckled. “I never thought my first kiss would be from being a good D&D player.” Alexis felt her heart burn for him. His first kiss? The poor guy hadn't ever been kissed before? He was over twenty, even as a nerd she didn't understand how that was possible. She gave him a pout, “First kiss? You've never made out with anyone before?” She asked sadly. Jake blushed and looked down before shaking his head, “No never really that popular with the ladies.” “Oh that's no good. We have to fix that.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him from the little kitchen towards his bed on the otherside of the room. She smirked at him and shoved him back onto the bed, she leapt on after him, stratling his hips. She smiled and lowered herself down upon him, kissing him deeply. Her tongue pushed into his mouth to tease and play with him, her lips part as she invited him to do the same to hers. His lips wer soft and wonderful to kiss, she felt like she could really enjoy doing this with him. Jake reached up to cup her face, she could feel his hands trembling as he touched her. Alexis broke the kiss and smiled down at him, “You nervous?” She asked. Jake let out a shaky breath, “Yeah, I just….wow this is incredible.” She smiled at him and rose herself on top of him, taking his hands in hers she gave him a wink. “You don't have to be nervous. It's okay.” She told her and pulled his hands to her breasts. Jake gasped as she held his palms against her chest, letting him feel the way her soft yet firm mounds dug back into his hands. “How's that?” She asked teasingly. “Incredible.” He whispered. She couldn't help but giggle, shifting herself on top of him. It was then that she felt it. Her eyes went wide, it wasn't possible, surely he had something in his pocket or something. The make out had made this poor virgin grow hard under her, she could feel his hardness pressing against her as she let her weight settle on him. But what pressed against her couldn't be possible, she wiggled on top of him gently trying to see if it was something else, but no, there was no mistaking it. The massive pressure under her was all him. Holy fuck. Jake was biting his lip and looking up at her expectantly, waiting to see what she would do next. Alexis smiled and leaning forward to kiss him again. After a moment she broke the kiss and whispered into his lips. “If you've never been kissed before, that means…you've never had a girl suck your dick then right?” She asked him playfully. He swallowed and shook his head. Alexis smiled and rose up, “Good, then this should be fun.” She shifted off of him, moving to his side. As she did so she took her phone out of her back pocket and set it on the mattress. Looking down at his crotch she could see the bulging area in his pants and her eyes couldn't believe it was real. There was a fucking monster in there. She smiled at him as she reached out to run her palm over his girth. He let out a loud breath as she did so and it brought a moan from her own lips. “Oh you poor thing, you are so big yet so trapped. This must be awful for you.” She told him. As Alexis reached for the button of his pants, Jake's hand were suddenly there to stop her. “Alexis wait.” He breathed, his desire was potent to the point where she could almost taste it on him. Slowly he pushed himself up onto his elbows to look at her. “Isn't this a little fast? I mean, I just met you the other day.” She blinked in disbelief. Was she hearing this right? Was he actually stopping her from going down on him? Never in the history of ever had she ever been stopped after getting to this point before. She knew he was excited for her, she could see the evidence of that. “What?” She asked softly. Jake frowned and sighed, “I don't know. I just never had anyone even consider this with me. I was the guy who couldn't get a date let alone…” He gestured to her hovering over his crotch, “this.” Alexis couldn't believe it. He was trying to talk her out of blowing him. He was actually considering her and her feelings. Or maybe he sensed that she had other reasons for what she was about to do, no that couldn't be right. He was just a good guy, a nerd to be sure, but a good guy and not bad looking. Smiling she crawled over to his face and gave him a gentle slap. Looking into his eyes she said, “Jake, when you give girls a good time, they like to return the favor. I had a blast tonight, and I wanted to kiss you.” She kissed him softly to accent her point. “When you told me it was your first I felt bad. So I want to do this for you, I wanna show you some fun like you've never felt before. Kinda like what you did tonight for me already.” She sat up beside him and let her hands move back to his jeans. “Besides it doesn't have to mean anything. It's just a little head, people hook up all the time for…I believe the term in D&D would be a ‘one shot'.” She gave him a knowing smile, as her fingers pulled open the fly of his pants. She snapped her fingers and pointed, “Alright tug these off.” Jake hesitated for a moment, looking at her as if still trying to decide if it was a good idea or not. Then he shifted and lifted his hips to tug his pants down, with a couple of kicks they went flying off somewhere on the floor. Alexis loomed over him and looked down at the massive lump in his briefs. “Alright now let's see the goods.” She teased, slipping her fingers into the pee-hole of the briefs and wrapping her fingers around…..Jesus what the fuck was this? A full Salami? Christ even as she wrapped her fist around him she could barely get her fingers to touch. She looked at him with wide eyes as she tugged him through the pee-hole and revealed the beast within. Alexis took a deep breath. “What the fuck dude?” Jake jerked and looked at her, “What?” “You're fucking gigantic, fuck dude look at this thing!” She cried, as her hand slowly caressed the length of him. She lowered herself and lifted his hardness before her face. It was bigger than her fucking head. “You're bigger than my fucking head man!” She gasped, her free hand reaching slowly behind her to grab the phone she had taken out. She rose up and unlocked her phone, “Hold the fuck on I have to see something here.” She handed him her phone with the camera on. “Take my picture, I'm gonna see if your dick will hide my entire face.” She dropped down and lifted him in front of her face again. Jake grimaced, “I dunno if I want to take a picture of my dick though.” “Oh come on dude, my face will be there too. I'll make sure to send it to you so you can jerk to it later.” She promised with a smile. “Please?” She then licked him, running her tongue along his entire length from base to tip. He had to be at least nine inches long, and thick as a brick. Fucking him must be like fucking an arm, she thought to herself. Her tongue upon him did the trick though as his shaft jumped with the pleasure and he grunted. Jake shook his head and aimed the phone again, snapping the picture before setting the phone down. “There.” He said panting. Alexis smiled and kissed the tip of his throbbing mushroom. “Beautiful.” She told him. “Now as I promised.” She opened her mouth and gently sucked his tip into her mouth. Jake moaned with it, his shaft pulsed warmly on her tongue. She felt her body react to it as well, after seeing his size she wanted him, she wanted to try him. But that was perhaps going too far, especially since she didn't think her condom would be of any use on this monster. So Alexis took more into her mouth, working him gently with her tongue. She kept it slow so that he wouldn't lose himself too quickly, she wanted him to enjoy this. Hell SHE wanted to enjoy this. Gone were the thoughts of shame of doing this just to be hazed, gone were the questions of her morality or ethics in doing something like this. Sure she had gotten her picture, but now she didn't have to feel bad about leaving him with blue balls because she wanted to suck him off. His size was a challenge that she wanted to tackle. Even just a few inches into her mouth and her jaw was already open wide. She couldn't take him like this, no fucking way, there was too much of him. Instead Alexis made good with what she could take, using her tongue to tease the underside of him, pulling him back to her lips so she could suckle his tip and then repeating. Jake would swell in her mouth and she would stop, instead rubbing her palm over the spit covered tip of him and using her saliva as lube to stroke him. Her gaze would go to his, enjoying the look on his face. “What do you think?” She teased. Jake struggling to catch his breath. “It's incredible.” He panted softly. “I don't know how much I can take, I'm sorry Alexis.” He warned her. Nobody that she could recall had ever warned her, they just came whenever they felt like it. She had gotten good at being able to read the signs of when her partner was about to finish, the panting, the change in movements, even the swelling of their size. Jake however was too thick for her to totally tell, she thought every throb was going to be the eruption but it wasn't. She smirked, “It's okay, I didn't expect you to have pornstar stamina baby. Don't worry I'll drink you all up.” Then her lips wrapped around him again. Her words and the return of her mouth around him must have been too much, because not a second after she had his smooth fluffy tip in her mouth did she feel his massive tool jerk almost out of her grip. Then a rush of his stuff flooded into her mouth. Alexis squealed in surprise, tightening her grip with her hands around his base, holding him as he continued to powerfully jerk in her hand. Waves of his juice pulsed into her mouth, her throat worked overtime just to keep up with all he gave her. Her eyes went wide as he passed the point where a normal guy would have been done. But Jake gave her more, and then a little more. Finally with a grunt, Jake slumped back onto the bed breathing heavily. Alexis sucked the last little bit from his tip and lifted her head taking a deep breath. “Whew!” She gasped, licking her lips a giving herself a few extra swallows to clear her throat. “Jesus not only is your dick huge but so is your load.” She exclaimed. Jake blushed, “Sorry?” She giggled, “No need to be sorry, that's intense is all. I really really want to fuck you, I just want you to know that.” She told him. Jake sat up, “What really?” Alexis frowned, “Yeah, but I can't.” Jake gave a deflated look, but Alexis grabbed his chin, “No I want to really. But I don't have a condom that will fit you Jake. I didn't expect you to have the fucking Titanic in your pants.” She explained. “So maybe we can set up a raincheck. Find some rubbers that'll fit, and then we can see if my tight little lady can handle your beast.” She smiled wide and kissed his forehead. by musicankane for Literotica

The most popular sorority, GGK; hazes Alexis. - listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories Alexis had always been popular, it came with the territory of being good looking. In high school, being a girl, being hot, was like an automatic “in” with the popular crowd. It made life really really easy. Nobody gave you shit, nobody cared what you did or how you dressed (to an extent) because everyone wanted to be friends with the hot girls. She had always been an automatic entry into that club growing up. She had often been a part of the group that decided what challenge other girls had to go through in order to join the popular group, if they weren't hot enough to be automatically in. Some of the things they made people do made Alexis glad she never had to go through it. [[MORE]] However college was a different deal entirely. Alexis foolishly thought that she could just join whatever sorority that she wanted. A flick of her shimmering long brown hair, a little shake of her narrow waist, and boom she would be hot enough to join whatever club she wanted. But this was college and things were different here. Everything was about being fair, and frankly the other girls were just as good looking if not even better looking than her. So she wasn't about to get out of her hazing. She supposed that she could always go to another sorority and try to join them, maybe there hazing trial wouldn't be as embarrassing. But Gamma Gamma Kappa was known as the hottest Sorority on campus, by a wide margin. Having seen the girls already in place, Alexis knew that this was the place to be to get invited to the best parties with the hottest guys. So if she wanted in she was stuck with this challenge. She twirled her iPhone in her fingers, the circular mount on the back of her pink case kept it from falling, the text message from Niece the Sorority leader staring back at her on the screen. Alexis' mission was to get a picture for Jake Farrow. Jake was absolutely the last person Alexis ever would have spoken too growing up. Perhaps that's why Niece selected him personally for her little mission. Jake was the head of the campus Dungeons and Dragons club. Nerd to the ultimate degree. Alexis sat not far from Jake now, observing him as she contemplated what she was to do. He didn't look that nerdy to be fair, or even that bad. His hair was long for a guys, combed back, his glasses weren't extremely thick or made of dorky plastic. From what she could tell he was just an average guy, nothing special one way or the other, his only downside was his choice of hobbies. Again Alexis thought about her goal. She was to seduce this guy, and take a picture of her holding his…special member. She didn't have to go through with anything beyond that, but part of her felt really bad about it. She would have to lie and charm her way into his pants and then leave him hanging after she got the picture she needed. It made her wonder whether this was a haze for her or for him. She debated about it for a long time, should she go through with this, should she not? Finally, she stood up and tucked her phone into her pocket to walk across the quad toward him. Fuck it, she figured, one embarrassing and awkward moment and then it would be over. She'd be in GGK and could spend the next four years forgetting it ever happened. Jake was leaning over a drawing pad as she approached, coming up from behind him so she could see over his shoulder as to what he was drawing. Turned out he could really draw, the picture on the paper was really detailed for just a pencil drawing. It appeared to be some knight of warrior in shining armor with a sword in on hand and a shield in the other which was raised to deflect or block some sort of attack that hadn't been drawn yet. Alexis was impressed and that gave her a conversation starter to talk to him. “Wow,” she said moving around to the other side of the table so she could stand in front of him. “That looks really cool.” Jake jerked as if she had shocked him. So into his drawing that he didn't expect someone to talk to him out of the blue. His hand jerked away quickly from the paper so he didn't mess something up. He glanced up at Alexis and blinked, clearly not expecting someone like her to start a conversation with him. He turned a little red and nodded, “Uh, thanks. I'm drawing it for somebody.” He told her. She gave an impressed look to him, “Not even doing that kind of work for a class. That's pretty cool, do you draw all the time then?” She asked. He shrugged, “Not all the time, but enough to keep improving I guess.” He glanced up at her, and Alexis saw his eyes take her body in quickly though she didn't show him that she noticed. He wasn't very good at hiding his gaze, but that was fine by her she found herself glad that he enjoyed what he was looking at. “I'm Alexis by the way.” She smiled, holding her hand out to him. Jake took her hand softly and nodded, “I'm Jake.” He said slowly. “So I have a confession to make.” She said, sitting down across from him. “I didn't come here to just tell you your drawing was cool.” Jake sat back from her and gave her a weary look, as if afraid she was about to do something to him. “Okay?” She shook her head, “Don't worry it's nothing bad. It's just that I am trying to get into the drama club, but I was told that my character acting sucked.” She lied. “So I did a little googling and I came across table-top roleplaying.” Which wasn't a lie, she had googled a bit about Dungeons and Dragons in order to help herself gain Jake's trust easier. The quickest way into a nerd's pants was through his hobbies. Unlike a jock, who's quickest way into their pants was to simply ask. She brought up the Dungeons and Dragons club page on her phone and showed it to him. “Turns out you run a little roleplaying game club on campus here already and I figured that maybe I could join for a while.” She told him, “You know to play a character work on my improv skills or whatever. Then I can take that back to the drama club and actually get into a play or something.” Jake leaned forward, again his eyes roamed over her body quickly, he was really bad at trying to do it low key. “You, want to play….Dungeons and Dragons?” He asked in disbelief. “Well I'd like to learn at least. Unless you have a better suggest for me to practice Improving a character.” She suggested. Jake shrugged, “I don't. I just, I don't know, I never thought in a million years that someone as…let's just say ‘un-nerdy' as you would ever try to sign up for a game.” Alexis shrugged, “It honestly wouldn't be my first choice either. But I don't exactly have the cash to take an extra acting class off campus, this was the best free option I could find.” She gave him a pout, “Are you saying that I can't play?” Jake shook his head quickly, “No not at all. It's just surprising, that's all.” He nodded and leaned back again, probably considering this unexpected turn of events. “Alright…well do you know how to make a character?” Alexis blinked, “A what?” Jake laughed softly, “You can't play until you make a character. I'm gonna guess you don't know how huh?” Alexis frowned, “No I don't. Is that a problem?” “Not really. I can teach you that on our own. When are you free next?” He asked, glancing at his watch. “I have class in thirty minutes so I can't do it right now. But maybe this evening around five thirty or six?” Alexis nodded, “I can do six. Where?” “The club normally meets in one of the rec rooms over in Grand Hall. Room 3, I can meet you there at six and we can build you a character. It's shouldn't take more than an hour or so.” He explained. “Okay that sounds good.” “Great, oh and if you can you should go get yourself a set of dice. There is a hobby shop like three blocks from campus on Grand Street that can get you what you need.” He told her. “If you can't do it today, no big deal but you'll need them for the actual game.” Alexis promised that she would try and then said goodbye. As she turned around she saw a couple girls from GGK watching her from the other end of the quad. She sighed and made her way over to where they were standing. Jessica was a beautiful latina, with caramel skin and flawless features. She wanted to be a model, but her parents were forcing her to get educated first. Though thanks to Instagram, Jessica was doing both. Emma was as much of a midwest girl as one could possibly be. Blonde, blue eyes, innocent looking with a body men would kill for. Both girls smirked at Alexis as she approached. “How goes the dick hunt Alexis, got a picture of the nerd-dick for us yet?” Jessica asked. Alexis shook her head, “Not yet, I had to sign up for his club in to give myself an excuse to be around him.” The giggled, “Seriously?” Emma asked, “Why didn't you just ask to suck his dick in the bathroom or something?” Jessica nodded, “Yeah why make it more complicated that it needs to be?” Alexis frowned, “I don't know, I just don't think he is the type for that.” “Please, every guy is that type, especially when a girl like you asks.” Emma said dismissively. Again Alexis shook her head, “Somehow I don't think so. A guy like that, probably used to getting bullied and would suspect a prank. I have to warm him up to me before pulling this stunt.” Alexis moaned and hung her head, “Oh God I have to learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons.” Jessica and Emma just laughed. “Tough shit girl. Get us the pic or find another Sorority.” They said and left. Alexis bit her lip and sighed, no use getting out of it. She was stuck with this, unless she gave up on GGK. No way in hell, Alexis wasn't a quitter and she certainly put other girls in High School through just as much shit as this, worse even. Begrudgingly, Alexis followed Jake's advice and went to the hobby shop he had told her about. It was a small store in the corner of a shopping center called Games, Dice, Action. The interior was much as she expected, walls of comic books, display cases fill with some kind of game game singles, and then there were dice. Little boxes of dice with several different shapes. Alexis looked though the different colors for a while before a chubby man with a thick beard came up to her, “Can I help you?” he asked. Alexis glanced up and then pointed at the dice in the case. “Are those the dice I need to play D&D?” She asked. The man nodded, “They are enough to get you going yeah. One die of each side type used in the game.” He explained. “Great, can I get those pink ones?” Shortly before six Alexis was back on campus with her bag of goodies. The clerk had been nice enough to also print her out several pages that he called “character sheets” so that she would be ready to sit down and immediately start making a character with Jake. Along with a set of pink dice that had three different shades of pink in their color scheme. She actually beat Jake to the rec room and found herself an empty table near the back of the mostly empty room so set up. She laid out her sheets and took out her dice, laying them in a row based on their total number of sides, and a little mechanical pencil. While she waited for Jake to arrive she googled basic D&D character creation rules but was giving a online book with nearly 200 pages and her eyes went wide. Did she have to learn 200 pages of rules? Who the fuck would play a game that required so much work. Wasn't it just supposed to be a bunch of dorks playing pretend around a table? The door to the rec room opened and Jaked walked in, holding a book under his arm. Alexis waved to get his attention and he began walking her way. “Wow,” he said, looking at the laid out paper and dice in front of her. “I gotta say, I didn't think you would go so far.” He told her, sitting across from her. She smiled and leaned toward him, purposefully giving him a glance down her top and get a good look at her cleavage. Alexis was proud of her perky just barely C-cups, and Jake took the chance to take the peek she offered. “Now why is that?” She asked teasingly. It was time to turn on the flurting. First meeting wouldn't have worked, but now that she had him mostly alone, she could start to give it to him and build not only his trust but his libido as well. Jake tore his eyes from her gapping shirt and blushed, “Look hot girls don't just ask to play D&D. It simply doesn't happen. I thought you were setting me up for a prank or something.” He explained. Alexis smiled, “I know you did. That's why I got all this stuff on my own. I want you to see I'm serious about at least giving this a try.” She gestured to her set up. Jake nodded, and set the book on the table. Alexis saw that it was the same book that the internet had proved her and the pit of her stomach dropped. Dread filled her as she began to fear all the rules he was about to dump on her. “Okay let's start by doing this….” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of scratch paper. Then he reached over and grabbed her six sided die. “Roll this four times…” And so began the process of Alexis making her first Dungeons and Dragons character. All her fear about the massive book turned out to be a waste because she ended up not needed more than like ten pages of the book in total. Jake made everything really simple and while she did roll her eyes a couple of times at the dorky terminology she found herself grasping it pretty easily. By the end of the sit down with Jake, Alexis' had her character sheet completely filled out. She had created a sneaky demon-like girl called a Tiefling Rogue and named her Shadow Heartly. Working with Jake turned out to be a lot of fun, and it made Alexis forget how dorky she always thought this would be. He helpped her create a back story for Shadow, together they crafted this back story of a demon born of noble blood who's demonic appearance forced her parents to give her up so she didn't hurt their reputation. Angery at being abandoned, Shadow began to steal mastering the art of pick-pocketing, before being grabbed by the thieves guild. The guild taught her to be unseen, and began using her for missions that asked her to sneak into dangerous locations. She learned to make herself valuable despite her demonic appearance. Alexis felt like she was going crazy, because she actually found herself eager to try playing Shadow in a real game. As they finished and stood up together, Alexis threw her arms around Jake and hugged him, purposefully pressing her chest tightly to his. “Thank you for this, truly.” She told him smiling as she stepped back. “I didn't think for a second it would be as interesting as you made it, but now I'm really glad I actually asked about this. I look forward to playing.” She paused and gave him a look, “When do we play?” Jake smiled, his face a little red after that hug. “I'm glad I was able to shatter your expectations. Let's see I have a new game starting with a group of players on Friday night at seven. So it's actually a perfect game for you to join in and try your hand at it.” Alexis groaned inwardly. Seven on a Friday night? Was he serious? She had a party to go to on Friday night. She didn't want to stay inside to play this game when she could be getting her party on. But she realized that she couldn't go to the party until she brought GGK what they asked for. So she smiled and nodded, “Alright Friday at seven. Where at?” “Oh we play in my dorm. I have a full ride and that came with a full sized dorm room with no roommate. So I have people come over there since it's private and I have the space.” He explained. His place? Alexis grinned, it was too perfect. All she had to do was wait for the game to end and everybody to leave and Jake would be all hers. “Great!” She replied. “I'll see you then I guess.” She started to walk away, “Oh, what dorm number?” Jake smirked, “224.” “Thanks Jake. See you.” She smiled and darted off. First thing in the morning Alexis went to the sorority house and explained the situation. Niece, the sorority leader, a buxom fit girl with long black hair and haunting blue eyes, glared up at Alexis from the love seat. “I don't know what you are going through all of this for. He's a nerd and you are way out of his league, just seduce him and be done with it. Why torture yourself?” Alexis didn't have a good answer really. She explained that Jake was too nerdy for that, and he would assume she was up to something if she just tried to pounce on him right out of the gate. Niece just scoffed and gave Alexis a dismissive wave, “Oh please, look if you went to his dorm tonight wearing nothing but a sexy set of underwear or a robe with nothing underneath, there is no way in hell he turns you away. Unless he's gay, is he gay?” Niece asked questioningly. Alexis shook her head, “I gave him plenty of chances to look down my shirt today, he took them all, so I don't think that's a worry.” Niece smiled and nodded, “Great, then go get your picture. Why play games with him?” Alexis shrugged, she didn't have a good answer. Jake had been a really nice guy, and totally different than the dwebe she had expected him to be. She just couldn't bring herself to be such a bitch to him for no reason. She didn't want to just leave him with his pants down, so to speak. It was then she had a chilling thought. If she was warming him up to her, did that mean she intended to give him actual head or something? Would she go that far just for a simple dick pic? Surely that wasn't what she was prepping for? But if she wasn't then why not just take Niece's advice and go blue ball the poor guy? Alexis couldn't think of a true answer. And that worried her. She shook it off, figuring she was just horny. After all she hadn't gotten any since she and her boyfriend broke up over the summer. He didn't even want to try a long distance relationship, and frankly Alexis couldn't blame him. It had left her with an inch to scratch though. Not that she would consider scratching it with Jake. Hell no. Friday came quickly and Alexis decided to bring a couple of pizza's to Jakes dorm room for the game. It always nice to be a good guest, that's what her folks taught her, and being a good guest meant bringing snacks or drinks for whatever get-together you were going too. So there she stood at his doorstep with two hot pizza's burning into her palm. Still she stared at the door for a while. Was she really going to try this for real? To get Jake alone so she could take a picture of his ramrod? It shouldn't mean this much right? Why was she scared, the worse that could happen was she upset him and no big deal. Then again, why did she make sure to put a condom in her handbag. That probably worried her more than anything else. Finally she knocked, Jake opened the door quickly. He smiled as he saw her and the pizzas, “Hey you made it. And with pizza! Wow you are officially my new favorite.” He reached out and took the boxes from her before stepping aside to let her in. “See guys this is how you impress your DM.” He said showing off the boxes. “You mean the food or the girl?” A male voice asked inside. Jake snapped at him, “Hey you better not start. I warned you, I want Alexis to feel welcome here.” There was a fairly small circular table with four people around it. Three of them were guys that very much embodied the typical guys that Alexis always pictured playing this game. Very overweight, thick glasses, beards that seemed to encompass their heads, they were total stereotypes. Alexis felt her stomach pitch with regret coming to this whole event. The other player at the table was a girl. But much like the boys she was far from what anyone would call attractive, overweight though not nearly to the degree the boys were, no sign of make-up, limp lifeless dirty blonde hair. She smiled at Alexis and waved her over, “Welcome Alexis, Jake told us you were maybe coming, glad you could make it.” Alexis smiled, “Thanks.” “Don't be nervous, it'll be a fun night. Jake is a great storyteller. I'm Nicole.” Nicole explained, taking Alexis' apprehension as nerves. But in truth it was Alexis fighting herself to come to terms with playing this nerd game all so she could seduce Jake enough to get a picture of his schlong so that she could then take it to GGK and be allowed full membership and regain her proper status as a “popular” girl. Holy fuck was she a shallow bitch or what? The next four hours turned into one of the best nights of fun Alexis ever had. Nicole had been right, Jake was an excellent storyteller, he told a story that made her feel like she and her character where actually in this fantasy world. Shadow and the other characters around the table found themselves stuck on a sinking ship. They rolled dice as they frantically tried to find some way to fix the boat, failing that they then tried to find pieces of the boat they could use to fashion a life raft of some kind. It was through sheer luck of the rolls that the party found themselves on an uncharted island, digging through a costal cave. Deep within they found a cavern of treasure, but guarding the treasure was a Manticore a flying lion beast with a human-like face. The party battled the creature, and Alexis managed to roll well which allowed her to get the finishing blow on the creature. All of it was exciting, and surprisingly engrossing which Alexis had never expected. As her character Shadow stood over the corpse of the beast, Jake stood up at the end of the table and said, “As Shadow pulls her dagger free from the Manticore's back, in collapses under her leaving her panting in victory over the beast.” He smiled at Alexis and she would be lying if she didn't get the tingle in her belly with arousal from his look. If ever she thought a nerd could be sexy it was in that moment. “And that is where we are ending this week.” Jake said, and Alexis clapped. She leaned back and ran her fingers through her hair. “Wow that was totally different than what I expected. Way more fun too.” Jake smiled, “I'm glad you enjoyed it. You did good as Shadow too, got into character pretty well for a first timer.” He told her. “Anyway thanks for coming guys, we'll see you all next week I hope.” The group packed up and Alexis spoke to them breifly thanking them for letting her join the group and playing with them tonight, Nicole was encouraging and told Alexis that she hoped to see her next week for the game again. As the group packed up Jake began to gather up the paper plates and napkins, the remains of the pizza's they all had crushed. Alexis got up and began to help him with the clean-up. She threw the trash into the bin, helped wipe the table up and put the cups that they had used for drinks into Jake's little mini dish washer. Once the rest of the group had left Jake moved next to her and helped rinse things out. “Well tell me what you thought. Was it as unbelievably nerdy as you thought it would be?” He asked her. She recalled the way he swung his arms as he described out they eached attacked the manticore, and how he had done voices of the many characters they had met along the way. She smiled at him, “Probably the nerdiest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. Unbelievably dorky.” She told him. Alexis turned to him and looked down at her hands, the nerves boiling inside of her again. “But,” she said softly before turning her gaze back up to his. “I'd be lying if I told you I didn't have an incredibly huge amount of fun either. If this is what it is like, sign me up.” She told him. Jake nodded with a smirk, “I'm really happy to hear that. Not many girls like you would give this game even the slightest chance. You were great.” Alexis blushed and leaned in to kiss him. Jake's lips were soft against hers, but a little stiff as he didn't expect her to kiss him. For a second she feared that he might be taken and she was making him cheat, but after a moment of shock Jake's hands found her hips softly and he began to kiss her back. She pressed her tongue out, tasting his lips. She felt her body react to being against his, and couldn't believe she was actually attracted to him. Jake broke the kiss lightly, taking a deep breath. “Wow that's umm…unexpected.” He chuckled. “I never thought my first kiss would be from being a good D&D player.” Alexis felt her heart burn for him. His first kiss? The poor guy hadn't ever been kissed before? He was over twenty, even as a nerd she didn't understand how that was possible. She gave him a pout, “First kiss? You've never made out with anyone before?” She asked sadly. Jake blushed and looked down before shaking his head, “No never really that popular with the ladies.” “Oh that's no good. We have to fix that.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him from the little kitchen towards his bed on the otherside of the room. She smirked at him and shoved him back onto the bed, she leapt on after him, stratling his hips. She smiled and lowered herself down upon him, kissing him deeply. Her tongue pushed into his mouth to tease and play with him, her lips part as she invited him to do the same to hers. His lips wer soft and wonderful to kiss, she felt like she could really enjoy doing this with him. Jake reached up to cup her face, she could feel his hands trembling as he touched her. Alexis broke the kiss and smiled down at him, “You nervous?” She asked. Jake let out a shaky breath, “Yeah, I just….wow this is incredible.” She smiled at him and rose herself on top of him, taking his hands in hers she gave him a wink. “You don't have to be nervous. It's okay.” She told her and pulled his hands to her breasts. Jake gasped as she held his palms against her chest, letting him feel the way her soft yet firm mounds dug back into his hands. “How's that?” She asked teasingly. “Incredible.” He whispered. She couldn't help but giggle, shifting herself on top of him. It was then that she felt it. Her eyes went wide, it wasn't possible, surely he had something in his pocket or something. The make out had made this poor virgin grow hard under her, she could feel his hardness pressing against her as she let her weight settle on him. But what pressed against her couldn't be possible, she wiggled on top of him gently trying to see if it was something else, but no, there was no mistaking it. The massive pressure under her was all him. Holy fuck. Jake was biting his lip and looking up at her expectantly, waiting to see what she would do next. Alexis smiled and leaning forward to kiss him again. After a moment she broke the kiss and whispered into his lips. “If you've never been kissed before, that means…you've never had a girl suck your dick then right?” She asked him playfully. He swallowed and shook his head. Alexis smiled and rose up, “Good, then this should be fun.” She shifted off of him, moving to his side. As she did so she took her phone out of her back pocket and set it on the mattress. Looking down at his crotch she could see the bulging area in his pants and her eyes couldn't believe it was real. There was a fucking monster in there. She smiled at him as she reached out to run her palm over his girth. He let out a loud breath as she did so and it brought a moan from her own lips. “Oh you poor thing, you are so big yet so trapped. This must be awful for you.” She told him. As Alexis reached for the button of his pants, Jake's hand were suddenly there to stop her. “Alexis wait.” He breathed, his desire was potent to the point where she could almost taste it on him. Slowly he pushed himself up onto his elbows to look at her. “Isn't this a little fast? I mean, I just met you the other day.” She blinked in disbelief. Was she hearing this right? Was he actually stopping her from going down on him? Never in the history of ever had she ever been stopped after getting to this point before. She knew he was excited for her, she could see the evidence of that. “What?” She asked softly. Jake frowned and sighed, “I don't know. I just never had anyone even consider this with me. I was the guy who couldn't get a date let alone…” He gestured to her hovering over his crotch, “this.” Alexis couldn't believe it. He was trying to talk her out of blowing him. He was actually considering her and her feelings. Or maybe he sensed that she had other reasons for what she was about to do, no that couldn't be right. He was just a good guy, a nerd to be sure, but a good guy and not bad looking. Smiling she crawled over to his face and gave him a gentle slap. Looking into his eyes she said, “Jake, when you give girls a good time, they like to return the favor. I had a blast tonight, and I wanted to kiss you.” She kissed him softly to accent her point. “When you told me it was your first I felt bad. So I want to do this for you, I wanna show you some fun like you've never felt before. Kinda like what you did tonight for me already.” She sat up beside him and let her hands move back to his jeans. “Besides it doesn't have to mean anything. It's just a little head, people hook up all the time for…I believe the term in D&D would be a ‘one shot'.” She gave him a knowing smile, as her fingers pulled open the fly of his pants. She snapped her fingers and pointed, “Alright tug these off.” Jake hesitated for a moment, looking at her as if still trying to decide if it was a good idea or not. Then he shifted and lifted his hips to tug his pants down, with a couple of kicks they went flying off somewhere on the floor. Alexis loomed over him and looked down at the massive lump in his briefs. “Alright now let's see the goods.” She teased, slipping her fingers into the pee-hole of the briefs and wrapping her fingers around…..Jesus what the fuck was this? A full Salami? Christ even as she wrapped her fist around him she could barely get her fingers to touch. She looked at him with wide eyes as she tugged him through the pee-hole and revealed the beast within. Alexis took a deep breath. “What the fuck dude?” Jake jerked and looked at her, “What?” “You're fucking gigantic, fuck dude look at this thing!” She cried, as her hand slowly caressed the length of him. She lowered herself and lifted his hardness before her face. It was bigger than her fucking head. “You're bigger than my fucking head man!” She gasped, her free hand reaching slowly behind her to grab the phone she had taken out. She rose up and unlocked her phone, “Hold the fuck on I have to see something here.” She handed him her phone with the camera on. “Take my picture, I'm gonna see if your dick will hide my entire face.” She dropped down and lifted him in front of her face again. Jake grimaced, “I dunno if I want to take a picture of my dick though.” “Oh come on dude, my face will be there too. I'll make sure to send it to you so you can jerk to it later.” She promised with a smile. “Please?” She then licked him, running her tongue along his entire length from base to tip. He had to be at least nine inches long, and thick as a brick. Fucking him must be like fucking an arm, she thought to herself. Her tongue upon him did the trick though as his shaft jumped with the pleasure and he grunted. Jake shook his head and aimed the phone again, snapping the picture before setting the phone down. “There.” He said panting. Alexis smiled and kissed the tip of his throbbing mushroom. “Beautiful.” She told him. “Now as I promised.” She opened her mouth and gently sucked his tip into her mouth. Jake moaned with it, his shaft pulsed warmly on her tongue. She felt her body react to it as well, after seeing his size she wanted him, she wanted to try him. But that was perhaps going too far, especially since she didn't think her condom would be of any use on this monster. So Alexis took more into her mouth, working him gently with her tongue. She kept it slow so that he wouldn't lose himself too quickly, she wanted him to enjoy this. Hell SHE wanted to enjoy this. Gone were the thoughts of shame of doing this just to be hazed, gone were the questions of her morality or ethics in doing something like this. Sure she had gotten her picture, but now she didn't have to feel bad about leaving him with blue balls because she wanted to suck him off. His size was a challenge that she wanted to tackle. Even just a few inches into her mouth and her jaw was already open wide. She couldn't take him like this, no fucking way, there was too much of him. Instead Alexis made good with what she could take, using her tongue to tease the underside of him, pulling him back to her lips so she could suckle his tip and then repeating. Jake would swell in her mouth and she would stop, instead rubbing her palm over the spit covered tip of him and using her saliva as lube to stroke him. Her gaze would go to his, enjoying the look on his face. “What do you think?” She teased. Jake struggling to catch his breath. “It's incredible.” He panted softly. “I don't know how much I can take, I'm sorry Alexis.” He warned her. Nobody that she could recall had ever warned her, they just came whenever they felt like it. She had gotten good at being able to read the signs of when her partner was about to finish, the panting, the change in movements, even the swelling of their size. Jake however was too thick for her to totally tell, she thought every throb was going to be the eruption but it wasn't. She smirked, “It's okay, I didn't expect you to have pornstar stamina baby. Don't worry I'll drink you all up.” Then her lips wrapped around him again. Her words and the return of her mouth around him must have been too much, because not a second after she had his smooth fluffy tip in her mouth did she feel his massive tool jerk almost out of her grip. Then a rush of his stuff flooded into her mouth. Alexis squealed in surprise, tightening her grip with her hands around his base, holding him as he continued to powerfully jerk in her hand. Waves of his juice pulsed into her mouth, her throat worked overtime just to keep up with all he gave her. Her eyes went wide as he passed the point where a normal guy would have been done. But Jake gave her more, and then a little more. Finally with a grunt, Jake slumped back onto the bed breathing heavily. Alexis sucked the last little bit from his tip and lifted her head taking a deep breath. “Whew!” She gasped, licking her lips a giving herself a few extra swallows to clear her throat. “Jesus not only is your dick huge but so is your load.” She exclaimed. Jake blushed, “Sorry?” She giggled, “No need to be sorry, that's intense is all. I really really want to fuck you, I just want you to know that.” She told him. Jake sat up, “What really?” Alexis frowned, “Yeah, but I can't.” Jake gave a deflated look, but Alexis grabbed his chin, “No I want to really. But I don't have a condom that will fit you Jake. I didn't expect you to have the fucking Titanic in your pants.” She explained. “So maybe we can set up a raincheck. Find some rubbers that'll fit, and then we can see if my tight little lady can handle your beast.” She smiled wide and kissed his forehead. by musicankane for Literotica

