Story Test - Time

Here's a bit of writing I did today. Not quite a story, but it will hopefully be a decent read nonetheless.


James opened the steel door and led the group into the room beyond. Inside, on top of a table, sat a large machine with various cords and parts.

“Before we begin, an explanation is in order,” James began. “We perceive time as constant, always moving ahead. But that’s wrong.”

“So I’m not aging right now?” said Silvia, with a smirk.

“You are,” James replied, “but at the same time, you’re already dead.”

Standing next to Silvia, Gulliver chuckled. Silvia shot him a look, an eyebrow raised.

“For us, time is moving,” James continued, “but overall, time is a thing that exists, as a whole. From beginning to end, it’s all there already.”

“There was a beginning to time?” asked Marsha.

“And there’s an end?” chimed Scott.

James smiled and said, “Things beyond human understanding. I can’t explain what existed before time or what exists after, and even if I could, none of you would understand it.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Gulliver said under his breath.

James just widened his smile at the comment. “The entirety of time exists, all at once. We are living in one moment, and it’s moving to use, but in actuality, it’s already happened. We’re dead and gone, as are the multitude of generations after us. Until the end of time.”

Seeing the perplexed expressions of the group, James shook his head. “All that doesn’t matter much though. What matters is that the future exists already, just like the past does. What I am saying is that if we can look at the past, and we can, then we can also look at the future.”

“Won’t what we see just be a possibility though?” asked Scott.

“No, because like I said, all of time already exists.”

“What about free will?” asked Marsha. “If the future’s already set in stone, how can we decide anything for ourselves?”

“You can still make your own decisions,” said James. “It’s just that the decisions you make will always end up being . . . the decisions you make.” He let out a small laugh.

“So we can look at the future, but we can’t change anything?” Gulliver crossed his arms as he spoke. “How does that work?”

Silvia turned to him. “Maybe the future we see will be one where we’ve already seen the future.”

  

Scott let out a loud sigh. “That’s a head-scratcher.”

“I guess that’s the point,” Marsha said.

“Well, part of the point.” James turned around to the machine on the table. “This device should allow us to see the future, or at least the most powerful parts of it. I was able to design it thanks to the machine we found a while ago.”

“The one that let us see the past,” Silvia said.

“That was a load of fun, wasn’t it?” Gulliver said with a hint of derision.

“We got to see some very interesting things,” said Marsha.

“And some very crappy things,” added Scott.

“Whatever we see is in the pursuit of knowledge,” James said, his voice a bit higher than normal to silence the group. “This will be different from looking into the past. We’ll be able to look ahead a hundred years, maybe a thousand, see what the human race is like, things we’ll never get to see during our own time.”

“Or we could see another murder,” said Gulliver.

“Or worse,” said Silvia with a shiver.

“We’ll see events in the area, whatever happened in this spot, one year from now or a hundred, that involved incredibly strong emotions by the participants,” Marsha said. “Is that right?”

“That’s the way it should go,” replied James.

“So we could see anything,” Marsha continued. “A crime, a war, a visit from aliens.”

Gulliver stifled a laugh.

Silvia eyed him again. “In a thousand years, we could have found life on other planets.”

“Or even be part of a group of alien races,” added Scott, “dedicated to keeping the peace in the universe. Some sort of federation, maybe?”

“Or it could be much, much worse.” James slowly looked at each of the four faces before him as he spoke. “With this machine, we could wind up seeing an alien invasion that destroys the human race as we know it. We could see the end of humanity.”

The group silently stood, thinking about the possibilities.

Gulliver broke the silence. “Or we could see nothing. For all we know, the world ends tonight.” He smiled.

Between Love and Hate

Most people either love their parents or hate them. If it's the former, even if their parents drive them mad or do insane things, in the end, they still love their parents and want to always keep them in their lives. If it's the latter, even if their parents try to be nice and compassionate, they know their parents won't really change and will always let them down.

I'm stuck in between.

My parents take care of me. They've always taken care of me. They try hard to make sure I get to work every night, to make sure I have something to eat every day, that I have the Internet to entertain and preoccupy myself. They want me to be happy, and they try to make me happy.

My parents also lie to me, mislead me, and make such a mess of their own lives that I get dragged down with them. They can't make themselves happy, they don't even understand what happiness is or how to get it, and they don't have any idea what to do to make me happy, or what they need to allow or force me to do in order for me to be happy.

Let's start with something very simple: If they died, I wouldn't know what to do. Sure, most people wouldn't know what to do because it'd be a quagmire, with a ton of decisions to be made. But I'm not talking about not knowing how to go about having them cremated or buried or what to do with the house. Quite simply, I wouldn't be able to survive without them, not at this moment. My brother could, because he's lived on his own before, he has friends on whom he can depend. But I'm not really close to anybody (in the state, at least - there is one person in the state, but I'm not close to her family, and I couldn't impose on them), and I have no idea where I would go. But it goes beyond where I'd live - I wouldn't even know how to live.

