Dentist, Gentleman, Sporting Man, Friend

'Straight as an arrow' was a phrase used to describe John in Denver, arrested for Stillwell's murder. It was commendation, along with his quiet responsible demeanour, soft slender hands, tailored clothes, rational forthright speech, contrasting him with the manic paranoid crank charged with conveying John back to vengeful Tombstone.

Billy Allen threatened to 'do him up' - beat him to death, when he was desperately ill in Leadville. Newspapers used the same phrase when he shot his would-be murderer, shattering his arm. Despite incapacity, his posture was perfect, his eyes alert, looking for any emergency or harm he could thwart.

Years: 1882, 1884

The Rules:
1. You can only say YES or NO!
2. You are NOT ALLOWED to explain ANYTHING unless someone comments to the entry and asks!



Taken a picture naked? No
Made out with a member of the same sex? Yes.
Danced in front of your mirror? Yes
Told a lie? Yes?
Gotten in a car with people you just met? No
Been in a fist fight? Yes
Had feelings for someone who didn't have them back? Yes?
Been arrested? Yes
( more! )

Snakeoil - venom - was added to buffalo-camp alcohol. From neither corn nor rye, John will not call it whiskey. Snakeoil gave bite and substance - poison, addling thought, vision, co-ordination... digestion. It impressed the skinners, commanding higher price. John left them to it.

Misnamed snakeoil salesmen of patent medicine were far more worrying. John's mother, desperate for ease, taken from herself by pain and fever, had begged for specific bottles of coloured water, and worse. John has an indelible horror of what so often contains tincture of mercury. Pictures of its effects in dental manuals - alveolar processes exfoliating - are nightmarish.

Years: 1872, 1866

The mayor's stagecoach was ambushed. He jumped, traveling cross country on foot. John, the Earps and their lawyers were threatened - messages and dire promises were delivered daily. Nobody traveled alone.

John received a beautiful succulent. Flowers the size of dinner plates - white, speckled in purple, seed pods larger than his fist. No botanist, he was enchanted but puzzled. Morgan enlightened him. A Carrion Cactus, pollinated by flies, with a rotting odor - meant to terrorise.

He cared for it tenderly beside his bed. When they departed Tombstone on the vengeance ride he left it to the Alhambra where he dealt Faro.

Year: 1882

John believes his childhood would have been a Utopia, had it not ended in grimy chaos. He has given up looking for traces of Utopia in the West. It will be a gift after he dies. It is not that John does not feel pleasure. He seems a sensualist, easily and congenially distracted to wrap himself in pleasure. He will not discard pleasure for anything less, but it is not an element of Utopia. That is reserved for depth, meaning, communion with his fellows. He looks for those he wants to see again - with richness of soul to last until the end of time. John does not believe in Heaven - Utopia - as reward or punishment. It is fulfilment granted when people have enough inner substance to be loved. It is the only thing of Utopia that John seeks. He will have known company when he arrives. He strives for worthiness.

Name: John H. Holliday, DDS.
Fandom: History.
Word Count: 150
Please comment if you wish.

I am trying to write to specific word counts. Drabbles maybe. 150 words is less intimidating right now.

1. The storm is over, in my head.
2. The rain has stopped pouring from my eyes.
3. I am quiet.
4. I am resting calmly.
5. I am still here.
6. I am thinking.
7. I remember.
8. I am tired. I am weary. I could sleep a thousand years. A thousand dreams that would awake me - different colours, made of tears.
9. I am waiting for sunrise.

for makeyourlist

Comment on this post and I will choose seven interests from your profile. You will then explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along.

These will be written and rewritten apparently as I rethink what I think, what I have said and what I then think I have conveyed. All works and writings are subject to editing, notes, clarifications and changes for the time being.

( 7 from kikibug13 - edited again for coherence (I hope) )

plays solitaire, exhausted, straight-backed, drinking scotch.

