But why were you complaining about it?

M-ko, who is also divine (according to her mobile phone email address I scored later that night), was actually learning German whereas Y-yo had only come along with her friend out of sheer curiosity. Which she expressed by bombarding me with lots of questions, in rapid succession. Being the attention whore I am I didn’t really mind. Her looking a lot younger than her actual age only added to the appeal. For M-ko it must have been disappointing that she so easily proved her suspicion she was probably hoping I’d at least pretend to not be true.

Does she look like she's in her early 30-ies? Well, she is. And she's also the childhood friend of your mother. So she's basically the milf that looks younger than you while you're still in high school. I never read this manga but it sure sounds like an interesting variation of the lolicon genre.

Y-yo also had some good advice for me which she commented must make her sound like an older sister even though she was a few years younger than me. Yes, I do love contradictions. Did I mention that my mother wanted to become a nurse when she was young? Anyway, Y-yo tried to get me to talk more to M-ko as well but then it was pretty much already too late.

We went to Kamogawa river after the meeting to talk some more and also ate some karaage there, since I mentioned it was one of my favorite foods. We shared a serving and there was a small piece of parsley which I grabbed for myself, much to the surprise of Y-yo, as she had just explained to me that it was paseri and that it had a bitter taste which I apparently shouldn’t have liked according to her image of me. Well, if you’re a manga and game loving otaku manchild you cannot like food with bitter taste I guess and I am of course a liar for liking it regardless.

I really enjoyed that night and when they had to take the train back to where they lived I did something I rarely have the courage and/or the necessary goal oriented way of thinking for, I asked them for their mobile phone numbers. I got the mail addresses as well which of course was even more useful.

The next day or some days later there was a post at 2ch about rather not wanting to have a child with a foreigner as it’s tough for halfs in school, some teachers being openly racist towards these children. I never really had given much thought to having a child, or it going to school, or having it with a Japanese woman for that matter, or it going to a Japanese school. But well, when something like this is brought up, and especially since you can imagine who posted it, I was kind of upset and I think I made an angry response post about it. I have no idea anymore what exactly my thoughts on it were that time and I won’t go and look it up, but it was really a reaction to something I was getting upset about on principle rather than because I saw my hopes shattered or something.

You still don’t believe me when I say something like the above, do you? I really didn’t lie when I was seventeen. I just expressed myself rather clumsily.

We went to drink some tea together very soon after that and I showed her a book I had just lent that day from Seika University and it was obvious she was struggling with herself if she should out herself that very moment. I still managed to mess up all of the numerous chances she was giving me the following weeks and months and it must have been very frustrating for her. I coped with my own frustration in a way that made things a lot worse, probably.

Anyway, coming back to the more recent past, the scene with in the meeting room repeated itself when you came to ask  a question and I was sitting next to him, again overhearing your conversation. Again, when you looked my way for a short moment I felt that same feeling when I saw ‘s glowing self that time in Kyoto.

But what really drew me to you of course was your bold attacks via messenger status tags. It made me realize you were the fujoshi to take revenge in place of all fujoshi for that aborted troll thesis of mine that resulted from my encounter with in Kyoto.

Now imagine how my feelings intensified when I learned you were the granny I stalked and kind of molested when she was only 114 years old (eXXXXXXXaggerated eXXXXpression™). I felt/feel attracted to a lot a lot of girls and looks always play a decisive role in that, which in fact they do in your case as well, but you also make me feel alive like no one quite could since parting with Kyoto. Because you emanate strength and determination which I can’t shake loose from.

When I talked to my gay friend B about slash and how it can be a way of coming out of the closet for gays on the fence, not yet sure of their sexuality, basically them being led by the encouragement of the female slash detectives, his look wasn’t all that different from hers. This notion also was conceived from studying Japanese culture and the reactions of male otaku to yaoi.

Anyway, closet gays and enslaved women helping each other out is nice and all, but too much unwanted/unneeded help can cause a lot of bad blood and people may start trying to outdo each other in being helpful even if you never intended to be helpful in the first place.

My well-meaning lecturer never quite understood the notion of BDSM and that it is not the same as wanting to be a child again. If you want to remain a child then it’s not BDSM but something else. So locking me up in the library to make sure I actually write my papers wouldn’t have been a good idea in the first place. Because it is not sexually fulfilling. It is not a fetish.

