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cryingbilldenbrough · 7 years

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Pls write something with Will in the IT universe omg.. . I would literally die that would be some good coming from you.

Will Byers doesn’t remember much about Derry, Maine.

It had been more of a rest-stop than a home, he knows that much is certain. He and his mom moved there that summer after Jonathan graduated high school, packing up their station wagon with Will’s colored pencils. A change of scenery, she called it, a chance to stretch our legs.

Will knows they were running away. But the bitter bite of cowardice had nothing on the relief he felt seeing Hawkins in the rearview mirror.

Now when he conjures memories of that single school year, his ninth grade year, he only comes up with faint flashes of color. Blue lockers and green grass and a red two-story house next door. He remembers ice-cold water and a rope swing in somebody’s backyard and lifting the door of some clubhouse, hidden away from the world.

A honking laugh, a hand clapping his back, a red balloon.

The memories don’t gain solidity until Mike Hanlon calls, late late at night.

Will rolls over in bed and picks up the landline, cradling the phone between his shoulder and his ear. His bedroom window is open, fall air blowing in and ruffling the curtains. The sounds of scratching branches and crunching leaves would have scared him a lifetime ago, would have reminded him of a summer spent in another World, but now they calm him. He can’t sleep in the lonely loud silence of his apartment, he needs a reminder of life outside his own, nature outside his window.

“Hello?” he asks softly, far too tired to speak louder than a whisper.

“Is this Will Byers?” a voice asks on the other line, honey-smooth and familiar.

“Yes,” Will whispers. There’s a peaceful silence for a moment, like time has stopped and the entire world is spinning around Will Byers, phone in hand. And then the voice shatters the peace and Will’s world with a single phrase.

“Will, it’s Mike. Mike Hanlon.”

“Mike,” Will breathes. “Can you believe I’d forgotten all about you?”

He hears Mike sigh on the other end of the line, crackly and distorted from miles of distance. Mike sounds older but still just as warm, a voice Will remembers from that singular school year spent tucked away in a sleepy Maine town. The fractured memories start to gain a little clarity, get context within his brain. For example, he remembers the tire swing was in Bill Denbrough’s back yard, which is a name he wouldn’t have been able to conjure up if you asked him for it just moments ago.

“I can believe it, all right,” Mike says. Will’s mind is racing, repressed memories floating to the surface all at once and it’s hard to grab hold of one and right himself. They slip through his fingers, like he’s drowning and trying to climb to the surface by grabbing hold of slippery seaweed.

And then one memory sticks out.

He remembers unpacking his room at the house in Derry, an attic bedroom with a small window that looked out across the neighborhood.

He had already filled his bookshelf, breaking down cardboard boxes as he went in order to create some actual floor space in his already small room, and then moved on to hanging and folding his clothes. The closet had a musty sort of smell, like mothballs and dust mixing together and Will cracked the window open in order to air the room out as much as possible.

The sounds of the day drifted in through the open window, the hum of a lawnmower cutting grass down the street and feet slapping on pavement. There was a shout from down below, a sort of yelp, and Will peered over the edge of the windowpane to investigate.

There were two boys across the street, probably a year or so older than him, and they were wrestling in the grass in front of a green bungalow house.

“Get off me, Richie!” the one boy yelled, pushing his friend and trying to roll over on top of him. He looked too small to do any real damage though and Will watched as the other boy, Richie, easily held his arms down with one hand and tickled his stomach with the other.

“Say uncle, Spagheds!” the boy on top shouted, pausing the tickling to push his glasses back up his nose. The brief moment of respite allowed the smaller kid to catch Richie by surprise and knee him in the stomach, forcing him to let out a choked gasp as he collapsed to the side dramatically.

“I’ve been assassinated!” Richie cried, “Killed by my own Eds!”

“You got grass stains all over my shirt, Trashmouth,” the little one whined, pulling the edge of his shirt out to look down at it. Sure enough, it had green smudges all over it that even Will could see from across the road. “Ma’s gonna kill me!”

Richie leaned over and helped to brush a bit of grass out of Eds’ hair and Will suddenly felt like an intruder, like he was watching the private moments of these strangers. It was nothing more than friendly wrestling but it felt like these boys had a bond Will could only dream of.