I don't know how to drive. I don't have the first clue about driving. Furthermore, I'm so bad with directions, and have never been forced to learn where things are, that I couldn't even get to my job without help from a GPS or someone that knows the way. Hell, I couldn't get anywhere, really, because I don't know where anything is. Then there's the fact that I simply don't know how to do simple things like paying a bill, or getting service set up in my name, or how to set up a bank account. I don't know how to do anything! I couldn't live on my own right now because I wouldn't know how to do anything! I could take care of myself, sure. I know how to do laundry, I know how to cook the stuff that I eat, I know to bathe regularly, etc. But that's simple. What I have no clue about is, how do I pay my electric bill? How do I pay my water bill? How do I set up cable? If I live in a place with a landlord, do I just complain to the landlord every time something breaks? If I don't have a landlord and am buying a house or trailer or whatever, where do I send the money every month, and what happens in my water messes up? Do I just call a plumber? To put it succinctly, I don't know how to live on my own. My parents have not prepared me for life on my own at all.

That's scary. That is scary as all hell. The world already terrifies me; the thought of having to face it alone, without knowing the simple rules to life, elicits a feeling I cannot put into words.

So, I'm mad at my parents for not preparing me for life on my own. But I'm also glad that I didn't have to move out at eighteen and figure it all out by myself. I'm glad that I was taken care of. Where do I end up? How do I balance being appreciative for all my parents have done for me, providing me with food and shelter for years without me bringing in a dime, and being mad at them for not making me learn how to live on my own? How can I acknowledge that I owe them for raising me and not treating me like shit, yet also acknowledge that they're the primary reason I haven't accomplished anything? How can I be glad that they didn't mess me up by getting into fist fights with one another or beating me but be angry that they did mess me up by owning a hundred cats, wasting all our money, having gigantic fights, doing drugs and getting arrested, and having episodes where they were so suicidal or angry that I almost couldn't stand to exist in the same world as them?

It's hard to keep loving them when they, either individually or together, do or say things that make me despise them and see how little has changed over the years. But it's hard to hate them when they bust their asses to keep us alive and fed. It's hard. It's just hard.

Letter to My Parents (Safe Version)

My parents recently responded unfavorably to my plan to move to a different state next year so I can be with my girlfriend. I was quite upset by it. My girlfriend suggested that I write down my thoughts, the things I wish I could, or one day might, say to them. This is the version I would probably tell them, leaving out certain aspects of the truth so as to avoid what could be a very bitter scene. *Takes a deep breath* Here goes. (Note: Names are fake.)

You guys have no idea, but I'm in  love with Kat. That may not make sense to you, but really, I've been in love with her for years. The moment we meant, there was an attraction. There's a reason we were best friends, always talking to each other, for hours at a time. There's a reason I always spent as much time as possible with her. I loved her, even if I couldn't admit it to myself at the time. And she loved me.

She was engaged to Dumbass. But that didn't make my feelings go away, nor did it make her feelings go away. Before she met me, she had promised to marry him. I'm not going to say whether that was right or wrong - that's her life, she can explain it herself. Just that, despite her being engaged to him, there was still a bond between us, the desire for one another's company, the need to be accepted by the other. We did date, for a short while, and it didn't work out for the same reason we often didn't talk for periods, because I wasn't ready to be that close to another person. Shortly before we stopped talking for nearly five years, I realized that I did love her. Miscommunication on both our parts led to our horrific fight. I walked away because, after discovering that I loved her, I was scared. I was afraid of being with her because I was sure that eventually, it would fall apart. I've had commitment issues since I was a teenager, always shoving people away. That was another example of that, the main example, really.

Over the past four years, she and I have separately reflected on what we were when we knew each other. When we started talking again, it confirmed to both of us that our feelings hadn't vanished. We were still in love with each other. This time, however, a 45-minute drive wouldn't let me see her. But in exchange for that, we were both far more mature and knowledgeable about ourselves than we were before. We're not afraid of loving one another.

Why do I love her? Because she gets me. No one else ever has, not the way she does. She tolerates me, deals with my depressive episodes and my negativity, as well as my manic sprees and bold declarations. I feel emotions very strongly, and she understands that and is okay with it. She accepts my weaknesses and wants to help me. She doesn't condemn me. She doesn't ignore me. She lets me be myself. I'm not afraid to say what I think about her. And if all that doesn't sound special, think about this: All of those things are extraordinary, because I don't get any of them from other people. I'm always the person I have to be around whoever I'm around. When I'm around Dad, I have to be a certain person. When I'm around Mom, I have to be a certain person. When I'm around both of them, I have to be a third person, separate from the other two. I can't say what I want. It's like putting on a different suit to deal with each person and each combination of people. I don't have to put on airs around her. I can be my weepy, girly self, my dominant, forceful self, my geeky, nerdy self, I can be who I am! And I can't even imagine anyone else letting me do that.

