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.

What I Remember of Philosophy

In college, I took a couple of philosophy courses. They really broadened my worldview and helped me a lot. I don't remember a great deal about who said what, so you will have to forgive me if I don't give credit where credit is due or get something wrong, but what I'm going to discuss here is important stuff that people need to know.

One of the best explanations of life, that is very easy to imagine and understand, is as a grand dinner, with lots of people eating at a long table. Food is passed around, with one person taking their share and then letting the next person take their share. The different foods are the different things we deal with in life. Using stereotypes, the steak represents the best parts of life, being happy and excited and not having any problems, while the asparagus represents the worst parts of life, being sad and troubled and overcome with problems. When the steak is passed to you, you can only take one portion. Take any more, and the other people will get upset because they won't get their share. Besides, too much steak is bad for you, and you have to eat other stuff, too. So, you have to accept that you can only get a small amount. When the asparagus comes around, you have to take your share of it, even though you don't want to. Everybody has to have some, and you not taking your share will force other people to take more. Besides, it's something that is good for your health, even if it tastes terrible.

This is life. We have to accept that the good times aren't everlasting and that the bad times are eventual. Trying to get around either of those will only result in trouble, either for yourself or others or everybody.

Onto religion - the most important that I've learned about religion from philosophy is that arguing about how one religion is better or worse than another is pointless. Christianity, for example, exists in many different forms, and a lot of smart people have said a lot of smart things about the different forms. Each statement makes sense, but they don't all gel. They can't all be right, but they're all valid, so how do we decide which is right and which is wrong? Is the existence of God obvious because there had to have been a creator-less creator, something that created everything without having to have been created, or does God have to exist because of the beauty of the universe and the rules that guide it? Even if you can proof the existence of God, can you prove that God is intelligent or involved in our lives?

The point is, people have been talking about God and morality and spirituality for centuries, and the philosophers that wrote books on the subjects worked much hard. They didn't just read the Bible, they read things written by other philosophers, they read the stuff that had already been written, centuries before they came along. To succinctly say it, if a person wants to talk about how the Bible says something, he or she had better have read Thomas Aquinas, at the very least. If the person hasn't, then they haven't really studied.

And that's the same with just about every religion. There is a ton of information aside from the holy texts that needs to be read, just like how you need to read about basic algebra before you start messing around with calculus. Or how you need to read essays written about William Faulkner before you write a thesis about him. You have to see what other people have said, the thoughts already communicated into the world. Until you do that, you cannot have a good grasp of the true tenets of the religion, and once you read the philosophy of the religion, you'll see that there are a lot of good points to it. If a Muslim reads Jewish philosophy, and really goes in with an open mind and trying to understand, he'll see that there are good points about it, and same with a Christian reading Islamic philosophy and any combination of any religion. The philosophers are the ones to heed, not the crazy bastards that make signs and scream. Pitching a bitch is easy. Spending countless hours reading and writing, that's hard, and it's the people that do that that deserve attention.

Friendship - the best thing I ever learned is that liking someone's character is what really matters. I tried to be friends with people simply for the sake of being friends, of being able to spend time with another person. But that only causes strife and turmoil. You have to like them as a person, not just for what they offer you. There are a lot of people that piss me off. I can be friendly to them, I can even genuinely enjoy their company, but sometimes, I want to strangle them, and not in a joking kind of way. It's because they do things I don't like or agree with. Now, some things I don't mind; I don't smoke pot, but I don't have a big problem with other people smoking it. But if a person smokes pot around a child, I do have a problem with that, and if I know someone who does that, I won't be happy with them. Hell, I'll be downright angry with them. I may still enjoy their company at times, but I won't consider them a true friend, and I won't do for them the things I would for my true friends. And that is because I learned that true friends are the people you are willing to do anything for; they are people you respect and admire, in some way. They don't have to be perfect, and no one else may respect or admire them, but if you do, that's what matters. If you try to make an unworthy person your true friend, then you're going to end up unhappy, because they will let you down and disappoint you.

For instance, I couldn't ever be friends with someone that does heroin because I couldn't ever respect anyone that does heroin. And it's not solely about the drug; using it shows a disregard for a law that could land them in prison for a long time, a lack of intelligence because you'd have to be stupid to want to keep pumping that shit into your body, and a lack of self-respect because they think they need it, think they are unable to live without it. If I liked everything about a person, but then found out that they were a junkie, I'd be so devastated that I wouldn't ever want to see them again. Just like how I don't want to associate with bigots or assholes, I don't want to associate with people that are throwing themselves under a bus. A friend is a person that makes you feel good about the world. not by doing things for you but by showing you that there are good people in the world. If you don't like your friend's character, who they are inside, then you shouldn't be friends with them.