The most popular sorority, GGK; hazes Alexis. - listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories Alexis had always been popular, it came with the territory of being good looking. In high school, being a girl, being hot, was like an automatic “in” with the popular crowd. It made life really really easy. Nobody gave you shit, nobody cared what you did or how you dressed (to an extent) because everyone wanted to be friends with the hot girls. She had always been an automatic entry into that club growing up. She had often been a part of the group that decided what challenge other girls had to go through in order to join the popular group, if they weren't hot enough to be automatically in. Some of the things they made people do made Alexis glad she never had to go through it. [[MORE]] However college was a different deal entirely. Alexis foolishly thought that she could just join whatever sorority that she wanted. A flick of her shimmering long brown hair, a little shake of her narrow waist, and boom she would be hot enough to join whatever club she wanted. But this was college and things were different here. Everything was about being fair, and frankly the other girls were just as good looking if not even better looking than her. So she wasn't about to get out of her hazing. She supposed that she could always go to another sorority and try to join them, maybe there hazing trial wouldn't be as embarrassing. But Gamma Gamma Kappa was known as the hottest Sorority on campus, by a wide margin. Having seen the girls already in place, Alexis knew that this was the place to be to get invited to the best parties with the hottest guys. So if she wanted in she was stuck with this challenge. She twirled her iPhone in her fingers, the circular mount on the back of her pink case kept it from falling, the text message from Niece the Sorority leader staring back at her on the screen. Alexis' mission was to get a picture for Jake Farrow. Jake was absolutely the last person Alexis ever would have spoken too growing up. Perhaps that's why Niece selected him personally for her little mission. Jake was the head of the campus Dungeons and Dragons club. Nerd to the ultimate degree. Alexis sat not far from Jake now, observing him as she contemplated what she was to do. He didn't look that nerdy to be fair, or even that bad. His hair was long for a guys, combed back, his glasses weren't extremely thick or made of dorky plastic. From what she could tell he was just an average guy, nothing special one way or the other, his only downside was his choice of hobbies. Again Alexis thought about her goal. She was to seduce this guy, and take a picture of her holding his…special member. She didn't have to go through with anything beyond that, but part of her felt really bad about it. She would have to lie and charm her way into his pants and then leave him hanging after she got the picture she needed. It made her wonder whether this was a haze for her or for him. She debated about it for a long time, should she go through with this, should she not? Finally, she stood up and tucked her phone into her pocket to walk across the quad toward him. Fuck it, she figured, one embarrassing and awkward moment and then it would be over. She'd be in GGK and could spend the next four years forgetting it ever happened. Jake was leaning over a drawing pad as she approached, coming up from behind him so she could see over his shoulder as to what he was drawing. Turned out he could really draw, the picture on the paper was really detailed for just a pencil drawing. It appeared to be some knight of warrior in shining armor with a sword in on hand and a shield in the other which was raised to deflect or block some sort of attack that hadn't been drawn yet. Alexis was impressed and that gave her a conversation starter to talk to him. “Wow,” she said moving around to the other side of the table so she could stand in front of him. “That looks really cool.” Jake jerked as if she had shocked him. So into his drawing that he didn't expect someone to talk to him out of the blue. His hand jerked away quickly from the paper so he didn't mess something up. He glanced up at Alexis and blinked, clearly not expecting someone like her to start a conversation with him. He turned a little red and nodded, “Uh, thanks. I'm drawing it for somebody.” He told her. She gave an impressed look to him, “Not even doing that kind of work for a class. That's pretty cool, do you draw all the time then?” She asked. He shrugged, “Not all the time, but enough to keep improving I guess.” He glanced up at her, and Alexis saw his eyes take her body in quickly though she didn't show him that she noticed. He wasn't very good at hiding his gaze, but that was fine by her she found herself glad that he enjoyed what he was looking at. “I'm Alexis by the way.” She smiled, holding her hand out to him. Jake took her hand softly and nodded, “I'm Jake.” He said slowly. “So I have a confession to make.” She said, sitting down across from him. “I didn't come here to just tell you your drawing was cool.” Jake sat back from her and gave her a weary look, as if afraid she was about to do something to him. “Okay?” She shook her head, “Don't worry it's nothing bad. It's just that I am trying to get into the drama club, but I was told that my character acting sucked.” She lied. “So I did a little googling and I came across table-top roleplaying.” Which wasn't a lie, she had googled a bit about Dungeons and Dragons in order to help herself gain Jake's trust easier. The quickest way into a nerd's pants was through his hobbies. Unlike a jock, who's quickest way into their pants was to simply ask. She brought up the Dungeons and Dragons club page on her phone and showed it to him. “Turns out you run a little roleplaying game club on campus here already and I figured that maybe I could join for a while.” She told him, “You know to play a character work on my improv skills or whatever. Then I can take that back to the drama club and actually get into a play or something.” Jake leaned forward, again his eyes roamed over her body quickly, he was really bad at trying to do it low key. “You, want to play….Dungeons and Dragons?” He asked in disbelief. “Well I'd like to learn at least. Unless you have a better suggest for me to practice Improving a character.” She suggested. Jake shrugged, “I don't. I just, I don't know, I never thought in a million years that someone as…let's just say ‘un-nerdy' as you would ever try to sign up for a game.” Alexis shrugged, “It honestly wouldn't be my first choice either. But I don't exactly have the cash to take an extra acting class off campus, this was the best free option I could find.” She gave him a pout, “Are you saying that I can't play?” Jake shook his head quickly, “No not at all. It's just surprising, that's all.” He nodded and leaned back again, probably considering this unexpected turn of events. “Alright…well do you know how to make a character?” Alexis blinked, “A what?” Jake laughed softly, “You can't play until you make a character. I'm gonna guess you don't know how huh?” Alexis frowned, “No I don't. Is that a problem?” “Not really. I can teach you that on our own. When are you free next?” He asked, glancing at his watch. “I have class in thirty minutes so I can't do it right now. But maybe this evening around five thirty or six?” Alexis nodded, “I can do six. Where?” “The club normally meets in one of the rec rooms over in Grand Hall. Room 3, I can meet you there at six and we can build you a character. It's shouldn't take more than an hour or so.” He explained. “Okay that sounds good.” “Great, oh and if you can you should go get yourself a set of dice. There is a hobby shop like three blocks from campus on Grand Street that can get you what you need.” He told her. “If you can't do it today, no big deal but you'll need them for the actual game.” Alexis promised that she would try and then said goodbye. As she turned around she saw a couple girls from GGK watching her from the other end of the quad. She sighed and made her way over to where they were standing. Jessica was a beautiful latina, with caramel skin and flawless features. She wanted to be a model, but her parents were forcing her to get educated first. Though thanks to Instagram, Jessica was doing both. Emma was as much of a midwest girl as one could possibly be. Blonde, blue eyes, innocent looking with a body men would kill for. Both girls smirked at Alexis as she approached. “How goes the dick hunt Alexis, got a picture of the nerd-dick for us yet?” Jessica asked. Alexis shook her head, “Not yet, I had to sign up for his club in to give myself an excuse to be around him.” The giggled, “Seriously?” Emma asked, “Why didn't you just ask to suck his dick in the bathroom or something?” Jessica nodded, “Yeah why make it more complicated that it needs to be?” Alexis frowned, “I don't know, I just don't think he is the type for that.” “Please, every guy is that type, especially when a girl like you asks.” Emma said dismissively. Again Alexis shook her head, “Somehow I don't think so. A guy like that, probably used to getting bullied and would suspect a prank. I have to warm him up to me before pulling this stunt.” Alexis moaned and hung her head, “Oh God I have to learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons.” Jessica and Emma just laughed. “Tough shit girl. Get us the pic or find another Sorority.” They said and left. Alexis bit her lip and sighed, no use getting out of it. She was stuck with this, unless she gave up on GGK. No way in hell, Alexis wasn't a quitter and she certainly put other girls in High School through just as much shit as this, worse even. Begrudgingly, Alexis followed Jake's advice and went to the hobby shop he had told her about. It was a small store in the corner of a shopping center called Games, Dice, Action. The interior was much as she expected, walls of comic books, display cases fill with some kind of game game singles, and then there were dice. Little boxes of dice with several different shapes. Alexis looked though the different colors for a while before a chubby man with a thick beard came up to her, “Can I help you?” he asked. Alexis glanced up and then pointed at the dice in the case. “Are those the dice I need to play D&D?” She asked. The man nodded, “They are enough to get you going yeah. One die of each side type used in the game.” He explained. “Great, can I get those pink ones?” Shortly before six Alexis was back on campus with her bag of goodies. The clerk had been nice enough to also print her out several pages that he called “character sheets” so that she would be ready to sit down and immediately start making a character with Jake. Along with a set of pink dice that had three different shades of pink in their color scheme. She actually beat Jake to the rec room and found herself an empty table near the back of the mostly empty room so set up. She laid out her sheets and took out her dice, laying them in a row based on their total number of sides, and a little mechanical pencil. While she waited for Jake to arrive she googled basic D&D character creation rules but was giving a online book with nearly 200 pages and her eyes went wide. Did she have to learn 200 pages of rules? Who the fuck would play a game that required so much work. Wasn't it just supposed to be a bunch of dorks playing pretend around a table? The door to the rec room opened and Jaked walked in, holding a book under his arm. Alexis waved to get his attention and he began walking her way. “Wow,” he said, looking at the laid out paper and dice in front of her. “I gotta say, I didn't think you would go so far.” He told her, sitting across from her. She smiled and leaned toward him, purposefully giving him a glance down her top and get a good look at her cleavage. Alexis was proud of her perky just barely C-cups, and Jake took the chance to take the peek she offered. “Now why is that?” She asked teasingly. It was time to turn on the flurting. First meeting wouldn't have worked, but now that she had him mostly alone, she could start to give it to him and build not only his trust but his libido as well. Jake tore his eyes from her gapping shirt and blushed, “Look hot girls don't just ask to play D&D. It simply doesn't happen. I thought you were setting me up for a prank or something.” He explained. Alexis smiled, “I know you did. That's why I got all this stuff on my own. I want you to see I'm serious about at least giving this a try.” She gestured to her set up. Jake nodded, and set the book on the table. Alexis saw that it was the same book that the internet had proved her and the pit of her stomach dropped. Dread filled her as she began to fear all the rules he was about to dump on her. “Okay let's start by doing this….” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of scratch paper. Then he reached over and grabbed her six sided die. “Roll this four times…” And so began the process of Alexis making her first Dungeons and Dragons character. All her fear about the massive book turned out to be a waste because she ended up not needed more than like ten pages of the book in total. Jake made everything really simple and while she did roll her eyes a couple of times at the dorky terminology she found herself grasping it pretty easily. By the end of the sit down with Jake, Alexis' had her character sheet completely filled out. She had created a sneaky demon-like girl called a Tiefling Rogue and named her Shadow Heartly. Working with Jake turned out to be a lot of fun, and it made Alexis forget how dorky she always thought this would be. He helpped her create a back story for Shadow, together they crafted this back story of a demon born of noble blood who's demonic appearance forced her parents to give her up so she didn't hurt their reputation. Angery at being abandoned, Shadow began to steal mastering the art of pick-pocketing, before being grabbed by the thieves guild. The guild taught her to be unseen, and began using her for missions that asked her to sneak into dangerous locations. She learned to make herself valuable despite her demonic appearance. Alexis felt like she was going crazy, because she actually found herself eager to try playing Shadow in a real game. As they finished and stood up together, Alexis threw her arms around Jake and hugged him, purposefully pressing her chest tightly to his. “Thank you for this, truly.” She told him smiling as she stepped back. “I didn't think for a second it would be as interesting as you made it, but now I'm really glad I actually asked about this. I look forward to playing.” She paused and gave him a look, “When do we play?” Jake smiled, his face a little red after that hug. “I'm glad I was able to shatter your expectations. Let's see I have a new game starting with a group of players on Friday night at seven. So it's actually a perfect game for you to join in and try your hand at it.” Alexis groaned inwardly. Seven on a Friday night? Was he serious? She had a party to go to on Friday night. She didn't want to stay inside to play this game when she could be getting her party on. But she realized that she couldn't go to the party until she brought GGK what they asked for. So she smiled and nodded, “Alright Friday at seven. Where at?” “Oh we play in my dorm. I have a full ride and that came with a full sized dorm room with no roommate. So I have people come over there since it's private and I have the space.” He explained. His place? Alexis grinned, it was too perfect. All she had to do was wait for the game to end and everybody to leave and Jake would be all hers. “Great!” She replied. “I'll see you then I guess.” She started to walk away, “Oh, what dorm number?” Jake smirked, “224.” “Thanks Jake. See you.” She smiled and darted off. First thing in the morning Alexis went to the sorority house and explained the situation. Niece, the sorority leader, a buxom fit girl with long black hair and haunting blue eyes, glared up at Alexis from the love seat. “I don't know what you are going through all of this for. He's a nerd and you are way out of his league, just seduce him and be done with it. Why torture yourself?” Alexis didn't have a good answer really. She explained that Jake was too nerdy for that, and he would assume she was up to something if she just tried to pounce on him right out of the gate. Niece just scoffed and gave Alexis a dismissive wave, “Oh please, look if you went to his dorm tonight wearing nothing but a sexy set of underwear or a robe with nothing underneath, there is no way in hell he turns you away. Unless he's gay, is he gay?” Niece asked questioningly. Alexis shook her head, “I gave him plenty of chances to look down my shirt today, he took them all, so I don't think that's a worry.” Niece smiled and nodded, “Great, then go get your picture. Why play games with him?” Alexis shrugged, she didn't have a good answer. Jake had been a really nice guy, and totally different than the dwebe she had expected him to be. She just couldn't bring herself to be such a bitch to him for no reason. She didn't want to just leave him with his pants down, so to speak. It was then she had a chilling thought. If she was warming him up to her, did that mean she intended to give him actual head or something? Would she go that far just for a simple dick pic? Surely that wasn't what she was prepping for? But if she wasn't then why not just take Niece's advice and go blue ball the poor guy? Alexis couldn't think of a true answer. And that worried her. She shook it off, figuring she was just horny. After all she hadn't gotten any since she and her boyfriend broke up over the summer. He didn't even want to try a long distance relationship, and frankly Alexis couldn't blame him. It had left her with an inch to scratch though. Not that she would consider scratching it with Jake. Hell no. Friday came quickly and Alexis decided to bring a couple of pizza's to Jakes dorm room for the game. It always nice to be a good guest, that's what her folks taught her, and being a good guest meant bringing snacks or drinks for whatever get-together you were going too. So there she stood at his doorstep with two hot pizza's burning into her palm. Still she stared at the door for a while. Was she really going to try this for real? To get Jake alone so she could take a picture of his ramrod? It shouldn't mean this much right? Why was she scared, the worse that could happen was she upset him and no big deal. Then again, why did she make sure to put a condom in her handbag. That probably worried her more than anything else. Finally she knocked, Jake opened the door quickly. He smiled as he saw her and the pizzas, “Hey you made it. And with pizza! Wow you are officially my new favorite.” He reached out and took the boxes from her before stepping aside to let her in. “See guys this is how you impress your DM.” He said showing off the boxes. “You mean the food or the girl?” A male voice asked inside. Jake snapped at him, “Hey you better not start. I warned you, I want Alexis to feel welcome here.” There was a fairly small circular table with four people around it. Three of them were guys that very much embodied the typical guys that Alexis always pictured playing this game. Very overweight, thick glasses, beards that seemed to encompass their heads, they were total stereotypes. Alexis felt her stomach pitch with regret coming to this whole event. The other player at the table was a girl. But much like the boys she was far from what anyone would call attractive, overweight though not nearly to the degree the boys were, no sign of make-up, limp lifeless dirty blonde hair. She smiled at Alexis and waved her over, “Welcome Alexis, Jake told us you were maybe coming, glad you could make it.” Alexis smiled, “Thanks.” “Don't be nervous, it'll be a fun night. Jake is a great storyteller. I'm Nicole.” Nicole explained, taking Alexis' apprehension as nerves. But in truth it was Alexis fighting herself to come to terms with playing this nerd game all so she could seduce Jake enough to get a picture of his schlong so that she could then take it to GGK and be allowed full membership and regain her proper status as a “popular” girl. Holy fuck was she a shallow bitch or what? The next four hours turned into one of the best nights of fun Alexis ever had. Nicole had been right, Jake was an excellent storyteller, he told a story that made her feel like she and her character where actually in this fantasy world. Shadow and the other characters around the table found themselves stuck on a sinking ship. They rolled dice as they frantically tried to find some way to fix the boat, failing that they then tried to find pieces of the boat they could use to fashion a life raft of some kind. It was through sheer luck of the rolls that the party found themselves on an uncharted island, digging through a costal cave. Deep within they found a cavern of treasure, but guarding the treasure was a Manticore a flying lion beast with a human-like face. The party battled the creature, and Alexis managed to roll well which allowed her to get the finishing blow on the creature. All of it was exciting, and surprisingly engrossing which Alexis had never expected. As her character Shadow stood over the corpse of the beast, Jake stood up at the end of the table and said, “As Shadow pulls her dagger free from the Manticore's back, in collapses under her leaving her panting in victory over the beast.” He smiled at Alexis and she would be lying if she didn't get the tingle in her belly with arousal from his look. If ever she thought a nerd could be sexy it was in that moment. “And that is where we are ending this week.” Jake said, and Alexis clapped. She leaned back and ran her fingers through her hair. “Wow that was totally different than what I expected. Way more fun too.” Jake smiled, “I'm glad you enjoyed it. You did good as Shadow too, got into character pretty well for a first timer.” He told her. “Anyway thanks for coming guys, we'll see you all next week I hope.” The group packed up and Alexis spoke to them breifly thanking them for letting her join the group and playing with them tonight, Nicole was encouraging and told Alexis that she hoped to see her next week for the game again. As the group packed up Jake began to gather up the paper plates and napkins, the remains of the pizza's they all had crushed. Alexis got up and began to help him with the clean-up. She threw the trash into the bin, helped wipe the table up and put the cups that they had used for drinks into Jake's little mini dish washer. Once the rest of the group had left Jake moved next to her and helped rinse things out. “Well tell me what you thought. Was it as unbelievably nerdy as you thought it would be?” He asked her. She recalled the way he swung his arms as he described out they eached attacked the manticore, and how he had done voices of the many characters they had met along the way. She smiled at him, “Probably the nerdiest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. Unbelievably dorky.” She told him. Alexis turned to him and looked down at her hands, the nerves boiling inside of her again. “But,” she said softly before turning her gaze back up to his. “I'd be lying if I told you I didn't have an incredibly huge amount of fun either. If this is what it is like, sign me up.” She told him. Jake nodded with a smirk, “I'm really happy to hear that. Not many girls like you would give this game even the slightest chance. You were great.” Alexis blushed and leaned in to kiss him. Jake's lips were soft against hers, but a little stiff as he didn't expect her to kiss him. For a second she feared that he might be taken and she was making him cheat, but after a moment of shock Jake's hands found her hips softly and he began to kiss her back. She pressed her tongue out, tasting his lips. She felt her body react to being against his, and couldn't believe she was actually attracted to him. Jake broke the kiss lightly, taking a deep breath. “Wow that's umm…unexpected.” He chuckled. “I never thought my first kiss would be from being a good D&D player.” Alexis felt her heart burn for him. His first kiss? The poor guy hadn't ever been kissed before? He was over twenty, even as a nerd she didn't understand how that was possible. She gave him a pout, “First kiss? You've never made out with anyone before?” She asked sadly. Jake blushed and looked down before shaking his head, “No never really that popular with the ladies.” “Oh that's no good. We have to fix that.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him from the little kitchen towards his bed on the otherside of the room. She smirked at him and shoved him back onto the bed, she leapt on after him, stratling his hips. She smiled and lowered herself down upon him, kissing him deeply. Her tongue pushed into his mouth to tease and play with him, her lips part as she invited him to do the same to hers. His lips wer soft and wonderful to kiss, she felt like she could really enjoy doing this with him. Jake reached up to cup her face, she could feel his hands trembling as he touched her. Alexis broke the kiss and smiled down at him, “You nervous?” She asked. Jake let out a shaky breath, “Yeah, I just….wow this is incredible.” She smiled at him and rose herself on top of him, taking his hands in hers she gave him a wink. “You don't have to be nervous. It's okay.” She told her and pulled his hands to her breasts. Jake gasped as she held his palms against her chest, letting him feel the way her soft yet firm mounds dug back into his hands. “How's that?” She asked teasingly. “Incredible.” He whispered. She couldn't help but giggle, shifting herself on top of him. It was then that she felt it. Her eyes went wide, it wasn't possible, surely he had something in his pocket or something. The make out had made this poor virgin grow hard under her, she could feel his hardness pressing against her as she let her weight settle on him. But what pressed against her couldn't be possible, she wiggled on top of him gently trying to see if it was something else, but no, there was no mistaking it. The massive pressure under her was all him. Holy fuck. Jake was biting his lip and looking up at her expectantly, waiting to see what she would do next. Alexis smiled and leaning forward to kiss him again. After a moment she broke the kiss and whispered into his lips. “If you've never been kissed before, that means…you've never had a girl suck your dick then right?” She asked him playfully. He swallowed and shook his head. Alexis smiled and rose up, “Good, then this should be fun.” She shifted off of him, moving to his side. As she did so she took her phone out of her back pocket and set it on the mattress. Looking down at his crotch she could see the bulging area in his pants and her eyes couldn't believe it was real. There was a fucking monster in there. She smiled at him as she reached out to run her palm over his girth. He let out a loud breath as she did so and it brought a moan from her own lips. “Oh you poor thing, you are so big yet so trapped. This must be awful for you.” She told him. As Alexis reached for the button of his pants, Jake's hand were suddenly there to stop her. “Alexis wait.” He breathed, his desire was potent to the point where she could almost taste it on him. Slowly he pushed himself up onto his elbows to look at her. “Isn't this a little fast? I mean, I just met you the other day.” She blinked in disbelief. Was she hearing this right? Was he actually stopping her from going down on him? Never in the history of ever had she ever been stopped after getting to this point before. She knew he was excited for her, she could see the evidence of that. “What?” She asked softly. Jake frowned and sighed, “I don't know. I just never had anyone even consider this with me. I was the guy who couldn't get a date let alone…” He gestured to her hovering over his crotch, “this.” Alexis couldn't believe it. He was trying to talk her out of blowing him. He was actually considering her and her feelings. Or maybe he sensed that she had other reasons for what she was about to do, no that couldn't be right. He was just a good guy, a nerd to be sure, but a good guy and not bad looking. Smiling she crawled over to his face and gave him a gentle slap. Looking into his eyes she said, “Jake, when you give girls a good time, they like to return the favor. I had a blast tonight, and I wanted to kiss you.” She kissed him softly to accent her point. “When you told me it was your first I felt bad. So I want to do this for you, I wanna show you some fun like you've never felt before. Kinda like what you did tonight for me already.” She sat up beside him and let her hands move back to his jeans. “Besides it doesn't have to mean anything. It's just a little head, people hook up all the time for…I believe the term in D&D would be a ‘one shot'.” She gave him a knowing smile, as her fingers pulled open the fly of his pants. She snapped her fingers and pointed, “Alright tug these off.” Jake hesitated for a moment, looking at her as if still trying to decide if it was a good idea or not. Then he shifted and lifted his hips to tug his pants down, with a couple of kicks they went flying off somewhere on the floor. Alexis loomed over him and looked down at the massive lump in his briefs. “Alright now let's see the goods.” She teased, slipping her fingers into the pee-hole of the briefs and wrapping her fingers around…..Jesus what the fuck was this? A full Salami? Christ even as she wrapped her fist around him she could barely get her fingers to touch. She looked at him with wide eyes as she tugged him through the pee-hole and revealed the beast within. Alexis took a deep breath. “What the fuck dude?” Jake jerked and looked at her, “What?” “You're fucking gigantic, fuck dude look at this thing!” She cried, as her hand slowly caressed the length of him. She lowered herself and lifted his hardness before her face. It was bigger than her fucking head. “You're bigger than my fucking head man!” She gasped, her free hand reaching slowly behind her to grab the phone she had taken out. She rose up and unlocked her phone, “Hold the fuck on I have to see something here.” She handed him her phone with the camera on. “Take my picture, I'm gonna see if your dick will hide my entire face.” She dropped down and lifted him in front of her face again. Jake grimaced, “I dunno if I want to take a picture of my dick though.” “Oh come on dude, my face will be there too. I'll make sure to send it to you so you can jerk to it later.” She promised with a smile. “Please?” She then licked him, running her tongue along his entire length from base to tip. He had to be at least nine inches long, and thick as a brick. Fucking him must be like fucking an arm, she thought to herself. Her tongue upon him did the trick though as his shaft jumped with the pleasure and he grunted. Jake shook his head and aimed the phone again, snapping the picture before setting the phone down. “There.” He said panting. Alexis smiled and kissed the tip of his throbbing mushroom. “Beautiful.” She told him. “Now as I promised.” She opened her mouth and gently sucked his tip into her mouth. Jake moaned with it, his shaft pulsed warmly on her tongue. She felt her body react to it as well, after seeing his size she wanted him, she wanted to try him. But that was perhaps going too far, especially since she didn't think her condom would be of any use on this monster. So Alexis took more into her mouth, working him gently with her tongue. She kept it slow so that he wouldn't lose himself too quickly, she wanted him to enjoy this. Hell SHE wanted to enjoy this. Gone were the thoughts of shame of doing this just to be hazed, gone were the questions of her morality or ethics in doing something like this. Sure she had gotten her picture, but now she didn't have to feel bad about leaving him with blue balls because she wanted to suck him off. His size was a challenge that she wanted to tackle. Even just a few inches into her mouth and her jaw was already open wide. She couldn't take him like this, no fucking way, there was too much of him. Instead Alexis made good with what she could take, using her tongue to tease the underside of him, pulling him back to her lips so she could suckle his tip and then repeating. Jake would swell in her mouth and she would stop, instead rubbing her palm over the spit covered tip of him and using her saliva as lube to stroke him. Her gaze would go to his, enjoying the look on his face. “What do you think?” She teased. Jake struggling to catch his breath. “It's incredible.” He panted softly. “I don't know how much I can take, I'm sorry Alexis.” He warned her. Nobody that she could recall had ever warned her, they just came whenever they felt like it. She had gotten good at being able to read the signs of when her partner was about to finish, the panting, the change in movements, even the swelling of their size. Jake however was too thick for her to totally tell, she thought every throb was going to be the eruption but it wasn't. She smirked, “It's okay, I didn't expect you to have pornstar stamina baby. Don't worry I'll drink you all up.” Then her lips wrapped around him again. Her words and the return of her mouth around him must have been too much, because not a second after she had his smooth fluffy tip in her mouth did she feel his massive tool jerk almost out of her grip. Then a rush of his stuff flooded into her mouth. Alexis squealed in surprise, tightening her grip with her hands around his base, holding him as he continued to powerfully jerk in her hand. Waves of his juice pulsed into her mouth, her throat worked overtime just to keep up with all he gave her. Her eyes went wide as he passed the point where a normal guy would have been done. But Jake gave her more, and then a little more. Finally with a grunt, Jake slumped back onto the bed breathing heavily. Alexis sucked the last little bit from his tip and lifted her head taking a deep breath. “Whew!” She gasped, licking her lips a giving herself a few extra swallows to clear her throat. “Jesus not only is your dick huge but so is your load.” She exclaimed. Jake blushed, “Sorry?” She giggled, “No need to be sorry, that's intense is all. I really really want to fuck you, I just want you to know that.” She told him. Jake sat up, “What really?” Alexis frowned, “Yeah, but I can't.” Jake gave a deflated look, but Alexis grabbed his chin, “No I want to really. But I don't have a condom that will fit you Jake. I didn't expect you to have the fucking Titanic in your pants.” She explained. “So maybe we can set up a raincheck. Find some rubbers that'll fit, and then we can see if my tight little lady can handle your beast.” She smiled wide and kissed his forehead. by musicankane for Literotica

