KENNEDY, jude

[JUDE KENNEDY]

JUDE ELLIOT KENNEDY

I'VE JUST SEEN A FACE

character name: Jude Elliot Kennedy
nicknames: Just “Jude” is fine, thanks.
age: Twenty.
gender: Male.
sexuality: Hetero.
pb: Chace Crawford

THE LONG WINDING ROAD

occupation: Starving artist; no muse, no paycheck.
residence: The Motel 6, Room 614. Knock first.
been in vegas for how long and why: Jude has been in Las Vegas for a little under a month. The whole reason he intended to move anywhere away from San Francisco was because he felt a need to prove himself. He broke up with his rich (but nurturing) girlfriend of five months. Jude dropped his job as gallery whore in the Haight, leaving the place of artistic purgatory with a colorful departing image concerning his middle finger. And he even moved out of his parents’ guest room. For what? To make it on his own, without strings and girlfriends. Without mom or dad buying groceries. The only place his measly savings account could get him was Las Vegas. Jude figured it was fate. Now, he’s not so sure. He doesn’t exactly find it to be conducive to anything but a developing alcohol problem and awkward Walks of Shame. But he’s an optimist and if all else fails, he’s really good at sex. Callboys make a lot of money in this city, right?

FULL OF EXCITING STORIES

likes:

• hot moms
  
• MGMT
  
• sleeping in
  
• Damien Hearst
  
• café americana
  
• Santogold
  
• counting clouds
  
• NYLON magazine
  
• blues songs
  
• Where the Wild Things Are
  
• underground poets
  
• The Rolling Stones
  

dislikes:

• gossip
  
• Eminem
  
• hot weather
  
• cigar smoke
  
• hearing “no”
  
• gallery owners
  
• his current residence
  
• questionable lays
  
• hair in his eyes
  
• Ed Hardy
  
• anything on the radio
  

personality:

• forthcoming
  
• naïve
  
• impetuous
  
• attentive
  
• voracious
  
• thoughtful
  
• forgiving
  
• easygoing
  
• dry
  

Naïve is…thinking that a change of location would result in instant artistic enlightenment. Jude figures Las Vegas was some kind of sign from God. A gesture from the hand of Fate. What he didn’t realize or stop to think of was that, maybe, Fate doesn’t like him. Maybe God doesn’t either. Las Vegas could very well be the death of his career for all he knows. But knowing is half of a battle that Jude has yet to contemplate. He has a childlike quality of naivety and optimism swirling about him. OJ is innocent. God loves most of us. Communism will eventually disappear…etc. It’s a trait that causes more complications than anything else. He’s had a few unlucky backhands and sucker punches but for the most part, he’s just as uncomplicated by the world as when he first entered it.

Attentive is…Jude having the uncanny talent of remembering every little detail, including the color of the dress his prom date wore and how she had a sprinkling of freckles along her collar bone. He’s in the world 100%. He’s the sort of person that makes you feel like you’re the only human on the entire planet worth listening to. Its this attitude of consideration that earns him the most notice. He’s not waiting for his turn to speak as soon as your mouth opens; he’s memorizing every word because chances are that something you’re saying will be useful later. Or so he likes to think. Jude will be the one with the chicken soup and the romantic comedies. He’s the one you call late at night because you can’t sleep and…there usually isn’t a need to explain further. He understands.

Dry is…sitting on a park bench and politely pointing out that eventually all things come to an end. But in Jude’s world, it’s a happy end. However, it’s an end nonetheless. And really, he just wanted to point that out. He’s a happy person but it never hurts to temper the (occasionally) irritating buoyancy with a little dark humor. Jude enjoys observing the small ironies of everyday life and occasionally scribbles them down to recall later when in need of a laugh. There are times that his ability to chuckle at misfortune serves as more of a hindrance than anything but usually he’s the subject of his own laughter, so he figures it evens out.