Cartoons

I haven't posted in a while, mostly because I don't have much to say. Also, I'm busy with work and tired after work. And lazy. But I've been wanting to discuss animated series (or "cartoons," for those that don't give a damn about "sophisticated" titles) for a while, so I figured I'd make a post about them. And by "discuss," I of course mean "bitch about and praise."

This show belongs in the shitter.

First up is Allen Gregory, which premiered on Fox in October of last year and has (thankfully) been canceled. It will hopefully never shame the world of television with its presence ever again.

I watched the premiere of this show, because I've always been a fan of prime-time cartoons, and I like to give them a shot. I avoided The Cleveland Show when it premiered only to find out during its second season that it was a pretty good show, as long as you didn't expect anything from it. I didn't want to make the same mistake. Besides, Fox wouldn't shut up about the damn show, airing promos for it months before it premiered. I had to see what it was all about.

It was offensive. On several levels. First of all, it wasn't funny. At all. It simply did not elicit laughter. But if that was all, then the show would just be another boring failure. No, Allen Gregory had other problems. It was a lame premise with an even lamer execution (and what an odd execution it was); a smart little boy has to go to a public school filled with, shudder, regular kids. Typical fish out of water story, right? Except Allen Gregory, the titular character, isn't actually a smart little boy. He's incredibly dumb, as a matter of fact. The show wasn't "Fraiser goes to elementary school," which it was marketed as. It was "insufferable asshole pisses off everyone around him." Allen acted like an adult but only in that he pretended to be an adult, by mimicking the things his father did. His father did fancy stuff like eat sushi for lunch, so that's what Allen did. That's as far as his maturity went. Otherwise, Allen was an annoying little kid that didn't fit in, something a lot of people can relate to. But instead of relating with the bastard, you hate him, because he doesn't try to fit in or be nice, at all. In the end, you feel bad for Allen because you can understand what it's to be picked on and have embarrassing things happen to you, but you also want him to get beat the fuck up, because he's the kind of kid that makes your life a living hell on purpose and has no regard for you whatsoever. It's impossible to love the character or even love to hate him, the way you might Mr. Burns or Peter Griffin. That's bad enough, but then the creators decided to toss in the gross factor and have Allen, a seven-year-old boy, fall in love with the principle of his school, a very old, very overweight, and very uninterested woman. She is not a bad person, but there is no reason why a little boy would fall in love with her, and the show doesn't even try to make sense of it. Allen simply sees her and somehow loses his mind. It's disturbing, the fantasies Allen has about her are exceedingly gross (so as to not even be funny), and the whole thing is disgraceful.

But the biggest problem, and what really made the show offensive, was the living situation of Allen's parents. Allen has two dads; that's right, a gay couple raising a child in a cartoon. Finally! Except they're not really a gay couple. I'll explain that in a moment.

Richard is Allen's biological father. Jeremy is Richard's husband. As his name suggests, Richard is a real dick. He's a selfish pain in the ass that ignores others and only cares about getting his own way. Jeremy puts up with Richard, for seemingly no reason, and is an all-around nice and cool guy. Allen takes after his father in nearly every way and, of course, also treats Jeremy like shit.

More than halfway through the first episode, we get a bombshell. Jeremy explains that he "used" to be a straight man, with a wife and kids. Then he came across Richard, who fell in love with him. Richard stalked him and badgered him so much that Jeremy left his family and became Richard's husband. That's right, Jeremy isn't actually gay. He never says anything about having gay thoughts or hiding his sexuality. The way it's explained, Jeremy is a straight man who just gave in to Richard's pestering. Do I need to explain why that is offensive, not just to gay people but to everybody? One of the few gay couples on TV, one of the only gay couples to ever be seen in a cartoon, and only one of them is actually gay. Not to mention how insulting that is to the audience's intelligence. Are we really supposed to believe that a man is going to give up his wife, his children, just to get an asshole off his back? And up his asshole? That's insane. I think that's what really offends me, that the man leaves his children to live an unsatisfying life with an insane bastard. His children are asking, "Where's daddy?" and all their mother can say is, "He's with a man he doesn't love, living a lie, for no fucking reason at all."

So, thanks for nothing, Allen Gregory! You were inexcusable.