He suddenly missed his friends back in Hawkins more than he could bear, so much he felt the sadness would fill up his insides and drown him, and Will closed the curtains before it could settle inside him any more. He set back to unpacking, hearing the sounds of the boys outside drift down the street, carried away by the summer wind.

When he comes back to himself, Mike is continuing on the other line.

“Will, I’m calling you about Derry,” he’s saying, “I’m calling you about It,”

It.

Such a small word to send bone-chilling terror into Will, to inject his blood with ice. He shivers underneath all his blankets, his palm on the phone growing clammy with nervous sweat, and swallows audibly. The trees continue to creak and groan outside his window and Will almost finds them fear-inducing now, almost likens them to the creaking and groaning of bones, brittle and breaking. He has a flash in his mind of It, of Its lair, of Its terror.

“Do you remember Bill?” Mike asks and it feels like he’s constantly changing the subject on purpose, to keep Will on his toes and keep him from spiraling down into a crazed despair, mad over the memories of It. Will latches onto his voice, lets the warmth remind him of the good times and distract him from the bad.

“Of course I remember Bill,” Will answers, thinking of his friend’s blue eyes and stutter. He loved Bill, he remembers, they all did. It was impossible not to fall in love with Bill Denbrough, impossible not to be drawn into his cosmic aura of protectiveness.

Mike chokes out a laugh on the other line, almost as if he’s wrapped up in the same memories as Will, remembering being ready and willing to die for Bill Denbrough.

“He’s come back to Derry,” Mike explains, “I saw him just the other afternoon,”

“You’re still in that town?” Will interrupts. He always thought they all were going to go running just like he did, abandoning that haunted town as soon as possible. He remembers Bev did that year, left them for Portland and her aunt. When Will left, so close to the beginning of his sophomore year of high school, they were all chomping at the bit to go. Derry was sucking the life from them, assimilating them to its dark magic.

Stay here forever, it whispered in their ears, Give in.

You’ll be happy here.

You’ll float.

“Someone had to stay behind,” Mike says. “You know that,”

Will knows there were other powers at play, a thrumming energy beneath the earth that he merely joined in on. He wasn’t part of the Lucky Seven, his fate wasn’t intertwined with theirs, but he wasn’t an outsider either. For some reason the fog of Derry didn’t work on him like it seemed to with everyone else, didn’t pull the wool over his eyes. At the time he thought it had something to do with his past, was a side-effect of his time in the Upside Down, but now he knows it was because he was Chosen. The Turtle chose him to do good, to protect the Lucky Seven and aid their cause. Will feels honored to have been trusted.

“What’s Bill doing in Derry?” Will asks.

He knows the answer, knows deep down in his bones why Bill followed the siren song back to the town that taught Will the true meaning of evil.

He remembers standing in a circle in the Barrens, his left hand in Eddie’s and his right hand in Mike’s.

The sun shone over them, casting shadows across their features. Will watched as Richie brought his knees to his chest, picking at a scab on his knee. He was leaned into Bill, just slightly, like he couldn’t bear to be apart from him even a few inches. Will knew something changed between them that day in the sewers, something in them grew closer and closer together. He couldn’t help but be a little jealous of their bond, like he always was when he remembered how much the Losers shared without him.

“I can only remember parts,” Bev said, staring at the grass as it bobbed in the wind. Will couldn’t meet her eyes, couldn’t force himself to look at the cut on her cheek and the way her hands shook as she clasped them together in front of her. “But I thought I was dead,”

Will kept his eyes on the ground as she told them of her vision, her now-memory of them as adults back in Derry, back in Its lair.

“I saw us,” Bev told, looking around the group. Will could feel her eyes on him, boring into his soul, but he couldn’t get himself to look up. Her vision couldn’t have included him, there’s no way his fate could be intertwinned with theirs in the same way.

“All of us,” she promised. When Will looked up, she was looking right at him, focused on his face. She looked so much older than the rest of them, so much wiser. It was like the Deadlights changed her, aged her, made her perhaps a little more empty inside. Will hated looking at her now and seeing the effect It had on her, on all of them.