How did all the players settle on their backstories? Can we hit every single fruit on the skill tree? And will we forget Havana Tropicana like Alonzo? All that and much, much more on this supersized Afterparty!   Dive into the classes from Mage Hand Press, the countries of Verda Stello, the Traditions mechanics, and other changes we've made for C3 HERE!   Sponsors - Twenty Sided Store, whose NEW LOCATION is open now at 280 Grand Street! Use code PIRATE for 20% off your first order in-store or online. - Betterhelp, where you can get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/jointheparty   Find Us Online - website: jointhepartypod.com - patreon: patreon.com/jointhepartypod - twitter: twitter.com/jointhepartypod - facebook: facebook.com/jointhepartypod - instagram: instagram.com/jointhepartypod - tumblr: jointhepartypod.tumblr.com - merch & music: jointhepartypod.com/merch   Cast & Crew - Game Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver - Co-Host (Umbi), Co-Producer, Sound Designer, Composer: Brandon Grugle - Co-Host (Chamomile Cassis), Co-Producer, Editor: Julia Schifini - Co-Host (Troy Riptide), Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin - Theme Song: Lyrics by Eric Silver, music by Brandon Grugle. Vocals by Brandon Grugle, Lauren Shippen, Julia Schifini, Roux Bedrosian, Eric Silver, Tyler Silver, and Amanda McLoughlin. Available for purchase here. - Artwork: Allyson Wakeman - Multitude: multitude.productions   About Us Join the Party is an actual play podcast with tangible worlds, genre-pushing storytelling, and collaborators who make each other laugh each week. We welcome everyone to the table, from longtime players to folks who've never touched a roleplaying game before. Hop into our current campaign, a pirate story set in a world of plant- and bug-folk, or marathon our completed stories with the Camp-Paign, a MOTW game set in a weird summer camp, Campaign 2 for a modern superhero game, and Campaign 1 for a high fantasy story. And once a month we release the Afterparty, where we answer your questions about the show and how we play the game. New episodes every Tuesday.

On Saturday, April 15th, The Radix Center will be having a volunteer food tree planting event. The food grown on these public trees will be available for free to local residents. The event starts at the Radix Center (153 Grand Street, South End, Albany) at 10 AM. Scott Kellogg discusses the effort and its role in combating climate change with Mark Dunlea of the Hudson Mohawk Magazine.

What happened to all the people left on Esca Island? Should we google every name that Eric comes up with? And is Umbi Dr. Radish Radish? All that and more on the Afterparty!   Share the C3 Sea Shanty!! Twitter: https://twitter.com/jointhepartypod/status/1630932757307170816?s=46&t=2YIb_Xlfoch11AgloCNhHw Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CpP7XnfjDVn/?igshid=MjkzY2Y1YTY= Tumblr: https://jointhepartypod.tumblr.com/post/710599406261501952/ill-sing-you-a-song-that-all-greenfolk-know YouTube: https://youtu.be/RWRBjA2W7uc   Dive into the classes from Mage Hand Press, the countries of Verda Stello, the Traditions mechanics, and other changes we've made for C3 HERE!   Sponsors - D and Tea, where code jointheparty will get you 10% off, free shipping, AND a Cammie sticker!! - Twenty Sided Store, whose NEW LOCATION is open now at 280 Grand Street! Use code PIRATE for 20% off your first order in-store or online. - Betterhelp, where you can get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/jointheparty   Find Us Online - website: jointhepartypod.com - patreon: patreon.com/jointhepartypod - twitter: twitter.com/jointhepartypod - facebook: facebook.com/jointhepartypod - instagram: instagram.com/jointhepartypod - tumblr: jointhepartypod.tumblr.com - merch & music: jointhepartypod.com/merch   Cast & Crew - Game Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver - Co-Host (Umbi), Co-Producer, Sound Designer, Composer: Brandon Grugle - Co-Host (Chamomile Cassis), Co-Producer, Editor: Julia Schifini - Co-Host (Troy Riptide), Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin - Theme Song: Lyrics by Eric Silver, music by Brandon Grugle. Vocals by Brandon Grugle, Lauren Shippen, Julia Schifini, Roux Bedrosian, Eric Silver, Tyler Silver, and Amanda McLoughlin. Available for purchase here. - Artwork: Allyson Wakeman - Multitude: multitude.productions   About Us Join the Party is an actual play podcast with tangible worlds, genre-pushing storytelling, and collaborators who make each other laugh each week. We welcome everyone to the table, from longtime players to folks who've never touched a roleplaying game before. Hop into our current campaign, a pirate story set in a world of plant- and bug-folk, or marathon our completed stories with the Camp-Paign, a MOTW game set in a weird summer camp, Campaign 2 for a modern superhero game, and Campaign 1 for a high fantasy story. And once a month we release the Afterparty, where we answer your questions about the show and how we play the game. New episodes every Tuesday.

What do you do with a devil's challenge? What do you do with a devil's challenge? What do you do with a devil's challenge early in the morning?   Dive into the classes from Mage Hand Press, the countries of Verda Stello, the Traditions mechanics, and other changes we've made for C3 HERE!   Sponsors - Three Black Halflings and their new series, Big Trouble in Little Mineuse. Subscribe in your podcast app today! - Twenty Sided Store, whose NEW LOCATION is open now at 280 Grand Street! Use code PIRATE for 20% off your first order in-store or online. - Betterhelp, where you can get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/jointheparty   Find Us Online - website: jointhepartypod.com - patreon: patreon.com/jointhepartypod - twitter: twitter.com/jointhepartypod - facebook: facebook.com/jointhepartypod - instagram: instagram.com/jointhepartypod - tumblr: jointhepartypod.tumblr.com - merch & music: jointhepartypod.com/merch   Cast & Crew - Game Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver - Co-Host (Umbi), Co-Producer, Sound Designer, Composer: Brandon Grugle - Co-Host (Chamomile Cassis), Co-Producer: Julia Schifini - Co-Host (Troy Riptide), Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin - Theme Song: Lyrics by Eric Silver, music by Brandon Grugle. Vocals by Brandon Grugle, Lauren Shippen, Julia Schifini, Roux Bedrosian, Eric Silver, Tyler Silver, and Amanda McLoughlin. Available for purchase here. - Artwork: Allyson Wakeman - Multitude: multitude.productions   About Us Join the Party is an actual play podcast with tangible worlds, genre-pushing storytelling, and collaborators who make each other laugh each week. We welcome everyone to the table, from longtime players to folks who've never touched a roleplaying game before. Hop into our current campaign, a pirate story set in a world of plant- and bug-folk, or marathon our completed stories with the Camp-Paign, a MOTW game set in a weird summer camp, Campaign 2 for a modern superhero game, and Campaign 1 for a high fantasy story. And once a month we release the Afterparty, where we answer your questions about the show and how we play the game. New episodes every Tuesday.

How are we enjoying getting our feet (or roots) wet in Verda Stello? How illegal really is piracy? And what's your favorite flawed government or institution in fiction? All that and more on the Afterparty! Dive into the Traditions mechanics, the countries of Verda Stello, the classes from Mage Hand Press, and other changes we've made for C3 HERE!   Sponsors - Twenty Sided Store, whose NEW LOCATION is open now at 280 Grand Street! Use code CAMP for 20% off your first order in-store or online. - Cornbread Hemp, USDA-certified organic CBD products grown in Kentucky. Use code jointheparty for 25% off your order at cornbreadhemp.com - Betterhelp, where you can get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/jointheparty   Find Us Online - website: jointhepartypod.com - patreon: patreon.com/jointhepartypod - twitter: twitter.com/jointhepartypod - facebook: facebook.com/jointhepartypod - instagram: instagram.com/jointhepartypod - tumblr: jointhepartypod.tumblr.com - merch & music: jointhepartypod.com/merch   Cast & Crew - Game Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver - Co-Host (Umbi), Co-Producer: Brandon Grugle - Co-Host (Chamomile Cassis), Co-Producer, Editor: Julia Schifini - Co-Host (Troy Riptide), Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin - Artwork: Allyson Wakeman - Multitude: multitude.productions   About Us Join the Party is an actual play podcast with tangible worlds, genre-pushing storytelling, and collaborators who make each other laugh each week. We welcome everyone to the table, from longtime players to folks who've never touched a roleplaying game before. Hop into our current campaign, a pirate story set in a world of plant- and bug-folk, or marathon our completed stories with the Camp-Paign, a MOTW game set in a weird summer camp, Campaign 2 for a modern superhero game, and Campaign 1 for a high fantasy story. And once a month we release the Afterparty, where we answer your questions about the show and how we play the game. New episodes every Tuesday.

The players reveal their characters for Campaign 3! We work through their Greenfolk species, their traditions, and how the classes of Valda's Spire of Secrets helps us unlock new potential. Dive into the Traditions mechanics, the countries of Verda Stello, the classes from Mage Hand Press, and other changes we've made for C3 HERE!   Upcoming Schedule - February 14: Worldbuilding Game - February 21: C3 Introduction Afterparty - February 28: Story episode 1!!   Sponsors - dScryb, your home for descriptive text, immersive sounds, and interactive maps for your home game. Get 10% off your first payment with code jointheparty at dscryb.com - Twenty Sided Store, whose NEW LOCATION is open now at 280 Grand Street! Use code PIRATE for 20% off your first order in-store or online. - Betterhelp, where you can get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/jointheparty   Find Us Online - website: jointhepartypod.com - patreon: patreon.com/jointhepartypod - twitter: twitter.com/jointhepartypod - facebook: facebook.com/jointhepartypod - instagram: instagram.com/jointhepartypod - tumblr: jointhepartypod.tumblr.com - merch & music: jointhepartypod.com/merch   Cast & Crew - Game Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver - Co-Host, Co-Producer: Brandon Grugle - Co-Host, Co-Producer, Editor: Julia Schifini - Co-Host, Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin - Artwork: Allyson Wakeman - Multitude: multitude.productions   About Us Join the Party is an actual play podcast with tangible worlds, genre-pushing storytelling, and collaborators who make each other laugh each week. We welcome everyone to the table, from longtime players to folks who've never touched a roleplaying game before. Hop into our current campaign, a pirate story set in a world of plant- and bug-folk, or marathon our completed stories with the Camp-Paign, a MOTW game set in a weird summer camp, Campaign 2 for a modern superhero game, and Campaign 1 for a high fantasy story. And once a month we release the Afterparty, where we answer your questions about the show and how we play the game. New episodes every Tuesday.

How did we like making so many characters? Which games are really our favorites? And how are we running Campaign 3 in response to what's going on with D&D? All that and more on the Afterparty! Vote for the oneshot you want us to play HERE   Upcoming Schedule - January 31: Worldbuilding episode 1 - February 7: Worldbuilding episode 2 - February 14: Worldbuilding episode 3 - February 21: Worldbuilding Afterparty - February 28: Story episode 1!!   Sponsors - Battling Blades, where you can get 20% off your order at BattlingBlades.com using code JointheParty at check out. - Twenty Sided Store, whose NEW LOCATION is open now at 280 Grand Street! Use code CAMP for 20% off your first order in-store or online. - Betterhelp, where you can get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/jointheparty   Find Us Online - website: jointhepartypod.com - patreon: patreon.com/jointhepartypod - twitter: twitter.com/jointhepartypod - facebook: facebook.com/jointhepartypod - instagram: instagram.com/jointhepartypod - tumblr: jointhepartypod.tumblr.com - merch & music: jointhepartypod.com/merch   Cast & Crew - Game Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver - Co-Host, Co-Producer: Brandon Grugle - Co-Host, Co-Producer, Editor: Julia Schifini - Co-Host, Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin - Artwork: Allyson Wakeman - Multitude: multitude.productions   About Us Join the Party is an actual play podcast with tangible worlds, genre-pushing storytelling, and collaborators who make each other laugh each week. We welcome everyone to the table, from longtime players to folks who've never touched a roleplaying game before. Hop into the Camp-Paign, our Monster of the Week story set in a weird and wild summer camp, or marathon our D&D games with Campaign 2 for a modern, sci-fi superhero game and Campaign 1 for a high fantasy story. And once a month we release the Afterparty, where we answer your questions about the show and how we play the game. New episodes every Tuesday.

Clip WVFP Ep16 Sean Wiggins jokes with people on the street in our very first WVFP Happy Hour Special on Grand Street in lower Manhattan, in a place better known as SOSO

"Now the bricks lay on Grand Street, where the neon madmen climbThey all fall there so perfectly, It all seems so well timed"And here I sit so patiently ,waiting to find out what priceYou have to pay to get out of, going through all these things twiceOh, Mama, is this really the end To be stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again"No getting stuck if you join me this afternoon for the Saturday Edition of Whole 'Nuther Thing. Joing us this afternoon are Badfinger, BB King, Colwell Winfield Blues Band, Leon Russell, Pearl Jam, The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Chicago, Bruce Springsteen, Blood Sweat & Tears, Little River Band, U2, Nirvana, Orleans, Bad Company, Bachman Turner Overdrive, Chicago and Bob Dylan...

On Saturday November 12th, the Radix Center will be having a volunteer food tree planting event to plant 50 mature apples, pears, cherries, persimmons, hickories, oaks, and more on the sidewalks along Warren Street, Grand Street, Trinity Place, and the surrounding blocks in the south end of Albany. The food grown on these public trees will be available for free to local residents. Scott Kellogg of the Radix Center talks with Mark Dunlea of Hudson Mohawk Magazine.

Di Palo Fine Foods on the corner of Mott and Grand Street in New York City's Little Italy has been a beloved destination for fine Italian food products for more than a century. An immigrant from Basilicata, Savino Di Palo opened his "latteria" in 1910. Di Palo's now sells over 300 Italian cheeses alone. Savino's great grandson, Luigi (Lou) Di Palo, sources products from artisan producers throughout Italy. A gifted storyteller, Lou discusses his family, heritage and essential Italian foods.The Connected Table is broadcast live Wednesdays at 2PM ET.The Connected Table Radio Show is broadcast on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). The Connected Table Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.

Alameda news and information with host Scott Piehler for the week ending October 7, 2022.This week, Scott covers City Council's changes to the Grand Street bike plan, multiple arrests by Alameda Police, Alameda's League of Women Voters analyzes  Measures E and F, a profile of local comedian Nina G., this weekend's Pride festivities, and more, including other local weekend events.For more podcast information, please visit AlamedaPost.com/Podcast. For more event information, please see AlamedaPost.com/Events, or visit AlamedaPost.com for more Alameda news and information.Support the show

We kick off season 2 by sipping on our cafecito and connecting with a couple that exemplify resiliency. So grab your cafecito and learn more about Luis Rodriguez and Trini Rodriguez, co-founders and former Executive Director of Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore (www.tiachucha.org), a cultural center/bookstore in L.A's San Fernando Valley that transforms community through ancestral knowledge, the arts, literacy and creative engagement. Luis rodriguez is the author of 16 multi-genre books, including the bestselling memoir "Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A." He is also founding editor of Tia Chucha Press. For more than 40 years, he's taught creative writing, read poetry, lectured, and facilitated healing circles in prisons, jails, and juvenile lockups in the United States., Mexico, Central America, South America, and Europe. He's been active in Indigenous spiritual practices and teachings for around 30 years, including among the Lakota, Mexica, Dine (Navajo), Akimel O'odham. Raramuri (Tarahumara). Maya (Mexico and Guatemala). Pibil (El Salvador),.and Quechua (Peru). He's been published widely. including in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, San Jose Mercury. L.A. Weekly, The Nation, Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine. Grand Street. American Poetry Review. Brooklyn Rail. and the Huffington Post. among others. From 2014 to 2016, he served as Los Angeles' official Poet Laureate. Trini Rodriguez (AKA Tlazohteotl) is a former bilingual educator, court interpreter, and newspaper editor, she writes, speaks and strives for personal and collective healing and systemic social change. Trini facilitates women's healing sweat lodge and healing circles in Native American and Native Mexican traditions. To connect further with this amazing couple go to their podcast "Hummingbird Cricket Hour"!

After an extended break fulfilling other obligations throughout the NYC dance music universe, DJ legend and the hardest working man in house JOE GOMEZ is back with Episode 9 of RANGE MUSIC MONTHLY, a set of summer house sizzlers, featuring all new vinyl releases from Javonntte, Atjazz and Mark DeClive-Lowe, Dave & Omar, Larry Heard aka Mr. Fingers and much more! Range Music has been distributing vinyl and exclusive tracks to the biggest names in the NYC and International House Music scene…“music for the dancer in YOU” If you're in NYC, don't miss the “Range Music NYC Selects Series,” Wednesday evenings at the Haven Lounge, 683 Grand Street in Brooklyn, 7pm til late, where Joe welcomes the best DJs in the business for a casual record-playing experience for house heads and those who love them.  Check out @rangemusicnyc on instagram for upcoming guests and more and of course, go to www.rangemusicnyc.com to check out any of the tracks on this mix.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alameda news and information with host Scott Piehler for the week ending June 24, 2022.Stories include the resurfacing of Grand Street, McKay Avenue Wellness Center controversy, AUSD Measure B statement,  increased garbage rates, and more!For more podcast information, please visit AlamedaPost.com/Podcast. For more event information, please see AlamedaPost.com/Events, or visit AlamedaPost.com for more Alameda news and information.If you would like to support our work, please make a donation via Square.Support the show

Painters, Keisha Prioleau Martin and Emilia Olsen joined me this week to talk about their work. Both painter's painters, they work primarily with the figure and use vibrant luscious color to add to the content of their work. Listen in to hear about why the "bather" is still a rich subject to paint (especially by women or female-identifying artists), why the city's character and quirks can inspire endless imagery and also what advice they would each give their younger selves. See more of their work: Keisha: https://keishaprioleaumartin.cargo.site/ and on IG at @keishaprioleaumartin Emilia: https://www.emiliawolsen.com/ and on IG at @emiliaolsen.biz Upcoming shows: Keisha: Solo ceramic show "Small Gestures" at ArtShack 1131 Bedford Ave (Bed-Stuy) Brooklyn, NY thru May 19, 2022 / Solo painting show at Olympia 41 Orchard St. NYC opens May 26, 2022 / Look for Keisha during Upstate Weekend too in Fall 2022 Emilia: Two-person show at Kates-Ferri Projects 561 Grand Street, NYC (w/ C.J. Chueca) Texts recommended by my guests: "Joy is a Human Madness" by Zadie Smith, "The Book of Delights: Essays" by Ross Gay, "The Trauma of Everyday Life" by Mark Epstein, "The Last Thing" by Ada Limón, "How to Be a Good Girl" by Jamie Hood (Fun fact: Emilia's work is on the cover and the book is seen on the nightstand in a scene from the Sex and the City reboot "And Just Like That"), Frank O'Hara, "The Whale" by Philip Hoare BrushTalk™: Keisha loves a round, a synthetic sable and a Hashimoto large flat. Emilia loves a filbert and also "mural" brushes. Shout out to radiant red and the quinacridone violets! Please check out the Pep Talks Instagram at @peptalksforartists to see images of the works mentioned on this episode in a special story highlight. Thanks so much to my guests and also thank you for listening! Licensed music is by Soundstripe --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/peptalksforartistspod/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/peptalksforartistspod/support

Patty Ann was a 17-year-old student at South High in 1984. Her two best friends are also named Patty. Patty Dansereau and Patti Weagle L'Ecuyer. Collectively, they were known as “the 3 Patties.” On a cold, rainy Wednesday night in October, Patty Ann called her mom to say she'd be late coming home from her boyfriend's house where she was playing Trivial Pursuit. The next morning, family and police discovered her belongings in an alley near the train tracks and her body in a window well at a factory on Grand Street. Before her passing, Patty's mother told the Telegram and Gazette, "I still have to believe that somebody saw something that night, or the murderer has told somebody something, and that person or persons aren't talking. Maybe someday someone will come forward, and that will be the break in this case that we've been waiting for...” Thank you to Heather Bish for shining a light on this Worcester cold case.