Pretty mind-numbing, in a good way

Next is Napoleon Dynamite, the movie-turned-cartoon that arrived eight years after the movie. Long before this show started, I hated it. I didn't care much for the movie, which is boring and odd in ways that did not please or interest me, and I didn't see how it could translate to the world of television, let alone a cartoon, at all. I watched the first two episodes, which premiered the same night, to give it a shot and wasn't impressed. I watched the next episode out of boredom, and . . .

It was great. I can't explain it, except that the premiere episodes, especially the very first episode, weren't very good, but another factor may have been that I watched the third episode without any expectations, good or bad. The other four episodes of the season are all top-notch and made me laugh a ton.

Part of what's good about the series is that it isn't like the movie at all. The characters are all there, but they're not doing boring things with blank faces. They're doing crazy shit, like racing beds and pointing guns at each other and fighting ghosts. Yes, there is a ghost in one episode, and the characters try to fight him. I'm sure part of the reason for this, and the show's quality, is that Mike Scully is involved. Scully has worked on The Simpsons, and the years he was involved in the show were the years that Bart's t-shirt incited a riot, Homer wanted to have as a villain a shifty-eyed dog, and a busload of kids got stranded on a desert island, where they would be "damn hell ass kings!"Scully makes things crazy, and it's good for a cartoon. It keeps the viewer interested, and it takes advantage of the fact that with animation, you can do things that cannot be done with live-action.

I really like this Napoleon Dynamite. Instead of taking pity on the characters, I like them and wouldn't mind hanging out with them. They're not annoying or pathetic. Napoleon himself gets quite a change; he actually seems badass in the series, instead of being just an awkward boy that puts on airs. I hope the show gets renewed and does well. It's time Fox has something in their animation domination that isn't The Simpsons or made by Seth MacFarlane. And yes, Bob's Burgers is great, but Fox seems intent to not show new episodes of it when airing new episodes of everything else.

Damn, I can write a lot, can't I? Maybe next time I'll actually write about something of import. Like The Simpsons.

Love

I'm in love. That's an unusual thing for me. I'm not very experienced with love. I've had plenty of crushes, but those are so simple, it's ludicrous. And this is honestly the first time I've been in love as a mature adult. Even at nineteen, I was immature with how I saw the world and pretty stupid, to be blunt.

So, I'm kind of freaking out.

But I'm freaking out for a weird reason. See, to me, love has always been a thing from movies. That's where I learned about love, and what I learned was that being in love meant doing outrageous things together, having beautiful talks while walking through snowy streets, and making bold declarations of love to a girl in a upper-story window from a sidewalk or lawn. But that's not life, not at all, and while I realize that, this deep-seated idea of love as a movie cliche lingers in my head, like a hypnotist's command.

Right now, I'm happy. Yet I'm not full of energy or bursting with affection. I was, definitely, but now, I feel content. More than content, but I'm not very good at describing my feelings, of course, so that word will have to do. So I'm kind of freaking out, because my learning is telling me that I'm supposed to still be hyper and overcome with chemicals, but I simply am not. But I am happy, and I am in love.

I think about her constantly, and it's like what I think is different every hour. Sometimes I think about the passion between us and want nothing more than to tear off her clothes and have at her. Other times I think about how she gets me and understands me, how she seems to know what I'm thinking at times, and that makes me feel so wonderful, I can't come close to being able to express it in words. Other times, I think about how great it would be to just lay beside her in bed, to sleep beside her or close our eyes and relax with our arms around one another. I think about the ways she can help me, and the ways I can help her. I think about protecting her from any harm, physical or mental or emotional. I think about her protecting me, rubbing my head when I'm angry and telling me to calm down or letting me rest my head on her chest when I'm depressed. I think about watching movies with her, watching TV with her. I think about planning for the future with her, mundane things like saving up money and what sort of necessities need to be bought and when. I think about holding her hand just as often as I think about having sex with her. And because there are few places my mind does not wander, I sometimes (rarely, thankfully) think about her dying, and how I'd want to give up on life but wouldn't because she has two daughters I could help, if they ever needed me. And I think about myself dying, and that's even scarier, because I don't know what that would do to her, and I never want to put her through that.

It's scary, just how much I care about her, and how I can't poke any holes in it. I always poke holes, that's been my job for most of my life, to point out the problems and mistakes, whether so they can be fixed or to convince myself that the whole thing isn't worth the effort or to prepare myself for a possible failure, but I can't do that here. I know we'll have rough times, and we'll still need to work on some things as time goes on, but I can't imagine living without her. Not just because she's the only one that would ever have me, and not just because she understands me and wants to make me happy. She makes me smile, just being the person she is. I can tell her anything, not just because she will listen and accept what I have to say, but because I want to tell her, want to share my life with her.

