I’m Seb Crews. Ask me anything.

Note: These “Ask me anything” posts (inspired by Reddit) are created when I post as a character and invite other group members to ask questions.

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Q: Hey, Seb! What Disney song best represents you?

A: ZAIN!! Get out of my AMA! This is for the group members to ask me questions, not you. And you know the answer. It’s “Colors of the Wind” from Pocahontas.

((To which Zain would comment that “Let it Go” might fit better on occasion, but this is not his AMA, so. xD))

Q: Even though Zain is in the military, do you think of having a permanent home?  Of buying a house that can be yours and Zain’s sanctuary?  If so, where would you like to buy a home?  In Hawaii?

A: I do feel like I am “home” whenever I am around him, but I also crave the stability and refuge of a place of our own. The house in Hawaii belongs to my parents, and we plan to keep using it during his leave periods. They let us do any remodeling we wanted when we moved in, so it is ours as well. (I dread the idea of living on a base and having the military tell me what color my walls must be and how high the grass can grow.) Hawaii is also one of the most beautiful, inspiring, artistic places places on Earth. If we bought a house, I would want it to be there, or among the redwoods in California.

Q: So Seb since you’re going to college, will you be away from Zain or live home? And what will you be studying? Oh and hide the hairbrush, too.

A: I’ll be living on campus at Cooper Union. I hope I’ll be able to visit Zain on weekends, but it is still a long trip from there to Annapolis.

Their Fine Arts program is very rounded and includes both art history and other, general academic courses like Psychology and Philosophy in the core curriculum, but I’ll mainly be focusing on drawing and painting.

Trust me, if I hide the hairbrush, Zain would simply find something else to use, which might be worse. He’s extremely good at improvising.

Q: Seb, when did you first realize you were in love with Zain and were you glad to know that about yourself? 

A: It was after he moved in with my family. He wanted to make dessert one night to show his appreciation for our welcome, only he didn’t know how to cook anything, so he asked me to help.

We made a complete mess of my mom’s perfect kitchen, and when I pointed it out to him he said, “Yeah, you look way too clean,” and then grabbed me and stuck his flour-covered hand in my hair. It was like getting knocked off your feet by an ocean wave you didn’t see coming. I had been trying to ignore my crush on him and be a good friend, and then I knew it was so much worse than that. I must’ve looked very strange, because he let me go and said, “Seb, you okay?” and I just mumbled something at him and took off.

He found me hiding on the roof later and asked me if I was angry with him. I shook my head, but I couldn’t say anything. Then he said, “Good, because I wanna kiss you, if that’s alright.” And I nodded.

Q: What is the angriest you’ve ever gotten at Zain and do you feel the anger was justified?

A: Most of the time, when I’m angry towards him, it’s not about him in reality. It’s because of other things that are making me mad, or because my blood sugar is out of whack, so it’s never justified.

The angriest was when he made me stop working on a painting I had been trying to finish for weeks. He said I was getting too stressed about it. Looking back, he was right, but I said he was interfering where he had no business and called him a lot of extremely nasty things in French, to which he said, “I have no idea what half of that meant, but sure, if it makes you feel better,” and that only made me more angry. There were three separate spankings before it was over.

Q: Which family member are you closest to?

A: We are all very close, but if I had to pick one, I would say my mom. I talk on the phone with her more than any of the others.

Q: This is kind of for you and Zain, who were the people the two of you called friends and socialized with while in Hawaii, and do you miss their companionship?

A: I don’t make friends easily, and we didn’t live in Hawaii long enough for me to upgrade many people from “acquaintance” to “friend”, but there was Tara, who gave me my first gallery show and was a kind of mentor for me in trying to sell my art. I still email her. Zain had a group of Marine friends, and we had dinner with his CO and his family sometimes, too. I’m sure he’s planning to stay in touch with them, once he’s able to.

Q: Seb, what is your least favorite form of art…if any?

A: I don’t have one. There are pieces of art I dislike or don’t understand, but there’s also amazing work in each form.

Q: Seb, what is the implement you’ve experienced that you dread the most, and what is the implement you haven’t experienced and hope that you never will?

A: The one I dread the most is a bath brush we have in Hawaii. At least, I think it’s still in Hawaii. I certainly didn’t pack it.

I hope never to experience a cane, and I can’t imagine I will, since Zain would have to go out of his way to get one.

Q: Do you miss Babar?

A: Yes. I would’ve brought him with me, but he’s too big for a dorm room. I miss climbing on his back with a good book or a sketchpad, and I miss the exaggerated, full-body shudder Zain does when he has to touch him.

Q: What is the worst spanking you ever received and why?

A: It was my first flat-out punishment spanking, which was a result of going cliff jumping with Dax when he visited us for a week just after the move to Hawaii. Zain wouldn’t have had a problem with it, except a) bodies of water in Hawaii sometimes contain leptospirosis, and my already-weakened immune system had just fought off a bad cold, and b) I didn’t actually want to jump, but I let Dax (who didn’t know about the leptospirosis or the cold) convince me to do it.

When Zain found out, he told Dax we were going grocery shopping and then drove me up to a deserted overlook and spanked me with his hand in the back seat of the car. It certainly wasn’t the most severe I’ve ever gotten, but emotionally, I was wrecked. I absolutely hated knowing I’d let him down so badly.

It’s closely followed on the list of worsts by all my other punishment spankings. That one is just at the top of the pile because it was the first one, I think. Also, after we went back to the house, he had a private conversation with Dax that he still refuses to recount to me. All he’ll say is, he was very tempted to spank Dax, too.

Q: Of course, your response makes me think of another question.  If your first punishment spanking was the worst you had, but not the most severe, what was the most severe and what was it for?

A: I can tell you right away it was the bath brush on wet skin. Explaining what it was for is a little bit harder.

We’d just gotten home from an endo appointment, and my A1C had been a lot higher than I expected. I’d been going through a rough patch, but I thought I was still in my target range more often than not. Maybe I was in denial, though, because I think Zain saw it coming and attempted to warn me. He also reassured me all through the drive home that it was okay and it didn’t mean I was a failure, and I nodded along with him and acted as normally as I could.

Before bed, I decided to take a bath. I don’t even remember locking the bathroom door. I didn’t realize I’d done it until he tried to open it, and then, when he knocked and called to me, I couldn’t answer for some reason. I just sat there in the water until I heard an edge of fear in his voice that made me force myself to say, “Je suis d’accord.” But I couldn’t speak again after that, and I couldn’t get up and let him in either.

Finally, he got a drill and took the door off its hinges. Then he stood in the doorway with his head cocked to one side, and I panicked and started to make a run for it, buck-naked and dripping bubbles. There was no getting past him, of course. He hauled me back to the tub, sat down on the edge of it, grabbed the bath brush, and turned me over his knee.

What felt like a very, very long time later, after he let me up again, he said, “Y’know, you could’ve just asked,” and I called him rotten.