Easygoing is…spilling coffee on his laptop, getting kicked out of an interview and dropping his cell phone in water while maintaining a smile because, well, he’s alive. That’s really all he asks for: surviving from one day to the next. He doesn’t like to stress out and he’s not fond of having people stress him out. Jude knows that there’s a time and a place for that and usually those two never coincide with him. That’s just how he likes to exist and there’s no saying otherwise. Flipping out and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder never got anyone anywhere other than upset and two steps behind.

Voracious is…wanting and not stopping until the want goes away. It could be the only child thing. It could be the youth thing. Or maybe Jude just has an insatiable desire to be entirely satisfied all of the time. He isn’t afraid of letting go. Jude has this feeling of what he’s entitled to and that’s always been everything. The world and every shiny bauble in it, be it love or fame, money or power. He’s just got this entitlement complex that may or may not serve him in the end. It’s a tough call with all things considered. That is, he goes through girlfriends so often that he names each one “Baby” in his contacts list, just to be on the safe side. Which isn’t to say he’s a jerk about the whole moving on process. Like art, love must transcend any obstacles, including Jude’s flighty muse.

fears:

Aspiring is just another word for…failure. Art is the only thing in the world that Jude has stuck with for longer than a year. If he doesn’t make a name for himself in Las Vegas, he’s going to have to move back home. Fast. Or he’s gonna be working the corner for rent money. Double entendres aside, Jude has been confronted with the harsh reality that a foreign location and no friends with money equates to no gallery openings and no money.

Below poverty can’t be a living standard…for Jude. He’s barely surviving. His laundry money and grocery money come out of the same pool of money. Occasionally he goes on dates…and sacrifices taxi money for the week. His part-time jobs aren’t pulling in much and the options for surviving are dwindling as the days trickle by.

Death by invisibility…can very well be in the future if he doesn’t persuade an owner to put up one of his pieces. Jude is willing to sacrifice all creative license just for a meal ticket. Just for someone to know his name other than because of the Beatles songs that they like to play in Motel 6 lobby.

Because I’m just a face to fuck…and that means all of the girls he meets in Las Vegas are just interested in a lay. That’s all fine for most days but Jude has the rare occasion where he’d like to actually hold a conversation that extends passed bra straps and peeling off skintight jeans. He secretly worries that his inability to say “no” to a pretty face will mean he will not only end up alone but with some kind of permanent health issue. The kind that keep giving. The kind that his sex ed teacher warned about.

secrets:

ONE: Jude hates being an only child. When he was much, much younger, he hid his mother’s birth control in hopes that there’d be a happy accident. But there never was.

TWO: There was a brief period in high school that he struggled with grades. Jude solved that; he slept with his chemistry teacher. The arrangement was strictly “Don’t Tell and You Shall Receive.” He graduated with 3.8 GPA thanks to her.

goals:

UN: Break into local art scene; He’s going to do it. He’ll just continue to submit every photo he’s developed, every sketch he’s fleshed out and every painting he’s stayed up all night working on. Come hell, high water or histrionics…Jude is going to become a local celebrity if it kills him. Granted, he’s certainly hoping it doesn’t but if it does, then that can serve as some kind of after-death springboard for immortality in the art world. That’s usually how it happens anyway.

DEUX: Have a gallery buy a series; This pretty much is for financial reasons really. When a gallery buys a series, it means he’s bankable. It means people have a demand for his supply. Jude wants to be able to eat three meals a day and not have coffee be one of them. So this is what it comes down to, Jude versus the almighty dollar.

TROIS: Maybe meet someone decent; Being single forever isn’t Jude’s idea of a good time. But neither is the clinic on the corner that administers free STD screenings. He’s trying to find time to date in between his two jobs and work. So far, no luck. But that, he figures, will come along eventually. On a long enough timeline, everybody finds somebody…at least, for a little while.

WHEN I GET HOME

family:

• Gerald Phillipe Kennedy, father, 59.
  
• Adele Cecile Theron-Kennedy, mother, 45.
  
• Grandma Beverly Kennedy, 77.
  
