The Silver Razor: Spithead

[anteros_lmc]

Title: The Silver Razor: Spithead
Author: Anteros
Characters: Archie Kennedy
Rating: R
Notes: Continuing the story of Archie's silver razor.

Comments

[eglantine_br]

Made my day. I was sitting here feeling very grumpy. This is just what I needed. There are so many perfect details in this. The description of the case, blue but worn, and the velvet inside bald, so real. Perfect.

And I love the description of the common use razor. I am sure it was so. (My father once took a trip with an uncle to explore The Great Dismal Swamp, he stopped at a hotel where they had a tooth-brush on a string for the use of the guests! This would have been about 1925.)

And I feel in my heart, as before, that Archie's father does love him. It is a confused and sore love, but it is there. The little boy who was told not to open the razor, and the dad who tweaked his nose, are still there-- way underneath.

Thank you. I shall climb out of my own dismal swamp and get to writing!

(Really sounds like something out of Pilgrims Progress-- but it is real. Starts in North Carolina.

[anteros_lmc]

I'm glad you enjoyed this and it's helped to un-grump you!

The description of the case, blue but worn, and the velvet inside bald, so real. Perfect.
For some reason I have a very, very vivid image of the razor case, I think it may have morphed from a jewellery case my grandmother had when I was a kid.

I think you're right about Archie's father. He does love him, very much. That's why he is so bitterly angry with him. It's hard to get past such intense love and anger, it's easy for it to become insurmountable. Horatio will learn that later.

My father once took a trip with an uncle to explore The Great Dismal Swamp, he stopped at a hotel where they had a tooth-brush on a string for the use of the guests! Well, it my fic made your day, your story made mine! I don't know what delights me more, the fact that The Great Dismal Swamp exists, or the fact that there was once a hotel there with a toothbrush on a string! Are you sure this isn't a Thurber story

[eglantine_br]

Yes, and it gets even better. While my father was there he met a girl he liked very much. Her name was Pukey Jinkins! Isn't that a storybook name? I never did ask why she was named Pukey.

It does sound like a Thurber story.

I have actually been through the Great Dismal Swamp. on a train. It is a good place for people who can see beauty in muted colors and shades of grey. Very serene. And it has vultures.

[anteros_lmc]

Pukey Jinkins?! You're kidding me?! XD

I spent quite some time last night night googling The Great Dismal Swamp. I am entranced by such a place!

[charliecochrane]

Perfect. You really get into the heart of Archie - what he does and thinks and says are drawn from him, as is the plot, rather than making him fit some predetermined plitline.

That may make no sense outside of my head...

[anteros_lmc]

Thank you! And yes, it does make sense outside your head, possibly because I spend waaay too much time inside Archie's head :}

[rikibeth]

Makes sense to me!

[eglantine_br]

Makes sense to me too.

[anteros_lmc]

I suspect you spend as much time as I do inside Archie's head!

[nodbear]

the dialogue between the thoughts Archie has and the 'mute' witness of the razor and wrappinsg is so lyrically handled here
that investing of history as our own and what is special to us is movingly portrayed - it is another thing that for too much of his life has been Archie
this wsa grand and I am going to read it all again now for the better gleaning of gems...

[anteros_lmc]

Somehow the silver razor seems to weave together the histories not just of Archie and his father, but also Horatio and William Bush. It remains Archie's until the end though.

[bauhiniakapok]

Reading this comment and thinking about how the silver razor weaves through the rest of their lives - especially about Bush shaving Archie at the very end - just made me cry. I feel like the silver razor symbolizes the beauty and loss of Archie's life. Lost potential happiness, estranged love, another love found, but then his life itself lost. It's gloriously poignant, but now I might need to pause re-reading your stories (for the third time at least) and go find some LKU to cheer myself up.

[anteros_lmc]

The silver razor definitely came to be symbolic of Archie's life and his relationship to Horatio. It's strange, this whole series stared off as a tiny prompt fill in a kink meme and it blossomed into one of the longest things I wrote. It means a lot to me this series, I'm glad you're enjoying it, even if it is terribly sad. I hope it ends on a positive note though.

[esmerelda_t]

This is such a realistic portrayal of a somewhat strained, yet still loving, family dynamic. I suspect Archie's father would have cheerfully gutted Simpson with the silver razor if given half the chance yet would never mention it again.

[anteros_lmc]

Yes, Archie's relationship with his father is "complicated" to say the least. But you're absolutely right, I'm sure Kennedy Snr wouldn't have hesitated to disembowel Simpson.