“Swear it,” Bill said, standing and grabbing a broken piece of glass from the ground. Will cut his eyes over to the boy, watching the sun glint off the glass as Bill gestured. “Swear if It isn’t dead– if It ever comes back, we’ll come back too,”

They looked around at one another, the wind ruffling their hair and stinging their eyes, and they made a promise to themselves. Richie stood up first, Eddie following his lead, and then they were all stood in a circle in the Barrens, pledging their future.

The bottle stung as Bill cut open Will’s palm, dug into his skin and stretched it open. He felt sharper somehow, more awake with the blood running down his palm and between his fingers. He looked at Beverly and she was watching him again, something in her eyes that Will couldn’t place. He kept looking at her as he took Eddie’s hand, wincing as his cut dragged across Mike’s palm.

There was a thrumming enery between all of them, a power being passed through as they bled together. It was hot like fire, electric as he felt his heart beat all the way down to his toes, getting louder and louder. It felt like they were beating together, their hearts in time with one another as they made a promise to return and finish their job.

They stayed together as long as they could stand it, for as much time as they could bear to feel the power, before they broke apart. The summer wind felt chilled when they separated, like the only thing keeping Will warm was the power of the Lucky Seven.

“You were there,” Bev told him later, saying goodbye for the last time before she went to Portland. She grabbed his shoulder and made him look her in the eye again. “Grown up just like the rest of us, back in the sewers,”

“Okay, Bev,” he said quietly, blinking as she swallowed. He watched her eyes flick between his, searching for something, before she nodded once and then brought him in for a hug.

She was lying. He knew she was lying, was trying to make him feel better by pretending he was there with them all those years from now, but she was wrong. He could tell in her eyes that she was scared of the future, was worried about what awaited them years and years from now, but that she was trying to be strong for all their sake. Will wondered what she really saw in the Deadlights that made her so scared, so desperate to assure Will of his placement in their cosmic group.

Friends don’t lie, but Beverly Marsh was lying anyway.

“I love you,” she promised, kissing the top of his head.

“I love you too,” he said and that was that.

He never saw Beverly Marsh again after that summer.

“He intends to finish what we started,” Mike says.

Will can almost feel Mike’s hand in his now, warmth spreading from his fingers over his palm and up his arm. He brings his hand up to the light, to his face, and expects to see blood in the center of his palm, dripping over the bedsheets, but he’s clean.

He squints and just for a moment, sees a thin white scar. It’s as long as the cut Bill made for him, jagged from the blunt bottle tearing his skin instead of slicing it, and it’s the first time Will is noticing it for twenty years. He turns his hand over and then back, watching it to make sure the evidence doesn’t disappear again.

“Please say you’ll come back too,” Mike asks. He sounds hesitant, like he’s waiting for Will to slam the phone down.

“I–” Will starts. The words clog in his throat and he has to clear it before he can force them out, “I’m not one of you,”

“No,” Mike interupts but Will keeps going, has to say it all now or he’ll never be able to say it again.

“I’m not… one of you. I never was,” he whispers. “You have so much power that you can’t even see and I’m not a part of that.” The scar on his hand feels hot, feels like a fresh wound that’s fighting infection, and Will pulls his fingers into a fist to fight the urge to break down.

“I can’t help you, Mike, I’m not strong enough,” Mike silences on the other line and Will’s breath is ragged, loud even over the beating of his heart.

“You were one of us,” Mike says finally, the words crackling. Will closes his eyes and tries to sink back into his pillow, tries not to let the words get to him but Mike sounds so earnest and honest. “We loved you like a brother, like one of our own,”

“I’m not strong enough,” Will repeats.

“We need you anyway,” Mike says and Will knows the decision has been made, was made twenty years ago when he cut his hand and looked into Bill Denbrough’s eyes. His fate was decided before he even knew what he was deciding on.

The scar burns as he nods, as he tells Mike he’ll be there soon. It aches as he packs his bags and books a flight to Derry first thing in the morning, twinging when he climbs into a towncar outside the airport and riding into the sleepy Maine town he’d forgotten all about.

The scar doesn’t stop burning until he’s stepping out of a taxi in front of Jade of the Orient, Derry wind prickling his face and smelling like the past. It reminds him of summer and dust and death and Will bites back the sudden fear that crawls up his throat.

He takes a deep breath and goes inside the restaurant, finally ready to face his fate.

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axiomandidiom-blog · 7 years

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>the not-so-great attractor

I’ve been bad.

