The schoolgirls abducted from their Chibok school by Boko Haram in April are still missing. The deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner have gone unpunished. The world is rarely a just place, and a hashtag, even one held up by the first lady, doesn’t wield a lot of power. But with it, we could do something else. We could gather to tell our stories. And we could express our anger, and our hope.
Livetweeting “Peter Pan Live!”
For one magical night, Americans of all classes and beliefs came together, united to gawk at what in the literal hell was unfolding on NBC during a musical “warning story of what happens when two lesbians UHAUL too soon.” And for a little while, it felt good to know that the Twitterverse cared so much more about the production than a deeply bored looking Christopher Walken did.
“The Japanese Firm Selling Videogames to Women, Using Sex” by Daniel Feit
Synopsis: A journalist reports on a Tokyo gaming convention, where women line up for the chance to interact with actors modeled after characters in hugely popular dating simulators.
Choice quote: “‘We’re basically hitting on them, without being too forward,’ said Kyle Card, an actor and model who lives in Tokyo. ‘A lot of the reactions are hands over the face, unable to speak, laughing to themselves. Lots of silence.’”Johnathan had barely passed his teenage years when he committed his crime. The way he told it, he was helping his ex-girlfriend escape her father in the middle of the night. He took some of her father’s belongings, too, and was about to pull away when an off-duty police officer in the neighborhood abruptly stopped him, never identifying himself as a police officer. The man held a loaded gun to his head, and Johnathan shot him, multiple times. He told me it happened on instinct, that he was in fear for his own life and that everything happened within a matter of seconds. The name of the victim was San Antonio Police Department officer Fabian Dominguez. The court records reflect that Dominguez was in uniform at the time, but Johnathan told me he was wearing a black coat that covered most of it and in the pitch black night he could barely see him. Johnathan wrote a confession upon his arrest.
He was guilty, but I never believed Johnathan should die for his crime, and not just because I don’t believe in capital punishment. His sentence was so severe; one of his co-defendants, Paul Cameron, was convicted of life without parole for simply accompanying him that night. But Johnathan was living in a conservative state, had no access to good legal counsel and had unknowingly killed a police officer. He never had a chance.
On the morning of the execution, we hustled to the famous “Walls Unit” in Huntsville, which had executed more than 500 people to date. One by one we passed through the metal detectors, and I walked down the hall to a small cage covered with a metal mesh gate.
Johnathan’s smile was beautiful as I sat down and searched his brown eyes.”Look,” he said. “No bulletproof glass this time.” I held my hand up to his. This was one of the few times our cells would rub off on each other and we were able to touch. His hands were big and warm and the connection felt good. I pressed my lips against the gate and we kissed and exchanged breath. For a moment I forgot about the gate, the guards, the glass. For a moment we were just two people, madly in love.
Then a guard dragged me back to my seat, and I was back again, looking at him through a cage. “Did you sleep last night?” I asked him.
“I had to,” he said. “They confiscated all of my property.”Michael Dewayne Johnson had broken a blade off a shaving razor and slit his own throat. Left on his cell wall was a message written in his own blood: “I didn’t do it.” I tried to imagine the determination this would require, to dig that tiny razor deep enough across his neck, again and again, to puncture his throat till he gagged and suffocated on his own blood. It’s a brutality that goes against our survival instincts. Now it was Johnathan’s turn to stare down his own end. Both plan A and B had failed. So I held onto his fingers through the metal mesh gate and kissed him again, hungry this time. The guards just shook their heads. “Give me some of your fur,” he said. He called my hair fur and my hands paws. His nickname for me was “chinchilla.” I ripped out a piece of my hair for him and passed it through a small hole in the gate. He put it in his mouth.
“Why?” I asked.I got back into the car and felt the whole world collapse around me.
Afterward, Johnathan’s family and close friends gathered in what’s known as the hospitality house, run by Christians, where the chaplain would brief us on what to expect as a witness to an execution. There was a memorial on the wall, which included pictures of every person who had been executed in Texas in the past two decades or so. The last picture was Carlos Granados, who had been put to death just a week earlier.
The chaplain sat us down. I curled up next to Devon, and she put her arm around me. We both cried as the chaplain described the procedure in gruesome detail.
A phone rang, and it was Johnathan.
“That was some good kissing, furry,” he said after I answered hello. A smile spread across my face hearing his voice. We bullshitted for a while. I forget everything we talked about. I asked him what he thought happened after death. “I’ll find out,” he said.
The phone was passed around. I went into the bathroom to cry. The phone was eventually returned to me. “I have to get off the phone soon,” he said and then paused. “I want you to know that you came into my life at the perfect time, and I couldn’t have asked for a better girl in my corner. Without you, I would have died lonely and incomplete.”
“Promise me that we will see each other again,” I said. “After tonight. Do you believe that we will meet again?”
“Yes,” he said.