This is being an adult, huh? It's really scary, because it's so different from being a kid. But I prefer it, definitely.

What to Say?

I haven't posted in a while. I haven't know what to say, honestly.

I said that I would talk about the birthday party from hell, and how I got the cut on my arm, but I was wary of delving into the details for fear that I would get depressed or overly emotional or stuck in the past that is gone forever and can never be changed. Now, I simply feel no need to revisit those scenes. There is no catharsis to be gained from them.

Two days ago, I got in touch with an old friend. Cowgirl, to be specific, the first and only girl with whom I've gotten hot and heavy (outdated references, yay!). We hadn't spoken in years. I sent her a message on Facebook, apologizing for the asshole that I had been. It was something I'd been thinking about doing for a couple of months. It's easy for me to carry guilt, as it seems to be for a lot of Aspies, and I knew that the dissolution of our relationship was partly my fault. I felt that she deserved an apology. But I lacked the courage to ever say anything to her. I just knew that she hated me, that she never wanted anything to do with me ever again.

Boy, was I wrong.

Two days, and it's like nothing's changed, as if those years apart didn't exist, except to make us both better people. I don't understand it, but I also don't care. I'm happy. I have someone to support me, someone that loves me and will always love me, who knows that I have Asperger's and who said, "It explains a lot." I don't mind who I am right now. That is a very funny feeling. But I am definitely not complaining.

So, I no longer want to change the past, nor do I want to revisit it. It's gone, dead and buried, and nothing will ever change that. The only benefit the past has is that it can teach me; I can understand people's motivations and feelings and fears. At the birthday party from hell, I hurt Sayla by being cold to her, and she hurt herself because of it. That in turn hurt me. Alcohol was involved, as well as some horny guys that deserve to be shot for messing around with a young drunk girl. I'll never forgive them for that. I hated it, she hated it, and I think we both wished that things had happened completely differently. But the past can't be changed. All I can do is  know that Sayla has suffered and try to think of things that will help her and not make her feel bad.

As for the cut on my arm, that came about because I was stupid and naive, plain and simple. I had lied to myself about Sayla and didn't believe what she was, and when faced with the undeniable truth of the matter, I couldn't handle it. I got hit my Lil' Slugger. ("Lil' Slugger seems to target people in crisis, and the attacks, though violent, lead to some improvement in the life of the victim . . . Lil' Slugger is a supernatural force, driven to rescue the desperate from their tragedies through violence," from the Paranoia Agent Wikipedia page.) That may not make any sense to anybody, but I understand it. When you're stressed out and can't take it anymore, Lil' Slugger comes along and hits you with his bat. When this happens, you are able to skirt responsibility. It's not your fault - Lil' Slugger did it. People can't expect anything from you, not for a while. You have to rest, recuperate from your ordeal.

The scar is a sign of my shame. I wasn't understanding; I wasn't accepting of her. But it is proof of how far I've come. Understanding and accepting are my best traits now. It's fitting that the scar is covered with hair and hard to see. I think I may even forget I have it one day.

So, instead of drudging up the past, I'm going to try to use this blog to talk about important things. Like what, I have no idea at the moment, but I'm sure most posts will involve Asperger's and/or concern for others. There may be wisdom, there may be relate-able anecdotes, there may be a light into the mind of someone called great by a handful of people. Who the hell really knows? But it should all be worth something, to someone.

That Good Night

People don't know what suicide is. The vast majority, at least. To them, it's the coward's way out, or a surprise that no one saw coming. Idiots.

Suicide is a beast, rampaging through your mind, until one day you finally get trampled by it. You never choose to stop and let it get you. It's a matter of fatigue. You fall over because you can't run anymore. Imagine what drowning is like - you kick and beat the water, not wanting to go under, but eventually you run out of energy, and there is nothing you can do. That's suicide.

There are always signs. Just because you don't see them doesn't mean they're not there. They may be little, but if you really cared about a person, you'd notice them. And if you didn't care about the person, you have no right to moan and complain when they're gone. You may not be at fault if your friend or loved one or family members kills him/herself; you may have noticed the signs and tried to help them, and they didn't, or couldn't, accept your help, or maybe it simply wasn't enough. It's not your fault, no more than it's the fault of the dead.

A few weeks ago, I was happy. But one night, as I lay in my bed, I suddenly felt that I should die. I shivered beneath the blanket, afraid. I didn't want to die, but I felt that it was inevitable. Suicide was my shadow, always chasing me and covering me, almost like a protector.