• Grandma Rachel and Grandpa Donovan Theron, 67 and 66.
  

history:

BIRTH AND SOMETHING ELSE

Jude Elliot Kennedy was born to Adele and Gerald Kennedy on June 17th, 1988 in the Lincoln Memorial Hospital in Palm Springs, California. He weighed an impressive 7lbs 5oz and was the only child to ever be had by the couple. Though his weight was healthy, his birth was a difficult one and as a result, his mother was no longer able to conceive after. This was never revealed to him and Jude grew up entirely alone, save for his pet hamster, Goliath. He has since held a deep-seated resentment for his only child status and thinks it was more of a conscious choice rather than sad conclusion.

Adele and Gerald met in the very same hospital that Jude was to be born in two years later. She was visiting her ailing aunt at the time. Gerald had just transferred to the pediatric ward. They both happened to crave a midnight sugar rush and this was how they met: fighting with the vending machine in the cafeteria. There was much dropping of quarters and shy giggling, a few half-hearted shoves at the broken buttons and a spark.

CHILDHOOD NIGHTMARE

Children don’t anticipate being spoiled. It’s not an idea sprung from the womb. No, it’s taught. And Jude, like millions of other children around the world, was one that was taught very well what it was to be catered to. Being the only son didn’t help things along either. Whatever he willed, it was. Whatever he wanted was purchased. Hardly sound parenting but new parents can’t be expected to do much else but just the opposite of that.

He wasn’t exactly born into the lap of luxury. But he didn’t know that and his parents never thought to remind him of the fact. He was the Golden Child and as such, this meant highway robbery and no discipline. It wasn’t until Jude was sent home repeatedly from first grade for “enthusiastic biting” that his parents finally agreed a bit of disciplinary action was in order. Granted, much of his ways had already been firmly set in place but they did manage to get a small hold on Jude’s more atrocious habits.

So much so that he hasn’t been anyone since first grade, not even when they ask nicely.

TEENAGE PICASSO

High school was both awkward and glorious. A time of great pride and a time of great ignominy. Jude struggled in vain to find a place where he fit completely. But like a white chess piece on a black square, he stuck out wherever he went. High school became a chore. His friends were consequences of the social institution. His grades and classes? Punishment. Punishment that he needed to constantly stand against or be swallowed by. Swallowing even took on a whole new meaning when he found his Chemistry grade to be dismal at best. Mrs. Halt showed Jude that sex doesn’t necessarily sell but it definitely can get you an “A” on the midterm.

The only place that he truly excelled was art. He could pass everything else without much effort or interest. However, it was art class that challenge him. It was his art teacher that made a public display of his ego and tore it down at will. Contrary to prior whims, Jude didn’t throw a tantrum.

He threw paint, Jackson Pollock-style.

PAINT IT BLACK

Leaving high school was a relief for Jude. No more predatory teachers, no more constant grade-slaving. He was semi-free to do as he wanted…as long as some kind of education was involved. So, he left for San Francisco. With his parents. A bit of a setback so far as independence went but he tolerated it. He couldn’t exactly support himself as a student and unknown artist. And for a while, he was sure he’d gotten to the point the needed to be. Jude had a receptionist’s position at a prominent gallery on Haight and Ashbury. He was about to be featured, or so he’d been told. His girlfriend had purchased an apartment to accommodate them both. Mom and Dad had finally agreed he was responsible enough to manage his own money.

Everything was coming together like a Monet from a distance. Jude liked to think that was the outcome. But instead, he discovered his girlfriend had paid the gallery owner to consider featuring him. His parents were talking about divorce and as a result, they would no longer be able to support him with that in the works. And his art? Well, rejected from every other venue he’d submitted to.

Jude did what any rational human would do: emptied his bank account and got on the nearest bus.

FROM POINT A TO POINT Z

The bus could only take him as far as Las Vegas because the funds were severely lacking. And this is where he currently stands in all of his meal-missing, art-serving, Motel 6-living glory.

Or something like that.

pets: Siddhartha; the gray alley cat. Jude feeds him from time to time, even though he can barely feed himself.