The schoolgirls abducted from their Chibok school by Boko Haram in April are still missing. The deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner have gone unpunished. The world is rarely a just place, and a hashtag, even one held up by the first lady, doesn’t wield a lot of power. But with it, we could do something else. We could gather to tell our stories. And we could express our anger, and our hope.
Livetweeting “Peter Pan Live!”
For one magical night, Americans of all classes and beliefs came together, united to gawk at what in the literal hell was unfolding on NBC during a musical “warning story of what happens when two lesbians UHAUL too soon.” And for a little while, it felt good to know that the Twitterverse cared so much more about the production than a deeply bored looking Christopher Walken did.
“The Japanese Firm Selling Videogames to Women, Using Sex” by Daniel Feit
Synopsis: A journalist reports on a Tokyo gaming convention, where women line up for the chance to interact with actors modeled after characters in hugely popular dating simulators.
Choice quote: “‘We’re basically hitting on them, without being too forward,’ said Kyle Card, an actor and model who lives in Tokyo. ‘A lot of the reactions are hands over the face, unable to speak, laughing to themselves. Lots of silence.’”Johnathan had barely passed his teenage years when he committed his crime. The way he told it, he was helping his ex-girlfriend escape her father in the middle of the night. He took some of her father’s belongings, too, and was about to pull away when an off-duty police officer in the neighborhood abruptly stopped him, never identifying himself as a police officer. The man held a loaded gun to his head, and Johnathan shot him, multiple times. He told me it happened on instinct, that he was in fear for his own life and that everything happened within a matter of seconds. The name of the victim was San Antonio Police Department officer Fabian Dominguez. The court records reflect that Dominguez was in uniform at the time, but Johnathan told me he was wearing a black coat that covered most of it and in the pitch black night he could barely see him. Johnathan wrote a confession upon his arrest.
He was guilty, but I never believed Johnathan should die for his crime, and not just because I don’t believe in capital punishment. His sentence was so severe; one of his co-defendants, Paul Cameron, was convicted of life without parole for simply accompanying him that night. But Johnathan was living in a conservative state, had no access to good legal counsel and had unknowingly killed a police officer. He never had a chance.
On the morning of the execution, we hustled to the famous “Walls Unit” in Huntsville, which had executed more than 500 people to date. One by one we passed through the metal detectors, and I walked down the hall to a small cage covered with a metal mesh gate.
Johnathan’s smile was beautiful as I sat down and searched his brown eyes.”Look,” he said. “No bulletproof glass this time.” I held my hand up to his. This was one of the few times our cells would rub off on each other and we were able to touch. His hands were big and warm and the connection felt good. I pressed my lips against the gate and we kissed and exchanged breath. For a moment I forgot about the gate, the guards, the glass. For a moment we were just two people, madly in love.
Then a guard dragged me back to my seat, and I was back again, looking at him through a cage. “Did you sleep last night?” I asked him.
“I had to,” he said. “They confiscated all of my property.”Michael Dewayne Johnson had broken a blade off a shaving razor and slit his own throat. Left on his cell wall was a message written in his own blood: “I didn’t do it.” I tried to imagine the determination this would require, to dig that tiny razor deep enough across his neck, again and again, to puncture his throat till he gagged and suffocated on his own blood. It’s a brutality that goes against our survival instincts. Now it was Johnathan’s turn to stare down his own end. Both plan A and B had failed. So I held onto his fingers through the metal mesh gate and kissed him again, hungry this time. The guards just shook their heads. “Give me some of your fur,” he said. He called my hair fur and my hands paws. His nickname for me was “chinchilla.” I ripped out a piece of my hair for him and passed it through a small hole in the gate. He put it in his mouth.
“Why?” I asked.I got back into the car and felt the whole world collapse around me.
Afterward, Johnathan’s family and close friends gathered in what’s known as the hospitality house, run by Christians, where the chaplain would brief us on what to expect as a witness to an execution. There was a memorial on the wall, which included pictures of every person who had been executed in Texas in the past two decades or so. The last picture was Carlos Granados, who had been put to death just a week earlier.
The chaplain sat us down. I curled up next to Devon, and she put her arm around me. We both cried as the chaplain described the procedure in gruesome detail.
A phone rang, and it was Johnathan.
“That was some good kissing, furry,” he said after I answered hello. A smile spread across my face hearing his voice. We bullshitted for a while. I forget everything we talked about. I asked him what he thought happened after death. “I’ll find out,” he said.
The phone was passed around. I went into the bathroom to cry. The phone was eventually returned to me. “I have to get off the phone soon,” he said and then paused. “I want you to know that you came into my life at the perfect time, and I couldn’t have asked for a better girl in my corner. Without you, I would have died lonely and incomplete.”
“Promise me that we will see each other again,” I said. “After tonight. Do you believe that we will meet again?”
“Yes,” he said.
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