It will always be there, for me and for so many other people. Every time I hear, "It was such a shock" or "She was such a happy girl" or "I wish I'd known," it makes me want to stick my fist through a wall. I'm here, I'm right here! So was she, and him and her and him and him and her and everyone else that slit their wrists or shot themselves or took a handful of pills or stuck a noose around their necks. You don't have to help us, I know I wouldn't want someone to overtax themselves for my sake, even if my life was at stake, but don't you dare act like our death, our suffering, cost you a damn thing if you couldn't even see that we were hurting.

The Long Summer

This is the continuation of the story of my first love and the events that have impacted my life the most. I'm not exaggerating there, and once the whole story is told, it should be clear why everything affected me the way it did, and for as long as it did. But this is part two, the middle.

When I left off, it was summer, and Sayla and I had been phone friends for a while. I had told her that I "liked" her, but we never agreed to start dating. I cannot recall exactly why, but it might have had something to do with us not being able to see each other much. It's hard to consider a relationship that takes place entirely over the phone a real relationship. I also don't remember why we couldn't see each other much. School was out, and neither of us had jobs or anything we had to do. We simply may not have been able to get to one another. Her mother and stepfather worked during the day, I believe, and my parents probably did, too. I wonder if things would have been any different had we lived closer (where it took an hour or less to walk from one house to the other) or been able to secure rides so we could spend time with each other. Everything might have still worked out the same though.

We talked all the time on the phone. Countless hours. It was practically like we were dating. We talked about everything, and as I mentioned before, we masturbated while talking to each other. Sort of like phone sex, but there wasn't a lot of role-playing. It was pretty much us feeling good, knowing that the other person was also feeling good, and talking about how good we felt. When I tell people how many girlfriends I've had, I say two; I'm counting Sayla, even though we never officially said we were dating and never did anything physical, but when you've heard a person have an orgasm, and have talked to them while they were masturbating, I think it's acceptable to say that you were going out. (Plus, it feels wrong to say that I've only dated one girl. First, it's a really low number. Two is a low number, but one is really fucking low. Second, Sayla and I cared for each other. I don't know how she would refer to me, if I'd been something like an ex-boyfriend or just a friend, but she's dated a lot of guys. She doesn't need to add to the total. I do.)

I believe that summer was also when I bought her a vibrator. It was a simple thing, only about $11 at the Spencer's in the local mall. It was glow-in-the-dark, waterproof, and had three different heads you could put on it, little caps that went on the top of it that created different sensations, I guess. It's weird, thinking about it. I bought a 14-year-old girl a vibrator. Granted, I was 17 at the time, but it still sounds weird. And creepy.

The thing about Sayla is, she was promiscuous. Like I said, when I met her, she claimed to be a nymphomaniac, and she wasn't lying. She was bisexual and liked both men and women very much, and had been with who knows how many people of both genders. She probably had more sex by the time she was 14 then I will ever have in my life. Now, I'm not judging her, nor am I saying these things out of anger or hatred. I'm just telling the truth. See, her promiscuity makes some sense. She was molested as a child, and then raped when she was either 12 or 13. The way she put it is, "I figured God didn't want me to be a virgin." At one point during the years I knew her, she also said something along the lines of, "I was molested, and that makes me want to do a lot of sexual things, and I don't like that, but I can't help it." I've met a number of girls that were molested, and they all seemed to struggle with sexual urges. I don't know why that is, but molestation really messes with the brain. I can't fault a person for being messed up.

Anyways, back to the story. Sayla and I were very close. But during June, I believe, she went down to Florida to visit her grandmother. She was gone two weeks, I believe. We still talked on the phone a lot, using phone cards. One night while talking to her, she told me that she didn't think she would go out with me when she got back. I felt terrible. Beyond terrible. The one girl that had liked me, had really liked me and opened up my world, had shown me what it was like to have a real friend that liked to talk to me and accepted me, was rejecting me.

I don't remember much of the conversation. This was more than eight years ago, mind you. I'm lucky to be able to remember any details at all. She said that we probably wouldn't go out, and I was crushed. This is just a hunch, but I think that she had had sex with someone down there. Hanging out with people, having some fun, got horny, and fucked somebody. She felt guilty about it, knew that I wanted her all to myself, that that sort of relationship was what I expected, and didn't think she could give me that. I think she was trying to protect me. I can't fault her for that, even if I do think it was the wrong decision. But she didn't know how I would react.