I'm not sure that I'll like living with her family. And yes, she has children. But why not take a chance and maybe be happy? Because I'm certainly not happy here. It can be enjoyable, but I have no one to love, no one to take care of me when I need it, no one to even talk to! All my friends are a joke, I'm not building towards anything, and I am getting nowhere at all. No goals, no ambition, nothing. And even if I do develop an ambition, there's no way I'll be able to make it come true. You guys do your best, but you simply know nothing about progressing in this world. I never went into a four-year school mostly because it was too much hassle. It's not because the homework would have been too hard or it would have cost too much money. Plain and simple, we didn't follow through because we didn't understand all the forms and protocols and got scared. And we've talked about me trying to get into a trade place, learn something useful and get a good job. What's happened with that? Absolutely nothing. Because all this family does is talk. We have no conviction, no confidence, no desire to take a chance. We'd rather go down on a slowly sinking ship than jump in the water and try to swim for safety. That's why it took us years to move out of the shithole we used to live in, despite it being obvious that the dump was falling apart, the landlord was never going to fix anything, and the bills were going to keep being so expensive that we could barely pay them. It's not because moving costs a lot of money; that factored, but it was mostly because the two of you didn't want to rock the boat or try. Same with every other problem we've ever had. As soon as we moved into this place, I pointed out that one of the showers was effectively useless. Has anything happened? Have you talked to the landlord about how the shower fixtures are crappy and need to be changed? Nope. We just use the shower as a storing place for a laundry basket. And it'll probably still be like that six months from now. Probably longer.

So you'll have to excuse me for wanting to get away from this apathetic atmosphere. Kat will help me create my own life, in a new city where I can be whoever I want, where I don't have to worry about someone who knows my brother finding out some secret of mine and relaying it to him, who then relays it to you. I won't have to worry about running into old dicks from high school who think they know a single thing about me. I won't have to be "Shaggy." I'll be my own goddamned person, who handles his own money, plans his own future, and does things for himself. Frankly, I'm tired of being dragged down by this family. I need strong people to support me, or else I'll keep being weak my entire life. And doing drugs, getting arrested, not keeping any sort of financial record, blowing money, never saving a dime, never improving yourself the least bit - that's the definition of weak. And I am sick and tired of it.

I want to live a good life, with a woman I love, without constant, idiotic fights that revolve around neither person listening to the other. I want to help raise happy children in a happy home. I want to not be poor my entire life. I don't want to be working class forever. Will living with Kat and her family be paradise? Certainly not. But it can't be worse than what I've lived in my entire life. I'm tired of the hate, the anger, the sheer lack of motivation. I want better. I deserve better. If you can't understand that, if you want me to go on living this tepid life, where nothing changes at all, then you really don't care about me. I'm a 25-year-old that doesn't know how to drive! Because you didn't teach me. I got my first job five months ago! Because you never made me get a job or really helped me look for one. I graduated a community college summa cum laude, with terrific grades, but never continued my education. Because it was too hard to figure out the process. I let you do all these things, I didn't try hard enough to make them happen, I will admit that, but you're my parents! It was your job to make me do things, to prepare me for the world! When I wanted to learn how to drive, neither of you tried hard to teach me. When I said that I wanted a job, wanted something to kill all the time I had, nobody took me to places or told me to call back relentlessly, that that's how you get a fucking job!. When I wanted to go back to school, all I got were long discussions about how easy it would be and empty promises that we'd look into it at some point.

I'm disgusted at the state my life is in right now. Is it so crazy that I want a change?

(Yeah . . . lot of anger there. Might want to hold off talking to my parents about this for a long, long time.)

Overload

I went to an anime convention this past Saturday. It was very fun. I walked around with some people I trust (or come close to trusting), I never had to do anything that made me uncomfortable (though at night we did walk around a city, and I didn't care for that at all), and I got to see a lot of interesting and exciting things. (God, the cute girls and amazing outfits make it all worth it.)

When I got home Sunday morning, I was exhausted. I slept a ton. I was also exhausted and slept a ton the day after. It is now Tuesday, and I am still tired.

Hurray for Asperger's!

This is a common thing for people with Asperger's. We go out and do something, and then we crash and feel like we've run a marathon. It doesn't matter if it was something as simple as going to the store, it can still wear us out.

I'm not an expert on autism. I have it, and that's pretty much all. So excuse me if I am completely wrong about things, but I believe that this break-down after venturing into the world (or just hanging out with friends) comes from sensory overload. We see a lot, we think a lot, and we have trouble processing it all. We may enjoy ourselves at the time, but after we get away from the excitement, once we are able to get back into our own worlds, our brains fry. It's not a conscious thing, it just happens. And though it doesn't happen all the time, there really isn't any way to prevent it.