Lalala

Now I definitely have to do this again.

M’s first girlfriend was quite a bit older than us and she had a cool accessory, a character from a popular German children’s book. Actually it wasn’t really a character but a toy modeled after a duck, with a tiger pattern, that was treated by its owner in the book like a living being and good friend. She had a small replica of that duck attached to her backpack and M and I imitated that and attached one to our shirts or sweaters. I remember wearing it from my scarves for many years, long after M had given up on this habit.

T wasn’t exactly a big fan of it and when I argued that it was really original and individual and that not many people wore something like this she countered that she did in fact knew some people who were even dragging it behind them all the time, with the attached cord, like the toy it’s supposed to be. She was of course kidding and implying that I was such a baby for wearing that toy.

T and M also met at some of our parties and at one of the local swimming pools in summer, for example. I didn’t go to the pool very often for which there were several reasons but once the three of us went together. I didn’t properly learn to swim until very late which is why I never really swam but only floated where it wasn’t that deep and I also had an aversion against jumping into the water.

The two of them tried to convince me to try it and the only way to get them off my case was to crack a joke which is really hard to translate though. I said, “das springt mir nichts” which you intuitively take to mean “das bringt mir nichts”/”I don’t get anything out of it” but since the word corresponding to “get” is replaced by “jump” it was a clever way of saying “I don’t get anything out of jumping”. It’s really not funny when you have to explain it but T and M laughed and stopped trying to talk me into it. My funny got me out of being pressured to do something I didn’t want to do.

That really sucks, let me tell you. It happened several times to me in my childhood. One of these cliffhanger stories where I never got to read the continuation and that I could never forget was an Uncle Scrooge story where he was looking for Circe’s treasure. Magica De Spell had turned Huey, Dewey and Louie into pigs on the last page of the episode and I was forever denied of the closure of them getting turned back.

Of course, these stories always end in everything restored to how it began. Of course I had read so many stories where the triplets weren’t pigs so it was safe to assume that they would be restored to their former selfs in the end. But it still bothers you not to know how the story ends.

Actually, even in the Duckburg stories I did get to read completely I was always bothered by the ducks, especially the triplets, getting caught and tied up, imprisoned and stuff. I always invented a hero that would save them on the spot which of course ended all those stories prematurely. As I grew older I understood that I was taking out the best part of the story and that these thrilling situations were in fact necessary for the stories to create their impact.

I understood that a story is not real and that whatever happens in it does not affect me as a person in real life. That’s when I began to enjoy these stories, which when I was younger I often switched off the TV because I didn’t trust the fearful situations to be resolved by happy ends. It’s funny, I craved for closure for the Oddball Odyssey story in which the triplets where transformed into pigs but I denied myself the happy ends in TV series because I never believed they would come.

Until I mastered this awesome technique, differentiating between fiction and reality. Really, I recommend it to everyone. Fiction becomes a safe haven, where everythings is possible but nothing can ever hurt you. Maybe it’s a bit too safe though.

When reality was stolen from me and stories invaded it, treacherous at heart though, dirty traps that waited for me to lose grasp on my special ability, being able to distinuish between fiction and reality, those storyweavers, they tried to force their image of me on me, proving that I in fact could not differentiate, that instead of analyzing the images in stories as products of reality, I was confusing story and reality, well that ended in me being imprisoned like the triplets in my childhood stories. But my imaginary hero never came. Retroactively I became Seta Soujirou, the character I had felt moe for years before. Well, my hero didn’t come that other time either, when I was death years old. So it wasn’t retroactive but a remake maybe.

Like I said before there was a lot of sexual tension between her and me for which the above episode is just one more example of but she did envy the intimacy of the male friendship I shared with B. I don’t remember exactly what it even was, but when I refused to tell her something I wanted to keep secret from her but revealed that B knew what it was about she insisted she would be able to get it out of him. I was sitting next to her on the bus like always and she was going to meet him at school later that day.