If you could get anyone drunk, who would it be and what would you do?

I always have scotch. My cough demands it, my throat and lungs. And my mind too is soothed, quieted, focused. It has become as a friend, always reliable and to hand with no delicate manoeuvrings. I drink to comfort myself.

I offer scotch to others, as hospitality sometimes. Or sometimes it is to ease their own agitation or to fill their need to simply drink. Mostly it is habit and politeness.

My friends are different. When I am with someone who I care for, who intrigues me, who lets a smile for them rise through me, I offer them my scotch for both of us. It is like a gift then - to me, yes - but also a gift between us. Communion. A small ritual of offering, and of being accepted, touching glasses, acknowledging that we are there together in space and time. L'Chaim, I say now. And, as I have said before, an answer means that we choose Life, at least for that moment while we are drinking. It is an action, a little rite, that makes it a fact, and that choice is a truce of sorts. That one, for the sake of the time with one's friend, is setting oneself apart from the darkness of one's inner struggle. To be present with another. But the scotch... it gives us something in common, a shared internal mental pattern of warmth, of mutual openness, so we can be together, so we can talk, listen, learn, feel maybe.

I can drink a great deal, and the more I drink, the steadier I become. Without it, I can barely - no, I cannot get up in the mornings. I have an unfair advantage, when getting people drunk. Maybe I would do it for vengeance, but for my friends... no. If what I want is to see them purely, cleanly and truly that I may love them; if what I want is to be known and still... wanted, then making them drunk will never give me that, no matter how I yearn to see, to share. To get someone I cared for drunk, so that they could abide my presence, my gifts, my darkness - that would be hard to bear and more pain than solace. For touch... it is tempting, but it would be a lie for touch is just speech without words. More pain than solace.

No one need worry.

John is inclined to bow his head, wrap his arms about himself protectively, but he is dignified and shows nothing. Loneliness is nothing. It is nothing. Nothing. The steady words sound softly, though they are imagined, and he is comforted for imagining he is known.


Name: John H. Holliday, DDS.
Fandom: History.
Word Count: 448
Please comment if you wish.
Nulli Virtute Secundus

I haven't answered this meme. I really only know one of your characters, mostly, and that one is the obvious one. Or I have asked you this before. Especially as it is usually the first thing I ask. But I still fail to have a ready answer to the question Why John? So I will try to save it here. Again, there is nothing to ask me. It will be John. For my amusement, his, and perhaps yours, I will answer in 100 words.

Name a character that you know I write or have written, and I'll tell you:
a. What initially prompted me to like the character enough to write about him/her.
b. One of his/her best traits.
c. One of his/her worst traits.
d. How easy/difficult I find it to write the character.
e. The story/thread/chapter/post/paragraph/tag/phrase where I feel that I truly captured the character.
f. My plans (if any) to write the character in the near future.

a. John dedicated himself to his code of honour with unfaltering tenacity. With debilitating disease, he rode, worked, and fought, leaping again and again to the defence of anything in which he believed. He was always an alien, as product of another place and culture, and created alienation by knowingly giving himself fully to what he valued and throwing all else away. He lived in depression without accepting pity. He was sensitive with wholehearted and unapologetic love. He was wistful and appreciative with shaking hands; a killer and his hands were true. His diligence was constant, as he sought the horizon.
b. Commitment (to principles, to actions, to learning)
c. Jealousy
d. I don't write John, I just listen. It is either easy to write him or impossible.
e. These are for my reference, maybe. First young John:
Dueling
Bringing Thomas Home
Leaving Georgia
Then older John:
The Tombstone Cycle
Albuquerque
Then feverish John:
Magic Mirror
John Dreams
f. Everything for John. I shall continue much as I have been. I am trying to write more stories. He hopes for RP. Somehow I will figure out how to do that for him, with luck and an absence of poor management.