FROM US TO YOU

ooc name: phresh?
age: ancient.
years roleplaying: too many.
other characters: none yet.
roleplay sample: here's your chance to show us what you've got to offer. a lot of your application is based on how well you write, and if your style will bode well at VIVA LAS VEGAS! you've got to shine; this will either make or break your application! you may use a previously written post for another site if you wish.

Julian had shed his old skin like, well, a snake. It had been a longer process than the aforementioned reptile’s but nonetheless, it had happened over the course of the last three years. Maybe four. He had sought to make his own way in the world and he couldn’t do that being teenage Julian Gray. That aspect of himself had been self-centered, moody, withdrawn…essentially, the epitome of teenage in a boy’s body. With more wealth than he knew what to do with, disowned Julian had very few options to make his life worth living. So he’d had to grow out of himself, build something new from the delusions and grandeur that he’d been heavily laying on for the majority of his life.

What he’d come up with, shiny new skin and all, was surprising. Disconcerting. He looked at himself in the mirror some mornings and wondered in plain awe at the person he’d become. He didn’t spend small fortunes on his wardrobe. He couldn’t tell you what really was ‘in’ this season. He didn’t have a slew of one night stands to gossip over. None of those things held any merit to him. In fact, everything he’d ever enjoyed held very little merit at all, even in retrospect. Except, as these things happen, there was one facet, one small part of him that he’d liked most.

He’d lost that part, of course. That was the due manner of the world, to lose all that you’d inherited that made you worth having around at all. Julian hadn’t inherited that which he missed most, surprisingly. He’d sort of…had a collision with it. It being himself in love or love having him caught up in it’s good graces. Either or, really, it made no difference to him as they were one in the same.  Who he had been in love with was just as surprising as the notion itself. Now that he was here and that part of him was in the long ago, Julian was trying to reconcile it all.

Almost dying does that to you, you know. It makes you starkly aware of all that you had the good fortune to experience, no matter how minute the duration of it may have been.  He was starkly aware now, in the future he’d never imagined for himself, that heartbeats and hand holding and whispered oaths were one of a kind. A rarity, so to speak. Julian didn’t dwell…too much. But he did on occasion recall his fondest memories and admire that which had been his life. The future had a tendency to make him anxious but the past soothed him more than anything. Not because it was over and done with but because it had happened, he’d survived it and what’s more…the greatest of all things had occurred to him.

Hand clapping to his flyaway hair, Julian felt his cheeks flush. All of his fluttery memories dissipated with one swift verbal blow. Riley had a knack for doing that, smashing his pretty reveries into a million glittery bits and then spitting on them. Busying himself with crossing his arms over his chest, Julian spun back towards the bar, facing the rows and rows of shining glass bottles. He wanted to break something, that urge crossed him for one wild instant. But he got a hold of himself. He always did. Correction: he always had to. Otherwise, the Armageddon was coming, which meant plainly that he and Riley had a knack for public humiliation and 'accidents.' (At least, they called them 'accidents' but a black eye can only be disguised as such before it becomes slightly suspicious.) In any case, he had to bite his tongue, turn the cheek. His usual routine of diplomacy or so he called it. It certainly didn't earn him brownie points of any kind but survival was better than...well, a brawl in the bar like a pair of country bumpkins with no decorum to speak of.

“Thanks, I’ve always strived to appear mentally retarded. I feel it gives me character. But enough of your compliments, how has life been fucking you lately? Rather hard, by the sounds of your obnoxious attitude," Julian paused thoughtfully, blue eyes wide with apparent pensiveness, "But then you always sound that way, so I'm going to guess it's just been business as usual?"

[/blockquote]

[TESS!]

accepted!


Congratulations! Welcome to Viva Las Vegas.
We are proud to have you as your newest
member! Now before you start posting, there
are just a few things you have to take care of.

Claims are listed under ` paper work so make sure you've
claimed your PB and taken care of anything else
you must reserve. Also, take a look at the * how to guide
if you're struggling to get started, and post a plotpage
in the ` relationships board.

If you have any questions, feel free to PM an admin.
Again, welcome to the site, and we hope you enjoy!

great app by the way. chace is a hottie.