Post by Manech Poulain Dufresne on Dec 28, 2009 15:47:59 GMT -8
dufresne, manech.
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" NOW THAT I’VE CALMED DOWN, MY HEART BEATS SO STEADY YOU COULD SET YOUR WATCH BY ME, BY MY BEAT BEAT BEAT."
-WILD DEER AT DAWN, DIANE CLUCK
the preliminaries,[/size]
INTRODUCING: MANECH POULAIN DUFRESNE[/center]
[/color] I've been on this earth since August 14th, 1987[/b], so that makes me 22[/color]. I'm a RESIDENT[/color] but I'm actually from 14th Arrondissement of Paris. In case you were wondering, I'm SINGLE and BISEXUAL. I know what you're thinking, am I Devendra Banhart, right? No, but I'm much less crunchy and much more French.[/blockquote][/blockquote]"Hi, I'm MANECH POULAIN DUFRESNE but most people just call me MANECH.
free-styling,
[/size]EXCERPTS AND TIDBITS FROM THE LIFE&TIMES OF MANECH DUFRESNE[/center]
” There is nothing here for you except for poetry: empty calories! They will keep you hungry here.” –La Vigne, best-friend status
“Manny, a girl is like a framboise, sweet and delicate and best-devoured when fresh and juicy.” –Anges, mother status
“Mam sent me out to get dinner, and on my way I passed by a group of kids my age. They started to get rough with one another in the middle of the street, when one of their fathers who had been watching came over and pulled his son away from the ruckus. I ducked behind a stall in the alley and tried not to cry. I forget what my father looks like sometimes. –Manech, 7-year old status”
most v a l u e d possessions
+ever-present pack of camel menthols
+hookah and shisha
+yellow bandana his mother gave him, from mexico
+copper aviators
+harmonica
+guitar given to him by an artisan of the 14th arrondissement
+compilation book of Toulouse Latrech's artwork
+copy of rainer maria rilke's book of hours
+various jewelry from his mother
+plain zippo lighter
history,
[/size]THE BACKGROUND.[/center]
Manech's personal history is like a cloth eaten by moths: only chewed fragments of it remain. The pieces of his history that he can remember, however, are as beautiful and as vivid as any rich cloth ever was, or will be. At least to him. Agnes was a young woman who hadn't planned on meeting a Boisjoly. His name was Toulouse, and he ended up to be not only a Boisjoly but also a deserter. So, when Agnes had a young boy whom she named Manech in the middle of the hot despair of August, she did not pass down to him his father's last name. Instead, she kept preserved for him her maiden name, her only family heirloom to pass down. Agnes, of course, was no rich woman. She did not come from blue blood. Manech inherited this family trait in particular. She had begun to raise Manech in the 14th arrondissement, where she would buy second day's bread from the patisseries. Occasionally, Agnes would even be proffered other amenities from local businesses who knew that the Bohemian was not an artistic lifestyle choice but a grim reality for the poor girl. Truly, when Agnes found herself pregnant by a young man with whom she'd turned to in the worser times, she was forced to leave Manech. And by leave of course, Agnes spent most of her time with the young man, leaving Manech to his own devices. The eldest, the boys in particular, she thought were expected to handle it. And she did the world one better, moving out of the neighborhood with this man in the hopes of finding a better life somewhere else. As if the backlands of France could be forgiving! But she was young and experiencing the tumultuous kind of romance that even full-grown men do not understand how to handle. Whether circumstance or self are to be blamed, neither looked favorably upon dear Agnes.
But Manech! The poor boy. Left to his own devices as a young child, he quickly got himself into the juvenile trouble that only juveniles don't know how to avoid. He was inexperienced, and who would blame a 7-year old for being experienced? His mother had tried to stay as long as possible, to show him motherly love as well as she was expected to know. But desperation plays a heart-wrenching tune, and it drives even the best of humanity away from their duties. So this was Manech's fate, then, to be found in a dusky, pressing cell 11 years later, eighteen years alone and still strong. For the first day the boy entertained himself by listening to the banter between the police in their adjoined watchtower down the hall. He would listen to the men talk about their schedules for duty, their rests and naps, for they were silly men and kept nothing hidden. Indeed, if he ever was given the opportunity to escape, he would have done so without a sound, because he knew the inner workings of the patrols like no other. It seemed as if Fate had found its guilt, for it chose to shine happily upon Manech. And how opportunity knocked that day for the poor boy!