This is the first paragraph of Panama. Again, it is a strange book. I was looking for quotes, but they are too pointed in various general ways (and yes, that is surely possible.) Or, looking at them again, I think they look less than spectacular, even though they mean something to me. And they are almost all inappropriately solipsistic, perhaps.

This is the first time I've worked without a net. I want to tell the truth. At the same time, I don't want to start a feeding frenzy. You stick your neck out and you know what happens. It's obvious.

Here is the second quote. I had actually been thinking about it for some time, in the context of disappearance. The occupational hazard of disappearing, over the long haul, is that at some point you buy a ticket too. It was more than that. I've forgotten, but it was important. I'll let you know (inevitably) when it emerges again.

"There's something inside him nobody can face" I wanted to know what that was, though I suspected that my enormous evasions had culminated in some ghastly suck hole. Still, I had faced a lot. The occupational hazard of making a spectacle of yourself, over the long haul, is that at some point you buy a ticket too.

It was supposed to be 5, but I got carried away. These are in no particular order, especially not that of importance. They are not complete. They are musings from observations, mostly and I reserve the right to think something else at any point. There is something important I have not mentioned. It slides away as I write. Perhaps I will remember, in which case I will post it (of course.)

( All or Nothing )

( Death )

( Fear of the Mundane )

( Diligence )

( Alienation )

( Heaven )

( Memory )

( Illness )

( Unknown People Could Be Worthwhile Despite the Odds against This )

( Forgiveness/Acceptance )

"Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?"

That may be true of some, but I saturate those moments in words, every word a filing card, a reference - to remember. History is not what happened. It is what is remembered and recorded. I remember. And I am careful to note everything - the texture of dry skin and tiny ridges of fingerprints; eyes of light, eyes of darkness; the small inclination of a head at a thought; the slight shift of shoulders, relaxing or tensing. I need to remember, and at those moments - of quiet companionship, of a speeding of my heart at new realisations, of loss or care - at those moments I pour words like water, tell everything. To remember, yes. But also to share. That you have reference cards as well, to remember if you use them. Words are anchors, scarcely existent, yet they are more concrete, more sure than simple sensory experiences. And they add, enrich, deepen - to let you see through my mind as well as my eyes, to feel through my mind as well as my hand. With their inherent weight of metaphor, words render those meaningful moments not only moving, but moments of communion, knowing and tenacity.

Name: John H. Holliday, DDS.
Fandom: History.
Word Count: 200
Please comment if you wish.
Nulli Virtute Secundus

I swear I didn't put those...
...bullets into Stillwell.

True, I went with Wyatt to the train station, to see Virgil off, and the others.

True we looked for him and I would have shot him if I had seen him.

But I never would have put so many bullets into him, so much lead. It was never my way.

On the other hand, it was not exactly like Wyatt either.
( cut for length )

Name: John H. Holliday, DDS.
Fandom: History.
Word Count: 992
Please comment if you wish.
Nulli Virtute Secundus

It is Easter. Thus the anniversary of John's own Christening, Exorcism, Forgiveness in Colorado, after Albuquerque. After Mattie had become Sister Melanie.

He goes to church now, when he can, in this new time. In the other century, he had not been welcome - dissolute sporting man as he had been. Now there are no questions. He does not speak to the others. They do not believe as he does, but it pleases him to stand, to kneel. And he prays wholeheartedly, even with different thoughts and reasons.
( cut for religion )

Name: John H. Holliday, DDS.
Fandom: History.
Word Count: 812
Please comment if you wish.
Nulli Virtute Secundus

We all strive to make believable characters. What have you done as a mun to write your character believably? Do you think you have successfully pulled this off? How do you as a writer keep your character balanced and believable?

I read an article recently that suggested that one should balance muses, if one loved them, so that they had flaws. And the test of whether such a flaw was genuine was whether one, as a writer, found the flaw annoying or would dislike it were it real. It was suggested that love of a muse tended to lead towards agreeing to, approving of or being able to justify all of a muses actions, and that that would mean the muse was too good to be true. It suggested that sorrow made a muse rather less than more real, but that inexcusable behaviour served to make him balanced.