I can only speak from personal experience, but to me going out and doing something is radically different from being relaxed at home, and there is a simple symbol that separates the two - shoes. When I'm at home, I never wear shoes. Why bother, right? I'm just walking around the house. But if I need to leave the house, I have to put on shoes. Over the years, it's become ingrained in me that putting on shoes means putting aside the relaxed version of myself, who is unseen by everyone and isn't judged by anyone, and becoming a more responsible person, who will buckle down and focus on getting things done. Though it's not as bad now as it used to be, an easy way to tell if I'm comfortable around you is whether I always keep my shoes on around you or if I can take them off without coercion. Because once my shoes are off, I can be a bit of a slob. I'm more likely to say what I'm thinking and not worry about how you might interpret it. I can be a real asshole. But honestly, everybody can (and is). The only difference with me is that I hide it most of the time. Once I allow myself to relax, I can be my complete, true self, and that can come as a shock to people that think I am incapable of being, well, human.

So, when I put on my shoes, I become somewhat like a different person. I'm not really that different, but I do think. To put it simply, when my shoes are on, I'm working. I am exerting effort. Imagine having to constantly work, never getting a real break. Even if it's a small amount of work, it literally never lets up until I take my shoes off and get comfortable. It's like holding your hand up. It's not hard to do, but after you've had it up for a minute or two, it really starts to hurt. A fun exercise - try holding your hand up for thirty minutes. It doesn't have to be all the way up, just up to your eye or thereabouts. See if you can keep it there for half an hour. Most people won't be able to, and those that can won't be able to do so without feeling quite a bit of pain. That's what socializing is like for people with Asperger's, or at least people like me. It's constant effort, without any breaks. We're lucky if we can catch our breath by going to the bathroom and just sighing in relief that no one's eyes are on us, but even that may not be an option if there is anybody else in the bathroom (public restroom, that is; hopefully there wouldn't be anybody else in a home bathroom, eek). It's hard, and it's understandable why most of us don't like to leave the house or be around large groups of people. It doesn't mean that we're anti-social or don't like other people or doing fun things. It just means that often, what we'll get out of it is not worth the work we'll have to put into it, even if it would be a very fun and rewarding experience. And believe it or not, that says more about what we have to deal with than the quality of the event.

The TV Changes, the Sound Remains but the Picture is Gone

I just had a nightmare. Well, the closest thing to a nightmare I get.

In it, my family had moved into a new house, which is something that actually happened fairly recently. (In the dream, as in real life, there was a basement which my brother had taken as his room and an empty in-ground pool near the house.) Weird stuff was happening all over the place.

The back door kept opening. At one point, I saw that it was open, but there was a screen door still closed. It was raining at the time, and I told my parents that if the screen door hadn't been closed, the kitchen floor would be soaked.

My mother's mental state was abysmal. During the time it was raining, I went from one room to another to get a bag of chips for my father, and due to some misunderstanding, I shouted something at him. I was a little angry, but I mostly shouted because the rain was loud and making it hard to hear. That, for whatever reason, tore my mother up, and she started sobbing and acting like she was having a mental breakdown. Nothing I did to console her did any good.

Space didn't seem right in the house. It was like the dimensions didn't add up correctly. There was a woman there (not sure who she was, but it was as if she was the realty woman, though we were already moved into the house and settled), and I asked her to show me the layout of the house, because I didn't quite understand how everything fit. We started at the corner of the left side of the house and went from the living room (which had a very small bathroom, with only a small toilet, nearly hidden to the side; I had never seen it before, in fact) through the kitchen. Instead of turning and going into the next room, she kept going straight and went out the back door. I heard some loud noise but couldn't figure out what it was. Then I saw that she had driven her car into the empty pool, which was beside where we had walked through the house, and it was as if she was trying to get into a space beneath the pool, like that was the next part of the house and she had to show it to me.

The worst thing was how the TV messed up. This happened later in the dream, after I had declared that the house was haunted, specifically the basement. We gathered in front of it, and it scrambled so that you couldn't make out anything. We had some friends over to show it to them, and it messed up again, but this time the picture, in addition to messing up, changed to a view of us, like there was a camera in the TV that was recording us. I think it would also show scenes from the lives of our friends who were visiting, as if they were recorded on a tape we were playing. What really made it disturbing is that it seemed like the TV would mess up when we were talking about the house being haunted.

For the longest time, excluding when I was a kid and was easily scared at everything, I've said that I wanted to be scared by movies and books and stories. I love creepy atmospheres. I've stated my intention to live in a haunted house because one, the price would be incredibly low (because that's how it always works, right? gigantic house for dirt cheap means it's haunted), and two, I'd see it as a sort of challenge. After all, how could a ghost actually harm me?

