CALLUM MATHESON, D3 // FIN

please leave all overcoats, canes and top hats with the doorman
from that moment you'll be out of place and underdressed
i'm wrecking this evening already
and loving every minute of it
ruining this banquet for the mildly inspiring and

/{~*~}\
(name) callum boyd matheson.
(age) eighteen.
(district) three.
(sexuality) flexible.
\{~*~}/

please leave all overcoats canes and top hats with the doorman
from that moment you'll be out of place and underdressed
i'm wrecking this evening already and loving every minute of it
ruining this banquet for the mildly inspiring, and when you're in black slacks
with accentuating off-white pinstripes, woah, everything goes according to plan

/{~*~}\
appearance
\{~*~}/

Nothing about me has ever really fit. I guess that's the price I pay for being out of the ordinary; it's worked its way through my mind and soul and eventually splayed itself out over my skin. Standing out in the crowd is a hereditary trait (I'm a goddamned Matheson and if there's one thing we're known for it's being smart enough to cause all kinds of trouble), but my family resemblance stops there. Never had any siblings to compare myself to, but you could never look at my cousin Lyla and I and guess that we're related. The Mathesons are a walking palette of light colors, blonde hair and caramel eyes and ricepaper skin, but maybe when it all came down to it I just had too much dark in my veins to conform to my family's pretty canvas. Dark is everywhere on me, ink-black hair and midnight eyes and swarthy skin that's never known a sunburn. In rare moments of inebriated pontification Dad will slur at me that I look like my mother, which in all reality explains a hell of a lot. She ran off before he could take all his rage out on her, so he moved onto the closest thing.

There are little bits of Matheson tucked away in the finer details of my features, though, in the strong-bridged nose and sharp-hinged jaw and heavy brows that lack my family's coloring but still keep their structure. Hawk-like, I've heard myself called before, and perhaps they hit the nail right on the head. Despite the lean muscle I've put on in damp alleys after dark when the good, clean-cut folks head home and the ruffians some out to play, I've still got a bird-boned structure to my body, a life of malnutrition lending to a stunted five-foot-seven height and protruding ribs that don't have the proper padding to take a punch very well at all. There are hints at how maybe with better food and a little TLC in my early days I might have been bigger, stockier, shoulders a bit too broad in contrast with the rest of me and hands that are big, clumsy at anything besides throwing punches or holding a pen. I taught myself with much cursing and frustration to play Dad's old guitar, but even now my fingers tend to stumble and warp the chords into something ugly and unworthy of the beautiful words meant to sit on them, and eventually I end up stalking off to go do something else so I don't throw the stupid thing against the wall.

I'm in the wrong damn profession to bruise like a baby peach, but that doesn't stop my skin from constantly being a mottled canvas of purple-black-blue that tells an epic saga of battles lost and won and an identity lost and found and lost again. They used to tell a sadder tale that reeked of whiskey and an abandoned husband's displaced anger, but that came to a stop when I was about fifteen - Dad never had any qualms about beating the shit out of me, but the first time I took a swing back he knew the score, never touched me again and chose to stick to sluggish insults that never really breach an icy armor I've built up over the years. Now they speak of triumph, blending with the bumps in a nose that's been broken a few times and chapped, cracked knuckles into something that's not quite as poetic as everything else I do, but I can't be a poet laureate all the time or I'd go (even more) insane. After all, I'm only slightly clever to just a certain extent, and if I talk, I'd better walk.

i'm the new cancer, never looked better, you can't stand it
because you say so under your breath, you're reading lips
"when did he get all confident?"
haven't you heard that i'm the new cancer
never looked better and you can't stand it

/{~*~}\
personality
\{~*~}/

Nox told me once that I talk too much shit to be a good street fighter, and for once, I didn't contradict him. The guy's got a way of taking the truths I weave into pretty turns of phrase in a carefully-guarded notebook and making them blunt, ugly things that nonetheless still apply to life. So yeah, maybe I'm a little flippant, a little sarcastic, and maybe that's why I've taken more than my share of punches to the face. But I can't help it, really. Thing is, it's too easy to verbally burn people when you're smarter than almost everyone you know. I guess that's the noticeable Matheson in me. You could never look at Lyla and I and guess we're related, but listen to us talk for about a minute and you'd swear we were siblings. She's made off well with her smarts, a cushy programming job at her daddy's big software conglomerate and social status that lets her talk down to whoever the hell she wants, but me... well, the only thing a genius-level IQ gets you when you grow up on the wrong side of the tracks is a reputation for being a smartass and a few teeth knocked out.