David Kramer has a session with me, Dr. Lisa, on the eve of the opening of his solo show, "Hooking Up With Dave." at the LMAK Gallery, http://lmakgallery.com/blog/ projects/hooking-up-with-dave/ Here's the video of "Hooking up with Dave" which is on display on the gallery as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=Uk75MuL8PPo It's also a great way to learn how to make hooked rugs. David Kramer is a visual artist whose works in a wide variety of mediums. And in his show at LMAK he set about to make a lavish bachelor pad, only to wind up making something a lot more dog eared and strange. His show at LMAK Gallery is basically "Dave's apartment" the character he plays in his video. Dave is, according to David, "...a guy who has gone so far to give up on his dreams of being an artist, that he is now actually pursuing a new career, as a YouTube Personality with his own fledgling Hook Rug channel." The installation and the video blend together to make a really MUST SEE gallery show this month, in NYC! Kramer and I have been friends for years and still it is a surprise to me when we dig into what's behind the character that is "Dave," the rug-hooking fanatic. Also we covered a lot of bases including some aspects of David's life at home managing to be an artist and a father and also a son. The ensuing discussion of Kramer's relationship with his father brings out a level of emotion on air that Dr. Lisa wasn't expecting. Also, Kramer and I both agree that we are jealous of his son, Martin for having so much love and encouragement that he is already a success as a 16-year old comedian. The exhibition at LMAK Gallery, 298 Grand Street, New York, NY 10002, is up until Dec. 16, 2016

Today’s poem is “Boulder” by Sidney Wade. Her eighth collection of poems, Deep Gossip: New & Selected Poems, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2020. She taught workshops in Poetry and Translation at the University of Florida’s MFA@FLA program for 23 years, and she has served as President of AWP and Secretary/Treasurer of ALTA. Sidney served as poetry editor for the literary journal Subtropics for many years, and her poems and translations have appeared in a wide variety of journals, including Poetry, The New Yorker, Grand Street, The Paris Review, as well as many other literary publications. She spends part of each year in Rangeley, Maine.

In today’s episode our guest speaks to the importance of hiring a matrimonial attorney who is both financially savvy and has the wisdom to acknowledge the limitations of their expertise and enlist the necessary financial experts.     NYC Matrimonial attorney Lisa Zeiderman walks us through how to pick choose the right  attorneys to interview AND how to use that initial consultation to assess the their qualifications for leading your support team.    Once you have retained an attorney, Lisa talks us through how to create the rest of your team and highlights the level of collaboration you should expect to guarantee your best possible settlement.   Lisa Zeiderman is Managing Partner at Miller Zeiderman LLP. A Matrimonial Attorney, CFL and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst, she regularly handles complex financial and custody divorce matters for high net worth individuals.   Named a 2019 10 Best Family Law Attorney for Client Satisfaction by the American Institute of Family Law Attorneys, Ms. Zeiderman is also a founding member of the American Academy of Certified Financial Litigators and a member of the panel for Attorneys for Children.     In addition to authoring a well-read blog on Psychology Today, “Legal Matters: Understanding Mental Health Issues as They Apply to Divorce and Child Custody,” Ms. Zeiderman is regularly published in various legal publications and quoted on issues ranging from financial empowerment to tax issues to child custody.   Ms. Zeiderman, a Fordham University of Law graduate, also serves on the Executive Board of Savvy Ladies, Inc., and on the board of LIFT, Legal Information for Families Today.     Lisa Zeiderman, Esq., CFL Miller Zeiderman LLP 150 East 52nd Street, Ste 1002 New York, NY  10022   Direct dial: 914-488-2402 Office:       212-769-3500   140 Grand Street, 5th Floor White Plains, New York 10601 Office:       914-455-1000 Facsimile:  914-468-4244   e-mail: lz@mzw-law.com      Request a Free Rapid Relief Call at  www.rapidreliefcall.com For more information on Journey Beyond Divorce visit:  www.jbddivorcesupport.com

Howard Halle is one of the least pretentious people I personally have interacted with in the name of art. He is honest, charming and has a specific insider view of the rise and future of the art world. He gave pulitzer prize winning art critic, Jerry Saltz his first staff job as a critic. One of Howards skills is identifying talent and managing a great department of art writers. As this is his last month with TONY, I thought he would be more nostalgic than he was. My personal take is he is looking forward to getting back to making some art of his own! BIO: Howard Halle is the Editor-at-large for Time Out New York as well as Chief Art Critic and Editor of the Art section. He joined TONY on August 1, 1995 as part of the staff at the launch of the magazine and has worked here since. He taught 20th-century art history at the Corcoran Gallery School of Art in Washington D.C. before moving to NYC in 1981 to serve as the Curator for the The Gallery and Performance Art program at The Kitchen, one of the city's oldest non-profit arts centers. Additionally, he organized exhibitions at galleries and other institutional venues, including the Centre George Pompidou in Paris. Before coming to Time Out, he was Assistant Art Editor at Grand Street, an arts and literary quarterly. And.. In an act of shameless Dr. Lisa self-promotion, here's an enjoyable story about me by Halle from 2016: https://www.timeout.com/newyork/blog/can-do-spirit-artist-to-sit-naked-on-a-toilet-in-a-10-hour-performance-012616

Jackson Bliss is an assistant professor of creative writing at BGSU. His genre-bending fiction focuses on being mixed-race in a global world. This episode features a conversation about exploring identity through writing and a reading from his forthcoming novel, The Amnesia of June Bugs.   Transcript: Intro: This podcast features instances of explicit language. If you are listening with children, you may want to save this conversation for later. Intro: From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas. Musical Intro: I'm going to show you this. It's a wonderful experiment. Jolie Sheffer: Welcome to the Big Ideas Podcast, brought to you by the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Dr. Jolie Sheffer, associate professor of English and American culture studies and the director of ICS. Jolie Sheffer: Today I'm joined by Dr. Jackson Kanahashi Bliss. Bliss is an assistant professor in the creative writing program here at BGSU. He's published in The New York Times, The Boston Review, Ploughshares, Tin House, and many other publications. He earned his MFA from the University of Notre Dame and his PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Southern California. Today we have the pleasure of hearing him read from his new work, Amnesia of Junebugs. Thanks for joining me today, Jackson. Jackson  Bliss: Happy to be here. Jolie Sheffer: You are both a creative writer and a literary scholar. How do you think of your creative writing as being shaped by scholarship on Asian American literature? Are there other ways in which you see your work as interdisciplinary? Jackson  Bliss: Yeah, it's a funny marriage, actually, and I think it's an accidental one, because, in the beginning, I wrote most experimentally, and then when I started studying Asian American studies, I realized there was a sort of strong bent towards experimentalism and activism and how it connects to ethnic nationalism, ethnic studies, academic studies, and academic centers and universities. So this was completely accidental. I didn't intentionally sort of imitate the preferred genre of activist-minded APIA literature. It just sort of happened that way. But the more I studied Asian American studies, particularly works like Immigrant Acts by Lisa ... What's her last name? Jolie Sheffer: Lowe. Jackson  Bliss: Lisa Lowe. Yeah. It sort of made me realize there's a strong sort of push against the stylistics of the empire, which tends to be connected to linear narratives and coming-of-age stories. That made me want to write that story, particularly because I found it a little bit both historically informed, but also generically arbitrary that a particular sub-genre of fiction would supposedly work so well, right, in something that we are actively trying to deconstruct. Jackson  Bliss: I feel like writers like Viet Thanh Nguyen are perfect examples of people who said, "No, you can have a narrative arc and do a lot of important work instead of deconstructing standardized, sort of imposed European models of narrative." Jackson  Bliss: So I think all of those things appealed to me a lot. So it became much more conscious the more I wrote fiction, I think. Yeah. But in the beginning, it was totally accidental and organic. Jolie Sheffer: Your peace Dukkha, My Love is an experimental hypertext novella, created for the web. Can you describe our audience, what that term means? What is an electronic novella, and what can people expect when encountering a text like that? What were you hoping to explore, both formally and thematically? Jackson  Bliss: I think part of it is that there is a very tiny archive of electronic writing, just in general. If you go to the standard places that catalog experimental writing, for example, they're really small. They're highly limited. A lot of writers that write experimentally or create online hypertext don't even publish through them. They just publish on their website. So it's highly decentralized in a way that can be really frustrating for, for example, scholars in new media, because there is no clearinghouse for someone to find all the works. Jackson  Bliss: I think the thing that new readers of hypertext, which is online experimental writing, have to sort of keep in mind is a lot of it is about the ability to create your own narrative, sort of on your own terms. This is sort of the burden, but the beauty of reading. In Dukkha, My Love, essentially, readers click on hypertext, not knowing where it takes them. So they have control, but they're doing it blindly, right? So there's a lot of that going on. It's highly immersive, but it's also indeterminate in terms of where your freedom and control as a reader will take you. Jackson  Bliss: Eventually, as readers start reading more and more, they sort of participate in the cyclicity of the three intersecting narratives, which is absolutely part of the point of reading it, which is the ways in which there is a historical cycle that would repeat, the ways in which we repeat sort of certain cultural modalities of xenophobia and fear against the other, the ways in which our own understanding of reality sort of goes in these continuous cycles of knowledge and awareness and denial, and the proof of this as well is on the first page, when readers click on one of the destinations, where you can basically pick where you want the story to go. It'll even say, "My life is a circle," right, sort of reinscribing this idea in the reader that they are participating in it, but they are not necessarily aware of where they're going, which I think is kind of a fitting cultural analogy of sort of our own conceptualization of history, right? So we sort of have an idea of where it's going, but we're sort of blind as to where exactly it lands. Jackson  Bliss: So yeah, it took me about probably four years of doing research and writing the excerpts and about four months of teaching myself how to code enough to learn how to strip audio files off of YouTube videos and then basically take my own music and sort of record it and then time it and cut it in such a way where it worked with the videos, which I basically ripped off from the Learning Channel and someone else. God bless all of you. Thank you for your fine work. Jackson  Bliss: Yeah. But I was learning as I was creating. That particular genre was something I had never done before, and that's why I wanted to contribute to the discourse, because I felt like it's pretty emaciated, in terms of a genre, right, but also highly accessible. Those two things really appealed to me. Jolie Sheffer: That project in particular, you set yourself a set of hurdles that were challenges you had to then work within, right? So you make something that is, by nature, through coding, deeply linear and kind of limit certain pathways. It is not an endlessly, right? You have to create a set of possibilities, which means foreclosing others, and yet your work itself and the things that interest you are all about the chaotic, the unpredictable, the messy. So how did you kind of respond to the challenge that you set for yourself? Did you feel like you'd handcuffed yourself, or was it liberating, in some sense, to have to work within these limitations? Jackson  Bliss: To be honest, I thought the limitations were there to keep me sane, because I think I would have lost my (beep) mind if I had literally created a work of infinity, because, originally, the idea was I was going to create [inaudible 00:06:50] Book of Sand, right? You could almost make that argument, but if you read Dukkha, My Love enough, you will eventually hit the same narrative strand. So you do sort of touch on finitude at some point. It's impossible to avoid that textual finitude. Jackson  Bliss: But the constraints ended up being lifesavers for me, because this project otherwise could have gone on forever. Let me give you an example. When I was trying to keep track of all the three separate narrative strands and then create a separate stub for each one on my website, this required a level of organization that, frankly, I don't like to have in my art. That goes against my entire ethos as a multimodal, mixed-race, experimentalist-leaning, voice-driven, stylized writer. Yet here we were, where I basically had to control my choices, one, so that I could finish this product before the next semester started and, two, to sort of create a bottleneck, I guess, a narrative bottleneck, where, at some point, everything does have to go through certain sort of narrative choices. Jackson  Bliss: That's both because of the limitation in my coding skills, frankly, but also because there are certain sort of narrative strands I want readers to go through, and I don't want them to necessarily be negotiable. So, for that reason, the index page is, in and of itself, a sort of delimitation of the narrative choices, right? Readers only have basically 10 to 15 places to choose, and then they only have 4 to 10 actionable links on that page. So it sort of starts and ends with finitude. Jackson  Bliss: There is, believe it or not, those of you that have read this, a goodbye page, an acknowledgement page, but, as it turns out, it's incredibly (beep) difficult to find. I mean, I can't even find it, and there's other details that I put that I think were just a little too [inaudible 00:08:41] for themselves. There was an asterisk next to certain narrative strands, letting readers know, "Hey, this is it. This is about to take you to the final page," and I hope that readers would note that this was connected to the theme of the star colonies. That's why the asterisk's there. But you have to scroll down, and if you don't scroll down, you don't see it, and then it doesn't take you to the final page. Jackson  Bliss: But I'm not upset about this. I don't hate myself. I have accepted that there are limitations to reading, and you really can't predict, unless you're into analytics, what your readers are going to do. To me, that's the beauty of it, is that it gives readers, essentially, some blind power to decide how the story is told, which, frankly, isn't done very often in speculative fiction. So that's why it appealed to me. Jolie Sheffer: Much of your work deals with being hapa, or mixed race. How do you see your identity playing a role in your creative work, or, conversely, how has your fiction played a role in your understanding of your own identity? Jackson  Bliss: It's interesting you ask me that, because, in the beginning, when I look back to my earliest fiction, all my characters were white, and this is for a couple of reasons. One, because, at that point, I was definitely passing as white. Two, it's just simply easier for me and my mom, who's hapa as well, my brother, who's also hapa, to just not push the mixed-race button. I was born in Northern Michigan. I didn't live in a community where we celebrated, right, sort of any sort of multicultural, multiracial identity. Jackson  Bliss: There was a lot of survival going on. I mean, even my obachan would not speak to me in Japanese unless I begged her. This was partially because she had a sort of assimilationist paradigm, when it came to living in America. So she thought she was helping me by just making me only speak English. Jackson  Bliss: So, ironically, as I got older and started realizing I have two very different racial and cultural modalities, I mean, I'm literally the son of Japanese immigrants on my mom's side, and that's how close that side of the genealogy is. It's insane I'm never writing about that. It's bizarre that I don't talk about that. I think part of it's because I didn't know how to. There's a lot of things I love about growing up in the Midwest, but it's culturally not the most progressive place to examine your racial hybridity, and I think if I had grown up in SF or New York City, a place where there are strong multicultural identities as the centering of the urban ethos, I probably would have found myself a lot earlier. So it took me a long time. Jackson  Bliss: So I realized at one point that my racial hybridity, in a lot of ways, sort of mimicked my generic hybridity, right, where I like to write in a lot of different genres. I sort of pick and choose. I don't feel like I should be pigeonholed. I sort of embrace this idea that I can almost pick the concept of the neutral, in terms of what it means and [inaudible 00:11:35]'s notion of you don't have to pick one side or other. You can choose to not pick between two options, especially when they're highly binary and deeply delimiting, existentially. Jackson  Bliss: So these things sort of coincided. My desire to sort of subvert genre conventions and just find whatever's the right genre and voice for me coincided with my realization that I had a lot I wanted to understand and investigate about my own mixed-race identity, as someone who's French, British, and Japanese. So it's really my PhD years where I really started fully embracing this and really interrogating it. Jolie Sheffer: What kinds of research do you do for your creative work? You alluded to some of that. What scholars or authors have shaped your work and worldview? Jackson  Bliss: The first people to influence my voice, Junot Diaz and then JD Salinger, and the third one is Zadie Smith. These three writers really informed my whole conception of voice and textual and racial hybridity. So the thing I liked about JD Salinger as a teenage boy was the authenticity of someone questioning authenticity, right? That sort of self blindness, I found really compelling, right? Jolie Sheffer: All his talk of phoneys, right? Jackson  Bliss: Yeah, phoneys. Right. Jolie Sheffer: Yeah. Jackson  Bliss: In many ways, he's [Salinger] the phoniest of all. But, on the other hand, there's a tender side to him that often gets ignored, where he's deeply concerned about preventing trauma to people, because he himself appears to be traumatized, in a way that Holden Caulfield was incapable of sort of working out. So that was powerful to me, and the stylization of the voice was really powerful. Jackson  Bliss: But then when I read White Teeth by Zadie Smith and then Drown by Junot Diaz, I suddenly realized that there was space for my voice, this sort of multicultural urban realism combining with almost sort of Creole sort of language, patois, right, in English. I didn't know that you could do that. I didn't know we were allowed to put the language of our other identity into English. It sounds really crazy when I hear it, but yeah, it was sort of a revelation to me that we could have a stylized voice that sort of embraced and sort of interrogated and was a product of a multicultural identity. Jackson  Bliss: With White Teeth, I think I was just so invested in the ways in which she sort of did these portraitures of different racial and historical and cultural communities and gave each of them a sort of majesty and humanity and an interrogation that I found really amazing and actually rare and then combine it with a sort of these moments of maximization, where the language just explodes off the page, right? Jackson  Bliss: I realized these writers were doing a lot of important work that I myself wanted to do, that I needed to understand better and also, at the same time, that they were giving me permission to sort of figure out my own narrative modality, my own stylized voice, because it's easy to feel like you have to basically come off as neutral, which is code for sounding white. A lot of writers of color I'm friends with feel the same way. They feel this invisible constraint all the time to write in a way where Ivy League-educated, East Coast white readers will understand and connect with. Jackson  Bliss: The problem is there's things that that demographic cannot connect with, and if we write for this imagined, embodied, universal voice, we can give up a lot of the most vital parts of our own sort of unique lyricism and our own techniques for storytelling. So that was a huge revelation for me. Jolie Sheffer: You recently published an essay in TriQuarterly called The Cult of Likability, or Why You Should Kill Your Literary Friendships. In it, you talk about how readers frequently criticize characters for their likeability, or lack thereof. Do you see this as a racialized or gendered criticism, and what qualities do you think are important to make characters compelling? Jackson  Bliss: I do think it's heavily racialized, and I think it's heavily gendered. I think it works in a really sort of sinister, unconscious way for a lot of people. There's still this notion of universal literary merit. When something's amazing, it has this broad appeal. But universality in literature, at least in the 21st century, is mostly code for literature that appeals to a massive white readership. What I've noticed in my workshops, but also in a lot of book reviews, is that works that are written with characters of color or by authors of color or both, especially when they're women, are much more heavily criticized than when they are, for example, white narrators or white female narrators, right? Jolie Sheffer: Yeah. You don't hear people complaining that Humbert Humbert wasn't likable enough in Lolita. Jackson  Bliss: Right. Exactly. Yeah. Jolie Sheffer: That's not the criticism, or that Rabbit Angstrom isn't likable. Jackson  Bliss: Right. That's right. So one of the arguments I made in this essay is, first of all, some of the most important works that I think have shaped, in a positive way, a sort of expanding sort of foundational text canon in America comes from books that weren't necessarily fun to read, with characters who we didn't necessarily like at all, who are important. I mean, Native Son has Bigger Thomas, I think his name is, and that's a crucial character, right? To say, "I don't like this, because I didn't get him" or "I didn't like him" or "He didn't appeal to me" is so essentially irrelevant to the importance, both culturally and historically and racially, that that voice sort of incarnates. Jackson  Bliss: I'm noticing a tendency now where liter agents and now MFA students and a lot of readers are using love and infatuation as this sort of literary metric for determining the value of something. "I didn't love it. I didn't love the voice. I didn't love the character," as if we are now given permission to not consider the literary value of the work, the importance of the marginalized voice, for example, because we realize we don't like the character. Jackson  Bliss: I think it's connected, partially, to cancel culture. But I also think it's partially connected to reality TV, because, with reality television, when we saw a character we didn't like, we would vote them off. So, essentially, likability had consequences, right? Jackson  Bliss: What I think is happening now is people are reading texts that decenter them or ask them to do work or research. Suddenly, they will just decide, "I don't like this character," and that's the end of it. Jolie Sheffer: It also seems to me, though, related to what you were talking about before, which is that if you don't recognize, if you're encountering a new voice, a new perspective, that is not one that you have been taught to recognize because of literature and because of established kind of genres of reading, that first impulse might be, "I don't like this person," and it takes time to actually get used to new voices. Jackson  Bliss: That's right. Yeah, and I think that sort of discomfort maybe at being de-centered is a completely understandable, very normal one. Everyone feels that way. The problem is communities of color and marginalized communities have felt this their entire lives. They go into any room, they go into any white space, and they are always de-centered, all the time. I think this is something that, in general, white readers are a lot less capable and patient and willing to deal with, in part because they've never had to, right? Jackson  Bliss: So for this to happen in the sort of sacred American pastime of reading I think rubs people the wrong way, but I feel there is a silver lining, which is these readers can sit in that lack of comfort and know, at the end of the day, that it's going to be okay and that they will work it out and they will start to slowly understand these characters and potentially empathize with them. But that takes time, and if we don't learn to learn about people and sort of enter into their space, we will never get there. Jackson  Bliss: That's actually one of the arguments I make in this essay, which is not only would we erase some of the greatest literature written by writers of color if we decide we don't like the characters, but, more importantly, we lose our critical thinking skills and our empathetic ones, because this requires us to learn from the other, whoever the other is for us. Jackson  Bliss: I think that's my issue with likability, is it's become this eroticized literary metric, as if infatuation is actually a legitimate metric to analyze the literary value of a work. Frankly, I don't give a (beep) whether someone loves a book of mine or not. What I care about is if they can enter into it, if they can learn from it, if they can go someplace new, from the end of the book to when they started. To me, that's, in some ways, almost more important. Jackson  Bliss: Whether I'm friends with a character, whether we're besties or not is ... I could give two (beep) about that. But it's becoming a sort of standard comment to make in workshop, and I do my best to sort of interrogate that a little bit. But I feel like we have now reached a point in our culture where not liking something, in our eyes, gives us permission to essentially dismiss it. Jolie Sheffer: We're going to take a quick break. Thanks for listening to the Big Ideas Podcast. Intro: If you are passionate about big ideas, consider sponsoring this program. To have your name or organization mentioned here, please contact us at ics@bgsu.edu. Jolie Sheffer: Hello, and welcome back to the Big Ideas Podcast. Today I'm talking to Dr. Jackson Bliss about fiction, form, and mixed-race identity. You prepared a reading for us called The Amnesia of Junebugs. Can you tell us a bit about the piece you're going to read and where it fits into the work as a whole? Jackson  Bliss: Sure. So this is a tiny excerpt from one of four principal characters. This character's name is Winnie Yu, and he's essentially a culture jammer. So he creates political graffiti, and/or he takes ads from companies and essentially turns the ads against themselves by adding different color, texture to essentially make the ad self-indict itself. It's a very sort of critical novel, as a whole, on capitalism and sort of begs for the role that public art plays in a sort of taking back of streets that are essentially corporatized, in a lot of ways. Jackson  Bliss: So this tiny part here is just a tiny sort of backstory of Winnie describing the first time he realized he did not live in Asia, but that he actually lived in New York City, a tiny secret he didn't realize at the time because he had never taken a train to another borough. So that's sort of like the context for this work. Jackson  Bliss: Winnie had lived off of the Bowery his whole life. Didn't even know that New York was in America until he was six. His parents spoke Cantonese, Taiwanese. Everyone in his fam did. The market signs on Grand Street, where his mom bought her groceries, were written in simplified Chinese characters. His neighbors watched Cantonese soap operas in the afternoon. Old men hung out at Mr. Chang's corner store at night, playing dominoes and drinking ginseng tea and Viper Whiskey, cracking jokes in Wu. His super was Fujian, the cheapest mother (beep) he'd ever seen, who tried to fix everything with duct tape, tinfoil, and DAP. Jackson  Bliss: For the longest time, Winnie believed he lived in Asia. He thought white people were the tourists. But in one day, Mama changed the rules of his storytelling. By taking the subway together for the first time to Brooklyn, she thought it would be cool for them to go over the Manhattan Bridge, and it kind of was. He'd never ridden over a bridge before, didn't understand that New York City had islands or that they were connected together by bridges, the vertebrae of the urban body. It took him a long time to see that subway lines are veins; the major subways, arteries; the streets, capillaries. Jackson  Bliss: Until that fateful and transformative day, Winnie didn't know he lived in a fractal world, in a city of billboards, insects, damaged vascular systems and wandering spirits. He didn't know that New York is an ethnographic sponge, silently absorbing the screenplay of immigration. He didn't know that New York is a megapolis, its streets, highways, and bridges resembling the human nervous system. NYC is an urban hive imploding with refugee stories, diasporic longing, bustling multiculturalism, and inherited fortune, a collapsing urban space where culture dances between neighborhoods and history intersects ethnicity, creating abstract forms that interact, but don't touch each other, like a kaleidoscope. Jackson  Bliss: Until that day, Winnie thought New York was only ten blocks, from Mr. Chang's bodega all the way to Good Times Dry Cleaners. He thought New York was the unofficial capital of Taiwan, a nation and an island and a freaky global village. He was half right, actually. Jackson  Bliss: The straight (beep) is that the day they took the train over the Manhattan Bridge, Mama was showing him the way to St. Ursula's School, were Asian, Latino, and black kids wore unforgiving white polo shirts with stiff colors that dug into their necks like plow yokes and old man pants with creases running down their legs like highway meetings that resisted wrinkles and clumps and refused to be rolled up at the ankles at a school were Asian, Latino, and black girls were forced to wear skimpy plaid skirts, even in the spring, where poor students of color pretended they were rich, rich white students pretended they were gangsta, and all the teachers spoke Midtown English. It was an academy of impersonations and a theater of the restless mind. Jackson  Bliss: The day Mama enrolled Winnie in Catholic school and filled out the paperwork for a St. Martin de Porres Scholarship for Immigrant Students, a detail and a reference he wouldn't even understand until he was in high school, when he realized his mom had accidentally taken away his fixed identity and shoved him into a chrysalis of his own making. As they passed over the Manhattan Bridge again, he didn't understand how the whole world he'd seen that day could all be one city, didn't understand why all the Asian people disappeared, or so it seemed, why no one spoke his family's languages anymore. Jackson  Bliss: Even now, as a 30 something, he still couldn't figure out how his parents had managed to sequester him from the class struggle, the racial conflict, and the spatial tension of inner-city life for as long as they did. What he did know is that after Mama had enrolled him for classes, smoothed his hair back for a school ID, bribed him with feng li su cakes from a Taiwanese Baker he'd never seen before to celebrate his enrollment, and then led his (beep) back to their apartment, pineapple paste caramelized in his teeth, Winnie realized that he didn't know (beep) about his American life anymore, except he wasn't living in Asia, and he certainly wasn't Catholic. Jackson  Bliss: As far as birthdays went, turning six (beep) sucked, the worst thing to happen to him, at least until explosive acne in 10th grade, at least until his Ba peaced out of his life for good too soon. Jolie Sheffer: You really set the scene of this world within a world, where a child could grow up in New York's Chinatown without realizing they were even in the US. You've lived in the Midwest, on the West Coast, in Japan, Argentina, and Burkina Faso. How do you approach the idea of setting a sense of place, in this story in particular and generally in your work? Jackson  Bliss: One thing is that I think places are characters. I have felt this way pretty much ever since, I think, I watched my first Bertolucci film. It's something I learned very early on, and I feel, as a writer who considers himself to be a sort of stylized urban maximalist, it's impossible for me to define or construct characters without understanding the sort of cultural context in which they grew up and evolve, because that's true for me, and that tends to be true for them. So, for me, setting and place are interconnected with voice and identity. Jolie Sheffer: What kind of research did you do for that piece? Jackson  Bliss: Mostly just walked around Chinatown a million times. I wrote a lot of this novel when I had an editorial internship at Hachette Books in New York City. I also visited in the fall of 2006. So I spent a lot of time just walking around New York City, taking the subway, looking for sort of famous graffiti that people were talking about. I spent a lot of time eating vegan dim sum in Chinatown. I feel like sometimes the best way to do research for cities is simply live in the city and see how it breathes. So a lot of it, yeah, was simply walking around, observing, taking notes, talking to my New York friends, asking them questions, asking my Chinese American friends questions. But most of it was just walking, breathing, living, eating in those places. Jolie Sheffer: Your characters always have very distinctive voices. You were just talking about character, but in the characters in your stories, how do you think about approaching developing their particular patterns of speech? Jackson  Bliss: I feel like, a lot of times, the verbal tics, they take time, because who I think a character is in the beginning when I write them is almost never who they are at the end, and then it's sort of up to me to go back and sort of reconcile the voice, so to speak, because there's this implicit rule in fiction where a character's voice has to actually be more consistent than people's voices in real life, right? Because in real life, we, for example, especially people I know who work in different sort of social, professional, racial, and cultural spheres, they code switch all the time, and this can seem inauthentic to people, but it's very normal. But in fiction, you actually have to have a more sort of reconciled voice that readers won't see as too contradictory. Otherwise, they won't think it's the same person. Jackson  Bliss: So this is one of those sort of secret constraints that most fiction writers I know struggle with. How do I keep a voice? How do I construct it, and then how do I maintain it? So I think a lot of times, I will read my dialogue out loud, and I'll just basically understand the character through their orality first, right? How do they sound? How do they feel? Jackson  Bliss: Then, I think, from there, I make modifications, especially when these characters make important sort of plot decisions that might alter their voice or their modulation in some way. For example, I once wrote a character, and then I realized halfway through, "Oh, this character isn't going to be Portuguese-Japanese. They're going to be" ... I don't know. I don't know what I decided, French-Japanese or something, and that changed some of the vocabulary, right? That changed some of the sort of place names and cultural references. Jackson  Bliss: I have another novella that's actually interconnected with this novel, and, for the longest time, it was written from a Senegalese American point of view, because I had spent a decent amount of time in West Africa. Then I realized I was interested to see what would happen if I changed the character and made him mixed-race and made him Japanese Senegalese American. I did that, and it suddenly transformed his voice. There were certain beats that didn't work anymore, right? There's certain slang that doesn't make sense anymore, and there are other things that had to sort of have a presence. Otherwise, it was just a whitewashed mixed-race character. Jackson  Bliss: I think that's the general process, but it always begins and, I think, ends with me simply speaking, because I need to literally hear the voice to understand it on the page. Jolie Sheffer: Lots of creative writers read their work in public, right? That is a kind of professional part of the job. You have a very particular kind of performative approach. How do you think about preparing what you're going to read, how you read, and how do you think that shapes your readers' or listeners' perception of the work? Jackson  Bliss: Yeah, I'll confess right now I'm a speech and debate geek, so in high school and even college, I was a debater, and I was one of those extemporaneous speakers. So I have a long history of sort of seeing the value that public speaking makes. Jackson  Bliss: But I also think that most of my important characters, the ones I'm really invested in emotionally, almost always have some level of identification with their language. So that's where the voice will end up being so sort of important and sort of fleshed out, and I've noticed in the past couple of years that when I give readings, I tend to read either the character or passages from a longer work that allows me to sort of take a very performative, language-driven sort of role in my reading. Jackson  Bliss: For that reason, if I've written a really difficult extemporaneous-feeling work that's actually highly edited and revised, that is really prolix, I guess, and heavily language-driven, I may not read it, especially if, for example, I can't find space to breathe. I have certain work that was pretty much meant to be read, even though I didn't realize it. Jackson  Bliss: So, for me, I think a lot about reading as performance, I think a lot about performance as text, and I think one of my big complaints with a lot of readings I go to is they tend to fall in a couple camps, which is, one, either they just read in this really monotone voice and they have this kind of arrogant idea that work should speak for itself. But the problem with that is what if you suck? What if you're awful? What if everyone's falling asleep? In that case, shouldn't they just stay home and read the book? Why did they waste their time to go out to this reading, where you became the greatest American sleep aid? But on the flip side, I've also seen people who sort of take it really far, and they act like they're basically unpaid beatniks. Jackson  Bliss: So I feel like every writer who ends up becoming a sort of social public figure on some level, which is inevitable once you start publishing, they have to negotiate the sort of reading ethos. For me, it's always been really important. I want readers and listeners to hear the rhythm, because musicality informs a lot of my writing, and that's from my music days. But I also want them to be transported, on some level, by my reading. I want them to feel the language and the cadence and the emotion. Jackson  Bliss: I used to get shamed when I was younger for my performances. People would be like, "Yeah, that was really something." Then you would go to their reading, and half the people were on their iPhones, fiddling away. So, for me, I see my readings as a performance, and I think that to ignore the audience is to be incredibly deceitful and to be delusional. You aren't reading to yourself. You're not reading to your partner. You're not reading to your little Shitzu. You're reading to people, and their experience should be something you think about, because that process is dialectical. It's not just about you, and it's not just about them, but there's an interplay that I honor and that I love. Jackson  Bliss: So yeah, I think a lot about how to read, when to read, and I always practice my readings because of that. Jolie Sheffer: Thank you so much, Jackson, for joining me today and sharing your work. Jackson  Bliss: Oh, it was my pleasure. Jolie Sheffer: You can find Dukkha, My Love and more of Jackson's work at his website, jacksonbliss.com. Jolie Sheffer: Our producers for this podcast are Chris Cavera and Marco Mendoza, with sound engineering by Jackson Williams. Research assistance for this podcast was provided by ICS intern Taylor Stagner, with editing by Stevie Scheurich. This conversation was recorded in the Stanton Audio Recording Studio in the Michael and Sara Kuhlin Center at Bowling Green State University.  