Bravado. All of it. In reality, I'm still the scared little boy I was when I had to close my eyes whenever the scene in Little Monsters with the boy in the suit came on near the end of the movie. There is a world of difference between me now and me back then, but most of it comes from the fact that very little scares me. Look at haunted house movies and books - they're all either over-the-top or focused on the characters or history of the house, and neither one of those does anything for me. Over-the-top things like poltergeist activity and visible apparitions that practically sing and dance aren't believable. They're not subtle, and they keep you from putting yourself into the role of the characters. Everyone can say, "I've heard odd sounds at night. What if my house is haunted?" No one could say, "Stuff flies around my house, this is just like my life!" Similarly with stories focused on the personalities of the characters involved or the history of a house being haunted. Knowing that the head of a household is a former alcoholic that still struggles with booze can help you relate to the character, but it can keep you from placing yourself into the story and imaging that the haunting is happening to you. If you know that the lights turn on in a certain room at a certain time because that's when a previous owner fed her beloved cat, it takes the mystery out of it, and it's not scary.

But when something comes along that does genuinely frighten me, I hate it. And I have to wonder, how could anybody like being scared? I love the horror genre, but not because it scares me. I like it because it's interesting and it can make my blood pump. The Puppet Master series is a personal favorite because many of the dolls scare the hell out of me. In particular, the guy with the drill on his head can keep me up at night, due as much to his blank expression as the deadly instrument on top of his head. But I know that no doll is going to start running around and trying to kill me. So, it scares me, but really, it makes my heart race. The bad kind of scary, and what really fits the term "scare," is when something makes your heart stop, when you're frozen with fear. If you can scream, you're not really scared. Your instincts may be activated, something may surprise you, but you're not filled with dread and disbelief and the absolute knowledge that things are not right.

The best way to scare me is to make me feel as though I am powerless. That's why haunted house stories and ghost stories (the rare times that they are done well) frighten me so. How do you make a door stop opening when there is no cause? How do you keep a room from being cold all the time? How do you fight a ghost? How do you control something that is beyond the realm of physics as we know it? Ghosts may have rules, and indeed, if they do exist, they are governed by some set of rules, but when we have no knowledge of such rules and no idea how to make use of them or if we even can, how does that help us? If we know nothing about a situation, how can we analyze it, how can we exert control over it?

Needless to say, I'm talking about more than just ghosts and haunted houses.

Man, I hate bad dreams. I might hate them less if I could actually be bothered to turn them into stories.

Perversions

This is probably going to be the most personal thing I've ever written and will ever write. People are free to hate me or think I'm weird; they are also free to love me and relate to me. It's the reader's decision. I don't believe in any force that judges us. People judge other people, that's the simple way of life. Sometimes they are right, sometimes they are right, but we all have the ability to judge others in any way we choose. No one can take that away.

"Pervert" is a negative term the majority of the time. Simply, it refers to a person that is different, sexually, or who likes to do non-mainstream sexual things. Sometimes these things are harmful, and sometimes they aren't. The word itself doesn't imply either of those, though people usually assume that a perverted person likes harmful things.

A person that likes to look up women's skirts without their permission or knowledge is a pervert. As is a person that likes to be tied up and whipped. As is a person that likes to fantasize about raping someone. As if a person that likes to look at drawn pictures of sex. All such people are perverts, generally speaking, but their interests are different, and the people themselves are probably quite different from one another. But because their sexual fetish isn't mainstream, because it strays from what is supposedly normal, these people may be seen as odd or disgusting by "normal" people.

The fact of the matter is, very few people enjoy only the most general form of sex. Even the couple that always has sex in the missionary position may feel a thrill at the idea of role-playing, pretending that one person is a suspect and the other is a cop, trying to get information. Or a quiet couple living in the suburbs may like to incorporate food, putting things on one's body and letting the other lick or eat it off. Or the nice gentleman down the street may want to put a woman's toes in his mouth and be stepped on by her, and the woman next to him may want to wear a strap-on and fuck a man in the ass. Fetishism isn't something you can discern by looking at a person. Sometimes, some things may be obvious, but you just cannot look at a person and know if they do or do not like to watch porn with maids or incest or peeing or anal sex or any of the many, many fetishes that exist out there. And here's an important note - fetishes exist because people like them. Whether you consider a specific fetish to be good or bad, it is a fact that some people, perhaps a great deal of them, like that fetish and get something from it. I think that scat (involving feces) is incredibly gross, but I don't think that the people who do like it are gross. That is an essential distinction, because often, people cannot help their fetishes. There may be an incident or series of incidents in the past that may explain someone's foot fetish, but it's more likely that it's just random. I have in the past, many times, compared this to liking chocolate ice cream over vanilla, or vice versa. If a person can't explain why one flavor of ice cream is intrinsically better or worse than another, then they also can't explain why one fetish is intrinsically better or worse than another.