After school was out that day she had to admit that “I had ‘trained’ (an alternative translation might be ‘raised’ but I think ‘trained’ is closer to her intended meaning) him very well” as he wouldn’t budge in keeping the secret. I explained that it had nothing to do with training but that it was pretty much normal that we as boys kept each other’s secrets.

I went to a different school but we still met a lot after school and at parties. I always hung out with her and some of my classmates who lived in the same neighboring village as her and I was already very nerdy then, but not yet combined with the confidence I have today. Basically my attempts to be cool always ended in total disasters and she had issues with some of my style choices as well but we got along more than well and the relationship should easily have gone to the next level if had had the courage to take the next step.

This lack of courage had something to do with me proclaiming that I’d “never hit girls” but still hitting my younger sister when she annoyed me which T appropriately called me a hypocrite for. It also had something to do with me liking the French movie The War of the Buttons from 1962 and imitating one of two important concepts from that movie, playful war, when I was still in elementary school, before I became friends with either B or T. Unlike the movie it wasn’t one gang of mostly boys against another gang of mostly boys but a gang of all boys who all tried to steal kisses from the girls of our class. I was the leader and founder of a sexual assault unit made up of 2nd graders. Our girl victims (unknowingly) imitated the other important concept of the movie, utilizing grown ups to punish the other side. They didn’t even have to cut off any buttons but had our teacher castrate us instead and put an end to a game that was ill conceived in the first place.

Not being able to admit to what I had done I couldn’t let the teacher’s claim of us “trying to make advances on our female classmates” stand as they were and had to prove that the kisses were nothing but a weapon and not an expression of affection at all. This was the beginning of me becoming a hopeless clown throwing kisses around from which I only barely recovered when I got the chance to start over advancing to gymnasium, a new school with a new class and mostly new classmates. In the meanwhile I became friends with B in 3rd grade from another class who entertained himself with healthier games, acting as the characters from Masters of the Universe during the breaks inbetween classes.

In gymnasium I again imitated a French movie, this time La Boum, and kicked off the age of teen parties in my circle of friends. I wasn’t as uncool anymore as in elementary school but still haunted by the fear of being uncool and denial was my main defense against all the pitfalls caused by my own clumsiness. One was literally a hole in the ground into which I rode my newly bought mountain bike (which were all the rage at the time). This was when I learned that following peer pressure did not really pay off.

Sex was my best weapon in the race for coolness because my mind was definitely dirtier than anyone else’s and my drive to establish parties gained me cool points with my friends. T was one the few who was never intimidated by my sexual bragging but she was soon to be disappointed, as my boldness was betrayed by my inhibitions. Inhibitions born from me always going overboard and getting my fingers burned repeatedly in the process.

The day after one particular party T wanted to continue partying with a smaller number of friends the next day. I had of course enjoyed the party but ‘autistic’ as I was I came up with stupid reasons why I couldn’t come that day, like having to take my sunday shower. She was really mad and asked me why I couldn’t skip my masturbation (I was pretty open about my habits in that regard) to come to party some more at her place. I was so stupid.

I kept using symbolism to further our relationship like sending her a letter that had the stamps angled in a certain way which had a hidden meaning. She replied in kind by sending me a letter written in a code I had to decipher. It was very funny and we were meant for each other but I had formed very strong inhibitions by then which always kicked in when I approached a certain line that when crossed had ended in disaster before.

My present for her (I think it was her) 15th birthday was a sexual education book and even though she had ridiculed me weeks before for “waiting for love to come seek me” instead of the other way round (which of our friends only B found a reasonable idea to have) she took the initiative and put the pressure on me to give up my refusal to dance, which I usually considered myself to be too cool for, and dance with her to a slow song. You know, the kind of dance they always did in the La Boum movie, hugging and slowly turning, enjoying the intimacy of touching each other’s body. Afterward she commented I had gotten her dizzy by moving too fast. I was supernervous and neither of us could really enjoy it.

I ended up not being T’s first boyfriend. Instead that was someone from my class, also taking the same bus as us. I ended up not being her second boyfriend either. She wasn’t going to wait for me, because as she said, the dirty books I lent her (compared to which the education book I gave her for her birthday was a harmless joke) were never followed up by appropriate action.