SEASON 2: EPISODE 6 Performer Jon Wan argues that kids are campy. ABOUT THE GUEST  Slipping in and out of drag skin Kiko Soirée, animagus Jon Wan serves an alluring feast of emotion - sensual, sincere, stupid. Kiko (@kikosoiree) is a queer comedian, host and drag queen, performing at venues like Club Cumming, Joe's Pub, The Bell House, Ars Nova, Caroline's, Union Hall, MoCA, Caveat, and UCB. They've been named by Time Out Magazine as one of the rising LGBT POC comedians to watch. Monthly, Kiko hosts 'A+, The Pan-Asian Drag and Burlesque Revue', in the Lower East Side, and seasonally, produces the original musical advice show, 'Dear Kiko'. Their Spanish is better than their Cantonese which hasn't made their mother proud but tracks for the American Born Chinese narrative. ABOUT THE HOST Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com. ABOUT THE TITLE SHE'S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast. CREDITS This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund.  Producer: Devon Guinn  Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue  Mixer: Andrew Litton  Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver  Theme Song: Jeff Hiller  Website: Itai Almor Media: Justine Lee Interns: Alara Degirmenci, Jonathan Jalbert, Jesse Kimotho, Rachel Wang Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Nick Rymer, Sue Simon, Maddy Sinnock TRANSCRIPTION JON WAN: I just took saxophone cause my friend was also gonna play saxophone, and I just played it through middle school. Then I just continued in high school, and then after freshman year I was like, I don't actually like this instrument. And I'm definitely not a jazz person. Cause I was having saxophone lessons with this person who was a very cool cat. And I was like, I am not understanding fundamentally why I'm here. This isn't clicking with me.  NEIL GOLDBERG: I'm going to really make a controversial generalization here. I don't think jazz is gay.  JON: Oh, no, I don't think so either. You have to be like kind of loose and like -  NEIL: Exactly, a type of casualness. JON: Yeah, and like comfortable with your body and expression, and I was not - like I was learning classical piano from an oppressive Russian teacher, growing up as a Chinese American, closeted, in a primarily white town. I did not know how to express myself in a healthy way.  NEIL: Right. JON: Right. NEIL: Hello. I'm Neil Goldberg, and this is SHE'S A TALKER. I'm a visual artist, and I have a collection of thousands of index cards on which I've been jotting down thoughts and observations for about two decades. In SHE'S A TALKER, I explore the cards through conversations with guests and responses from listeners. These days, the cards often start as voice memos I record throughout the day. Here are some recent ones: When a parent says to a kid, "Look at me," I'm suspicious and think the parent is probably a narcissist. Thick Sharpies are to thin Sharpies as water bugs are to roaches. Art project: drawing all the missing arms in selfies. Today, my guest is Jon Wan. Jon, who often appears on stage as their drag persona, Kiko Soiree, describes themself as a Swiss Army knife performer whose work weaves together musical comedy, storytelling, standup, and beyond. Jon's performed at Club Cumming, Joe's Pub, the Bell House, Ars Nova, Caroline's Mocha, and has been named by Timeout Magazine as one of the rising LGBT people of color comedians to watch out for. We spoke in February at a recording studio at The New School near Union Square in New York City. I'm so happy to have with me Jon Wan.  JON: Hello.  NEIL: Hi Jon. Thank you for being on SHE'S A TALKER.  JON: I'm enchanted to be here. Simply.  NEIL: Simply. What are the alternatives, in terms of enchantment, besides simple enchantment? JON: Oh, very complex. Yeah. Like arcane magic, you know? Not for pedestrian folk.  NEIL: Yes. Complex enchantment. What is your elevator pitch for what you do? JON: I am a drag queen, performer, comedian bopping around New York City. You might know me as my drag persona, Ms. Kiko Soiree, performing and doing shows here in this beautiful garbage city and really always aspiring to one day live within walking distance of a Trader Joe's. NEIL: I see it for you. I really see it for you. You know, a Trader Joe's just opened opposite where Jeff and I live.  JON: No, which one?  NEIL: Uh, it's on Grand Street. Grand and Clinton.  JON: Oh, wow.  NEIL: It's the biggest Trader Joe's on the Eastern Seaboard, I'm told.  JON: That's crazy. So you live near not only a Trader Joe's, but a historic one. NEIL: Yes, exactly. Uh, what does your mom, when she's talking to her friends, what does she say you do?  JON: Oh, (In his mother's accent) oh, Jon um, oh, Jon lives in New York City. (back to normal voice) And then she kinda just like shoos the conversation. I think, she knows I'm a drag queen. I don't think she publicly has the language to talk about it the way she might alternatively say, "My daughter works for a pharmaceutical company." Do you know what I mean?  NEIL: Right. Do you have a sister that works...?  JON: She does. Don't worry. It's a good pharmaceutical company.  NEIL: Oh yeah. Uh, what does your dad say?  JON: My dad, uh, is actually very vocally supportive of my creative life. He usually says, "He's a performer and a comedian, and..."  NEIL: What kind of performances does he do? JON: "Oh, (In his father's accent) Jonathan does his funny stand up in New York City." And just stuff like that and yeah, I don't think they're, they're like ashamed of anything I do, but my dad came here for college. My mom came here when she was 13. They're kind of this transition generation, you know, they, they were really straddling both cultures and had to deal with the more brutish parts of assimilation. They came from traditional Chinese parents, but they're, you know, they're open-minded. They both grew up. They were like hippies. You look at old photos of them. My mom had like hair down to her waist. But, you know, you know, I'm the first drag queen of my family.  NEIL: That you know of.  JON: Hopefully not the last. NEIL: Yes. What is something you find yourself thinking about today?  JON: Um. Today, I was thinking about how everyone is a walking advertisement. I was a sucker for the AirPods, the first ones that came out. They're just, I know when I put them in my ear, I'm going to feel very sexy, and I had this thought today as I was putting them in my ear. It's like everyone is a walking advertisement.  NEIL: So when you're wearing AirPods, you're an advertisement for...  JON: Yeah, for Apple. My AirPods now suck because I lost the original case and I bought a knock off one on Amazon for like 30 bucks and they do try to pair with everyone on the train.  NEIL: Oh really?  JON: I just kind of, but you can't do it successfully. NEIL: It's like your dog humping strangers' legs or something. JON: Truly. I can see on people's phones like something comes up and says, Not your AirPods. It goes all the time and I just keep my head down and I just. I didn't want to pay another $70 for the case. NEIL: I've curated some cards just for you. Um, first card, Jon.  JON: Okay.  NEIL: All kids' names are campy.  JON: Absolutely. Cause kids are camp.  NEIL: How so?  JON: I used to teach, um, preschool in undergraduate. so I worked with three, four, and five-year-olds. And when you talk to a kid, it's very serious. It, it's of the utmost importance. And it's also insane.  NEIL: Which is the essence of camp!  JON: Which is the essence of camp. Um, but you know, when they're just playing, they're just talking very seriously about something. Or they're telling you an opinion, something they saw today, like.  (imitates kid's voice) "Like, Mr. Jon? Today, I, I saw a dog and... Dog had a really long tongue."  (back to normal voice) And they like will drop whatever they're playing with me to let me know about this thing, which neurologically like they're doing that thing where like, they have seen a new category that they don't yet understand and they're trying to integrate it into what they do, right? So I have to be there and say, "Daphne, tell me about the dog." You know, like I want to know more. Well, what color was the dog? You know what I'm saying? "It was, it was brown." I'm like, okay. All right. It was brown. I love that. So, but then it's also insane cause you're like, this is so crazy.  NEIL: To me, it makes perfect intuitive sense how that connects to camp. But could you, could you... JON: I think it connects to, I mean, camp, I mean, treats itself seriously, but knows it's also ridiculous. You know. I mean, campy drag queens like divine, completely over-the-top makeup and personality, but acting and performing with a lot of conviction.   NEIL: The difference, though, may be being, and maybe it's a technical difference, do you think kids know that they are ridiculous? JON: No. Absolutely not. Did you - NEIL: Okay. So they're inadvertently campy?  JON: Unless they were like early stars and then they're like, Oh, okay, people are enjoying what I'm doing.  NEIL: Right, right, right, right.  (flip card) I love the smell of a drag queen.  JON: Absolutely not. If you really smelled, uh, maybe the perfume that we put on at the very end, but if you smelled any of our undergarments or any of our clothing, that's, some of that, I mean, the vintage pieces maybe haven't ever been washed. Maybe just sprayed down with some alcohol and water.  To get rid of the bacteria and the smell. Um. And I'm not washing pantyhose every single week. Are you thinking of the metaphorical smell?  NEIL: I have no idea what that is. And I'm all in.  JON: Every drag queen has a different energy and that can be very intoxicating. That's like half the fun, that someone's showing you something on the other side of the looking glass. NEIL: Aha. But the literal smell for me is always about just powdery perfume. But you're saying beneath that is just... filth.  JON: I've, I guess I've, I've done it so many times. I'm no longer piqued by just the smell of powder and, and lipsticks and things like that. Just, that's kind of smells like the entrance of a, of a Macy's, you know? You know what I'm talking about, right? You walk into a Macy's and it's always like the perfume entrance, right? NEIL: Yeah, yeah. That somehow seems like a euphemism. Smells like the entrance of Macy's.  JON: God, she smelled like the entrance of a Macy's. I'm not going back there, Charlotte.  NEIL: Um, I guess I have thought about like with padding and tucking, uh...  JON: Mhm. Machinery going on. NEIL: Yeah. Which does involve compressing the body, or, or depriving the body of air circulation, which I guess could generate smells, right?  JON: Yeah. It's tight. I mean, if you're, I mean, if you're just, even if you're putting on hips, right? Let's say you're padding, some people, some queens are wearing four or five layers of tights, right? Just to make a smooth silhouette. Um, you know, and you're hot, you're moving around, your head is hot cause you're wearing a wig. My hair lines are glued down, so everything's sleek. So when I go, you know, getting out of drag is the best feeling.  NEIL: I can imagine. Do you get out of drag at the venue or at home? JON: I am an at home queen. And I'm also a get ready at home queen, too. I just ride the train down.  NEIL: Really?  JON: Yes. I mean, I'm in drag, but have like a winter coat on, and a scarf, and I have sweatpants over my dress, so I look like just like a, a gymnast going to a meet or something.  NEIL: To a Wheaties commercial.  JON: I look like a suburban mom going to Costco. NEIL: That thing of posing people in nude photos, so their genitals are hidden by a raised knee or what have you.  JON: That's very Black Mirror to me.  NEIL: Oh really?  JON: Oh, just like it's on the cusp of this is, this is very sexy, and also, what are we doing, right? What the hell are we doing? This is insane. I think of Instagram immediately. NEIL: Oh yeah, sure.  JON: People just like, a sexy photo of themselves. It's like, "You're naked." You hid, you moved your body a little bit. We're one centimeter away from seeing whatever it is, you know? But it's like, if you cover a little bit, Instagram's like, Oh, you're not nude.  NEIL: Isn't that deep?  JON: It's crazy. It's true. It's true. It's truly wild.  NEIL: I wonder if there is a fetish around obscured - like if there are people who get off on the actual obscuring.  JON: Oh, 100% yeah. 100% think that's a fetish. I mean, in the same way that just wearing a leather chest strap, that's totally nonfunctional.  NEIL: Right, exactly.  JON: Like there's not even a function to it. NEIL: Yeah.  JON: But I'm just imagining you in a different way. I mean, you know, cause you're an artist. Marina Abramovic's, um, performance where she stood naked, right? And she had a table of instruments.  NEIL: Yeah.  JON: That was, I think like the exploration of like is, is this actually like. Well, it was exploring a lot of things. Like one of the questions I had was like, is this sexual? Like, she had a feather. She had a knife. She had a gun, right?  NEIL: Uh, may have had a gun, uh, I thought she had scissors too. Or maybe I'm confusing that with Yoko Ono's "Cut" piece. Um, yeah, there were things that could do violence for sure.  JON: I think there was a gun. NEIL: Yeah, that sounds right.  JON: Um, that sounds very Marina probably.  NEIL: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.  JON: But, um, I think the reason why I thought Black Mirror at first, cause it's like we are so... We are surfing the simulacra of society.  NEIL: Oh my God.  JON: Who, Baudrillard? Is that the philosopher?  NEIL: Mhm. Society of spectacle. JON: I am really smart right now in this hour... NEIL: Oh my God. Um, it's funny you mention Marina Abramovic, cause one of the cards I have, or this is just an idea for an art project I would love to do, which is, you know, the artist is present where, you know, you would sit with and look into her eyes. But I'd like to do that with, butt warmth. You'd sit on chairs and then you would just switch. Like I could feel your butt warmth on the chair, and you could feel mine.  JON: And I'm going to, I'm going to build on this. The seats, to kind of give it some sort of like, um, sexy factor. The seats are thermo-visually dynamic. So when you sit, you can see the warmth, um, like a print? That the last person -  NEIL: The heat, the heat map.  JON: Mhm. The heat map of the last person.  NEIL: If that's what it's called. Our first collaboration.  JON: That's going to sell tickets at the MoMA. NEIL: This is a card I found tucked under my, uh, the, the sofa in my studio, and all it says is: Anus. JON: You know, synchronicity. Because we recently got a bidet. Um, which has quickly made my Top 2020 List of things to improve your life.  NEIL: Oh my God. Yeah.  JON: Um, bidet.  NEIL: Yeah.  JON: Pretty, uh very affordable. There are certain models that are just like, even under 50 bucks.  NEIL: Oh, wow. Okay.  JON: Will change your life.  NEIL: Huh? I, um, I would be, cause I feel like I've seen some like bidets that border on like the geriatric medical in terms of their appearance, you know, where they look like an add-on to the toilet seat. And, I feel like I would embrace a bidet deeply, but I need for the aesthetics to be on point.  JON: I hear you. I'm also someone who is an obsessed aesthete. And also I'm very practical and functional. And I really saw no point of a bidet cause I had a, was doing perfectly fine for God knows how many years, right? But we won it in a Santa Swap, like a, you know, the white elephant thing. Um, so we brought it home. I took it through the airport. My bag was fully paused cause they thought I was carrying home a bomb. Like what the fuck is in your bag, right? There's like piping and tubing, and this big shape of plastic and a knob. So, um, so this one's pretty sleek. And a bidet is, it's like a shower just for your ass. And. And that's it. It's, it's like, it's like taking a shower, but just for your anus. I, there's no other way to feel it. And I thought, and then I, I'm, and now I've, I've talked about it in my office because if I'm excited about something, I must to talk about it.  NEIL: Oh, yeah.  JON: And I'm going to put it out there - bidets are very sexual, and every straight man who's out there is understanding the queer experience. I, or like, this is like, you understand. It's like, Oh that's right, butt play isn't just like a gay thing. It's like a universal thing. And uh, you know, the anus is a sexual region, so you let it go for as long as you want. Some people have heated bidets, and that's nice cause then it's warm water. Mine is not, we have a cheap kind. So in the winter time it's frigid. But I like it because it makes me feel like I'm alive, and it's a test of character, which I get off on. And then you're done. And then it's, and then it's like you took a shower. NEIL: Ah. But you know, you should have front loaded the part that it's not heated. That might be a deal breaker for me. Although I also, like you, I'm energized by like, as a depressive. I love winter because it really brings out, um, a feeling of like, the will to live in me.  JON: And it's good for your skin.  NEIL: Cheers. But I don't want. I don't think I want, I don't know. I've never had that experience. I don't think I want a cold-water anal shower.   JON: Uh huh. Well, you know, and neither did I, I thought it would, it would never be on my radar. And that's why it's made my Top 2020 List.  NEIL: Wow.  JON: And I know we're just wrapping up the first month, but I think it's going to be on there. NEIL: Oh, I'm so confident in that, I'm so confident in that. I think if they called it a cold-water anal shower, it wouldn't sell as many units as a bidet.  JON: It would only sell in niche markets for sure.  NEIL: Uh, next card. The way you can tell certain people won't age well.  JON: Yeah. Um, you can just tell. Uh, for me it's just like an impression.  NEIL: Yes. It's not based on facts, for me.  JON: Truly not based on facts. A lot of it really just has to do with their energy.  NEIL: Exactly.  JON: Absolutely. Like their energy, the way they carry themselves, the way they think about themselves. Did you read that Roald Dahl book, The Twits?  NEIL: No. JON: The Twits. I can't recap the entire plot in entirety, but there's this one part of like, they think ugly thoughts and then they became ugly. And it was, you know, he is an amazing writer. But yeah, that never left me as a kid. And I think that continues to apply today. Even there are people who are old, but they just. They look and appear and they feel so young. And they're aging like, “Oh my gosh, you're aging beautifully.” NEIL: Right. I love that.  JON: Right?  NEIL: Yeah.  JON: It's not about having wrinkles or things like that. There really is a disposition, the way you carry yourself.  NEIL: Yeah. I find also, I think that card for me came from like, it, it can be a strategy or it used to be a strategy for managing, like desire. Like I would see someone who was hot to me, but then I would mentally age them and be like, No, as a way to... Yeah, manage my desire.  JON: Yeah. I mean, I'm not petty, but I recently went to a high school reunion and I said, I loved that I did not peak.  NEIL: Oh my God.  JON: I'm still ascending.  NEIL: Oh, you so are. You totally are.  JON: Oh, thank you. And you are too.  NEIL: Um, I think I, I don't know where I am.  JON: You're aging gracefully.  NEIL: Thank you. I'm trying.  JON: That's, and that's the goal. Yeah. No. Cause it's like some people that were like super hot in like, in high school and you're just like, Oh wow. I think we, I think our people had a different kind of strategy. We had a different strategy.  NEIL: Yeah. It's like, um. I just read this book called The Overstory, which is all about trees. I don't know if you heard of it. It's so good. I recommend it, but, uh, it talks about the different things different trees' seeds need to become activated. Like some seeds need extreme cold. Some need to be set on fire. Um, so I think the gay seed... That sounds bad. JON: No, no, no. Perfect.  NEIL: Um, benefits from not having peaked in high school. JON: Yes, absolutely.  NEIL: Can I ask how old you are?  JON: 29. 29, my numerological golden year.  NEIL: Oh, what does that mean?  JON: Everyone has a life path number.  Okay, so mine breaks down to 29 slash 11 slash 2. If you're a, ever all my die-hard numerologists out there. Um, and so 29 is the first reduction. And so I'm 29.  NEIL: I love it. Um 29 and 11 are both prime numbers, aren't they?   JON: Mm, I studied visual arts in undergraduate, so I'm going to pass on this one. But you know, you calculate your number by just adding your birthdate across like... So mine is zero plus eight plus zero plus two plus one plus nine plus nine zero equals 29. Two plus nine is 11. One plus one is two. NEIL: I love it.  JON: And then they all have meanings. You know, there's a whole book. You can Google it.  NEIL: Yeah, I can imagine. Wait, so you were born in August? Was that what I heard? Leo? JON: I'm a Leo. Are you a Leo?  NEIL: No, I'm a Virgo.  JON: Oh! I have a lot of Virgo friends.  NEIL: I have a lot of Leo friends. Well, Virgo teaches Leo. You're taught by the sign that follows you. So Virgo is taught by Libra. Leo is taught by Virgo.  JON: Yes, yes. And. The sign before you teaches a person after to remember that they didn't have to give up the qualities that they left behind. NEIL:  Cheers.  JON: Virgos are famously the perfectionists, right? Natural at managing their immediate environments and, you know, being very meticulous and they could run the whole system, but then they forget that they're also, you know, they can allow themselves to shine. They don't have to be so critical of themselves.  NEIL: That is such a beautiful, um, flipping of the teaching thing. I love it.  JON: You know who is a prime example of a Leo-Virgo cusp?  NEIL: Who? JON: Beyoncé. So you can tell she has the Virgo energy of like, everything must be perfect.  NEIL: Absolutely.  JON: Um, and I'll think of my idea and then I'll present it to you. But then she's also, you know, still carrying her Leo energy of like, I am a star.  NEIL: Right, exactly. That's deep. You have forever changed how I think about, um, the Zodiac.  JON: And that's my time today.  NEIL: Yes. (flips card) What's a bad X you'd take over a good Y?  JON: What's a bad X you'd take over a good Y? Oh gosh. I would take a bad massage over a good meal.  NEIL: I'm with you, totally with you.  JON: I had to really think.  NEIL: Yeah, you look a little spent right now.  JON: No, I mean that, that took the, the, the final juice of my brain. Yeah. We have, we have gone to the trenches of my brain and pulled everything out. That was it. I mean, like, that's it. That's my, that's my ethos.  NEIL: Have you had a bad massage?  JON: Absolutely. And would I take it over a good meal? 100%. I'm a little, I'm a little surprised that I haven't vocalized this earlier in my life, but that's how you know this is the genuine response. Bad massages? Oh, I don't care. Someone's touching me, oh, I melt. I like, I think I'm like in a constant state of low-grade ecstasy when someone's touching me. Right?  NEIL: Yeah.  JON: It could be terrible. And I have had my share of terrible massages. You know, Chinatown massages have a spectrum.  NEIL: Yeah, yeah, yeah.  JON: No frills. You can't complain.  NEIL: Yeah.  JON: Good meal? Okay. But I know I'm gonna be hungry again. You know, like... Meal goodness to me is controllable cause you could let yourself go to the brink of like, I can't see, I'm so hungry and anything will taste good. Yes. Sometimes I do that. Sometimes I let myself get so hungry if I'm, if there's a meal I'm not thrilled to eat. I'd be like, Oh, I'm more vegetarian now, but when I would, when I was less, I would hang out with some of my friends, I'm like, Oh, I'm going to go to their place. I'm going to let myself get famished cause then it won't matter what I eat.  NEIL: Cause they're not good cooks, potentially? JON: Cause like, Oh, I really wanted meat. But like who knows what the vegetarian meal will be. A crap-shoot. But I'll be so hungry. It's going to taste like milk and honey from the Bible.  NEIL: You found a way to turn - you've made it predictable. You've managed it.  JON: I mean the gamble is, you do become more irritable and you have to kind of like have a lot of self-control. NEIL: Right, right, right.  JON: People want to small talk with you. You'd be like, okay, when's dinner?  NEIL: When's the shitty dinner that I'm starving for?  JON: A shout out to all my vegetarian friends. I love coming over to your house and don't stop making food from me.  NEIL: On that note, Jon Wan, thank you so much for being on SHE'S A TALKER. JON: Oh, thank you for having me, Neil. NEIL: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of SHE'S A TALKER. Before we get to the credits, there were some listener responses to cards that I'd love to share. In my conversation with Buddhist teacher Kate Johnson, we talked about the card:  I can imagine thinking as I'm dying, "Here we go again."  In response to that card, David Coleman wrote, "The one time that I ever really thought I was about to die, all I could think was, 'Wow, so this is it. Nothing more than this.' It was a feeling of peaceful surprise. This story is from 9/ 11. My building was so close to the World Trade Center that when the first tower started to collapse, it appeared as though it was going to fall to the East, which would've completely flattened my building, and I felt so sure I was about to die. Actually, for the next several months, I had this little secret thought I'd never shared that maybe I really was dead. But then again, my neurologist also said I was the only person he'd ever heard of who enjoyed having a stroke. So don't go by me." Thank you, David. If anyone out there listening has something that you'd like to share about a card on the podcast, email us or send us a voice memo at shesatalker@gmail.com or message us on Instagram at shesatalker. And also, as always, we'd love it if you'd rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or share this episode with a friend. This series is made possible with generous support from Still Point Fund. Devon Guinn produced this episode. Molly Donahue and Aaron Dalton are our consulting producers. Justine Lee handles social media. Our interns are Alara Degirmenci, Jonathan Jalbert, Jesse Kimotho, and Rachel Wang. Our card flip beats come from Josh Graver, and my husband, Jeff Hiller, sings the theme song you're about to hear. Thanks to all of them, and to my guest, Jon Wan, and to you for listening. JEFF HILLER: She's a talker with Neil Goldberg. She's a talker with fabulous guests. She's a talker, it's better than it sounds, yeah!