Time had not even passed long enough to have been measured in a week, and it was on the fifth day of Manech's confinement in which the Angel of Fate strolled past his cell. His stroll was much closer to a shuffled struggle, actually, as he was being manhandled by one of the policemen who was guiding him towards the wall by Manech's cell. And glory of all glory, they were meant to be roommates! The great God in Manech's heart was nearly driven out of his chest for fear at this, but only at first, as he was an abandoned boy and had learned to be most cautious of strangers. But this boy, La Vigne as he was known only by his surname, was certainly to be trusted. And his trust was manifest in the plan, and the tangibile key to their cell, which he held in his hands and mind. And Manech was indefinitely impressed.
They talked for the first few hours of their lives and their interests. La Vigne was not surprised by Manech's hard beginnings but it was certainly not to say that he had not been moved by the boy's story. By now, two teenagers who were considered men by most should have had more than destitution to talk about: things like marriage and women and jobs. None of these things did Manech or La Vigne possess, and perhaps they were better off for it. What struck Manech was that none of these things occured to La Vigne as essential. "Love is essential, my friend, we need to be loved! Brothers are a necessity of the heart: lust is what the heart concocts for its ache in a brothers' absence." And Manech wept, because he understood the truth of his despair, and he felt for the first time the hungry loneliness that his poor mother Agnes felt. La Vigne knew that it was not Manech's fault, as much as Manech wished it were so, if only so that life might have seemed a little more easily explained in that moment. But the only mystery worth solving was the puzzle of the prison and their holding cell, and fortunately for Manech and his future, La Vigne had already solved this. Manech would learn soon after that every knew La Vigne as the "Black Arrow," for he flew silently through the night without so much as the sound of wind whistling through his rags-for-clothes. Most just called La Vigne, "Arrow," for short, or even "Black," but he was honest with Manech when he said sometimes he simply preferred his surname to anything else. And that was the first bond created between them.
It turned out that La Vigne's most-likely-not-to-have-worked plan was unnecessary, for on the eighth day of Manech's stay (and La Vigne's third, by the same token,) an anonymous source paid for the two boys to be released, with a hand-written note saying they felt it was an outrage that boys be kept from becoming men simply for being boys. And so, as they strolled away from the prison in the stink of their old clothes, La Vigne proposed to Manech an idea of massive proportions:
"Cordes-sur-Ciel, Manech! C'est bon! C'mon, you come with me. There is nothing here for you except for poetry: empty calories! They will keep you hungry here. I will find you more than food!"
So with a handshake, Manech accepted this Angel's proposition, and they spent the better part of two weeks biding their time on their way back to La Vigne's town, Cordes-sur-Ciel. And when they arrived, the good times truly began to roll. For some reason, Manech felt that a memorial for his old life was in place, and when he came to La Vigne for the best place to find tattoo artists, La Vigne delivered. Of course, it was in the next town over, but when Manech came back with a bloodied patch it was as if he'd never left his Bohemian neighborhood, or his mother for that matter. The name "Agnes Marselles DuFresne," and in subscript underneath, "14th Arrondissement, Paris," was scrawled languidly on the side of his left rib cage, parallel with his arm while it hung placid at his side. And he was happy with this.
If any had hindsight when it was useful to see the repercussions of one's actions, Manech would not have called his entrance to Cordes-sur-Ciel the good times, but instead the beginning of the even-worser-than-before times. For, shortly after Manech inducted himself into the small town of La Vigne's history, he was swept up in the turbulence of his generation's affairs. As it turned out, La Vigne was one to lie about many things. Fortunately enough for Manech, and them both inevitably, La Vigne had not lied about being from Cordes-sur-Ciel, nor had he lied about being called the Black Arrow. What he had not failed to mention, which Manech called "lying by omission," was that La Vigne had incurred a nice bounty over the last few years in joined operation with the "Quiver," a band of flyaway rogue boys who had either grown up in, near, around or migrated to Codes-sur-Ciel. When La Vigne had "found" Manech, for this is how he had begun to portray the scene when they first arrived in Cordes, he thought the boy to be a spanking good specimen for inditement into the Quiver. And this is how it all began.
the sample,
[/size]YOUR NAME'S ROLE PLAY SAMPLE. 450 WORDS=THE BARE MINIMUM. [/center]
It felt like he was falling when it happened. You know the feeling, like in the moment it goes by so slowly, but the second you hit the ground you wonder how it went by so fast, and why you can hardly remember it. Now that he has all the time in the world, he remembers back to that day.
Kane was 19 and in university. His parents were well off and could afford to send him away. It was one evening when his brotherhood went out on a nightly stroll; they had plans to do initiation night with freshmen. He was one of the privileged who got to escort them to the spot. His job was to take one of them (a measly little thing, stringy compared to the upperclassmen, so young, fresh, and impressionable...). They were bringing them to an ancient haunted house, where they had to spend the night. Of course, they would be camped outside to share them crazy when they ran screaming from the foyer. It always happened.