When I got a new shrink who wrote me a script for Vyvanse I was supposed to ask him to refill my other meds.

I did not do that.

I have not taken two of them in a while. Things are... losing their precious, precarious balance. I was unsatisfied with the balance. I guess I want to see if I’m satisfied with the imbalance. I’m also just tired of being a goddamn robot.

But that’s not what I want to talk about really. I want to talk about some gooey stuff. Well, I’ll get to the gooey stuff. I mean sex and other humans, mostly, though the “other humans” bit is a little presumptuous tbph.

One of the previous drugs I was on was an ssri and really destroyed my libido. That was okay, in some ways, and not okay in some other ways. It was okay because I wasn’t particularly focused on that which vexes all men (not the sea, not sums, not the dichotomy of good an evil, not even women, because there are plenty of dudes who don’t swing that way. I mean the essential and eternal war between a man and his own genitals). I am, or have been, somewhat whimsical in my ideas about attraction in other people. I used to say, and this was mostly true, that I could tell I was attracted to someone because when I thought about them later I imagined the scene with Def Leppard playing in the background. Mostly Photograph, but sometimes Rocket or Rock On.

That stopped happening sometime around 2010-2011. So did the other, more conventional markers of attraction, infatuation, whatever you want to call it. I never daydreamed about women, didn’t get crushes, didn’t give people a second glance when walking down the street. And not just that; I forgot what it was like to do and feel those things. I started looking at my peers and trying to figure out what was driving them (I mean, beyond the obvious. see: man’s war with genitals). I saw the outside evidence of people acting out mating rituals and the pursuit of sexual contact (chief subject: my roommate) and could no longer place myself in their shoes in order to try and understand what they were doing or going through.

This was pretty alienating, actually. I imagine it must be something like what an asexual individual experiences; and to some degree I considered myself a de facto asexual for a while. I just didn’t get it.

I’m explaining this like it was simple and that’s the error of narrative and I recognize that. But it wasn’t simple at all. At the time I had no idea of why this change had occurred. I had been on the ssri for like two years by the time I started experiencing this and I ruled it out as an explanation. I have only now come to believe the ssri was to blame because I stopped taking it and some of this stuff is starting to come back, slowly.

But it wasn’t simple because it was wrapped up in a bunch of other stuff. Like: my experience with my ex of so many years ago at this point. I felt like I had touched a hot pan and burned myself, and not only did I not want to touch the pan again and be more careful, or touch the pan again and fuck getting burned because the reward was so much better, or even I realize this is going to burn be but holy fuck I’m so lonely; but I didn’t want to ever touch any pans again, because that shit is stupid, that’s like breaking your leg after jumping off a bridge and getting right back up to jump, I’d rather just microwave my food. The microwave, in this illustration, is a metaphor for masturbation. In case that wasn’t clear. Also I’m still pretty sure being in a relationship is like jumping off a bridge. But more on that later.

I described it this way to two psych professionals, and got two widely different answers. One said “that’s dumb you’re being dumb” and the other said “I don’t think that’s irrational given your circumstances.” So, um, jury on that is still out.

Also I had gained a bunch of weight in the years since. And though I’m no longer a teenager I still have some seriously fucking terrible skin. Like, omg why can’t I just not have acne all the time what am I doing wrong (the answer: I haven’t spoken to a dermatologist in many years). Also, I’m generally pretty uncomfortable with affection and attention. My best explanation for that is that I think I’m horrible and I don’t want to infect other people with my horrible (see >poison).

I’m sort of a miserable specimen, then, in my estimation. And coiled up in that is a deeply held belief that some things are not for me. I will never have some things. That’s just the way of the universe: I will never be a supreme court justice. I will never be asian, middle eastern, or black. That’s okay. There are some other things that I probably won’t ever be, like out-of-my-mind rich or successful, or adventurous, or athletic, or fun at parties. And I’ve made the leap, perhaps appropriate and perhaps not appropriate, to some other stuff that makes people look at me weird when I tell them, like, I don’t think I’ll ever be married. I don’t think I’ll ever have kids, I don’t think I’ll ever be a homeowner, I don’t think I’ll live much longer than 50, if that. And some people want those things and have always wanted them and think I’m strange for not wanting them or believing that they are out of my reach. And I think they’re weird for not understanding (and why should they, I guess) that those aren’t a part of my life, and aren’t my desires or goals.

