welcome to the white house.
^{please beware the wolf dog.}

* readplato.

― don’t we long sometimes for something clean, once, in this polluted land? that’s what i hope to bring. not something grubby with compromise but something clean and true and refreshing, something proud and pure.

• rules
• character
• take me back

* rules & warnings.

( template made by @poohsources )

• rules
• character
• take me back

* character info.

Born and raised in the tiny Minnesota town of St Martin (or Smartin, as per the locals), Jeryd Mencken’s childhood was nothing like the grandiose and fast-paced endeavor his later life would become. With a household composed of an army general, a nurse and two pet dogs—one a mutt of a german shepherd and something floppy-eared, the other a little white thing, his mother’s favorite—his earliest years were (… sunshine blotted out by trees coming in through little windows in a house that’s mostly wood; were stomping mud off boots on the doormat and being greeted by the barks and tongues of two dogs (one large, one small) and the smell of coffee in the kitchen and steam against the light streaming in and wood on the floors and faded fabrics and dust on endless rows of books on bookshelves, dust on the globe, dust on gold-plated letter openers, dust on old paperwork, dust on barely-used glasses, dust in corners that haven’t been touched for years. they were the rustle of daddy’s newspaper and the touch of momma’s hand on his head and the brush of fur passing by underneath the table. were simple dinners and in before sunset and a hole in the sheets and reading from daddy’s collection of nonfiction, the pages yellowed and bearing the scent of many years. wars, plagues, famines, cultures, art, politics, scandals. momma’s books were filled with matters of the heart, the lungs, the eyes, the mouth; he leafed through those sometimes, but more often than not the words seemed from another language. cardialgia, dyspnea, lachrymation. it was rarely more than how was your day? and were you a good boy? and eat your dinner, son, i can see right through you. it was the silence between feeding the family and feeding the dogs, the silence between dinner and bedtime, unbroken by daddy’s favorite channel on the radio, the silence in the night) as slow and simple as anyone’s. From about the age of 6 onwards, Jeryd was a member of the local Evangelical church’s boy choir, entering as a soprano and graduating to a tenor later on. This provided him with a musical education alongside his general one, especially given that he learned quickly and accurately enough to be granted access to the piano and the organ in a pinch, and eventually earned his place as the backup conductor (hold that tone, carry it over. you must consider the caesura to be a part of the composition; you must live towards it and then reach past it. the evening light’s spilling across the chapel lawn as the boys file up out front, thick and heavy folders under their arms and pencil pouches in their hands. it doesn’t reach inside the building, where the icy minnesota cold seems to hang forever, so they always bring their jackets with. stop chopping the words into syllables. smoothly, now. sing this final chord in major; i want to see the sun rising over the cave as christ pushes the stone aside).Throughout his secondary school career (the click of the clasp of his leather briefcase, had been his father’s before it was his, free hours sometimes spent lingering near the library’s sections on history and human nature, but far more often in loud, bark-like laughter with a group of eager friends, class pest, class clown, just a bit too mouthy and handsy for comfort but not enough to say anything of, all toothy grins and too-rough stomps and punches), Jeryd proved a quick and shrewd student, though highly argumentative towards his teachers and somewhat prone to malice towards his fellow students (really, man? that sounds like a load of bullshit to me. how do we know? can we go back and ask? i don’t think he’s implying that at all, actually. i think— i think you’d better keep your mouth shut, jameson, before i tell the entire school what you got in this funny little notebook of yours. what would mommy and daddy think, man?). While he got in trouble once or twice for his attitude towards his superiors, he managed to keep those he pestered among his peers in check— or, at least, there are no records of any student complaints filed against him during this time.It is the University of Chicago that can claim Jeryd Mencken as its first and only Presidential alumnus, enrolling in a double major of history and philosophy on a scholarship. By this time, he had matured a fair amount, and his tendency towards sadism was mostly satiated with pranks, a thing his house on campus (Chamberlin) was already notorious for. Most notably, he can ascribe the Stairwell Water Cup Incident of 1988 to his name, wherein residents of Coulter House were hindered from descending their stairs because paper cups with water had been lined up to fill every stair, including the landings, of their house. Arguing with professors was, though still not always prudent, far more acceptable in this atmosphere, and Jeryd’s attitude in this regard landed him in the university’s debate team rather quickly after starting his first year. It was there that he encountered [REDACTED], a fellow student who would become his fREDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED. (... beloved ethics aren’t falsifiable either, should we get rid of those?” “in what way are ethics not falsifiable when they demonstrably improve people’s lives?” “oh, yeah, buddy? which one of the thousand schools of thought? the golden mean, that your drug of choice?” “fuck, man, you can falsify my ass, yeah?” and it was leaning forward over the desk, closer and closer, no sliver of opportunity left for the other members to speak, the mediator having to cut in. an intensity of eye contact neither budged from, admirable, in a way, because almost everyone else did, with him. it was beers at the campus pub until the am’s, beating each other at trivia nights and still the eye contact when the conversation lulled, growing still, breath speeding up. i’m thinking it, you’re thinking it. silence out on the quad, distant laughter only as grecian brown met aryan blue. fascination, obsession, have to have you, feel you, be inside you. ah, ah, hah–all over you, but only for one night. “if the supreme value (christ) and the supreme negation (sin) are outside, then the soul is void: its highest and lowest are missing.” good. you’re good. you’re so fucking good). Alongside this, he began expressing his often contrarian ideas via poignant articles for the University of Chicago Magazine, an endeavor that rendered him well-liked by some and disdained by others. Soon enough, he would be contacted by the student’s association of the local GOP, and would continue to work alongside and ascend their ranks for much of his career. With his penchant for debate and public speaking, his lack of concern for what others thought of him and his interest in many historical schools of thought, Jeryd proved a fine politician, being, of course, the career path he ended up following to its very summit.

• rules
• character
• back to start