Earlier, at one of my birthday parties she had spilt a drink over her t-shirt and asked me if I could lend her one of mine. It wasn’t the first time she came to my room of course but maybe the first time we were there just the two of us, and then she was alone in it as I let her change her shirt. I didn’t think much of it then and I’m probably thinking too much of it now. The t-shirt, btw, was one of my old ones and already too small, even for T.

At one of B’s birthday parties T suddenly had the need for something she hadn’t thought of bringing to the party. B’s mother was kind enough to lend her some of hers though.

While in elementary school I was a frequent target of bullying but in gymnasium I was smart enough to become friends with the bullies. One time I argued that (on a subjective level) not all people are equal in ‘worth’ but that we value people we like more than those we don’t even know or those do know but don’t like. It was just supposed to be an argument in favor of subjective reality versus idealistic theory but nevertheless a very dangerous idea to have, on a rhetorical level. Especially since the reason I raised this subject was a guy who was frequently verbally abused for his overweightness by almost everybody and T got very angry at me for my lack of idealism and for providing fuelwood to a flame not quite extinguished. I didn’t think much of it then but now I think there was a deeper meaning to her strong reaction.

This post has gotten much too long already, and I should probably have cut it short before it became convoluted so badly. It could have become several posts instead of just this one but I wanted to summarize as many things as possible about T, the girl that should have become my first girlfriend. I often asked myself how my life would have been different if I had asked her to go steady then and hadn’t let this opportunity go by.

It was the major turning point of my life and I’m still spinning even today.

YOU

4 I (h)F yet 2 C.

Anyway, one of the nighttime festivals involved some walking up to the premises where the ceremony was held and we overheard a Korean woman walking in front of us talking to her friend in her native language. I commented to my friend that I liked how Korean woman talk and that it always sounds as if they’re complaining about something. I think she heard us too since she turned around to look at me, with a puzzled look on her face. Although I might be making that last part up as it was really to dark to tell for sure. I already thought so back in Kyoto. I have a clear recollection of me doubting my recollection then.

Anyway, when I had just come to Japan some fellow exchange students from Korea taught me how to eat with chopsticks. I had bought some instant ramen type food and had trouble eating it. The other students saw me and explained to me how to use them properly. I was very relieved because I already had some troubles managing those sticks in the university cafeteria at lunch time.

Actually that wasn’t the first time I had someone explain the use of chopsticks to me but the first time I gave up because it seemed easier to eat with my fingers then. That was at our university’s bounenkai where among other food we ate some karaage which then were just chicken wings to me (even though they’re not really wings but they looked like that on first impression). So some of the credit goes to the female student who had started studying Japanese in the same semester as me and tried to teach me how to properly eat Japanese food when I wasn’t yet feeling the necessity to seriously give it a try.

I master things pretty quickly but it’s usually the second or third attempt after several half assed ones. My Japanese friends were seemingly impressed by how quickly I had learned to use those sticks but maybe they were just being polite, paying compliments. I myself was/am not polite so wouldn’t have been able to tell even if I had tried, I guess. Instead I tried to resist stereotyping but I guess I was hyper correcting the prejudices of my own culture.

The Korean exchange students got increasingly pissed off at me though for me never returning the favor of showing considerateness. When I brought a scissor to the common room kitchen the one who taught me how to use chopsticks expressed his anger by asking me if i was going to use it for cutting the noodles short implying I still had trouble with Asian cuisine. I laughed and commented on his remark being “a good one”. That helped them figure me out much faster than any of the other nationality students did especially the European and other Western country ones.

When I started spending time in the common living room many interpreted that as my initial reservedness softening and me opening up to the other dormitory residents. One of the Korean students got it right though when he asked me if I was saving heating expenses by spending time in the already heated common room. Winters in Kyoto aren’t particularly cold but you still need to heat.

This wasn’t the same one who made the comment about the scissors but they were friends and usually came to the kitchen in a group of three. If I had been more compassionate I would probably have offered to help him with his German studies. Instead I always waited for people to ask me for help. So he got help from another German exchange student who incidentally also became good friends with an female American student who had shown interest in me from the first day we met in Japanese class. I really hurt her by being the wrong kind of asshole. Her strong and openly expressed disappointment demonstrated my inabilities to me very effectively but what was I supposed to do about it?