And hey, I've got to get my kicks somehow. I'll be the first to admit that I'm a mouthy, condescending little shit, but it's my only source of fulfillment in a world where finding anything meaningful is exceedingly rare. People say I'm jaded (to which I reply that I spend my days hanging around Nox and Carmen, you try for a few weeks and see how jaded you are), and they're certainly right. Jaded, bitter, cynical, pessimistic... I can keep going with this. Carmen frets and pets my hair back and says I'm prone to highs and low because I have an artist's soul, Cal, and it's beautiful. For her sake, I usually manage not to snort and roll my eyes. She's right about the emotional roller-coaster, though. I've thought more than once that I might be a little bipolar, living in a nearly constant manic-depressive (mostly depressive) state. Probably why Carmen set her sights on me in the first place - girls eat that whole 'brooding, anti-social artist with a dark past' thing up, and, poor thing, she's about as shallow as a shower. I don't begrudge her for it, but Ripred knows that after dealing with her vapid monotony I need a change of scenery once in a while. Maybe she knows that I don't love her, I'm just passing the time. Maybe she doesn't. Either way, I can't bring myself to care too much.

In fact, not caring is just about the only defense I've got. I tried for a few years, tried being a motivated, upstanding member of society, but that came to a pretty quick stop when I realized my efforts weren't getting me anywhere. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results, but I'm not that particular brand of crazy. I'm what the teachers at school like to call a gifted underachiever, which they don't think I'm smart enough to realize is a euphemism for a kid who's finally realized that his life is a dead-end no matter how hard he tries. Apathy's a pretty good shield against the outside world, but it has the fatal flaw of not being able to defend me from everything else that goes on under my skin, a sense of abandonment I can't shake and a bone-deep rage at the world for screwing me over when I'd done nothing to deserve it. So I write to deal with the sadness, and I fight to deal with the rage. My room is full of scribbled notebooks scrawled cover to cover with everything that stays sepulchered in my mind (Dad never bothered teaching me many life lessons, but "real men suppress their emotions and turn to self-destructive coping mechanisms" was one of the few), formless thought translated into poems, stories, songs. And all of it, every last word, is bloody and raw and real.

Carmen tried to get me to write her a song once, and I couldn't do it. It's not that I have any sense of artist's integrity (or any sense of integrity at all, if we're being perfectly honest), but nothing about her has ever felt real enough to make words spark at the tip of my pen and weave themselves into something that transcends human perception. So I scrolled through the obscure Indie music on Lyla's computer and learned some sappy ballad, and Carmen I-Only-Listen-to-Capitol-Radio von Meyer was none the wiser. I told you, no sense of integrity. That's probably why I'm a good fighter. In the street rings they fight dirty, and if you stop to think twice about biting a guy's hand or kicking dirt in his eyes, you're going to lose. I don't think twice, and that's why I win. I think the problem with most of the guys I knock the living daylights out of is that they're too trusting. People are inherently trusting creatures, they operate under the assumption that everyone has their best interests at heart and then act accordingly, letting their guard down and more often than not running into the lion's mouth with open arms. Me? I don't trust anyone but myself. Even most cynics have a best friend that is the exception, but we're being truly honest here I don't trust Nox as far as I can throw him, no offense to the guy. I've always operated under the assumption that if things go downhill, I'll be on my own, and maybe that's why it's so much easier for me to fend for myself in the ring or out in the real world.

People are the products of their environments, and so maybe I'm just the bitter, paranoid, cynical product of a broken home, but the origin of the way I am doesn't change the fact of the matter - there's no real purpose in my life, and that's one of the few things left in the world that can really scare me.

next is a trip to the ladies room in vain and
i bet you just can't keep up with these fashionistas and
tonight, tonight, you are, you are a whispering campaign
and i bet to them your name is cheap
and i bet to them you look like... shhhhh

/{~*~}\
history
\{~*~}/

Maybe I've never really believed in love because all the love I was supposed to have in my life had a way of disappearing.

My mother left when I was two. I don't know the details because like hell I was going to ask Dad about it, but as far as I can tell one day she just packed up her stuff and went waltzing out the door. I see her once or twice a year if I'm lucky, pas her on the streets and exchange curt greetings. I've got half-siblings somewhere, a stepfather I've never met, nor do I care to meet. She stopped sending birthday cards after I turned seven. I stopped caring whether she lived or died sometime after that. Dad never did handle abandonment well. I guess that's the difference between us. Ever since I can remember he's had a bottle in his hand and a displaced rage that he takes out on the world, which I've wanted to inform him several times was probably a contributing factor to the string of short-lived girlfriends he's been hauling around for years leaving him one by one.

I grew up in a household that didn't care what I did for the most part. Dad was too busy with his booze and his replacement-women to really take notice of my activities, and as long as I didn't get myself into trouble (I did) or talk back (I did), I was treated with all the notice that one might give a goldfish - feed it, and other than that let it do its own thing. Little kids have a pathological need for attention, though, and I was no exception. Acting out was the only way to get anyone to notice my existence, and as soon as I figured that out I made being an obnoxious little pain in the ass my top priority. In my flawed logic Dad yelling at me to knock it off was better than him seemingly forgetting that I was even in the house, and so I started pushing the envelope, seeing just how much I could make my presence known.