Or weren’t.

I still don’t think I’ll be a homeowner. I get that it’s an investment and blah blah blah it just doesn’t make sense to me, and I can’t imagine making enough money to actually pay for that.

I’m still pretty sure I’m gonna die before I get particularly old. Unless there’s some kind of super revolution in the kind of healthcare that I require, and I’m not holding my breath about that.

And I’m afraid of kids. I’m afraid of them for two reasons. One of which I will share here, the other of which I’m definitely too afraid to share, ever, with anyone, for any reason, which may or may not be the result of some things that happened to someone who may have been me. plausible deniability

I’m afraid of screwing kids up. And that’s a futile fear, because kids will be screwed up no matter what anyone does. But I’m really, really, constantly angry about the course of my life. I think sometimes there’s an alternate universe where there’s an axiom who’s a doctor of memetics, and who publishes papers about the dissemination and transformation in quanta of thought across networks of people (which I find incredibly interesting), and I know I will never be that person because nobody figured out what was wrong with me while there was still a chance to divert course.

Nobody figured out that I was hiding from everyone all the time. Can’t blame them for that, because I was good at it. But my nerves were too raw. I was so anxious and terrified of my world as a child that I walked around in a fog. It was a fog I put there to separate myself from my own experience. Events in my life taught me that I could hide in the fog, even when I couldn’t hide from what was happening to me in real time, and at least I’d be mentally protected, even if I wasn’t physically protected. And my whole life kind of grew up around the hiding. I have two older siblings and they got into lots of trouble as teenagers. That’s what teenagers are fucking supposed to be doing. But I knew that I could just not do those things I saw my siblings doing, because I saw the consequences of them, and in so doing avoid those consequences. Because I was fucking scared of that shit.

And nobody took me aside and put their hand on my shoulder and said “hey kid, go do bad things. The whole world is set up to try and prevent you from doing things they think are bad, and all of the systems of all the different organizations and hierarchies which you are a part of all want to keep you from doing those things, and that’s the most horrible, selfish thing a group of people can do to an individual, especially if that individual is young and doesn’t have the capacity to reject the group. I think many teenagers go through a time when they’re really shitty to people like their parents because they’re testing the boundaries of their world, and have come to realize that some of what other people have told them to do or not to do “for their own good” wasn’t for the teenager’s own good, it was for the good of the person giving the order.

And I never did that. I was very concerned with maintaining the appearance of being “good” because that meant that people left me alone. And I wanted to be left alone because existing under scrutiny was too horrible. I didn’t want people to see me, and I didn’t want people to know how not-together I was.

I still hide from people. I’m not sure how capable I am of connecting to other humans on an emotional level I am. None of my friendships are like that, even my really close friendships that have lasted for years.

It’s a dangerous thing to say to some kids that the world isn’t going to end if you spend a night in jail, or fail a class, or sneak out in the middle of the night to get stoned, or ask out a close friend and get rejected. But it was what someone should have said to me. Not because I wish I had done those things. But because I want to think I wouldn’t have been so afraid of everything if I had done some of it. I want to believe that I would be better able to make my own decisions now if I had actually experienced the consequences of behavior directly and not vicariously.

Some non-zero amount of bitching about my childhood is a result of a desire to be a different person. And I want to be a different person. That leads me to the other big thing I wish someone had noticed, or found out, or helped with.

And that’s ADHD. I would say I can’t believe I got all the way through school and fucking graduated with undiagnosed ADHD, except that it was so fucking unbelievably awful that I still feel horrible about the whole experience. I still regret it. I still can’t think of myself as having accomplished anything because it feels more like I survived years of torture than it feels like I worked and received recompense for that work. I think about being in school and I just want to cry. I’m so, so angry about it, and to know now that the difference between being able to function academically and being a hopeless, perpetual fuckup hemorrhaging money that didn’t exist was a once-daily pill makes me want to curl up and fucking die.