F45 is a network of gyms that incorporate High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) and a spirit of community. Fitness superstar Oscar Yerushalmi just opened his F45 training center at 1200 S. Grand Street in downtown LA. He comes by the podcast to talk about how he went from struggling with his weight in high school to getting in shape and becoming a fitness expert in his own right. Listen carefully for your chance to get some F45 swag and free training sessions*** (offer limited to those who can work out at Oscar's F45 gym in DTLA).   Find Oscar on Instagram @oscaryf45 and make sure to check out the fabulous facilities of his gym here.

Dannielle Hille talks about the incident on Grand Street on Sunday

The Grand Street boys interview a couple of childhood friends, the Drury Twins. Bray & Drew talk about their lives as a twin as well as dive deep into conspiracy topics and get fired up about NBA free agency.

Dana Taylor literally dreamed her business idea. She felt compelled to get out and build it - creating that soft wearable tshirt we all have and never want to let go of. Dana bought some fabric and started working from home, sewing the tshirts herself. Cut to Made on Grand (@made_on_grand), her cool, handmade fashion brand every high end boutique and retailer like L J Cross, @fredsegal, @linda_dresner and @neimanmarcus wants to carry. We love her pivot from mom into cool brand maven - her 1 of a kind pieces have become go to pieces in our closet. Understand Dana's unlikely journey from her beginnings in Romania to starting her business on Grand Street in this podcast episode 16. Subscribe to The IdeaMix Radio and stay tuned for our next episode.The IdeaMix Radio show brings you stories, inspiration and resources to live what you love with new episodes every week. Sign up for The IdeaMix weekly newsletter here. For comments, questions, podcast guest ideas or sponsorship enquiries, please email info@theideamix.com.

We really have no idea what we are doing, but enoy!

The Four Horsemen in Brooklyn. Have you been there? Have you drank some wine there? Had some of the restaurant’s bread and cultured butter? It’s an amazing place, up on Grand Street, and I had a great time talking with the chef, Nick Curtola, and co-owner, James Murphy. James of the band LCD Soundsystem and fan of drinking natural wines by the Jeroboam. Nick of making really great bread—among other fine things. We talked about the unique way they run their place (we talk fancy water filtration), and also about the time James appeared on French national television and was asked to taste wines blindly. Awkward. He tells the story.Also on today’s show, TASTE contributor Max Falkowitz answers a burning reader question: What is Chicago pizza, exactly?

Which street is Capital Hotel on?*Capital 首都It's on Highland Avenue. 在高地街上*Avenue 大道、大街Fifth Avenue 第五大道（纽约很有名的购物街）Go straight until you get to Grand Street then turn right. Go to the second stoplight and turn left. Capital Hotel is right there.直走直到你看到格兰特街然后右转。 到第二个红绿灯左转，首都饭店就在哪儿！*有没有注意到 right 在这里有使用到两个意思，一个指方向（右边），另一个是指「就在、正是」的意思，这个字还有「正确的」意思，所以我们要根据说话的情景和语句整个意思来判断。关注我的社交媒体账号，有更多精彩分享：- 公众微信号：贵旅特（ID：Guilvte）- 网站：flywithlily.com- FB粉丝页：Fly with Lily- IG: flywithlily-Line ID: Fly with Lily

Episode Transcript: My name is Tanya Marsh and you’re listening to Death, et seq. We’ve been talking about funerals a lot on this podcast so far, and I wanted to switch gears this week and talk about one of my favorite topics – cemeteries. I love cemeteries. As my friends and family will attest, I am a semi-professional cemetery tourist. When I visit a new place, I want to check out the historic cemeteries. When I visit a place that I’ve been dozens of times, I still want to check out the cemeteries. So in a new series that I’m going to call “Cemetery Tourism,” I’ll be looking at different clusters of cemeteries that share similar characteristics or a similar history. I’m going to start the series in the Northeastern United States, in two of our earliest urban centers — New York City and Boston. Both of these cities were founded in the mid-1600s, and their early cemeteries share some common characteristics, but they also differed in important ways because of the people who founded those two cities. American cemeteries are different from cemeteries anywhere else in the world, for a couple of reasons. In the colonial era, we were obviously heavily influenced by the law of England and the social norms that had been established there and carried here. The England of the 17th century had an established church – the Church of England. The theology of the Church of England placed great importance on burial in consecrated ground. So the law of England reflected the assumption that all people in good standing with the church and entitled to burial within the church would be buried in their local parish churchyard. There were people that weren’t in good standing, or members of other religions, so allowances had to be made for them too, but the vast majority of people were buried in the local parish churchyard owned by the Church of England. That’s just how it was set up. But colonial America was a fairly diverse place. For example, Puritan colonists from England of course settled Massachusetts Bay Colony, while a more diverse group of English, Dutch, and German immigrants settled the former New Amsterdam, there were all kinds of ethnic groups and faiths on William Penn’s land, and the English Virginia Company established settlements focused on economics rather than religious liberty. Each of the colonies was different from the English system, but they were also each different from each other. These realities forced Americans to innovate. Massachusetts established (and still retains) a law that each town must create a burying ground for the use of residents and strangers. Unlike the English system, these are secular cemeteries, owned and managed by the government. In the densely populated cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, cemeteries were established downtown and despite practices designed to maximize the capacity of cemeteries, soon became overcrowded. In the Chesapeake, where the population was more widely dispersed, family burying grounds were established in addition to more traditional churchyards. Although the location of American burials differed from the uniform English precedent, other aspects of the process were the same during colonial times. Remains were wrapped in a shroud or encased in a wood coffin, then placed in the earth, a family tomb, or a mausoleum. Americans originally followed other European Christian customs—most graves were not individually memorialized and many contained the remains of more than one person. American disposition practices shifted after the Civil War. Embalming was rarely practiced before the war. During the war, a crude method of embalming was used to stabilize the remains of wealthier men, primarily on the Union side, so they could be sent home for burial. After the Civil War, undertakers trained in embalming evolved into funeral directors. Into the twentieth century, death moved from the home to the hospital; and the ceremonies surrounding death moved from the parlor to the funeral parlor. Undertaking had once been a complementary profession for carpenters—they could build the coffin and transport the remains to the cemetery. But the Industrial Revolution moved casket production from small workshops to factories, particularly after World War II. “Modern business principles” were applied to create modern cemeteries, owned by for-profit companies in many states, larger in scale and designed to minimize the costs of maintenance. These companies benefited from laws that gave great deference to cemetery owners—traditionally families, religious organizations and municipalities—to establish their own rules and regulations. Modern cemeteries adopted rules that required concrete and/or steel vaults or grave liners that would encase the coffin and prevent the uneven terrain that follows grave collapse. These companies also adopted rules that limited graves to a single interment. The cumulative effect is a very different set of practices than existed before the Civil War. Nearly all modern graves in the United States are dedicated in perpetuity to the remains of a single individual, memorialized with a tombstone. On today’s episode, I’ll talk about the history and development of cemeteries in New York City and Boston. If you’re interested in photographs and maps, be sure to check out the show notes at the podcast’s website – www.deathetseq.com. The Dutch first settled New Amsterdam, then just the southern tip of Manhattan, in 1624. A detailed city map called the Castello Plan was created in 1660 – it shows virtually every structure that existed in New Amsterdam at that time. In 1664, four English frigates sailed into New Amsterdam’s harbor and demanded the surrender of New Netherlands. Articles of Capitulation were signed that September and in 1665, New Amsterdam was reincorporated under English law as New York City. The settlement was named for the Duke of York, the brother of the English King Charles II who later became King James II. During most of the 17th century, even after the English took over, the Reformed Dutch Church was the dominant religious authority in New Amsterdam/New York. There were scattered Congregational, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches in the region, as well as Quakers, Catholics, and a few Jews. With the English in 1665, however, also came the established Church of England. One of the first significant cemeteries in New York City was established in the 1630s on the west side of Broadway, a little north of Morris Street. It was referred to as the “Old Graveyard” In 1656, there was a petition to “divide the Old Graveyard which is wholly in ruins, into lots to be built upon, and to make another Graveyard south of the Fort.” Apparently it persisted until at least 1665, when a collection was made to repair the graveyard because it was “very open and unfenced, so that the hogs root in the same.” By 1677, however, the graveyard had been cut up into four building lots and sold at auction to the highest bidder. There is no record regarding where the graves from this “Old Graveyard” were moved, but construction on the site more than a century later uncovered “a great many skulls and other relics of humanity,” so it sounds like perhaps they weren’t moved at all. Some things in Poltergeist are real, people. In 1662, the Dutch established a new burial ground on Broadway, on a parcel that was then located outside the city’s gates. That burial ground became a part of the Trinity churchyard when Trinity Church was established in thirty years later. In 1693, the New York Assembly passed an act to build several Episcopal churches in New York City and “all the inhabitants were compelled to support the Church of England, whatever might be their religious opinion.” In 1696, a plot of land stretching 310 feet from Rector Street to the Dutch burial ground that had been established on Broadway in 1662 was acquired by the Episcopalians and the Charter of Trinity Church was issued on May 6, 1697. The charter declared: “[Trinity Church] situate in and near the street called the Broadway, within our said city of New York, and the ground thereunto adjoining, enclosed and used for a cemetery or church-yard, shall be the parish church, and church-yard of the parish of Trinity Church … and the same is hereby declared to be forever separated and dedicated to the service of God, and to be applied thereunto for the use and behalf of the inhabitants … within our said city of New York, in communion with our said Protestant Church of England.” By the time of the Revolution, the churchyard at Trinity, including the old portion that had been the Dutch burial ground, was said to contain 160,000 graves. In 1847 a proposal to extend Albany Street to connect it with Pine Street would have disturbed the northern portion of the Trinity Church churchyard, part of the 1662 Dutch burial ground. A government report advocated against the extension: “[The burial ground] was established by the Dutch on their first settlement... It is nearly a century older than the other sections of the yard. It was originally a valley, about thirty feet lower at its extreme depth than the present surface, and has undergone successive fillings, as the density of interments rendered it necessary, to raise the land until it reached the present surface: so that the earth now, to a depth of several feet below the original, and thence to the present time of interment, is in truth filled with human remains, or rather composed of human ashes. The bodies buried there were [approximately 30,000 to 40,000] persons of several generations, and of all ages, sects and conditions, including a large number of the officers and soldiers of the Revolutionary War, who died whilst in British captivity; and almost every old family that is or ever was in this city, has friends or connections lying there.” In an 1892 guidebook to New York City, Moses King wrote: "Only the established and powerful corporations of Trinity and a few other churches have been able to resist the demands of modern life and business for the ground once sacred to the dead. Hundreds of acres [in Manhattan], now covered by huge buildings or converted into public thoroughfares, were at some time burial-places; over ninety of which have been thus existed, and passed away. Of most of them even the location has been forgotten…” Trinity Churchyard still resides on Broadway at Rector Street, in lower Manhattan, two blocks from Federal Hall, the building where George Washington was sworn in, the “room where it happened” in the very early days of the Republic, and the New York Stock Exchange. The Anglican St. Paul’s Chapel, established on Broadway between Fulton and Vesey Streets around 1766, and its surrounding churchyard still remains in the shadow of the World Trade Center. Many of the other cemeteries that once resided in lower Manhattan are relics of memory. For example: • The Middle Dutch Church, on the east side of Nassau Street between Cedar and Liberty Streets, was surrounded by a burial ground beginning in 1729. The bodies were removed sometime after 1844. The North Dutch Church on William Street between Fulton and Ann Streets had an adjacent burial ground from 1769 to 1875. • The French burial ground on the northeast corner of Nassau and Pine Streets, extending north to Cedar Street (1704-1830); • The Presbyterian churchyard on the north side of Wall Street opposite the end of New Street (1717-1844); • The Old Brick Presbyterian Church graveyard on Beekman Street between Chatham and Nassau Streets (1768-1856); • The cemetery located at Pearl, Duane, and Rose Streets which was leased from the city as early as 1765 but not used as a cemetery until after the Revolution; and • A Lutheran Church and adjacent burial ground on south Pearl Street, a site which had become a vegetable market by 1706. A cemetery on the south side of Houston Street between Eldridge and Stanton Street was used from 1796 to 1851 as the Reformed Dutch Church Cemetery, to provide excess capacity for the crowded churchyards. The bodies were disinterred and removed around 1874. Meanwhile, Puritan colonists from England founded Boston in 1630. Unlike the religious and ethnic diversity that could be found in New Amsterdam/New York City during this time period, the Puritan leaders of Boston punished religious dissenters. Baptist minister Obadiah Holmes was publicly whipped in 1651 and Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston Common in 1660 for repeatedly defying a law banning Quaker from being in Massachusetts Bay Colony. However, prosperity in Boston led to the development of a more diverse community that included Catholics and Quakers and other groups that were initially persecuted by the Puritans. Eventually the Puritans began to accept that they could not have a unified church and state. Puritan burying grounds were often located adjacent to the town’s meeting house. Headstones were expensive and many of the earliest were imported from England. Most often, early burials were marked with wood markers or primitive stones, if they were marked at all. The Puritan burying ground was a utilitarian space simply used to bury the dead. Puritans did not visit graves or maintain them. They were often very disorganized. Graves were tightly clustered and gravestones were often broken or buried as the cemetery became more populated. In many cases, graves were dug deep enough to accommodate 12 or more coffins placed on top of each other to within five feet of the surface. Recall that in the 1650s, there was a petition to remove the Old Graveyard in New Amsterdam because hogs were rooting around. In Boston, the early burying grounds were used as communal space to graze cattle. The oldest burying ground in Boston is King’s Chapel which is not, as the name suggests, the churchyard for the adjacent King’s Chapel. What was originally simply known as the “Burying Ground” was established in 1630 and was Boston’s only cemetery for 30 years. King’s Chapel is quite small, less than half an acre. It was used as a burial ground for 200 years, but estimates are that there are only about 1,500 burials. There are only 615 gravestones and 29 tabletop tomb markers remaining. Most graves include about four burials on top of one another. Excess remains were excavated and the bones were deposited in the charnel house that can still be seen on the edge of the burying ground. A charnel house would be a very familiar idea for the English colonists because English churchyards were similarly overcrowded. When the cemetery authorities ran out of ground for fresh burials, older burials were simply dug up and the bones were placed in a communal pit in the consecrated ground, or catacombs beneath the church. If you’ve visited any European churches, you’re probably familiar with this idea. Although the idea of the charnel house was a feature of English churchyards, King’s Chapel Burying Ground was not a churchyard. It was a community burial ground and included people of all faiths, not just Puritans. It was more like a municipal, secular cemetery than a churchyard. In all of the Boston burying grounds, it was common to have a headstone, highly decorated with the name and sometimes the biography of the deceased, and a footstone with only the name of the deceased. Graves were placed so that the feet of the deceased faced east. This was believed to have been done so that when Christ returns, the dead can simply stand up and walk to Jerusalem. King’s Chapel also includes 29 underground tombs which consist of a burial room made of brick and covered with earth and grass. These are marked with box structures, but the boxes are just markers, not the tombs themselves. When the tombs needed to be opened, the box was removed and the entrance dug up. In the early 1700s, 24 tombs were built along the back fence and in 1738, 23 tombs were built along Tremont Street. These are actually underneath the present-day sidewalk of Tremont Street and their markets and entrances are inside the fence. King’s Chapel Burying Ground also includes a curious structure that looks like the top of a tomb or pit. That’s actually a subway fresh air ventilator shaft that was constructed in 1896. Human remains in that portion of the burying ground were relocated during the construction. It is called King’s Chapel Burying Ground today because in 1686, Governor Edmund Andros wanted to build an Anglican church in Puritan Boston. This was an unpopular idea, so no one would sell him any land. So Andros built his church in part of the existing Burying Ground, right over existing graves. As you can imagine, this didn’t make Andros any more popular with the Puritans of Boston. After King’s Chapel was consecrated, people began referring to the adjacent cemetery as King’s Chapel Burying Ground, which also couldn’t have made the Puritans very happy. In 1660, King’s Chapel was ordered closed “for some convenient season” and new burials directed to the second burying ground. Of course tombs were installed decades later and grave burials in King’s Chapel Burying Ground weren’t outlawed until 1826, although they continued until 1896. The second burial ground in Boston was established in 1659 when the Selectment of Boston purchased ½ acre in the northern end of town. Originally called the North Burying Place or the North Burying Ground, the parcel was expanded in 1711 and 1809. It is now known as Copp’s Hill Burying Ground and is located just down the street from the Old North Church. The City of Boston has counted 2,230 grave markers and 228 tombs in Copp’s Hill but the exact number of burials is unknown. Estimates range from 8,000 to 10,000. This includes an estimate of over 1,000 unmarked graves of African and African American slaves. The third burying ground in Boston is located just down Tremont Street from King’s Chapel. Also established in 1660, the Old Granary Burying Ground is the final resting place of many important figures from the Revolutionary War including Paul Revere, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and the men killed in the Boston Massacre. Benjamin Franklin’s parents are also buried here. Granary is located on 2 acres and contains 2,345 gravestones. In 1922, it was estimated that there were 8,030 burials over its 260 year history. Originally, Granary Burying Ground was part of the Boston Common, which then extended up Tremont Street. It was originally called the South Burying Ground, then renamed the Middle Burying Ground when one was established further south. It was finally renamed Granary Burying Ground because of the 12,000 bushel grain storage building built in 1737 to provide food for the poor and called the granary. The granary was moved to Dorchester in 1809 to make room for Park Street Church. The final colonial burial ground that I’ll mention is the Central Burying Ground, which was established in 1754 on 1.4 acres at the corner of Boston Common on Boylston Street between Charles and Tremont Streets. There are only about 487 markers remaining, but records indicate that approximately 5,000 people are buried in Central Burying Ground, including many unmarked graves of paupers from the Alms House and inmates from the House of Industry. There are some unique tombs visible in Central Burying Ground because they are surrounded by a “moat” on both sides. The first tomb is thought to have been built in 1771. 149 tombs were built on the four sides of the burying ground and nearly half of the burials were in the tombs. But in 1836, Boylston Street was widened and 69 tombs were destroyed – the owners moved the remains either to the 60 tombs in the Dell or to the then-new Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. In 1895, the subway was being constructed along Boylston Street disturbing the remains of approximately 2,000 people. They were reburied in a mass grave in the northeast corner of Central Burying Ground. The last grave burial took placed in 1856, but tomb burials continued until the 1950s. Until 1810, Central Burying Ground was called South Burying Ground, which is when Granary was renamed. Identifying burying grounds by their relative location to one another is clearly a bad strategy, as the constant re-naming of cemeteries in Boston demonstrates. So I’ve described the first four cemeteries in Boston and the most famous cemetery in colonial New York – Trinity. The four colonial cemeteries in Boston were all owned by the government and non-sectarian, even though their practices resembled those of churchyards in England. New York, on the other hand, was dominated by churchyards in colonial days and the early days of the Republic. The challenges that these cemeteries faced in the beginning of the 1800s was similar in both cities, but the way that the cemeteries were changed as a result was very different. All four cemeteries I described are still in the heart of downtown Boston. In lower Manhattan, only Trinity and St. Paul’s Chapel remain. The backlash against the colonial cemeteries was triggered by their overuse and their general lack of organization and maintenance. In 1807, an Englishman named John Lambert visited New York. In his diary, he referred to Trinity Church and St. Paul’s Chapel as “handsome structures” but added: "The adjoining churchyards, which occupy a large space of ground railed in from the street and crowded with tombstones, are far from being agreeable spectacles in such a populous city. … One would think there was a scarcity of land in America to see such large pieces of ground in one of the finest streets of New York occupied by the dead. The continual view of such a crowd of white and brown tombstones and monuments as is exhibited in the Broadway must tend very much to depress the spirits." Some burial places had been closed and relocated in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. But the Nineteenth Century significantly accelerated that process. Overcrowded church yards and vaults (referred to as “intra-mural” burial grounds) were criticized by public health officials as “injurious to health, offensive to the senses, [and] repulsive to the taste of a refined age.” In New York City, the precipitating event to efforts to halt intra-mural burial was the Yellow Fever epidemic that began in late July 1822 on Rector Street. Reported cases spread quickly and when the first cases on Broadway were reported, public health officials feared that if the disease was not contained, it would quickly engulf City Hall and force the government into exile. On August 7th, the Board of Health ordered that an area around Rector Street be quarantined by the erection of fences. The quarantine area had to be expanded quickly. Searching for a cause of the epidemic and an effective way to halt the spread of the disease, the Board of Health began to panic. Prevailing medical thought of the day blamed epidemics on “miasma” and “infected air.” In early August, concerned about the cluster of cases in the area around Trinity Church, the Board of Health appointed a committee to “inquire into the expediency of regulating or preventing the interment of the dead in Trinity Church Yard during the continuance of the present epidemic.” The committee concluded that “the yard of that Church is at times, offensive to persons in its vicinity, and that, in the evening especially, the exhalations are such as perhaps are dangerous to the health of the citizens in its immediate neighborhood.” It was therefore recommended that “no grave be permitted to be opened or dug in Trinity Church Yard, until the further order of the Board of Health, under the penalty of one hundred dollars.” The proposed resolution was adopted by the Common Council on August 22nd. Around the same time, a report from Dr. Samuel Ackerly to the Board of Health recommended that the ban on interments at Trinity be made permanent. Dr. Ackerly related the story of the Cathedral of Dijon, “which [recently] produced a malignant disease in the congregation from the putrid bodies of the persons buried in the vaults of the Church. The disease ceased after the Church was ventilated and fumigated.” This case was presented to the Board of Health as “proof that noxious exhalations may arise from dead bodies.” Accordingly, Dr. Ackerly suggested that the source of the Yellow Fever epidemic may be Trinity Church Yard, where “the ground has been one hundred and twenty-four years receiving the dead, and the evil day has at length arrived. To strike at the root of the evil,” Dr. Ackerly advised, “no further interments should be allowed there. The graves might be leveled and covered with a body of clay, upon which a layer of lime, ashes and charcoal should be placed, and the grave stones laid flat, that the rain may run off and not penetrate the soil to hasten putrefaction and increase the exhalations.” On September 15th, the Board of Health “respectfully request[ed]” that churches with adjacent burial grounds in lower Manhattan cover their graves “thickly with lime, or charcoal, or both.” On September 23rd, Trinity Church Yard was covered with 52 casks of lime. The next day, 192 bushels of slacked lime were spread in St. Paul’s church yard, a few blocks north of Trinity Church. On September 28th, 172 bushels of slacked lime were spread “upon the grave-yard and about the vaults of the North Dutch church corner of William and Fulton-streets. The grounds about this church were not extensive and principally occupied by vaults, which nevertheless emitted very offensive effluvia.” Thirty additional casks of lime were slacked and spread at Trinity Church on October 1st. On October 8th, the vaults of the Middle Dutch Church at the corner of Liberty and Nassau were covered with 40 casks of lime. “These vaults were exceedingly offensive,” the Board of Health reported. It was also reported that “the vaults of the French church in Pine-street in the vicinity of the former church also emitted disagreeable smells.” By late November 1822, the Yellow Fever epidemic had subsided. With an eye towards preventing the next outbreak, the Common Council passed a resolution to consider the future of intra-mural burial. "It appears to be the opinion of Medical Men that the great number of the dead interred in the several cemeteries within the bounds of this City, is attended with injurious consequences to the health of the inhabitants. This subject is therefore worthy of consideration and if the effects are in reality such as some of the faculty declare them to be, ought not future interments be prohibited at least during a part of the year. …" A law forbidding interments south of Canal Street was proposed in early 1823. At the time, there were at least 23 separate burial grounds south of Canal Street, many adjacent to churches. The leaders of the Reformed Dutch Church, the First Presbyterian Church, Grace Church, St. George’s Church, Christ’s Church, and Vestry of Zion Church all presented remonstrances to the Common Council in February 1823 objecting to the proposed law. Over those objections, a Law Respecting the Interment of the Dead was enacted by the Common Council on March 31, 1823. "Be it ordained by the Mayor Aldermen & Commonalty of the City of New York in Common Council Convened. That if any Person or Persons shall after the first day of June next dig up or open any grave or cause or procure any grave to be opened in any burying ground cemetery or church yard or in any other part or place in this City which lies to the Southward of a line commencing at the centre of Canal Street on the North River and running through the centre of Canal Street to Sullivan Street thence through Sullivan st. to Grand Street thence through Grand St. to the East river or shall inter or deposit or cause or procure to be interred or deposited in any such grave any dead body every such person shall forfeit and pay for every such offence the sum of Two hundred and fifty dollars." "And be it further Ordained that no dead body shall after the first day of June aforesaid be interred or deposited in any vault or tomb south of the aforesaid line under the penalty of Two hundred and fifty dollars for each and every offence." Churches south of Canal Street continued to fight the law. On April 21, 1823, the leaders of St. George Church, the Brick Presbyterian Church, the First Presbyterian Church of Wall Street, and Trinity Church requested revisions to permit some burials and entombments in private vaults. But the die had been cast. As the population of Manhattan grew, the Common Council moved the line prohibiting new burials northward, first to 14th Street, then to 86th Street. Without the income generated by burials, many churches closed their doors and relocated their dead to the new rural cemeteries in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. Similar complaints in Boston prompted the creation of Mount Auburn Cemetery, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the most important and earliest rural cemeteries. Justice Joseph Story gave the address at the dedication of Mount Auburn cemetery in 1831. Story, then an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court and a professor at Harvard Law School, emphasized “the duty of the living” to “provide for the dead.” He explained that although the obligation to provide “grounds … for the repose of the dead” is a Christian duty, our “tender regard for the dead” is universal and “deeply founded in human affection.” Justice Story explained that Mount Auburn had been founded to cure the problem with the Boston colonial cemeteries. "It is painful to reflect, that the Cemeteries in our cities, crowded on all sides by the overhanging habitations of the living, are walled in only to preserve them from violation. And that in our country towns they are left in a sad, neglected state, exposed to every sort of intrusion, with scarcely a tree to shelter their barrenness, or a shrub to spread a grateful shade over the new-made hillock." Story argued that “there are higher moral purposes” that lead us to establish and care for cemeteries—"[i]t should not be for the poor purpose of gratifying our vanity or pride, that we should erect columns, and obelisks, and monuments to the dead; but that we may read thereon much of our own destiny and duty.” "[T]he repositories of the dead bring home thoughts full of admonition, of instruction, and slowly but surely, of consolation also. They admonish us, but their very silence, of our own frail and transitory being. They instruct us in the true value of life, and in its noble purposes, its duties, and its destinations. … We return to the world, and we feel ourselves purer, and better, and wiser, from this communion with the dead. I hope you’ve enjoyed this first episode in my series on Cemetery Tourism, and I hope that next time you’re in New York or Boston, you take the time to check out not only these colonial cemeteries located in the heart of the old cities, but the beautiful rural cemeteries that were later constructed – Mount Auburn in Cambridge, Green-wood in Brooklyn and Woodlawn in the Bronx. I’ll perhaps talk about the rural cemetery movement in a future episode. If you are interested in having me focus on particular cemeteries, please let me know by visiting www.deathetseq.com or dropping me a comment or a direct message on Facebook or Twitter. Thank you for joining me today on Death, et seq.