Time to reveal some personal details. First off, I am very odd, sexually. I have heard that this is a common thing for people with Asperger's, but I've never talked to any other Aspies about it, so I'm not sure. Thus, I am not going to use it as an explanation for some of the stuff I like. I have Asperger's, and I'm odd when it comes to sex. Those two may be related, but they may not be.

The best way to explain how I am odd is to tell what I like and how or why I like it, or what appeals to me. Before that, let me state that I am, in most aspects of my life, like the ocean, with waves coming and going. I'll be super-interested in one thing for a month or two, and then I'll not care at all anymore and be super-interested in something else. Regarding sexuality, this means that my fetishes cycle. They don't come in any sort of order, but some days, I'll feel like watching or thinking about a certain activity, and a week later, that activity won't do anything for me, or it may even turn me off completely. Yesterday, for example, I searched for handjob videos, because that was what I felt like watching. I didn't try to find anything else. I just zeroed in and watched girls giving handjobs. Now, that has happened before, but the last time it did was months ago. The day before yesterday, I couldn't have stood to watch a handjob video. It would have bored the fuck out of me. (Unintentional pun, totally intended!)

So, what do I like? The biggest thing I like is hentai, or drawn porn, specifically Japanese drawn porn. (And despite what you may think, there is a lot of it.) In fact, there are two worlds for me, real life and hentai. Some days I only want hentai, and other days I only want real life porn. It's a common thing, actually, for hentai fans. Really, I've heard more than a few fans say that they don't even watch real life porn. One of the major benefits of hentai is that, as with any sort of animation, anything can happen. No expensive special effects needed, no shitty costumes or props, and there are some things that simply cannot be done without animation. Internal ejaculation is the first to come to mind. That can be done in live-action, but all you'll see if the cum leaking out afterwards. In hentai, you see the sperm shooting into the woman's body. If that's your thing, hentai is about the only way you're going to be able to see it.

There are a lot of fetishes in hentai. This is a list of tags from my favorite hentai site. There are forty-three tags, and most of them are different fetishes. (Clicking on a tag will take you to a page that explains what the tag is. The page for "chikan" will tell you that it's public molestation, and the page for "trap" will tell you that it's feminine-looking men dressed as women.) Some of the fetishes exist in live-action porn, too, of course. "Futanari," often shorted to "futa," is hermaphroditic women, and there is a market for hermaphrodites in live-action porn, though since they are hard to come by, usually hermaphroditic porn is faked. (There are some Japanese videos where a girl will magically wake up one day with a penis, which she will use to have sex with many other women. This is worth mentioning because the penis is laughably fake. It couldn't fool anyone. It looks obviously fake, and it is even attached to the underwear the woman is wearing, so she never takes off her panties. But hey, it works!)

I love hentai. I love anime, too, so this is no surprise. Hentai has been referred to as "anime after-dark." Specifically, I like futa, tentacle sex (exactly what it sounds like; some monster uses tentacles to have sex with a woman or women), rape (90% of hentai, and live-action Japanese porn, incorporates this, so it's actually hard to like hentai without liking it at least a little), schoolgirls (the uniforms, mostly, probably because of the skirts), traps/yaoi/yuri  (traps are explained above, yaoi is male homosexuality, and yuri is female homosexuality; they're kind of related), and lolicon, often shortened to "loli." That last one takes some explaining, and you may not that it's not on Fakku, linked above.

"Lolicon" refers to an attraction to, or porn involving, minors. (Semantics: "lolican" is underage girls, while "shotacon" is underage boys. I'm not very interested in shota though, and it usually doesn't carry the incredibly negative connotation that loli does, so it's not that important.) It is a reference to age, being under eighteen, but it can also be a reference to physical appearance. Looks can be deceiving, after all, especially with the world of animation, where a girl can look 10 years old but be said to be 30. (Yes, that has happened before, and will happen again, and not even in hentai.) A drawing of a flat-chested girl with a nubile body may be considered loli, or if it is known that she is intended to be at least 18 years old, she may not be. She may instead be "pettanko," or flat-chested. Lolicon can be a very confusing thing, sometimes purposefully so, due to legal concerns.

Izumi Konata, from Lucky Star. 18 years old

I like lolicon because I like the way lolicon girls are drawn. That sounds like a circular argument, but it's a hard thing to explain without mentioning what I like regarding live-action porn. So here I go . . .

Many of the things I like in hentai, I also like in live-action porn. I like lesbians, rape and forced sex, hermaphrodites and transsexuals, cross-dressing men that are effeminate, and young girls. I'm not going to define "young" because it's essentially pointless to do so. One 14-year-old girl will look 12-years-old, while another looks 16-years-old. It's impossible to pinpoint age, and since people age differently, at different rates and with different characteristics emerging at different times, it's meaningless to say that I only like girls older than 12 or younger than 16. It is a pointless distinction.