That’s a feeling that’s exacerbated by what I brought up in my previous post (>writing). I feel like I can’t write the way I used to. And yeah, duh, I’m writing now, and that’s not what I mean. I’m just shitting out thoughts as they come, I’m not composing anything, and I’m able to do that because I’m taking a drug that flips the lightswitch on the “pay attention lmao” part of my brain on for 13 hours at a time. And writing is one of the very few things about my life I feel like makes me worthwhile as a human. And by worthwhile I mean worth keeping around. And if I can’t do it the whole college experience, which I already conceive of a waste, was even more pointless than it was before. And that makes me feel pretty bad.

What was this post about?

Oh, right.

So I don’t like myself. I don’t think I’m a good person, or valuable. And I feel like those are some important factors when it comes to courtship. And I used to be on this drug that killed my libido, so I was okay with ignoring that. But now... I don’t know why this feels like an illicit admission (maybe because it’s so contrary to where my head has been at for so many years)... I kind of want it. The intimacy. Closeness. Sharing. That kind of stuff. Oh, and sex I guess. But I can do without that, and have for some time. I’m holding out for my ten-year anniversary, so I can write a book called “the ten year drought.” idk what that book would be about but it seems like a good title.

Some of this is a reaction to my newly switched-on brain, I think. Where before I’ve just been confronted by alienation when I thought about being close to other people, I dunno, it seems both possible and desirable now. And because none of my close friendships are built on any kind of emotional connection, I don’t have that in my life. And combined with my awakened libido, it seems like, well, why the hell shouldn’t I try and find that sort of connection with a romantic partner? And maybe it’s been so long that I don’t remember what it feels like to burn myself on the stove any more, and it seems like that might be fun, you know, to burn the fuck out of my hand now and again.

SPEAKING OF AWAKENED LIBIDOS, this is when I’m going to talk about the gooey stuff. I told you it was coming (ayy).

You might be forgiven for assuming that when I considered myself de facto asexual, that meant I abstained from self-manipulation. But no. Lord, no. Instead, it just became a chore.

Let my try and explain. Turning off the red neon sex light in my head didn’t stop the other physiological consequences of orgasm or lack thereof. For those readers who are not men, you may not be aware (or may not have put two-and-two together) that semen doesn’t just go nowhere if it doesn’t, uh, get used. There is, I think, some point (look I’m not a scientist) where after a while of infrequent emissions the little foreman down there in the prostate tells the factory workers at the testes to quit making so much product it’s not going anywhere, but fuck me if I know when that is. Because until that point it’s gotta go somewhere. It’s gotta go somewhere. If I were to cease, uh, disposing of it in a regular fashion, on my own schedule and terms, it would find its own damn way of releasing. Usually this happens during a dream of some kind. There are some problems with this:

1.) mess. You must now wash your sheets and bedclothes. Good job.

2.) disruption to sleep for the above reason. Sleep is important to me. More important before the stimulants, I guess, because I wake up 4-5 times a night anyway now.

3.) disturbing dreams. Sometimes they’re fun disturbing. Most of the time they aren’t. What amateur dream theory I understand is from my meager reading of Freud and that guy was full of shit about a lot of stuff, but this makes sense so I still believe it an will repeat it here: your id, aka the triforce of power, just wants release from tension. Which is not to say it doesn’t want tension. I wants the tension, and the release. Which, according to Freud, is why people have dreams about death; the lead up and then the death itself is the ultimate tension and release fantasy your brain can construct. And the penultimate tension/release is sex. Duh. But the id isn’t picky. Id doesn’t believe in rules or norms or values or anything like that. Id just wants its release. And, honestly, if whatever strange brew it cooks up in the dark recesses of your skull upset your conscious, rational mind (your ego, the triforce of courage), well, fine, cause that makes the tension (and thus the release) stronger, and because fuck your ego, id hates that guy.

4.) As actual, physical releases go (i.e. not psychological, as discussed above) this is a pretty garbage one. Look, not every orgasm is going to be good, But this one is fucking soaked in shame and disappointment. And fuck if I know if this is what it’s like for other people, but I get just a little lucid at the end of a wet dream. Like, there’s a QTE segment, where shit slows down, and I can let the sequence play out or I can press ‘a’ to try and prevent it from occurring. Hint: pressing a does not work. But I don’t know that when I’m fucking asleep. So I press ‘a’ like a fucking idiot and ruin my own shame-dream orgasm and end up with sticky sheets anyway. This is not fun. No part of this is fun.