I turned in. I wanted to be completely alone. It was like I had spikes coming out of my body, to keep anybody from getting close to me. I made an especially rude comment to Sayla. For my birthday, which is in the middle of July, I went to see Metallica, a band I'd loved for years, down in Atlanta with some friends. When I got back, I was telling her about the concert, and I said, "It was the best thing that's happened to me this summer." I knew it'd hurt her; I wanted it to. I felt like, if I couldn't be with her, then what was the point of us getting so close? I regret that comment even now, perhaps because it is still so vivid in my mind.

I was reading a book about Buddhism as the summer was coming to a close. It helped me to wall myself in even more. Buddhism teaches to discard wants and desires; I tried to discard my desire to be with Sayla, though in the end I only managed to discard my concern for her. I was angry at her. I lashed out at her. I'd feel bad about it, apologize, and try to be nice, but that would make me want to be with her again, and that's make me angry, both at her and myself.

That summer, those few months, are what I remember the most about my relationship (personal, not romantic) with Sayla, which lasted for years. It's hard to imagine that so much could happen in three months. But so much did, especially at the end of July/beginning of August.

I hadn't had a birthday party in July, because I didn't have any friends I talked to outside of school (aside from Sayla), and Sayla's birthday was at the beginning of August. We decided to have an early party for her that would also serve as a late party for me. Great idea, right? Well, neither of us could arrange a party by ourselves, so we had a third person, a girl we both knew (though I didn't know her that well and had never really spent any time around her), throw a party and invite people, procure beverages, and the like. Great idea, right? Yeah, it was wonderful. A night to remember. The story of the worst birthday party ever. At least, the worst I've ever been to, and one of the chief reasons I don't drink around people.

Being a Parent

I'm a big fan of anime, or Japanese animation for anyone not familiar with the term. (If you're incredibly unfamiliar with it, it might be good to read the Wikipedia page on it if you're going to read anything I write, because it's a major part of my life, being my main preoccupation and interest.) Lately, I've been watching a show called Usagi Drop. That translates to Rabbit Drop, as if that explains anything. The title doesn't make a lot of sense, and I doubt it ever will. A lot of anime series in Japan have titles that don't make much sense or aren't relevant to the series at all.

Anyway, the show is about a 30-year-old man who goes to his grandfather's funeral and discovers that he has an aunt - a 6-year-old girl, the old man's illegitimate child. Her mother has run off, and the little girl (Rin) has nowhere to go, so the man (Daikichi) agrees to take her in, unable to bear the thought of her being passed around or taken in by the government. The show is about being a parent; we see Daikichi confused and embarrassed at what is involved in being a parent, but more often, and more importantly, we see how much he cares for this poor little girl, whose father is dead and whose mother isn't even a memory. We see Daikichi take care of Rin, and we see Rin trust Daikichi and rely on him.

I've watched five episodes, and I've cried during every one. Sometimes more than once. I've listened to the opening song many times (I downloaded the whole song so I could listen to it), and I've been humming it under my breath at work this past week. It's gotten to the point where just hearing the song makes me smile, and makes my heart feel like it's going to burst. It's also gotten to the point where hearing the song makes me cry.

The show is touching. I can't even put it into words. But it hits me harder than it would a lot of people, because my dream is to have a daughter. And I'm about at the point where I don't think it will ever happen. I feel old; rather, I feel like I'm going to be too old. Daikichi is 30, and he's just become a parent, so being a parent at 25 is no big deal, right? Except that Rin is 6 when Daikichi takes her in; she was born when he was 24.

Having a child before I'm 26 is a dream, because I'll be 26 in a few months. Starting a family before I'm 27 is unrealistic, too, because I'd have to find a woman I can love, and who can love me. (I'm not the kind to knock up a girl; the very thought of actually having sex with someone scares me. It's too intimate. I have no problem with doing sexual things, but actually joining with someone like that just seems like too much. It takes me a long time simply to be able to talk freely around people.) If I have a child when I'm 28, I'll be middle-aged before she even starts school. By the time she graduates high school, I'll be an old man. Okay, I have a slanted view of age, but it seems weird for an 18-year-old girl's father to be close to 50. Doesn't it?

Of course, that's if I can even get married and have a daughter. You know, I don't have anything against having a son, but it's hard for me to relate to most other men, and I'm afraid that I'd be a bad father for a boy. My own father wasn't really there for me growing up, and I'm not really there for him now. I love him, but I don't know how to act around him or what to say. I don't want that to happen between me and my child. But that's putting the cart before the horse again. I don't know how to meet people; dammit, I don't understand how adults date at all. I don't understand anything adults do, really. How can I meet a woman when I don't know how to do so, and how can I woo her if I don't know what I'm supposed to do? I don't want to be defeatist, but it's like I'm fighting an unwinnable war, where the enemies are everywhere but I don't know what they look like. All I can do is get stabbed and fall to the ground.