I read an article recently that suggested that we create a world and a worldview with our muses that should be true. And the test of whether it was true was whether it was realistic, if muses would do as they do in one’s writing as people would do in the real world. Would, it asked, they really be apt to murder or harm others, and if they would, it further queried, is that what one ought to be writing and so promoting, even as a ‘meme?’

In response, for my own edification, and hopefully to improve my writing and portrayal, I should like to address the way in which I write John.( cut for length and poll graphics )

Name: John H. Holliday, DDS.
Fandom: History.
Word Count: 1026 (excluding poll)
Please comment if you wish.
Nulli Virtute Secundus

John does not pray for justice. Justice exists hand in hand with innocence. Both are the converse of guilt. Justice is not personal. It is not what one deserves, but what is produced by the limitless intricate web of causality. Justice is what results. It is the product of all that has gone before, spreading over all the world like a blanket.

Justice is what he reaches for. Every choice is trading one thing for another. One life for another. Peace for truth. He does not pray for justice, he tries to create it. Creating justice is creating the future, and it is within the hands of everyone. Causality is complex, without blame, simply with what comes to be, and creating justice results in success or failure. To avoid choosing is to fail to live. With each choice and its aftermath John learns; John becomes; John can see justice more clearly.

And it is innocence that builds it. Innocence is moving forward – it is created by the past. It is knowledge and experience, growing from pain, growing from mistakes and guilt - growing from smiles and pleasure, growing from skill and pride. Innocence is a process of becoming more and more certain of what will be justice.

John does not pray for innocence. It is not a goal. It is what lies always at the feet of everyone. It is a matter of degree and those who have known most have the most innocence. It is the opposite not only of guilt but of naivety.

John prays instead for the courage to choose and sacrifice.

But he is human, and John prays more for inspiration, for patience, for trust, for the strength to resist jealousy, for chance and eyes to see what he can respect. He prays still more to be known. He prays to smile, to give smiles. He prays to love, and thinks sometimes of praying to be loved. And when he is weak - or is it faithful - he dares pray for touch and company.

Name: John H. Holliday, DDS.
Fandom: History.
Word Count: 340
Please comment if you wish.
Nulli Virtute Secundus

Please fill these out if you would. John himself has never posted one before. Leave your name or post anonymously, as you wish. We are ever curious.

Johari Window

Nohari Window

Thank you very kindly.

1. My perpetual silver flask of scotch
2. My silver cup
3. The pocket set of nesting silver cups
4. The Colt Lightning
5. The Colt Thunderer
6. The double-action Webley boot revolver
7. My diamond stickpin
8. My pocket watch
9. My Pocket Dental Kit I made in Dodge
10. A knife
11. A deck of cards
12. A silver pencil
13. Handkerchiefs
14. A hat
15. money

John knows what to show and what to hold. Poker. The familiar given cards vary only in sequence. He can bend their order as well – a slight rotation of his thumb, a straightening of his little finger, a small movement of a knuckle at the edge of the deck, busy barely perceptible pressures of his fingers beneath it, a shuffle that is not quite a shuffle, a cut that is not quite a cut. Every deal has a perfect and correct reaction - a star in the grey of dawn. John calculates odds and probabilities. He watches the other players, the way they show and hide disappointment, fatalism, eager hope, or triumph. John remembers every card dealt; remembers every corresponding narrowing of an eye or twitch of a hand. He floats above any interest. He erases the part of himself that cares, reaching only for the perfect reaction to each deal. And part of each reaction is to show and to hold – to smile, to lift his lip, to add momentum as he throws cards, to hesitate, to appear to drink too much and sway with gravity, to look up with a cocked eye, teasing and daring. Am I lying? And then, afterwards: Why yes, I was. There is always a correct, a perfect thing to do. Poker.