Now, I think I’ve mentioned here before, I have problems with dreams anyway. Every few months (and I always think, well, surely this is the last time, I must now be free of them) I have a dream about my ex. And if I time this wrong, the dream gets weird and sexual. A dream about my ex is guaranteed to fuck up my day at least a little, and a sex dream about my ex is just throwing my whole week away. Thanks id, you little shit.

So, that’s a reason not to do things that way.

There are some others. For one, having an orgasm feels pretty good, at least if you do it right. And at various times in my life I’ve been starved of good feelings. That the orgasm is free and readily available (for the most part) is what leads it to being such an addictive drug. And afterwards, a man (I have somewhat independently verified this with others of my sex) has some beneficial psychological effects; it’s also a way to regulate your hormones, and relieve stress and anxiety. And let me get this in here, when a man does without orgasm, at least in my experience, reality warps to compensate. Like, suddenly, day 3+ of no orgasm, skirts get shorter. They just do. Suddenly women are tying back their hair, and their shirts just don’t cover anything anymore. And everybody is wearing leggings. And suddenly people are smiling at you and blushing and they smell good and their eyelashes are so damn long.

AND I HATE THIS PART. THE TENSION IS UNBEARABLE. It’s unbearable, maybe, because of what I’ve written above--that I have internalized the belief that some things are not for me. And maybe, actually I’m pretty sure, that this is why men chase women. Because, unless they are doing what I do, the whole damn world is fluttering eyelashes and jorts. And they can’t fucking think about anything else. Hence, the war. Because either you do something about it or life is a sex-crazed fever dream.

This is how I feel about desire. It feels like affliction. I know that’s messed up. I know I’m messed up.

And when I was taking that ssri, I wasn’t attracted to people, even when this happened. Skirts didn’t get shorter. Skin wasn’t suddenly everywhere. I just felt awful. It just felt like I was in the hallway in Inception and the van was turning over and over. It was like what eating is like now that I take a stimulant; you know you’re hungry because you’re being mean to everyone and everything everyone says to you feels like a personal slight. And so you go get some food because you need to eat and it just looks like dogshit and it smells like dogshit and you put it in your mouth and you chew and you’re mad about it and you feel like a fucking chimp in a tophat dancing for a vaudeville audience. It sucks. It’s not cool.

But back to what I was saying about regulating one’s orgasms. I know that if you are a woman, the rules and boundaries are different, but men have a limited number of orgasms available to them in a given time period. See the little foreman and the factory workers.

Given this I don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude that frequent (this I will leave to the imagination), managed orgasms are good policy.

Good policy, as anyone familiar with governments will well understand, has a way of becoming bad practice when it intersects with the real world. And in this case, the reality of the situation is porn.

I’ll delve into this some other time but for now let it be said that porn is horrible. And It isn’t necessary, in the strictest sense. But I found it expedient in my former circumstances; i.e. perpetually single and with a poor libido. Masturbating, as I have said above, became a chore. As in, “well now it’s X:XX o’clock and I guess I should get down to business,” even while I was also thinking “I really don’t want to do this, this is gross, I am gross.”

And while in another person that might be enough to stop the whole process, not with me. I dunno why. Sue me. Typing it out makes it seem like it was something I could just choose not to do, and sometimes I did, but most of the time I didn’t.

Now, porn is a bottomless endeavor. I had a professor who I always thought was kind of a shithead talk about porn, for men at least, as being an expression of the fantasy that any woman is available to a man.

This is problematic for a bunch of reasons, but I didn’t invent the primate brain, I just have one, and it doesn’t really do what I want it to most of the time. Or like ever.

So one does not find a quantum of pornography and decide that, yep, that’s that, this is all I need. Again, we’re talking about that fucker id (and I think here there’s even less basis for Freud’s model of personality but fuck it I’m on a roll and also not particularly educated) and he doesn’t care about your rules. He just wants more. And again, id doesn’t want just the mere release, id wants tension before the release. Id wants the lead up as much as the actual orgasm, if not more (as they tend to inform each other; this is true as far as I can tell for both men and women but I’m not an expert). So the male experience of pornography (this I have also somewhat independently verified) is one of seeking and evaluating. This is, as far as I can tell, what tabbed browsing was invented for. One looks, and looks, and looks (it is about 90% visual) for something that has that certain spark to it. There is no describing the spark. Whatever you have found either suits or it doesn’t. I’m sure if Freud were here with me he’d have something to say about what people look for and why but that guy is fucking dead so fuck him. There is a great deal of quite automatic selection that goes on.