I'd be a great father. I'm not very confident about most things, but I'm confident about that. There's a lot I don't know, and I'd need a lot of help, but I'd love my child, and I'd do anything for him or her. A child needs love and support, and I have so much of that to give. The thought that I'll never get to is too much to bear. I don't even care about passing on my genes; they're shitty genes anyway, even without the autism. I wouldn't mind raising another's man child or children, and I wouldn't mind adopting or taking in foster children. But I can't do it alone; a child should have two parents anyway, be it a mother and father or two fathers or two mothers. Hell, I doubt they even let single men adopt or take in foster children. I don't know. I'm just scared at the prospect of the future, or the lack of a prospect.

The world is scary. But it's not living that scares me. It's not living, being alive and with breath in my lungs but not doing what I want to do. That purgatorial existence where the days simply go by. I don't want that. I don't want that at all.

The Day Everything Started

I really should be fixing something to eat right now, but I've been inspired to tell more of my past, because I've been reading some random tumblr blog where a young woman has revealed some of her dirty past. I enjoyed reading it, so maybe people will enjoy reading about my past. Right? Who knows.

On May 23rd, 2003, I went to my high school's graduation. I was still a junior at the time, and I didn't know many of the people graduating, but I was bored and wanted to get out of the house. If I hadn't gone to that single event, my life would be drastically different. At that event, I met First Love.

That "name" is a bitch to write, and it's pretty dehumanizing, so I'm going to change it. From now on, I'm going to change "First Love" to "Sayla," a reference to one of my favorite characters from the Gundam universe, Sayla Mass.

I was angry when I got to the graduation. I was usually angry. I used hatred as a shield, to protect me from the isolation I felt. It kept me from being sad. I sat down among some people I knew, just to not be alone. Beside me was Sayla; I had seen her before, as she had dated an acquaintance from school that lived near me, but I had never really talked to her before. Sayla saw that I had a nail file in my hand and asked about it. I explained that I bit down on it, to keep from grinding my teeth, and stuck the plastic end in my mouth to show her. She asked if I wanted to walk around a bit (the graduation was being held in the local park), and I agreed. As we were leaving, Sayla's friend Merry (fake name), who was actually Sayla's girlfriend in a weird way (I'll elaborate on Sayla's bisexuality and their relationship later), told her not to miss the ceremony. Thinking back on it, I think Merry was saying, "Don't spend too much time having sex."

We started walking around the park, starting with a trail through some trees. We had taken only a few steps, enough to get away from the noise of the graduation, which hadn't started yet, when Sayla pointed out an empty condom wrapper on the ground. She gave a small laugh.

As we walked, trees on either side of us and the sun blocked out by their leaves, we talked. About all sorts of things. Who we were, how we each subscribed to our own religious views and didn't belong to any religion, how we perceived the world. We spent a lot of time talking. We did miss the graduation. As it was nearing its end, we were sitting on a creaky wooden swing nearby. I remember that she told me to stand up, that I had some leaves on my back. I was wearing a heavy trench coat, despite the warmth of spring. It was a protection thing, something other Aspies should understand. Wearing the trench coat, I didn't feel vulnerable. Sayla swept the leaves off the back of the coat and said that she wasn't trying to touch my butt, honestly.

After the graduation ceremony ended, we met up with the friends she had come with, Merry and Sayla's ex-boyfriend Lucas (another fake name) and a few others, their sort of posse. I joined them, and we rode around in Lucas's truck for a while. We parked some place, and I fooled around outside the truck with the other people while Sayla and Lucas talked inside. I don't know what they talked about, but I assume it was about how she liked me. Lucas had known who I was, seeing as we were in the same grade and had talked to each other before, and there was no bad blood between us at that time. After they talked for, it had to have been at least half an hour, and I snapped some pictures with my disposable camera (meant for the graduation I never watched), we all got back in the truck and left.

I'm not sure of the exact order of things, but before dropping off Sayla at her house, I asked her for number. Maybe the first time I had asked a girl for her phone number, and so far the only time I have "gotten" a number from a girl that liked me. She wrote it on the booklet or paper or whatever that I had gotten at the graduation. I'm pretty sure I still have it somewhere. After that, we stopped by the house of one of the posse members, who lived nearby. There, we talked about how I liked Sayla and how she seemed to like me. Someone said that there was a Renaissance Fair that weekend, an annual event I had always been interested in but had never attended, and that Sayla liked those and that I should ask her to go.