This episode is a recording from the Super Normal Panel at the Fox & Jane workshop on Grand Street. We have 4 panelists and a lovely introductory poetry reading by a special guest so sit back, relax, and take off your bra.   Follow Sam Sedlack Twitter @SmokedSamman Instagram @SmokedSamman SuperNormalPodcast.com Follow Sammi Chichester Twitter @SammiChichester […]

In the 1930s, brothers Homer and Langley Collyer withdrew from society and began to fill their Manhattan brownstone with newspapers, furniture, musical instruments, and assorted junk. By 1947, when Homer died, the house was crammed with 140 tons of rubbish, and Langley had gone missing. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the strange, sad story of the Hermits of Harlem. We'll also buy a bit of Finland and puzzle over a banker's misfortune. Intro: When New Amsterdam governor Wilhelm Kieft tried to outlaw smoking in the 1630s, his citizens literally puffed him into submission. Residents of the Canary island La Gomera communicate over long distances using a unique whistled language. Sources for our feature on the Collyer brothers: Franz Lidz, Ghosty Men, 2003. Franz Lidz, "The Paper Chase," New York Times, Oct. 26, 2003. William Bryk, "The Collyer Brothers," New York Sun, April 13, 2005. Michael Kernan, "The Collyer Saga And How It Grew; Recalling the Men Who Turned Trash Into Legend," Washington Post, February 8, 1983, B1. "Strange Case of the Collyer Brothers," Life, April 7, 1947. Robert M. Jarvis, "The Curious Legal Career of Homer L. Collyer," Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce 38:4 (October 2007), 571-582. Keith P. Ronan, "Navigating the Goat Paths: Compulsive Hoarding, or Collyer Brothers Syndrome, and the Legal Reality of Clutter," Rutgers Law Review 64:1 (Fall 2011), 235-266. Kenneth J. Weiss, "Hoarding, Hermitage, and the Law: Why We Love the Collyer Brothers," Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 38:2 (June 2010), 251-257. Kenneth J. Weiss and Aneela Khan, "Hoarding, Housing, and DSM-5," Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 43:4 (December 2015), 492-498. Scott Herring, "Collyer Curiosa: A Brief History of Hoarding," Criticism 53:2 (Spring 2011), 159-188. Patrick W. Moran, "The Collyer Brothers and the Fictional Lives of Hoarders," Modern Fiction Studies 62:2 (Summer 2016), 272-I. Jackie McAllister, "The Collyer Brothers," Grand Street 14:2 (Fall 1995), 201. Joyce Carol Oates, "Love and Squalor," New Yorker, Sept. 7, 2009. "Collyer Mansion Keeps Its Secrets," New York Times, Sept. 30, 1942. Harold Faber, "Homer Collyer, Harlem Recluse, Found Dead at 70," New York Times, March 22, 1947. "Thousands Gape at Collyer House," New York Times, March 24, 1947. Harold Faber, "Police Fail to Find Collyer in House," New York Times, March 25, 1947. "The Collyer Mystery," New York Times, March 26, 1947. "Collyer Mansion Yields Junk, Cats," New York Times, March 26, 1947. "Langley Collyer Is Dead, Police Say," New York Times, March 27, 1947. Russell Owen, "Some for O. Henry: Story of the Collyers," New York Times, March 30, 1947. "3D Search Starts at Collyer House," New York Times, April 1, 1947. "53 Attend Burial of Homer Collyer," New York Times, April 2, 1947. "More Secrets Taken From Collyer Home," New York Times, April 4, 1947. Harold Faber, "Body of Collyer Is Found Near Where Brother Died," New York Times, April 9, 1947. "Langley Collier Dead Near Month," New York Times, April 10, 1947. "200 Bid Spiritedly for Collyer Items," New York Times, June 11, 1947. "Collyer Home 'Unsafe,'" New York Times, June 26, 1947. "Collyer Brothers Park," Atlas Obscura (accessed March 4, 2018). Andy Newman, "Origin Aside, 'Collyers' Mansion' Is Code for Firefighter Nightmare," New York Times, July 5, 2006, B1. Listener mail: Wikipedia, "Category:Drugs With Unknown Mechanisms of Action" (accessed March 16, 2018). Wikipedia, "Theories of General Anaesthetic Action" (accessed March 16, 2018). Wikipedia, "Paracetamol" (accessed March 16, 2018). Tanya Lewis, "Mystery Mechanisms," The Scientist, July 29, 2016. Bruce Schneier, "Harassment by Package Delivery," Schneier on Security, Feb. 22, 2018. Sean P. Murphy, "'I Just Want It To Stop': Women Get Sex Toys In Packages They Didn't Order," Boston Globe, Feb. 20, 2018. Sean P. Murphy, "This Couple Keeps Getting Mystery Packages From Amazon They Didn't Order," Boston Globe, Feb. 6, 2018. "Bow Tie - Every Buyer Gets 100 Square Feet of Scandinavian Forest - Hand Made in Finland from Finnish Curly Birch - By Woodinavia," Amazon UK (accessed March 16, 2018). Woodinavia. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Tommy Honton, who sent this corroborating link (warning -- this spoils the puzzle). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!

Most colleges are organized as a collection of academic silos. Many challenging problems facing society,  though, are multifaceted. In this episode, Leigh Allison Wilson joins us to discuss the use of common problem pedagogy, an approach that allows students to address a problem from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Leigh is the Director of the Interdisciplinary Program and Activities Center at SUNY-Oswego. She is also the author of two collections of stories, one of which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her stories have appeared in the Georgia Review, Grand Street, Harper's, The Kenyon Review, Smokelong Quarterly, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. Leigh teaches creative writing at SUNY Oswego. In addition to the Flannery O'Connor award, she has received the Saltonstall Award for Creative Nonfiction, and a Pulitzer nomination by William Morrow for her collection Wind. Leigh is a Michener Fellow of the Copernicus Society and is a Henry Hoyns fellow of the University of Virginia. A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.

Welcome to the Punchbowl, an interview segment about playing Dungeons and Dragons in 2017 and beyond. We talk to people who are pushing the game forward - creatively, communally, socially, just doing good work. Today, we sit down with Lauren Bilanko, the co-owner of 20 Sided Store in Brooklyn, NY. We talk about the rebirth of Fifth Edition, community building for all players, and how to sell Dungeons & Dragons without scaring away the customer.  Find her at @bilanko on Twitter, and find 20 Sided Store at http://twentysidedstore.com/ or IRL at 362 Grand Street, Brooklyn, NY. And here are Lauren’s “Master, Dungeon Master” posts she talked about in the interview.   Find Us Online - website: jointhepartypod.com - patreon: patreon.com/jointhepartypod - twitter: twitter.com/jointhepartypod - facebook: facebook.com/jointhepartypod - instagram: instagram.com/jointhepartypod - tumblr: jointhepartypod.tumblr.com - merch: jointhepartypod.com/merch - music: brandongrugle.bandcamp.com   Cast & Crew - Dungeon Master: Eric Silver - TR8c (Tracey): Brandon Grugle - Inara Harthorn: Amanda McLoughlin - Johnny B. Goodlight: Michael Fische - Creative Contributors: Connor McLoughlin, Julia Schifini, Heddy Hunt - Multitude: multitude.productions   About Us Join the Party is a collaborative storytelling and roleplaying podcast. That means four friends create a story together, chapter by chapter, that everyone from seasoned players to true beginners can enjoy. Where else can you get adventure, intrigue, magic, drama, and lots of high fives all in one place? Right here. After each episode we sit down for the Afterparty, where we break down our game and answer your questions about how to play Dungeons & Dragons and other roleplaying games at home. We also have the Punchbowl, an interview series with people pushing D&D forward creatively, communally and socially. It’s a party, and you’re invited! Find out more at jointhepartypod.com.

Mike Banks, President of the Bord of Direcctors talks about how  Grand Street Community Arts Center has changed the neighborhood

Tesla: un nom qui en dehors de la marque de véhicules électriques et de l'unité de mesure du champ magnétique, n'est que rarement associé à l'inventeur américain d'origine serbe né au XIXème siècle et qui participa à l'essor du courant alternatif qui est aujourd'hui indispensable à notre monde.Vous découvrirez que beaucoup d'erreurs sont colportées à ce propos sur l'Internet mondial (inventeur de génie que le système a fait taire, l'homme qui fut capable de dompter l'énergie libre, celui qui pouvait parler aux autres planètes ou encore un vénusien qui était là pour aider l'humanité à grandir) et qu'en se basant sur la littérature sourcée et la science, nous arriverons à comprendre un peu mieux la première partie de sa vie. Ce dossier a été réalisé pour Podcastscience et a été présenté en premier lors du live du 14 juin 2016. Vous pourrez aussi le retrouver sur le site de podcastscience. Introduction On a tous entendu parler de Tesla, que ce soit pour des voitures électriques ou pour l’unité de mesure du champ magnétique. Mais on pense rarement à l’inventeur américain d’origine serbe, contemporain d’Edison, Einstein ou Marconi, qui participa à l’essor de l’industrie électrique et au développement de la radio. Le problème avec Tesla c’est qu’il fit aussi des déclarations fantasques qui font qu’aujourd’hui on entend plus souvent parler de lui comme le chantre du New Age, le maître de l’énergie libre ou pire, un vénusien venu sauver la Terre ...Mais qui est vraiment Nikola Tesla? Sur quoi a-t-il travaillé réellement ?Je vais tenter de démêler le vrai du faux en me basant sur un certain nombre d’ouvrages que j’ai pu lire sur lui directement, sur Edison, ou encore sur l’alterscience.Au cours de ce double épisode nous allons aborder sa jeunesse, son éducation, son voyage en Europe qui le mena à travailler pour Edison, leurs relations, ses travaux sur le courant alternatif et le moteur polyphasé, ceux sur le grand sujet de sa vie : la transmission d’énergie sans fil, ses idées “farfelues” et la fin de sa vie. Je prendrais enfin un peu de temps pour faire du debunking de quelques mythes qui peuvent exister à son propos.Petit disclaimer: les “faits” sur la vie de Tesla, il faut le dire franchement, c’est le bordel pour vérifier. J’ai tenté de donner une vision plus juste de Tesla et si vous pensez que j’ai pu dire quelque chose de faux malgré mes recherches, je suis totalement ouvert à recevoir vos remarques! La jeunesse de Tesla Les parents de Nikola Tesla, Milutin et Djuka, sont nés dans le premier tiers du XIXème siècle[1]. Après un court passage par Senj, sur la côte adriatique de la Croatie, où sont né trois des enfants Tesla[2], ils migrèrent dans une autre ville de Croatie, Smiljan, en 1852.C’est dans cette ville qu’est né Nikola Tesla dans la nuit du 9 au 10 juillet 1856. La légende veut que ce fut à minuit une nuit d’orage et d’éclairs. Un échange aurait eu lieu entre la sage-femme du village qui aurait dit de Nikola qu’il était un enfant de la tempête et Djuka aurait répondu “non, de la lumière”[3].Plusieurs évènements de sa jeunesse, vont marquer toute sa vie. Il découvrit l’électricité statique avec son chat, contracta une horreur pour les boucles d’oreilles, ou encore des troubles obsessionnels compulsifs (les fameux TOC) comme le fait de compter par trois toutes les choses par exemple[4]. Il développa aussi une capacité désormais fameuse à voir, aussi vrai que nature, tout ce qu’il pouvait imaginer[5].Pendant sa jeunesse Tesla fut aussi choqué par la mort de son frère Dane[6] et ses parents furent ensuite très protecteurs avec lui.Suite à cet évènement, ses parents migrèrent à Gospic, toujours en Croatie, où Tesla entra au collège et c’est au cours de cette période qu’il découvrit le principe des turbines et autres roues à aubes. Il prétend d’ailleurs qu’ayant entendu parler des chutes du Niagara il aurait dit à un de ses oncles qu’il maîtriserait leurs forces grâce à ces techniques, ce qu’il réalisa effectivement près de 30 ans plus tard[7].Après avoir fini son collège en 1870, il poursuivit ses études dans un lycée avant d’entrer en 1875 à la Joanneum Polytechnic School de Graz, en Autriche. Nikola entreprit un cursus orienté autour des mathématiques et de la physique. C’est pendant un cours de physique à propos des moteurs ou générateur/dynamo à courant continu que, remettant en cause l’usage du commutateur, son professeur, lui expliqua que l’enlever serait aussi impossible que le mouvement perpétuel[8]. Tesla, instinctivement sûr de son fait, poursuivit cette idée pendant de nombreuses années pour aboutir au moteur à courant alternatif polyphasé qui, aujourd’hui, fait rouler les TGV entre deux grèves notamment.Mais à quoi servait ce commutateur dans les moteurs à courant continu utilisés à l’époque? Prenons un peu de recul pour comprendre un peu ces histoires de courant continu/alternatif et de moteur/générateur d’abord.Le courant continu est celui qui sort d’une pile ou d’une batterie par exemple. Il circulera toujours dans le même sens sans changer d’amplitude au cours du temps. Le courant alternatif de son côté va aller dans un sens puis dans l’autre un certain nombre de fois par seconde (il s’agit de sa fréquence). C’est celui qui est produit par les centrales électriques et qui vous est délivré par les prises de courant de nos maisons.Afin de pouvoir faire fonctionner des rotatives ou des machines industrielles qui fonctionnent à l’électricité, il fallait disposer de générateurs qui produisent du courant, de fils pour le transmettre et de moteurs pour l’utiliser. Ces moteurs devaient, à l’époque, fonctionner sur les mêmes infrastructures électriques que celles utilisées pour la télégraphie qui fonctionnait par l’interruption d’un courant continu. Et il pouvait aussi être nécessaire de pouvoir faire fonctionner les machines sur batterie (qui délivre du courant continu donc).La recherche avait donc tenté d’aboutir à la création d’un couple générateur/moteur à courant continu. Les travaux de l’époque étaient basés sur l’induction magnétique découverte par Faraday en 1831. L’idée était de générer du courant lors du passage d’un aimant dans une bobine de fil (pour le générateur) ou inversement, de générer un champ magnétique lors du passage d’un courant dans une bobine (pour un moteur).By Abnormaal (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia CommonsPour faire fonctionner un moteur il fallait tout d’abord pouvoir générer de l’électricité. Le principe était donc de faire tourner une bobine dans le champ magnétique d'un aimant pour produire un courant électrique dans les fils de la bobine. Comme dans une dynamo de vélo ou une roue à aube par exemple. Mais ce courant étant alternatif par nature, il fallait un moyen de le rendre continu. C’est un certain Hyppolite Pixii qui inventa en 1832[9] le fameux commutateur qui permettait de le faire en prenant le courant dans le bon sens à chaque rotation.Une fois le courant continu arrivé au moteur, le système de la dynamo était inversé et le courant passant dans la bobine générait un champ magnétique qui entre les aimants du stator, la partie aimantée fixe, faisait tourner l’axe.Le problème avec l’usage du commutateur c’était que des étincelles étaient générées quand le courant était récupéré dans un sens puis dans l’autre et cela avait tendance à provoquer des incendies[10].By Pulsar at French Wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsPour en revenir à l’éducation de Tesla, et malgré un bon début à Graz, ses résultats scolaires périclitèrent au cours de ses trois années car il fut absorbé par le démon du jeu[11] et il fuit à Maribor (ville située dans l’actuelle Slovénie) pour travailler[12]. Son père le retrouva et lui proposa de reprendre ses études à Prague mais Nikola déclina l’offre.Peu de temps après cette altercation, son père mourut à Gospic en avril 1879. Nikola continua de jouer aux cartes et à perdre de l’argent. Sa mère craignant pour sa santé, le convainc d’arrêter et Nikola alla dans la famille d’un de ses oncles pour finir ses études[13]. Mais en 1881, son oncle ne pouvait le financer plus longtemps et Tesla dut se résoudre à aller à Budapest. Il comptait y travailler pour un certain Puskas, un ami de la famille, qui avait pour charge d’implanter en Europe le téléphone mis au point par Edison. Mais il fut finalement embauché dans le Bureau Central du Télégraphe en Hongrie[14] où il rencontra Anthony Szigeti qui le suivit un bout de temps.C’est en 1882[15], au cours d’une de leurs marches, que Tesla eut son moment Eureka. Il comprit comment se passer de commutateur. La solution : l’obtention d’un mouvement de rotation dans le rotor via des courants de Foucault générés par l’utilisation de champs magnétiques dans le stator grâce à différentes bobines déphasées dans lesquelles passent un courant alternatif.Si vous n’avez pas tout suivi, ce n’est pas grave. Il faut juste retenir que c’est une idée extraordinaire. Il fallait maintenant qu’il puisse le construire en vrai. Tesla et Edison Après un passage court à Budapest, Szigeti et lui furent envoyés à Paris par Puskas afin de travailler pour une division européenne de la société d’Edison dirigée par un de ses proches, Charles Bachelor[16].La réalisation de Tesla la plus notable pendant cette période chez Edison fut de travailler sur les systèmes installés à Strasbourg pour le gouvernement allemand et résoudre une situation complexe pour la société d’Edison. De retour à Paris, il voulut obtenir la prime promise pour ce travail, mais ses supérieurs se rejetaient la responsabilité et il n’obtint rien. Dégoûté par ces agissements, Tesla démissionna. Mais Charles Bachelor, ayant identifié en lui un inventeur de génie du niveau d’Edison, lui fit une lettre d’introduction pour aller à New York s’il souhaitait y travailler pour Edison. L’histoire retient que Bachelor aurait écrit : “I know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man”[17]. Ce qui se traduit à peu près en “Je connais deux grands hommes et vous êtes l’un d’entre eux. L’autre est ce jeune homme”.Tesla sauta sur l’occasion et prit le premier train et le premier bateau pour New-York, perdant au passage tous ses effets personnels[18]. Il y arrive néanmoins sûr de ses connaissances et de sa volonté de vouloir démontrer la supériorité de ses inventions.crédit : inventors.about.com : http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bledison.htmArrivé chez Edison, Tesla le trouva devant un gros dilemme: des dynamos avaient été installées à bord du SS Oregon - le paquebot transatlantique le plus rapide du monde - mais elles ne fonctionnaient pas. Ne disposant pas d’ingénieur qui puisse s’y rendre, il proposa à Tesla d’y aller. Celui-ci s’y rendit et traita le problème rapidement. Recroisant le lendemain matin Edison et Bachelor, Tesla leur annonça que le travail était fini. En partant, Tesla entendit Edison confier à Bachelor : This is a damned good man!”[19]. En français cela donnerait quelque chose comme “Il est sacrément bon!”.Mais la durée du travail de Tesla chez Edison ne dépassa pas les 6 mois et la raison de son départ est controversée. Edison aurait, selon certaines sources, promis à Tesla 50 000 dollars s’il arrivait à passer de continu à alternatif certaines de ses machines[20]. Ceci semble invraisemblable vu qu’Edison ne croyait pas du tout à l’intérêt du courant alternatif. D’autres expliquent qu’Edison avait des problèmes d’argent[21] et qu’il n’aurait jamais pu promettre une telle somme. D’autres racontent enfin que c’était plutôt pour des améliorations sur des machines[22], ou alors pour le non usage d’un système de lampe à arc qu’il aurait mis au point[23] … Tesla et le moteur à courant alternatif Toujours est-il qu’il partit fonder sa propre entreprise. Après une première création d’entreprise qui se finit en eau de boudin[24], Nikola Tesla se retrouva de nouveau à la rue sans le sou. Avec le peu d’argent qu’il arrivait à gagner il déposa néanmoins un brevet en 1886 pour un nouveau type de moteur. C’est le dépôt de ce brevet qui lui permit de rencontrer Alfred Brown. Cette rencontre allait changer sa vie[25].Coutumier de certaines inventions d’Edison pour le télégraphe, Brown, qui travaillait chez Western Union, vit en Tesla un inventeur à soutenir. Aidés par Peck, un homme d’affaires, ils décidèrent de créer Tesla Electric Company dont l’objectif serait de développer le moteur à courant alternatif.La stratégie de Brown et Peck était dite de “patent-promote-sell”. Breveter des inventions, les mettre en avant auprès d’industriels et vendre les brevets. Peck et Brown n’étaient pas convaincus par le courant alternatif, et pour eux le continu était plus établi dans l’industrie[26]. Tesla leur fit le coup de l’oeuf de Christophe Colomb, en version revisitée : S’il arrivait à faire tourner un oeuf sur lui-même sur sa base sans le toucher, Peck et Brown le soutiendraient avec son idée de courant alternatif. Il y arriva grâce au champ magnétique rotatif qu’il pouvait générer grâce au courant alternatif. Peck et Brown furent impressionnés et le soutinrent[27], tout comme Colomb fut soutenu par la reine d’Espagne grâce à son oeuf.Tesla déposa d’abord des brevets pour un système complet pour le courant alternatif incluant dynamo, transformateur, et moteur. Ensuite l’intérêt de l’invention fut mis en avant grâce à des experts du domaine et à travers plusieurs conférences que Tesla réalisa à propos de son moteur, mais aussi à propos du courant alternatif de manière plus générale[28].crédit : encyclopedia brittanica : http://global.britannica.com/biography/George-WestinghouseEnfin ils surent aussi attirer l’attention de George Westinghouse. Il s’agissait d’un homme d’affaires ayant fait fortune grâce à des inventions dans le domaine du ferroviaire et qui souhaitait se développer dans le domaine de l’électricité. Il était l’un des seuls à voir dans le courant alternatif de bonnes perspectives et dans ce but chercha à acquérir des brevets pour diverses technologies en lien avec ce type de courant. A côté l’achat de brevets pour des transformateurs développés eu Europe, les brevets que la Tesla Electric Company possédait étaient, même pour un prix important[29], un atout important pour disposer de dynamos et de moteurs afin de développer cette activité[30]. Enfin cela lui permettait de se différencier d’Edison qui ne misait que sur le courant continu.Tesla travailla avec les ingénieurs de Westinghouse à Pittsburgh pour industrialiser son moteur[31] de juillet 1888 jusqu’à son départ en août 1889. Ce travail continua sans lui car ce n’est pas avant début 1893[32] que Westinghouse eut la possibilité, autant technique que financière, de pouvoir pousser commercialement les résultats de ces travaux. La guerre des courants La période 1890-1891 fut très compliquée pour les sociétés de l’électricité. Entre la fusion des sociétés d’Edison et celle de Thompson Houston pour former General Electric d’un côté et Westinghouse qui tenta d’acheter de petites entreprises locales d’électricité de l’autre, le monde de l’industrie électrique était sous la pression du monde financier pour se structurer.Par ailleurs, la guerre des courants faisait rage entre Edison et Westinghouse. Edison était convaincu que le courant continu était supérieur au courant alternatif. Westinghouse, de son côté, avait fait, comme d’ailleurs Thompson-Houston, le pari du courant alternatif.Pour comprendre un peu cette bataille entre les deux systèmes, laissez moi juste vous expliquer les enjeux. Comme je l’ai expliqué avant, la télégraphie et l’usage régulier de batteries rendaient indispensable l’usage du continu. Un des problèmes que l’on rencontre quand on veut transmettre du courant, c’est la perte en ligne. L’idée étant que plus la tension est élevée, moins on perd par effet joule[33]. Le problème avec le courant continu, c’est que, comme on ne peut pas changer la tension une fois le courant produit, il fallait le produire à la tension utilisée par les moteurs (ou autre) à exploiter. Comme les tensions utilisées n’étaient pas forcément très importantes, il était donc indispensable de produire du courant près des lieux d’usage afin d’éviter les pertes en ligne liée à la faible tension. Pour le courant alternatif c’était différent. Sur la deuxième moitié du XIXème siècle des transformateurs, permettant de monter et descendre la tension, ont été développés en Europe. Ces transformateurs ont ainsi permis de transmettre du courant alternatif sur de plus grandes distances en minimisant les pertes en ligne.L’Europe passa assez rapidement au courant alternatif. Mais Edison voulait imposer le courant continu à tout prix car son entreprise reposait principalement d’une part sur la construction de centrales locales produisant du courant continu et d’autre part sur la fabrication de matériel électrique fonctionnant sur ce type de courant. Il était par ailleurs convaincu qu’il était intrinsèquement plus dangereux (à tension égale il avait vu dans des expériences que des risques mortels plus grands existaient). Ce lobbying d’Edison se transforma en campagne agressive contre le courant alternatif. Il alla jusqu’à organiser des démonstrations publiques de sa dangerosité en tuant des animaux[34]. Il arriva même à ce que la première électrocution se fasse grâce à du courant alternatif. A l’époque on parlait d’ailleurs de “Westinghouser”. Mais cela eu l’effet contraire car l’opinion se retourna contre lui[35].Cette guerre et les efforts importants que Westinghouse réalisa en R&D, notamment concernant le moteur de Tesla[36], lui imposèrent de demander à celui-ci de renoncer aux royalties. Selon Westinghouse cette condition était imposée pour qu’il conserve son rôle dans l’entreprise. Tesla aurait accepté par amitié…[37] La transmission sans fil et le show Après avoir quitté Westinghouse, Tesla prit un nouveau laboratoire à Manhattan, sur la Grand Street. Son idée était de développer les recherches autour du courant alternatif à haute fréquence. Partant des travaux de Hertz qui générait des ondes EM, il tenta de les améliorer et mit au point sa fameuse bobine Tesla. Grâce au phénomène de résonance il arrivait à faire un certain nombre de choses : générer ce qu’il appelait des “bouffées” d’énergie électrique; réaliser un transformateur (cela lui permettait d’augmenter fortement le voltage); et produire des fréquences extrêmement élevées. Lors d’une erreur involontaire, il toucha une partie de son matériel branché sur une bobine Tesla, et découvrit l’effet de peau (à haute fréquence le courant alternatif ne pénètre pas profondément et ne se propage qu’en surface, sur la peau donc, d’où son nom) qu’il exploita ensuite dans la plupart de ses conférences pour émerveiller le public[38] en tenant des ampoules ou des tubes fluorescents alimenté par le courant qui passait à la surface de son corps.Il faut noter que Tesla n’était pas un Maxwellien (il ne faisait pas partie des partisans de la nouvelle théorie mise au point par James Clerk Maxwell quelques années auparavant pour expliquer les phénomènes électriques et magnétiques). A la différence de Hertz ou Lodge, il pensait pouvoir justifier des phénomènes observés avec les théories existantes et pensait que les Maxwelliens se trompaient d’explication avec ces nouvelles théories. D’autant plus que selon lui, les ondes électromagnétiques n’étaient pas capables de se propager sur de grandes distances et que les bouffées électrostatiques étaient plus aptes à justifier des phénomènes observés[39].Il présenta diverses inventions lors de plusieurs conférences : en mai 1891 à New York[40] et en Europe en 1892. Il alla notamment à la Royal Society[41] où il eut l’occasion de s’asseoir dans le fauteuil de Faraday et à Paris avant d’aller au chevet de sa mère mourante. Malgré le fait qu’il prétendait ne pas croire aux prémonitions il raconte néanmoins que c’est en rêve que cet évènement tragique lui fut révélé[42] …Parmi ses expériences de l’époque on peut en noter une en particulier : il prenait deux plaques non connectées et il les tournait vers le ciel; la première était branchée sur son oscillateur et elle était connectée à la terre; et l’autre plaque était aussi fixée à la terre avec une induction bien réglée. Une fois ce système mis en place il pouvait connecter sur cette seconde plaque un moteur où une lampe et les faire fonctionner[43]. Cette expérience représente les prémices de la radio pour certains. C’est en tout cas ce que Tesla défendit plus tard lors de divers procès sur la paternité du système[44]. Cependant cela s’entendait dans le cadre de ses recherches sur la transmission d’énergie sans fil et pour lui cela ne fonctionnait pas grâce à des ondes électro-magnétiques mais grâce à ses bouffées électrostatiques. Enfin il faut bien comprendre qu’à l’époque il y avait cette notion de “circuit” à fermer avec la terre, une vue très électricienne de la chose. Et Tesla pensait que le courant passait principalement dans la terre … Les chutes du Niagara En 1893 se tint la foire internationale de Chicago. C’est Westinghouse qui en obtint le contrat d’électrification. Cela permit à Tesla de montrer que le courant alternatif était capable d’illuminer un grand nombre de lampes ou de moteur en toute sécurité, au contraire de ce que pouvait dire Edison. Cette foire fut aussi pour lui l’occasion de présenter les prodiges que le courant alternatif rendait possible : son oeuf de Colomb électrique ou encore le fait de pouvoir allumer une ampoule sans qu’elle soit branchée (grâce à l’effet de peau).Cette foire précéda de peu la victoire de Westinghouse dans l’obtention d’un contrat important : celui de dompter les chutes du Niagara. L’objectif était notamment de pouvoir transporter de l’énergie jusqu’à la ville de Buffalo (28 kilomètres[45])[46].C’est Edward Dean Adams qui en fut le promoteur et fin 1892 un appel d’offre fut lancé pour choisir l’entreprise qui serait en charge du travail[47]. Tesla voulait à tout prix pousser son système à courant alternatif et rencontra Adams à de multiples reprises. En effet, entre la variété de systèmes à courant alternatif possibles, les guerres de brevet le concernant ou la position de Lord Kelvin, membre de la commission, qui poussait le courant continu (selon lui utiliser le courant alternatif était une “erreur gigantesque”), Adams souhaitait garder un maximum d’options[48]. Cependant les arguments de Tesla contre le courant continu convainquirent Adams. Il lui expliqua ainsi que l’usage de hautes tensions en courant continu poserait problème au niveau des moteurs et de l’éclairage qui ne fonctionnaient pas avec des hautes tensions. Il lui expliqua aussi que la génération et l’usage de courant étaient fondamentalement alternatifs comme le mouvement de rotation des turbines et des moteurs et qu’avec le courant alternatif il était possible d’amener de l’énergie plus loin grâce à des transformateurs. En octobre 1893 la commission choisi Westinghouse pour la mise en place du système (le succès de de la foire internationale de Chicago fut sûrement déterminante)[49].Ce fut une grande victoire pour lui[50] et Tesla en fut grandement responsable. La production et la transmission à l’échelle industrielle du courant alternatif avec succès en Europe, et avec les chutes du Niagara aux Etats-Unis furent la démonstration qu’il était bien supérieur au courant continu et en firent un standard dans le monde entier.Cet évènement permit à Tesla d’être reconnu comme un inventeur de premier plan aux Etats-Unis et de pouvoir embrayer sur un domaine qu’il allait développer les années suivantes : la transmission d’énergie sans fil. Mais ce sera pour un autre dossier. Conclusion A travers ce premier dossier nous avons découvert la première partie de la vie de Tesla. Sa jeunesse tout d’abord, avec le développement de certaines idées qu’il chercha par la suite à vouloir développer, avec plus ou moins de succès pour le moteur à courant alternatif par exemple. On découvre aussi comment cette invention fut mise au point et le contexte dans lequel cela se passa. Tesla n’inventa pas un moteur comme un génie venu d’ailleurs, d’autres chez Westinghouse, Thompson Houston ou en Europe en développèrent aussi. Les années qui suivirent son industrialisation furent émaillées de procès sur la paternité de cette invention. On découvre aussi les prémices de la radio, même si appliquée à un autre cas d’usage, la transmission d’énergie sans fil. On voit aussi que pour Tesla la théorie de l’électromagnétisme n’était pas pertinente et cela le fit partir dans une direction différente de celle de ses contemporains pour la transmission d’énergie sans fil, celui de l’usage du courant passant par la Terre …Dans la deuxième partie nous découvrirons la suite des travaux de Tesla sur cette transmission d’énergie sans fil et d’une certaine manière sa déchéance à force de poursuivre des rêves impossibles … Je parlerai aussi de certains mythes qui, aujourd’hui, sont colportés ici ou là à son propos. Quote If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. … I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor.New York Times, 19 octobre 1931 Références Livres Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius de Marc J. Seifer ISBN : 0806519606 (ISBN13 : 978-0806519609) Auteur : Marc J. Seifer Nombre de pages : 542 pages Date de parution : 01/05/1998 chez Citadel Edition Prix : 19,44€ chez Amazon Inventor of the electric age de Bernard Carlson (meilleure biographie selon moi sur laquelle est basée ce dossier) ISBN : 0691165610 (ISBN13 : 978-0691165615) Auteur : W. Bernard Carlson Nombre de pages : 520 pages Date de parution : 15/05/2015 chez Princeton University Press Prix : 19,26€ chez Amazon Man out of time de Margaret Cheney ISBN : 0743215362 (ISBN13 : 978-0743215367) Auteur : Margaret Cheney Nombre de pages : 400 pages Date de parution : 09/10/2001 chez Touchstone Prix : 10,43€ chez Amazon Tesla: The Life and Times of an Electric Messiah de Nigel Cawthorne ISBN : 078582944X (ISBN13 : 978-0785829447) Auteur : Nigel Cawthorne Nombre de pages : 192 pages Date de parution : 05/04/2014 chez Chartwell Books Prix : 14,46€ chez Amazon Prodigual genius de John J O’Neill ISBN : 1596057130 (ISBN13 : 978-1596057135) Auteur : John J O’Neill Nombre de pages : 336 pages Date de parution : 01/11/2006 chez Cosimo Classics Prix : 11,96€ chez Amazon My inventions de Nikola Tesla ISBN : 1519534477 (ISBN13 : 978-1519534477) Auteur : Nikola Tesla Nombre de pages : 50 pages Date de parution : 26/11/2015 chez Createspace Independent Publishing Platform Prix : 5,65€ chez Amazon Edison: A life of invention de Paul Israel ISBN : 0471362700 (ISBN13 : 978-0471362708) Auteur : Paul Israel Nombre de pages : 560 pages Date de parution : 16/02/2000 aux Editions Belin Prix : 21,59€ chez Amazon et 32,90€ à la Fnac The Wizard of Menlo Park de Randall E. Stross ISBN : 1400047633 (ISBN13 : 978-1400047635) Auteur : Randall E. Stross Nombre de pages : 125 pages Date de parution : 25/03/2008 chez Broadway Books Prix : 13€ chez Amazon et à 12,85€ à la Fnac Nikola Tesla: prophet of the modern technological age de Michael W. Simmons ISBN : 1532867735 (ISBN13 : 978-1532867736) Auteur : Michael W. Simmons Nombre de pages : 242 pages Date de parution : 21/04/2016 aux chez Createspace Independent Publishing Platform Prix : 16,81€ chez Amazon Thomas Edison & Nikola Tesla: The pioneers of electricity de Charles River Editors ISBN : 149234219X (ISBN13 : 978-1492342199) Auteur : Charles River Editors Nombre de pages : 80 pages Date de parution : 05/09/2013 chez CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform Prix : 10,34€ chez Amazon Altersciences d’Alexandre Moatti ISBN : 2738128874 (ISBN13 : 9782738128874) Auteur : Alexandre Moatti Nombre de pages : 336 pages Date de parution : 17/01/2013 chez Odile Jacob Prix : 23,90 € chez Amazon ou la FnacWeb Marathon Tesla – « Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla » par Marc J. Seifer sur LisezLaScience : https://lisezlascience.wordpress.com/2016/02/22/marathon-tesla-wizard-the-life-and-times-of-nikola-tesla-par-marc-j-seifer/ Marathon Tesla – « Tesla: The Life and Time of an Electric Messiah » par Nigel Cawthorne sur LisezLaScience : https://lisezlascience.wordpress.com/2016/02/29/marathon-tesla-tesla-the-life-and-time-of-an-electric-messiah-par-nigel-cawthorne/ Marathon Tesla – « Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age » de W. Bernard Carlson sur LisezLaScience : https://lisezlascience.wordpress.com/2016/03/08/marathon-tesla-tesla-inventor-of-the-electrical-age-de-w-bernard-carlson/ La page wikipédia à propos de Nikola Tesla (attention quand même) : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Sur Tesla chez Oatmeal : La page qui avait été faite originellement par the Oatmeal sur Tesla : http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla Un article de Forbes sur la question et qui est pas d’accord : http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/05/18/nikola-tesla-wasnt-god-and-thomas-edison-wasnt-the-devil/#147cb87c1dbd La réponse de the Oatmeal : http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response Mon point de vue ? Ben The Oatmeal défend son bout de gras et parfois est un peu trop en mode groupie (et tord un chouilla les choses) et Alex Knapp de Forbes est un peu trop “c’est pareil Edison et Tesla”. La page de Galileo Ferraris, scientifique italien ayant travaillé sur le champ magnétique rotatif sur la même période que Tesla : http://www.accademiadellescienze.it/accademia/soci/galileo-ferraris La vidéo de Richard Taillet à propos de Tesla : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDn6rlPXb7g Une suite de trois très bons billets de Richard Taillet sur Scilogs.fr : http://www.scilogs.fr/signal-sur-bruit/nikola-tesla-la-promesse-the-pledge-13/ http://www.scilogs.fr/signal-sur-bruit/nikola-tesla-le-tour-the-turn-23/ http://www.scilogs.fr/signal-sur-bruit/nikola-tesla-le-prestige-the-prestige-33/ Une description intéressante du brevet de Tesla sur le moteur synchrone (avec des affirmations plus difficiles à confirmer/informer concernant les résonnances de Schumann ou le Radar, etc) https://www.bibnum.education.fr/sciencesdelingenieur/electrotechnique/l-invention-du-moteur-synchrone-par-nikola-tesla Une page sur l’Edison Tech Center (ils sont potentiellement partisans) qui, selon eux, débunke des mythes autour de Tesla : http://www.edisontechcenter.org/tesladebunked.html Mon point de vue ? Ok, ils en débunkent certains (l’invention de l’AC par Tesla, par exemple), mais un certain nombre de choses est avancé sans citer de source spécifiquement par information, et vu la passion de certains sur la question on est en droit de se poser la question de la partialité d’un debunkage de soi-disant mythes à propos de Tesla sur une page créée par un centre au nom d’Edison) La page wikipédia sur les bobines Tesla : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobine_Tesla La page wikipédia sur le moteur synchrone : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinesynchrone La page wikipédia sur le monteur à courant continu : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine%C3%A0_courant_continu “A NEW SYSTEM OF ALTERNATING CURRENT MOTORS AND TRANSFORMERS” by Nikola Tesla Delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, May 1888 : http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1888-05-16.htm “EXPERIMENTS WITH ALTERNATE CURRENTS OF VERY HIGH FREQUENCY AND THEIR APPLICATION TO METHODS OF ARTIFICIAL ILLUMINATION” by Nikola Tesla Delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Columbia College, N.Y., May 20, 1891 :http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1891-05-20.htm “EXPERIMENTS WITH ALTERNATE CURRENTS OF HIGH POTENTIAL AND HIGH FREQUENCY” by Nikola Tesla Delivered before the Institution of Electrical Engineers, London, February 1892. : http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1892-02-03.htm [1] Son père Milutin Tesla était prêtre orthodoxe et sa mère, Djuka Mandic, s’occupait du foyer et des enfants [2] Un garçon, Dane en 1984, et deux filles Angelina en 1850 et Milka en 1852[3] Inventor of Electric Age, Carlson, p 18[4] My Inventions, Tesla, p 12[5] Capacité qui, selon John O’Neill dans Prodigual Genius, lui permis soit disant de ne pas avoir besoin, ni de prendre de notes, ni de faire de tests en vrai.[6] Inventor of Electric Age, Carlson, p 20[7] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 26[8] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 42[9] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 37[10] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 42[11] Il jouait aux dominos et au poker principalement[12] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 47[13] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 48[14] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 50[15] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 52[16] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 63[17] Prodigual Genius, O’Neill, p 60[18] Prodigual Genius, O’Neill, p 58[19] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 70[20] Thomas Edison & Nikola Tesla, The pioneers of Electricity, Charles Rivers Editors[21] Ibid[22] Prophet of the Modern Technological Age, Simmons, p 76[23] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, 73[24] Tesla avait toujours en tête de pouvoir réaliser le développement de son moteur AC et avec quelques investisseurs (principalement messieurs Vail et Lane), qui s’étaient intéressés à ses travaux du temps de son passage chez Edison, il fondât la Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing Company. Cette société se chargea de vendre des lampes à arc basées sur un brevet déposé par Tesla quelques temps plus tôt. Brevet qu’il mit au nom de cette société. Mais selon Carlson les investisseurs ne souhaitèrent pas poursuivre l’aventure sur les aspects manufacturing et préférèrent se concentrer sur l’aspect vente de systèmes d’éclairages à travers la création d’une nouvelle entreprise en laissant tomber Tesla. Tesla ne put plus exploiter son brevet ni développer son moteur AC comme il l’avait souhaité en s’associant à Vail et Lane.[25] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 77[26] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 87[27] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 92[28] “A NEW SYSTEM OF ALTERNATING CURRENT MOTORS AND TRANSFORMERS” by Nikola Tesla Delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, May 1888 : http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1888-05-16.htm[29] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson p 113[30] Avant d’acquérir les brevets de Tesla, il acquis aussi celles de transformateur de Gaulard & Gibbs nécessaire à la modification du voltage AC (impossible à l’époque pour du DC), mais aussi les travaux de Ferraris qui a Turin avait aussi travaillé sur les champs magnétiques rotatifs (d’où d’ailleurs une certaine confusion sur la réelle paternité du moteur AC) .On trouve chez Charles Rivers editors une référence à une somme d’1 million de dollars que Westinghouse aurait payé, mais il semble plus réaliste que la Tesla Electric Ligne Company ait reçu 25,000 dollars en liquide, 50,000 dollars en billet à ordre and des royalties de 2,50 dollars par cheval vapeur développé.[31] Il est important de noter, qu’à la différence de ce que Tesla croyait, même si son moteur fonctionnait à la perfection dans sa tête où dans son laboratoire, il était indispensable de pouvoir mettre au point un moteur qui puisse fonctionner dans des conditions réelles, avec les fréquences délivrées par les générateurs, sur le bon nombre de phase, etc.[32] Carlson, p 167[33] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perte_en_ligne_(%C3%A9lectricit%C3%A9)[34] selon lui le DC à même tension était non mortel, alors qu’il était surtout question de fréquence[35] Thomas Edison & Nikola Tesla: The pioneers of Electricity, Charles River Editors[36] selon Carlson c’est la raison en tout cas. Par contre on trouve plein d’autres raisons dans les autres bios ...[37] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 131[38] C’est notamment via cet effet de peau et l’usage des ancêtre des tubes néon, ou de lampes à un seul fil avec un bouton en carbone, qu’il est devenu le magicien de la lumière, expert des shows dans les plus grandes capitales. [39] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 125-128[40] “EXPERIMENTS WITH ALTERNATE CURRENTS OF VERY HIGH FREQUENCY AND THEIR APPLICATION TO METHODS OF ARTIFICIAL ILLUMINATION” by Nikola Tesla Delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Columbia College, N.Y., May 20, 1891 :http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1891-05-20.htm[41] “EXPERIMENTS WITH ALTERNATE CURRENTS OF HIGH POTENTIAL AND HIGH FREQUENCY” by Nikola Tesla Delivered before the Institution of Electrical Engineers, London, February 1892. : http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1892-02-03.htm[42] Même si il raconte par la suite avoir pu tracer la naissance de cette idée jusqu’à des choses qu’il aurait vu par ailleurs. Cette idée d’un déterminisme de toute idée ou sentiment ou action est quelque chose qu’il a en tête depuis tout jeune et qui conduit aussi à tout ce qu’il a comme opinion sur l’aspect automate de l’homme et sur ce qu’il réalisa autour des bateau téléguidé et de ce qu’il appelait “Teleautomatics” dont nous parlerons plus tard.[43] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 139[44] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 141[45] selon le site : http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/distances.html?n=422[46] Si on remonte un peu on peut aussi voir, comme le présente Carlson, que Tesla allât en Europe pour se renseigner plus en détail sur ce qui avait été présenté lors le l’Electrotechnical Exhibition à Francfort en Septembre 1891. Outre qu’à cette occasion fut démontrée la possibilité de transmettre du courant depuis Lauffen (175 kilomètres de distance) via de l’AC, van Miller, Brown et Dolivo-Dobrowolsky démontrèrent le potentiel commercial de l’usage de l’AC polyphasé grâce à un moteur utilisant cette technologie. Il n’était donc pas seul à avoir travaillé sur le sujet à l’époque et même si il semble avoir devancé de peu ceux-ci, l’information n’était pas forcément arrivée en Europe et certains les annoncaient comme les inventeurs de cette découverte. Comme quoi il y avait vraiment une convergence d’idée à l’époque sur ces sujets.[47] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 166[48] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 170[49] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 173[50] même si GE eut le contrat pour la mise en place des lignes servant à transmettre l’énergie