Body type is what is important. And here's a very important factoid - 18-year-old girls can have the body type I like. Hell, girls in their 20s can. I like slender, petite bodies and innocent-looking or cute faces. I'm not going to lie and say that there isn't a thrill when the girl is probably under eighteen, but that's really not what it's all about. However, it is a complicated issue . . .

I mentioned role-playing way back at the start. One form of role-playing that apparently isn't too uncommon is where the woman pretends to be a young girl, to turn the other person on, or to turn both people on. There are a multitude of porn sites that feature only 18-year-olds and that boast that their stars are "barely legal." In a lot of countries, the legal age for sex is sixteen. What does all this mean? Quite frankly, that's for you to decide. But it's clear to me that biologically speaking, women don't start becoming attractive once they turn eighteen and men don't start being attracted to them only when they're legal.

But that feels like it's neither here nor there. It feels like I am somehow trying to defend myself, and perhaps I am, so I'll add some info to show that I'm not the average person, and I'll try to say things clearly and matter-of-factly.

I can get excited looking at a 14-year-old girl. Being honest, if she's developed, I can get excited looking at a 12-year-old girl. Or, depending on how she's developed, I can feel nothing looking at a 16-year-old. Like I said, the body type is most important. I can imagine doing things to a young girl, and I can have an orgasm while looking at a picture of a young girl or thinking about one.

I don't think that's a crime. I don't really like that about myself, but I didn't make a decision to be that way, and I can't change what turns me on.

I also don't think it means anything. "How the hell can it not mean anything?" you might say.Well, I like to see animated girls getting fucking by tentacles; that doesn't mean I want to see a real octopus fuck a woman. I like to watch rape videos; that certainly does not mean that I like rape or want anyone to get raped. (Seriously, all rapists should die. If I could press a button that would kill all rapists, I'd press it in a heartbeat, and no matter who died as a result, all I'd think is, "They shouldn't have raped anybody.") I like to watch guys with breast implants jerk off and cum in their own faces; that doesn't mean that I want to do anything with another guy, transsexual or no.

Simply put, an idea that turns me on may not be something that I want to do or will ever act upon. I sometimes fantasize about getting fucked in the ass by a guy, but I hate guys and cannot seriously see myself doing anything with another guy. On the other hand, I can see myself getting fucked by a woman with a strap-on. I like the way young girls look, but the idea of doing anything with a real underage girl makes me sick to my stomach, and I hate anyone that molests kids even more than I hate rapists. Part of the reason I hate rapists is because I've known, and still know, people that were raped. I saw what it did to them and can see how it still affects them. I've also known girls that were molested, and though I didn't know them beforehand, I can definitely see that it affected them. It changed them from the get-go, perhaps kept them from ever being well-adjusted people, who could easily laugh and smile and be happy. I wouldn't wish it on anyone, not even the worst person in the world. (Though, in all honestly, I could wish for several people to be disemboweled while still alive, without any problem.)

I am saying all this to reveal more about myself, to let people know that their fetishes don't keep them from being nice, caring individuals. All the nice things said about me, I wonder if the people that said them would have still said them if they knew the stuff that went through my head. I care about people, I don't like seeing others in physical or emotional pain, I would gladly sacrifice myself for the sake of another person (depending on the circumstances, of course, but I'd be more willing to give more of myself than most people), and I've imagined fucking a young girl. I've also imagined what it was like when my first love got raped, as well as the time she had (perhaps) consensual sex with two guys. I've imagined ripping open someone's throat with my bare hands and stabbing someone half a hundred times. I've imagined sticking a knife in my chest and slitting my wrists. I'm not proud of any of those things. I don't like my mind, and I never have. But that's because my mind is something I cannot control. What I am proud of is that I've never beaten up anyone (I'm proud that I've never beaten up someone that didn't deserve; I'd be more proud if I'd kicked a lowlife's ass), that I've never acted on the irrational and absurd thoughts in my head, that I've never plotted something devious and then acted upon it. I'm proud that I've been there for the important people in my life, that people can count on me because I've shown that I am a respectable person, that people like me and love me, even knowing the terrible shit about me, because there is enough good to offset the bad. I don't like who I am, but I like the person I'm trying to be.

Your actions matter most. If you think about murdering people, does that make you a murderer? If you think about robbing a bank, does that make you a thief? Is the person that has their partner pretend to be a little girl a pedophile? Is the person that sleeps with the man that wants to be treated like a baby a sex offender? Are these people bad? Do they deserve to be hated? No. They're just people with thoughts. Their thoughts may be bad, but who doesn't have bad thoughts? How you act is what really counts.