That night, after Lucas took me home, I called Sayla and asked her if she wanted to go to the Renaissance Fair. She said yes, and the next day (graduation was on a Friday), I was picked up by Sayla, her mother, and her little sister, and we went to the Renaissance Fair. Sayla was wearing this Renaissance-esque outfit, similar to a belly-dancer's. She was so cute. I was wearing a black Slayer t-shirt (the band, Slayer). I didn't have much else besides band t-shirts. We were able to do our own thing, without her mother or sister. As we walked through the fair, an old man dressed as a minstrel took note of my shirt and asked what I was a slayer of. "Of Dragons!" I proclaimed, thinking it made me seem strong. As we walked away, Sayla told me that dragons were revered there.

I could go on and on about the fair, but there were only a few important things that happened. One, I never touched Sayla. I never held her hand nor hugged her. I'm not wired for those sorts of gestures, and this was a girl that seemed to like me, a girl that I really liked. I was nervous, and I was a guy that had never even held hands with a girl before. It's no surprise that I didn't touch her, though I wish I had. The other important thing is that I bought a dragon necklace. Sayla named it for me - Niner, after the dragon in Stephen King's Eyes of the Dragon, a book we had both read, though I'd read it years ago for pleasure and she had read it recently for her Honors English class. Niner was important to me, and he was important to her, too, in the years to come. I don't know what ever became of him. I gave him to her at one point, to protect her. The rope (or whatever it is, that you put around your neck) broke while she was wearing him later on, I know that. Sayla believed in signs the way I do. Niner breaking was a bad sign. I think one of his legs or arms broke off, too. I wonder how much that affected the way she felt about me. Rather, the decisions she made regarding me. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When we first really met, on May 23rd, I was sixteen, and Sayla was fourteen. She had blond hair and a petite build. She wasn't short, but she had thin arms and legs. Or maybe not. I'm not good at describing people. Even if I pulled out the pictures I have, taken the night of graduation and the next day at the Renaissance Fair, I wouldn't be able to paint a very good picture. She was cute, and hot, and way more than I could handle. We talked on the phone every night. She told me that she was a nymphomaniac, which I thought was exciting. I didn't think about what it meant, nor did I consider what being a nymphomaniac meant. I took it as meaning that she liked to have sex, which was great because I was always horny. But it's more than that; being addicted to sex is different from wanting to fuck your partner three times every day. She made me open up and talk about sexuality, something I had never done with a girl before. Even admitting that I masturbated was a hard thing to do. She got me over my nervousness by talking about how much she masturbated. It sounds really weird, writing it out, but that's how it happened. I remember one of our first conversations involving her saying, "There's the g-spot. Why do guys say it's so hard to find." While talking to me, she had gone exploring and found it herself, heh. Another time she said, "Whoops," and when I asked what had happened, she said that she had been fingering herself, almost accidentally.

We touched ourselves while talking to each other. In the middle of the day, in the middle of the night, whenever we got the chance. But that was over the phone. In person, I was frigid. I was once visiting her at her house, going to have dinner with her family. Sayla and I were upstairs, watching either the first or second Harry Potter movie. We weren't watching it so much as it was on. I was more interested in running my finger up and down her leg, which was mostly bare due to her very short shorts. I had a pillow over my lap, and when I said that I was hard, she moved to take the pillow away. I grabbed it with my own hand and didn't let her move it, shy as all hell. She got up, not overtly angry or upset, and said that she was going down for dinner. I didn't know what to do or say. I got up and was able to hide the erection within my jeans, which were baggy because I hate tight clothing. The thought of facing her mother and sister helped me to calm the little fellow down.

It has since occurred to me that Sayla was coming on to me, and that had I let her move the pillow, I might have gotten a blowjob or handjob. I might have been able to finger her or eat her out. If nothing else, I would have shown that I wasn't a prude. That's one reason we didn't work - I was a prude. I thought anything sexual should only be done between people really close. And I was inexperienced with everything and didn't know what anything meant. To me, a girl wanting to see my erection, even though my jeans, was frightening and embarrassing, and the thought of something good coming of it never even occurred to me. I've also realized that I was the one that started it; I had been running my finger up and down her leg, her thigh. I was inches away from her pussy. Of course she had been excited. If she had known that I wouldn't refuse her, she probably would have tried to have sex with me then and there. But nothing happened.

This was the end of May and the beginning of June. During July, Sayla went down to Florida to visit her grandmother. That's a story that needs to be told. After I tell it, I'll tell about the birthday party, which was a momentous event that affected me for years. It's a horrible story, but I need to get it out.