Alexis Bhagat Grand Street Community Arts

Alan Soldofsky is a veteran of the San Francisco Bay Area poetry scene. His new collection of poems, IN THE BUDDHA FACTORY, was published in 2013 by Truman State University Press. He has been a contributing editor of Poetry Flash, and co-host of the popular poetry show “Planet on the Table” on Berkeley’s KPFA radio. He has published three poetry chapbooks: Kenora Station, Staying Home, and Holding Adam / My Father’s Books, a chapbook that includes a selection of poems by his son, Adam Soldofsky. Over the last three decades, his poems have been published widely in magazines and journals, including The DMQ Review, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Grand Street, The Greensboro Review, The North American Review, Poetry Daily, Poetry Flash, Rattle, The Rattling Wall, and The Rumpus. His essays, interviews, and reviews have appeared in Chelsea, The Writer’s Chronicle, Narrative, and Poetry Flash. Before beginning his academic career, he edited the newsletter for The Commonwealth Club of California. He is professor of English and director of creative writing at San Jose State University, where he been on the faculty more than 25 years.

Robert Kensinger moved to L.A. in the late 70's. He was hoping to make it as a film director after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design. He stumbled into a job as a personal assistant to the legendary actor, writer, and director Orson Welles. Kensinger worked for Welles off and on for several years before he left to write scripts for indie producer Roger Corman. Then he carved out a long career as a set decorator on many studio films. People tend to think of Orson Welles as inactive or diminished during those final years – living off Laurel Canyon on Wonderland Avenue, earning a living starring in wine commercials and making the rounds of TV talk shows. But Kensinger remembers the director of Citizen Kane as vital and alive, working hard as ever on projects including his last film, The Other Side of the Wind. It remains unfinished to this day. Today's Organist features Bob Kensinger, remembering Orson on Wonderland. Produced by Gideon Brower and Kristine McKenna. Edited by Nick White. Mixing assistance by Mario Diaz. Still from a TV magic show pilot Welles shot, in which Bob Kensinger appears as a waiter. Documents from Bob Kensinger's tenure as Welles's assistant, including shopping lists and a personal note. Originally appeared in Grand Street. Screen grab from Orson Welles's appearances in Paul Masson Wine TV spots from the early 80's Screen grab from Orson Welles's appearances in Paul Masson Wine TV spots from the early 80's

Bari Musacchio, Owner, and Matthew Gray, General Manager, of Baz Bagel & Restaurant step on to the third episode of the New York Launch Pod to go behind the scenes of one of New York’s quintessential foods: the bagel. Baz Bagel is a neighborhood restaurant in Nolita (181 Grand Street) with much more behind the scenes.  With the best blintzes, as named by New York Magazine and a full complement of delicious food, Baz Bagel does almost as much business outside its walls as it does inside.  Listen to what it took for Bari to come up the perfect bagel and how Baz Bagel took an initial press boost to now sell over 1200 hand rolled bagels each day all over the United States and the world. Baz Bagel is just over one year old.  Find out how Bari and Matthew first met and how the dynamic between them has helped to grow and sustain the restaurant, as well as establish a strong relationship with its neighborhood clientele as well as tourists.   Go inside what Bari and Matthew think is the toughest part of being in the restaurant business, their one word secret for keeping staff motivated, and their Bingo recipe for evening entertainment every two weeks.   Transcript of the episode available here: http://nylaun.ch/bazbagelt   More on Baz Bagel: http://bazbagel.com/

Amy has served as production designer and set decorator for feature and short films, music videos, commercials, TV and print fashion. One of Amy's proudest achievements was running the art department for the Festival of Light in Guyana.Amy's film credits include: White Irish Drinkers, Holy Rollers, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You, Keep The Lights On, Grand Street, Last Weekend, and Love Is Strange.

关注我的公众微信账号：贵旅特（guilvte) Which street is Capital Hotel on?*Capital 首都It's on Highland Avenue. 在高地街上*Avenue 大道、大街Fifth Avenue 第五大道（纽约很有名的购物街）Go straight until you get to Grand Street then turn right. Go to the second stoplight and turn left. Capital Hotel is right there.直走直到你看到格兰特街然后右转。 到第二个红绿灯左转，首都饭店就在哪儿！*有没有注意到 right 在这里有使用到两个意思，一个指方向（右边），另一个是指「就在、正是」的意思，这个字还有「正确的」意思，所以我们要根据说话的情景和语句整个意思来判断。

Pizza a Casa Pizza School officially opened its doors April 15th, 2010 at 371 Grand Street on New York City’s historic Lower East Side. Since opening, Mark and his wife, Jenny, have been teaching sold-out pizza-making classes to thousands of students from all over the world. Together with their students and the Pizza a Casa team, the home ovens in their classroom have produced more than 15,000 pizzas (as of Spring 2013). On Cutting the Curd, learn about their groundbreaking pizza app, and hear the story of how the decided to make education their outlet. This program was sponsored by Academie Opus Caseus

THE FLAMETHROWERS (Scribner Book Company) Skylight Books is thrilled to be hosting the book launch for National Book Award Finalists Rachel Kushner's hot new novel THE FLAMETHROWERS. The year is 1977 and Reno--so-called because of the place of her birth--has come to New York intent on turning her fascination with motorcycles and speed into art. Her arrival coincides with an explosion of activity in the art world--artists have colonized a deserted and industrial Soho, are squatting in the East Village, and blurring the line between life and art. Reno falls in with group of dreamers and raconteurs who submit her to a sentimental education of sorts. She begins an affair with an artist named Sandro Valera, the semi-estranged scion of an Italian tire and motorcycle empire. When they visit Sandro's family home in Italy, Reno falls in with members of the radical movement that overtook Italy in 1977. Betrayal sends her reeling into a clandestine undertow. “Kushner is rapidly emerging as a thrilling and prodigious novelist.”—Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom "Rachel Kushner writes dazzling, sexy, glorious prose. She is as brilliant on men and motorcycles as she is on art and film. The Flamethrowers is an ambitious and powerful novel." —Dana Spiotta, author of Eat the Document and Stone Arabia “The Flamethrowers lives up to its incendiary title—it is a brilliant, startling truly revolutionary book about the New York art world of the seventies, Italian class warfare, and youth's blind acceleration into the unknown. Kushner is a genius prose stylist, and her Reno is one of the most fully realized protagonists I've ever encountered, moving fluidly from the fringe of the fringe movement to the center of the action. I want to recommend this stunning book to everyone I know.” —Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! Rachel Kushner debut novel, "Telex from Cuba", was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, winner of the California Book Award, and a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The""New York Times, The Believer, Artforum, Bookforum, Fence", "Bomb", Cabinet", and Grand Street". She lives in Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS ON APRIL 2, 2013. COPIES OF THE BOOK FROM THIS EVENT CAN BE PURCHASED HERE: http://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9781439142004

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. AUGUST KLEINZAHLER published his first book of poetry, A Calendar of Airs, in 1978. Since then, he has published seven others, including Storm over Hackensack (1985); Earthquake Weather (1989); Red Sauce Whiskey and Snow (FSG, 1995); Green Sees Things in Waves (FSG, 1998); and Live from the Hong Kong Nile Club: Poems 1975-1990 (FSG, 2000). In 2003, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published The Strange Hours Travelers Keep, which won the 2004 Griffin International Poetry Prize and the 2004 Gold Medal in Poetry from the Commonwealth Club of California, and was short-listed for the U.K.'s Forward Prize in Poetry. His most recent collection of poetry is Sleeping It Off in Rapid City (FSG, 2008). He is also the author of a book of prose, Cutty, One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained (FSG, 2004).His poems have appeared in numerous publications including The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Harper's Magazine, Grand Street, The Threepenny Review, and The Paris Review. He has also written essays and criticism for The London Review of Books, Threepenny Review, Sulfur, and the San Diego Reader.A native of Jersey City, Kleinzahler is the recipient of awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1989), the Lila Acheson-Reader's Digest Award for Poetry (1991), and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1996). In 2000 he was awarded a Berlin Prize Fellowship.Kleinzahler has been a taxi driver, a locksmith, a logger, and a building manager. He has taught creative writing courses at Brown University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, as well as to homeless veterans in the Bay Area. He lives in San Francisco.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. AUGUST KLEINZAHLER published his first book of poetry, A Calendar of Airs, in 1978. Since then, he has published seven others, including Storm over Hackensack (1985); Earthquake Weather (1989); Red Sauce Whiskey and Snow (FSG, 1995); Green Sees Things in Waves (FSG, 1998); and Live from the Hong Kong Nile Club: Poems 1975-1990 (FSG, 2000). In 2003, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published The Strange Hours Travelers Keep, which won the 2004 Griffin International Poetry Prize and the 2004 Gold Medal in Poetry from the Commonwealth Club of California, and was short-listed for the U.K.'s Forward Prize in Poetry. His most recent collection of poetry is Sleeping It Off in Rapid City (FSG, 2008). He is also the author of a book of prose, Cutty, One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained (FSG, 2004).His poems have appeared in numerous publications including The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Harper's Magazine, Grand Street, The Threepenny Review, and The Paris Review. He has also written essays and criticism for The London Review of Books, Threepenny Review, Sulfur, and the San Diego Reader.A native of Jersey City, Kleinzahler is the recipient of awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1989), the Lila Acheson Reader's Digest Award for Poetry (1991), and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1996). In 2000 he was awarded a Berlin Prize Fellowship.Kleinzahler has been a taxi driver, a locksmith, a logger, and a building manager. He has taught creative writing courses at Brown University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, as well as to homeless veterans in the Bay Area. He lives in San Francisco.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. AUGUST KLEINZAHLER published his first book of poetry, A Calendar of Airs, in 1978. Since then, he has published seven others, including Storm over Hackensack (1985); Earthquake Weather (1989); Red Sauce Whiskey and Snow (FSG, 1995); Green Sees Things in Waves (FSG, 1998); and Live from the Hong Kong Nile Club: Poems 1975-1990 (FSG, 2000). In 2003, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published The Strange Hours Travelers Keep, which won the 2004 Griffin International Poetry Prize and the 2004 Gold Medal in Poetry from the Commonwealth Club of California, and was short-listed for the U.K.'s Forward Prize in Poetry. His most recent collection of poetry is Sleeping It Off in Rapid City (FSG, 2008). He is also the author of a book of prose, Cutty, One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained (FSG, 2004).His poems have appeared in numerous publications including The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Harper's Magazine, Grand Street, The Threepenny Review, and The Paris Review. He has also written essays and criticism for The London Review of Books, Threepenny Review, Sulfur, and the San Diego Reader.A native of Jersey City, Kleinzahler is the recipient of awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1989), the Lila Acheson Reader's Digest Award for Poetry (1991), and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1996). In 2000 he was awarded a Berlin Prize Fellowship.Kleinzahler has been a taxi driver, a locksmith, a logger, and a building manager. He has taught creative writing courses at Brown University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, as well as to homeless veterans in the Bay Area. He lives in San Francisco.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. AUGUST KLEINZAHLER published his first book of poetry, A Calendar of Airs, in 1978. Since then, he has published seven others, including Storm over Hackensack (1985); Earthquake Weather (1989); Red Sauce Whiskey and Snow (FSG, 1995); Green Sees Things in Waves (FSG, 1998); and Live from the Hong Kong Nile Club: Poems 1975-1990 (FSG, 2000). In 2003, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published The Strange Hours Travelers Keep, which won the 2004 Griffin International Poetry Prize and the 2004 Gold Medal in Poetry from the Commonwealth Club of California, and was short-listed for the U.K.'s Forward Prize in Poetry. His most recent collection of poetry is Sleeping It Off in Rapid City (FSG, 2008). He is also the author of a book of prose, Cutty, One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained (FSG, 2004).His poems have appeared in numerous publications including The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Harper's Magazine, Grand Street, The Threepenny Review, and The Paris Review. He has also written essays and criticism for The London Review of Books, Threepenny Review, Sulfur, and the San Diego Reader.A native of Jersey City, Kleinzahler is the recipient of awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1989), the Lila Acheson-Reader's Digest Award for Poetry (1991), and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1996). In 2000 he was awarded a Berlin Prize Fellowship.Kleinzahler has been a taxi driver, a locksmith, a logger, and a building manager. He has taught creative writing courses at Brown University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, as well as to homeless veterans in the Bay Area. He lives in San Francisco.

Dancer-choreographer Heidi Latsky presents the New York City premiere of "GIMP"--a full-throttle, passionate ensemble work that expands expectations and perceptions of the body, disability and performance. Thursday-Saturday, March 19-21, 8pm. Opening night reception honors The Wounded Warrior Project (http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org) Abrons Arts Center at Henry Street Settlement, 466 Grand Street (at Pitt); 212-598-0400 Further information at http://www.thegimpproject.com Boston premiere at the Institute of Contemporary Art, April 24-25 (http://www.icaboston.org) (c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody (http://infinitebody.blogspot.com)