One of the other Korean students who didn’t always hang out with the other group I wrote about above but still was good friends with them tried to become friends with me as well. I didn’t dislike him or anything but when you always sabotage people’s attempts to get close to you the ones who are used to experience this kind of behavior from certain people will naturally assume you’re of the same kind. When he touched my shoulder affectionately greeting me in the cafeteria one time in the latter half of my one year stay it felt really good. But as usual I didn’t let it show.

I didn’t just recently remember all of this, most of the above I frequently remembered during the last few years. It’s just my tough luck that men are the ones more willing to take a direct approach. But only women can give me the incentive to try to overcome my inability to put passive understanding to active practice. However passiveness is a habit easy to fall back upon.

In that battle mode the best item to have was of course the red shell. When I got one I usually headed for the open space in the middle of each course and tried to take the opponent head on. Even if I couldn’t see them I often would just let the red shell loose as it is easy to get another one as long as the opponent doesn’t break the chain. And in the open space the shell has enough room to turn and get the opponent even if they are behind you.

You can of course look at the opponent’s screen to see in which color sector they are to go chase them. Or you can check in the same way if they can see you which means they’re already behind you. But I often blindly shot the shell relying on pure intuition. The majority of times I just missed. But when I hit them it was spectacular.

Feeds. Cheating me of my well deserved hits.

Indifference. Not caring about what people think. Not caring for achievements. Not being subject to opinion. Not being easily manipulated. Avoiding achievement. Taking the money. Taking the info. Not taking sides. Understanding everything. Cheating the educational system of their trophy. Cheating society of my gift.

Decency. Cheating men of those would be sluts craving to be unchained.

Home. My home is my castle. It’s my refuge. The world must stay outside. No duties to anybody but myself. Privacy. Not caring about appearance. Slacking off. Enjoying myself. Cheating the world of its star.

Showering. Cheating horny sluts of that sweet ripe smell.

Brilliance. Observation. Keen intellect. Open eyes. Quick grasp. Cheating people of their defenses. Cheating them of their secrets. Cheating them of the silence of shame.

Spycams. Cheating me of my “most brilliant mind in the history of the universe”-superiority.

You want to be my pimp? You want to be my dealer? Please throw some pills in my coke. Please throw me some. Please. Please!

But really, best book since Palahniuk’s Diary. And Emanuela and LAMB.

And by them I mean their fan turned fiction boo hoo lighters, of course.

Look at him. He’s huge!

Then you get this…

you won. And since you’re a Zelda 2 type boss, you also lost. Sucks, doesn’t it? Because a good boss needs to lose for the game to be won. So everybody loses, me, you-me and us.

I won’t continue, I won’t retry, I’ll just be miserable. Because that’s how I do things.

I’m sorry for that and although I most probably can’t begin to understand the true horrors of these concepts it’s exactly that what makes them so fascinating. It’s a matter of degrees really, we all become victims of crimes of different scopes and we all have mixed reactions towards them. Experienced in small doses the positive reactions may even prevail, or maybe if the one who dishes out the humiliation also offers a lot of positive things we may forget that the crimes are actually despicable and not part of a package of a gift.

When part of play it might even be desirable to up the degree of humiliation, to go to your limits, to get more than you bargained for. You might even understand at one point why this is not really desirable. When you finally reach your limit.

I often stress the potential of games to turn you into a criminal. This doesn’t mean that games should turn decent people into monsters but rather, by comparing the acts done in the game to one’s own actions in life, one is confronted with their own inner monster and has to acknowledge their own indecency.

And yes, being evil can also be empowering. When part of consensual play this is a very good thing. But then it’s not really all that empowering, is it? The power is an illusion, a fake gift given by the one really in power. The criminal pretending to be the victim. You really want to be in control, dictate the rules, teach the criminal a lesson.

Or maybe make them remember that they really are a victim after all and don’t just pretend to be. Anyway, you crossed so many lines and did it so often, it cannot be justified anymore. If it could ever. Stop pretending your actions compare to mine or that it would even validate them if it were true. Or that I ever wanted any of this.

I understand that security cams offer just that, security, but if they are used as a tool for trolling I refuse to excuse them.