The first time he hit me, really hit me, I was eight. Don't get me wrong, I had it coming. I'd been using the living room as my own personal jungle gym and ended up knocking over the bookshelf I'd been climbing, and the old man cracked me so hard across the jaw I saw stars. It wasn't anywhere near what some other kids were dealing with from their parents, and yet it was like some sort of invisible line had been crossed. From then on there was no more dammit, Callum, cut it out, only swift retribution borne on a fist or a belt. For a while I thought it was discipline, was him thinking that I'd grow up a better man for it, but after a while I realized the truth of the matter. Dad was just taking his anger out on the one thing that couldn't leave him: me.

I don't really know when I started writing, but I do remember being ten years old and getting back a haiku we'd written for class with a little gold-star sticker on the top and thinking hey, I could be onto something here. My teacher gave me a little black-and-white composition book, and before I knew it I had filled every line with beautiful, perfect words, poems and stories and even the beginnings of a few rudimentary songs. For the first time in my life I had something that people would notice me for, and I dove into it headfirst, winning essay contests at school and taking English tests by storm and slowly, slowly beginning to let off the explosive force bearing down on my pressure-cooker soul until every dark thing that had sat beneath my skin for years bled out in wet ink and eloquent turns of phrase.

The fighting came later, after puberty opened my eyes to the whole cesspool of indignant teenage rage sitting in my veins, the years I'd spent watching the world pass me by fueling a sort of bottomless anger I couldn't shake. I met Nox when I was fifteen and we hit it off right away; he taught me how to smoke a cigarette and how to throw a punch, something I promptly put to good use the next time Dad thought I'd stepped out of line. And that was it. One hit, and it never happened again. For a cataclysmic moment, I was astounded by the fact that I had that kind of power in a world that had always made me feel completely powerless. We'd always been dirt-poor, and so my ears perked right up when I heard the whispers about a secret form of entertainment that started in the back alleys after dark. What better way to let off steam and make a little pocket money on the side?

I lost my first fight. Bad. I got mouthy with a guy who was twice my size, and he clocked me so hard I legitimately thought I'd broken my neck. By the time he was done with me I was a mess of blood and bruises, a split lip and a black eye and a decidedly broken nose, slumped on the wet pavement while everybody cleared out of the alley before the Keepers came to see what the commotion was. I thought I'd been left to stumble home on my own (I wasn't surprised that Nox had left, skeevy little son of a bitch), but suddenly there was someone crouching down next to me, a bright-eyed little angel with a pretty face and gentle hands. She helped me get the nosebleed stopped, ran to the corner store to get a cup of ice for my mouth, sat down beside me on the wall of the alley and said her name was Carmen von Meyer. She was a friend of a friend, apparently, I'd heard Nox talk about her a few times, and she was also in my math class, although I hadn't noticed her before. I walked her home, held her hand, and two weeks later we were getting to third base in the janitor's closet between lunch and fifth period.

I don't do labels very well, and even though Carmen's my "girlfriend," I like to think our contract is pretty... flexible. She swears she loves me and I nod along and mumble yeah, uh-huh, you too babe, but I think we both know my heart's never been in it. My heart's never been in much of anything, really, just my words and a rapidfire bang, bang, bang in my ears as someone else's bone structure shatters beneath my hands. I've got nothing going for me, not much of a past and even less of a future, and maybe that would be okay if I wasn't so damned conflicted about it. On the whole, I feel utterly lost and adrift, and yet still on the precipice of something more, something I can't put my finger on.

Yesterday, I sat down with my notebook, flipped it open to a blank page, and sat staring at it for hours. My pen hovered over the paper uncertainly as I tried to sift through the guarded hopefulness that swirled through my soul and jumbled my thoughts, and slowly, tentatively, a single line scrawled its way across the paper.

Swear to shake it up if you swear to listen.

talk to the mirror, oh
choke back tears and keep telling yourself that
"i'm a diva!"
oh, and the smokes in that cigarrette box on the table, they just so happen
to be laced with nitroglycerin

/{~*~}\
codeword
\{~*~}/

o hai dair

i'm the new cancer, never looked better, you can't stand it
because you say so under your breath, you're reading lips
"when did he get all confident?"
haven't you heard that i'm the new cancer
never looked better and you can't stand it

Other Speech: 27ACB5
Other: 318D95
Main: 3D6B71
Emphasis: 474C50
Speech: 4E373B

Faceclaim is Blake Harnage

There's A Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered, Honey, You Just Haven't Thought Of It Yet - Panic! At the Disco

A Fever You Can't Sweat Out in the Album Plot

and i know, and i know
it just doesn't feel like
a night out with no one sizing you up
i've never been so surreptitious
so of course i'll be distracted when i spike the punch