But now it is not poker. The cards are not Ace to King in four suits.

John sits across the table. He is always sitting across the table. Now he does not deal cards but invoke Platonic Forms. Innocence. Darkness. Warmth. Fear. Bravery. Love. Want. Sacrifice. It is as if every ideal is an ace – at once low and high. ( cut for length )

And you will win. And he will win.

The Character Physically

1. What is the character's stature and build? Is he overweight? Thin? What is his height and weight?

John is five foot ten inches and one hundred and twenty pounds. He is almost frighteningly thin and thus looks taller than he is.

2. How old is he?

36, though he looks older. He is not aging beyond the age he reached.

3. Describe his posture. Is it good? Does he carry himself well? Is he crooked? Straight?

John stands erect – it is something he has maintained so long it is natural. But... he is ill and is sometimes less erect when he is feeling especially poorly. This is a natural effect of tuberculosis.

4. Is he in good shape or out of condition? Is he muscularly weak or strong?

He has very strong hands, but he is fragile and weak. He still does not give in to it but carries himself with will beyond his physical resources.

5. How is his health? Any illnesses or conditions? Any physical disabilities?

Well, obviously he has tuberculosis. And he was born with a cleft palate, but it is scarcely noticeable now, the scar beneath his moustache. His health is terrible.

6. Is he physically active or sedentary? A fast or slow mover?

He is surprisingly active for his condition. But again, he overextends himself and finds himself exhausted.

7. Is he clumsy, awkward, graceful?

Generally he is precise, every movement perfect with purpose. In most social situations he is nervous and his hands shake. When he is working or in emergency this does not happen. He can be extremely graceful, but only rarely, when he is especially happy. He is never clumsy.
( cut for length )

It was a different place and a different time. Prejudices carried by the characters are by no means held by the writer. Warning for language and bigotry.

My father told me he believed in the South and the Confederacy. He told me in word and deed. And he lied.

Fifteen years old, John started school.
( cut for length )

Name: John H. Holliday, DDS.
Fandom: History.
Word Count: 1892
Please comment if you wish.
Nulli Virtute Secundus

11. What was the first fandom you wrote for? Do you still write for it?
That would be John. Obviously I still write him. Type for him.

12. Name your OTPs and explain what it is about them you love to write. Yes. Relationships in general.
I... don’t know. I Hate things where one must select some people over others. If John loves you, he will tell you. He is shy but cannot stop from telling you. Me? I follow John. If John loves it is like all the world opens in visions and beauty. He is so lonely, rejects so much, that when he does love Heaven opens. And I am filled with joy as I look to see why, what it is, what it means, who he loves. Even if his love is just pain. He loves not to be loved but to love. To wonder. To feel. To remember. It is amazing to him. And to me.

13. What would you call your writing style?
I have a writing style? I have nothing to say here. Honestly, I don’t think about it. I just write.

( questions 14 to 20 )

Reference
the_iscariot writing for john_h_holliday

John waits.

He is a patient man, the consummate gentleman and perhaps the rarest of hosts, because he is sincere. John feels wholly and simply and without demanding you do the same. To do so, would be vicious and he will not so, not now at least. Perhaps once, long ago, when he was a different sort: he could have been vicious, or cruel, or taunting. Once, he may have hurt you because he wanted to. Someday soon, he may do it again. John’s dreams, whims and desires are as vast and endless as Arizona deserts, his nightmares, and wrongs as black and arid.

But…

But, his voice is smooth, welcoming, and it warms like a good Whiskey. He knows that most precious of all gifts, how to listen and how to make people listen. He hides secrets- yours and his own- behind the languid pools of his eyes. He dreams easy and laughs easier.

One day soon, he will die.

But until that day, John sits, smiles and speaks to you when he chooses to, but mostly, he’ll just chase the horizon, any horizon he finds, like he did when he was a younger man and death not so real.
Because John was never any good at waiting.