I just read The Song of Achilles and I need to make @ember1224 sad before I make them read this because I cried at the end. So here’s Patroclus’ first and last thoughts of Achilles.
The first thought, “My eye catches on a light head among dozens of dark, tousled crowns. I lean forward to see. Hair lit like honey in the sun, and within it, glints of gold- the circlet of a prince. He is shorter than the others, and still plump with childhood in a way they are not. His hair is long and tied back with leather; it burns against the dark, bare skin of his back. His face, when he turns, is as serious as a man’s. When the priest strikes the ground, he slips past the thickened body’s of the older boys. He moves easily, his heels flashing pink as licking tongues. He wins.”
And the last thought, “I conjure the boy I knew. Achilles, grinning as the figs blue in his hands. His green eyes laughing into mine. Catch, he says. Achilles, outlined against the sky, hanging from a branch over the river. The thick warmth of his sleepy breath against my ear. If you have to go, I will go with you. My fears forgotten in the golden harbor of his arms.”
There is a great deal of truth there. Sometimes special moments happen purely by accident. But most of them happen because you make a plan and create the conditions to let them happen.
It’s interesting how many cis dudes do not want children but are against vasectomies because they consider them to be emasculating. No medical reason just that they think it would make them less of a man. Manhood is stored not in the balls, not in the brain, not in the soul but in the vas deferens only. Apparently. According to them.
If you’ve neglected your first set of kids emotionally and financially, you probably shouldn’t produce a second set of kids. Just an idea. The amount of dudes crying about child support and then immediately starting another family with someone they don’t really know boggles my mind. You won’t fork over $100 a month for new shoes for your first kid but you want another baby with another babymama? Did you not learn the first time?