Maybe I'm just trying to defend myself. But I still think that I'm a better person than most of the people I've met in my life. I'd make a better parent than a lot of people, a better teacher, a better lover, a better friend. I may think that I'm a worthless stain, but on the outside, I'm a great person, and I'm always going to strive to be one. I couldn't live any other way.

A Dark Room

I just had this really weird experience.

Looking at the free movies On-Demand on cable, I found Ghost Story, a movie from the 80s that is based on an exceptional novel by Peter Straub. I read the novel last year and loved it; I consider it perhaps the second-best horror novel I have ever read, after Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill. I started watching the movie version of Ghost Story because I have some time to kill this morning, needing to stay awake to run an errand, and I have wanted to see the movie since finding out that it existed.

I remember a lot of the book, though some things are blurry and I of course don't remember names and have trouble with relationships. But I pretty much know how things go, and I know what the deal is with the characters and the "ghosts" in the story. I think I am going to enjoy the movie very much.

After watching ten minutes of the movie, I decided that I needed something different to drink besides a bottle of water. I got up to go to the kitchen and get a glass of tea, hoping it would also help to keep me awake, as well as quench my thirst. The light in my room was off, because it is best to watch horror movies in the dark; also, why waste electricity? It's very early in the morning, the sky still pitch-black, and I may be the only one awake. My brother may be awake, but he lives in the basement. So, all the lights in the house are off.

I opened my door, walked through the hallway towards the dining room, which you must pass to get to the kitchen, and as I near the dining room, I stop. Everything feels different. Everything looks different, though I'm not surprised by any of the objects in the dining room, and the place doesn't look unfamiliar. We've been living in the new house for a couple of weeks, and I'm thoroughly used to it. The feeling I got, the way I want to explain it is, I felt like I was going to wake up.

I don't lucid dream. I never have, and I doubt I ever will. Once, I had a dream where I figured out that I was in a dream, but nothing changed. I shouted, "I don't know what will happen when I wake up!" but it still felt like watching a movie, the way my dreams always feel. My dreams are always strange, in some way, and are not realistic at all. Sometimes, upon waking, the dreams will feel as if they were real, but only in a tiny way. It quickly passes, though a feeling of unease may remain. My memory is very messed up, but I never confuse reality with my dreams, except for the occasional time that I tell someone or am told something by someone in a dream and think it happened in real life.

But I felt like everything was about to melt away, like I was going to blink and suddenly be somewhere else, maybe living a different life as a different person. I have had that feeling before but not in a long time. I'm kind of scared, actually. I would be thrilled if I thought it was because of the movie, but I know it's not.

I can't remember a time when I didn't have issues with my memory. I won't remember things, like everyone, but to a much higher degree. There are large holes in my memory, where I'm not sure what happened, days and weeks and months that passed with nothing to show. I can't remember more than a few of the classes I took in high school or college. I can't even remember most of the time I spent with my high school love and my first real love, who is my current girlfriend. Some of the stuff I do remember is crystal clear, like I have photographs or movies of them in my mind, but such moments are short, and I may not remember anything that happened before or after them.

Part of this is natural; I have always been this way. During my sophomore or junior year of high school, I cannot recall which, I was told by a good friend that I needed to get my memory checked out, because there was so much that I didn't recall. This girl would say, "Do you remember [insert random guy's name]?" And I'd say no. "I dated him a few months ago, he had this feature and did this..." I still wouldn't remember, at all. Which wouldn't be a big deal, except that it would be just a few months in the past, and I had spent hours talking to her on the phone about this guy. When you spend a dozen hours talking about a person, you should get at least a glimmer of recognition when the person's name is mentioned.

Part of this is by design; to escape from pain, I've told myself many times in the past, "That didn't happen, I made it up." Not a smart thing to do, but I figured that if I didn't think any of my experiences were real, or if I was unsure if they were real or not, things would be easier for me. Now, telling yourself that your experiences with a person or people didn't actually happen doesn't actually do anything. At first. But after a year or so, when you've told yourself a handful of times that your memories aren't real, well, things start to get hazy. Your brain remembers stuff that is important, whether it's good or bad. Your brain tends to forget stuff that isn't important. So, when you hear a song you really like, your brain may remember how it sounds, and when you're told some uninteresting fact, your brain may toss it in the garbage five minutes later. When you confuse your brain like I did, you get a situation similar to mine, where you have trouble recalling events and aren't always sure what's what.

I don't know what the point of this is, except that I needed to write about that odd experience. I need to go back to watching the movie. Sometimes I wonder if this is all real. That doesn't come out of any deep thinking. It's not a thought experiment. I sometimes simply feel like this isn't real. And all that is indicative of is some sort of brain damage. Which makes me wonder if I'm awake at all.

Times like this really make me wish I had a transporter out of Star Trek.