The boy's name that he grabbed from the throng of slightly quivering boys was Harold Whittaker. He was fairly tall for his age, freckled face, straw blond hair. He wasn't quivering like the rest, though, but his eyes were fierce, like something had seized his heart and he couldn't move. Kane walked him silently towards the house, his expression lit up with a smirk. In contrast, Harold's lips were grim and his eyes severe. Kane suddenly felt like he was childishly walking him down the plank.
When they got inside, the floorboards creaked. Mice scurried over the planks like tacks scrambled across the floor, scattering here and there. "Don't worry, Whittaker, it's not as bad as they say," He said. It came out sarcastically, as if he half believed it to be true himself. And then, the other voice spoke.
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"He's right, Harold J. Whittaker. I'm not that bad..." Before Kane realized what had happened, a lamp had crashed to the floor before sparking out a brief bit of light, which illuminated a figured coming towards the two boys. He heard a rush of breath leak out from Harold's lips as if his chest was being crushed, and within a second he felt him being plucked from his side, the speed of it flushing air into his face. He dove, scrambling for Harold, and suddenly his fingertips touched something hard and icy cold. He tried pushing it aside, mistaking it for a statue, but then the marble hand snatched his wrist, and he felt a searing pain. Suddenly, a second voice hissed, "Leave this one to me," and another searing pain at his other wrist, then at the crease of his elbow, and finally his neck. He could hear Harold trying to gasp for breath somewhere in the darkness. Kane felt as if they were only a feet away, unable to move towards each other. Outside, he could hear feet hitting the cold ground as the guys ran in fear from the catastrophic sound inside. Someone had seen it happen from the doorway. The footfalls slowly faded away into nothingness. He felt as if he was losing himself, and then everything went black.
When Kane Gamble Hastings woke up, his throat was burning and he felt the deepest longing for something he didn't recognize. He felt as if a rope was tied around his waist, being tugged at, leading him somewhere. When he sat up weakly, he looked to the right and saw, illuminating in cold rays of sunlight, Harold. His neck was punctured, small rivulets of blood running down it. He felt my own neck, and fingered small indentations, the scars of marks that should have looked like Harold's. Kane touched the boy's cold hand briefly when he walked over, and then left the foyer to find a mirror. The one he did find was upstairs in a grand room I'd never been to before. It was tarnished with black spots and fade marks around the edges, but it was his face, somehow, that undeniably stared back from the silvery glass. His eyes, once a clear, demanding blue, were pitch black like the deepest coal. His skin, once warm and suntanned, was as pale as the moon, blanched white like marble or flour. He traced his fingers over his neck, where silver scars marked his skin. At his elbow and wrists too were the same markings. As he stared at them, it seemed as if they disappeared before his eyes, as if they'd never been there, just a mere breath...
From then on he struggled with what he was. It took him awhile to adjust to the superhuman strength and agility, along with the beyond-words gorgeous looks. Suddenly everything was going better, simply better, than before. And before, things had been pretty swell.
Difficulty with adjusting to new circumstances. If Kane had been checked in at a clinic somewhere, perhaps at Dr. Cullen's hospital, that's what would have been written on his sheet. During his first few years as a newborn, Kane felt as if he was losing control of himself. He had always been somewhat of a power-player, using his privileges to get what he wanted out of people, and the worst side of that usually persuaded him to kill more often than he needed to. And after years of sloppy cleanups and staggering body counts, Kane couldn't take it anymore. He almost considered ending his life, because the grief and guilt seemed too much for him to bear. He could imagine and empathize how his victims felt before he killed them, because he too had once been caught off guard. His life had ended and he'd had no choice, just like them.
His only choice then, if only to save himself from self-destruction, was to give them a choice. Kane brooded over the options for at least a year until he wondered whether or not human blood was all he could drink. On a trip to a national park in Wyoming, he became a 'vegetarian', and he decided to never go back. Of course, the human blood felt so much better and empowering, but it wasn't worth it to him at such a high price. He did not want to help history repeat itself, at least not like the way it had been.
about the author,
[/size]SO WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY FOR YOURSELF? [/center]
[/color]. I've been roleplaying for + 5[/color] years now. I hail from the e a s t coast[/color]. If need be, you can contact me by sarahelizabeth127@yahoo.com, theorangewolf (AIM)[/color]. My other characters are multiplying like rabbits and too many to list[/color] and I like it’s always sunny in Philadelphia + discovering new music[/color]!Hi everyone, I'm s a r a h and I'm 19 ½
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