Yes, after the fact, one may find and describe patterns to the searching. Without descending too far into the vulgar universe of pornography and its associated vernacular, I’ll try and give some examples. I am attracted to faces that have robust lower lips, dark hair, and perhaps a gap in the teeth. I don’t know why. I just do. It’s just what I like. Those are things I think are fairly specific to me; I know my friends like other things in their faces.

And now that I’ve found some nice video of a dark-haired, gap-toothed, robust-lipped girl folding her laundry and pairing her socks, I’m good right? Wrong. Depending on the strength of the suitability of this video, it might remain useful (i.e. functional i.e. qualified for release) for like three or four uses, and then one day I’ll look at it and the evaluative bit of my id will say “nope lol” and I’ll skip over it. Sometimes, and this too is common, in months or years following, I might remember (by association) this video of the sock-pairing and check it out again, and it might have regained some of its suitability. And this is the mystery of the brain. I can’t explain why something regains its power this way.

But I know pretty well why it loses it, and that’s the goddamn dopamine circuit in the brain. There are a few qualities of the primate brain that I think are truly evil, in the sense that they are the genesis of evil behavior--not callousness, not antisocial action, not violence, evil, evil in the sense of wrong action which the brain does not recognize as wrong action--and they are, in no particular order, rationalization to reduce cognitive dissonance, pattern recognition, and the diminishing returns of the reward circuit. If you look at those and think, “gee axiom those are the reasons humans have been able to do anything at all,” then congrats, you’ve managed to realize what the Buddha meant when he said that existence is suffering, and that it is a man’s own mind, and not his enemy or his foe, which lures him to evil ways. I wonder if it’s worth it sometimes. We should have stayed in the trees, maybe. We sure as shit shouldn’t have invented the internet.

But I digress. What I’m saying here is that the reward circuit and the amorality of the id is what drives the obsessive searching involved in pornography. It’s why the addict, and I guess I’m an addict, spends so much time looking relative to the time spent using. Watching people have sex tricks our monkey brain, and the monkey brain gets tired of the same things day in and day out, particularly when the pleasing release of brain chemicals is so dramatic.

The ease of obtaining the pleasing brain chemicals (once a man gets to my age, he is likely to be quite practiced at obtaining an orgasm in one way or another) and the swiftness with which a quantum of pornography becomes tarnished with regards to suitability lead the consumer of pornography down greater and greater rabbit holes seeking stimulation. And, if the user is paying attention, he will find that this isn’t at all necessary. But, and I can’t speak for anyone else here, I know I’m never paying attention when I masturbate. Thinking ruins the experience. RUINS IT. Thinking leads me to analyze what I’m watching and there’s nothing more boner-killing to me than thinking about the clashing figures I’m watching as people. And yes, that’s horrible. And yes, that means I should stop. Because if I object to what I’m seeing morally, then I should, should apply that to my actions in consuming that media. BUT I DON’T AND I DON’T KNOW ANYONE WHO DOES THAT, EVER, ABOUT ANYTHING, INCLUDING BUT CERTAINLY NOT LIMITED TO THE CONSUMPTION OF PORN.

And that’s why humans are garbage.

When I say that it isn’t at all necessary what I mean is that the entire exercise of pornography is extraneous. Pornography is not required for orgasm. It’s just expedient. It’s just easy. It’s just what men, and me, have learned to do because it feels good, it’s pleasing, and it’s (in the sense outlined above RE: regulation) necessary to living.

And here’s the problem with all of that: there’s no alternative. I mean, okay, there is. There’s a bunch. Like, I could just use my imagination. But that’s like saying “dude you could just think about a story, reading is for idiots,” and to that I say, well, yeah, I could. But if it’s just me, if there’s nobody else, then the story I come up with has no purpose. It has no boundaries. There is no reason to present narrative challenges or to think about word selection because it isn’t a story if it’s in my head, it’s just feelings, it’s just ideas, it’s amorphous and ephemeral. It’s the same as anything else; it’s even the same as an orgasm in the greater sense. Yeah you can do it yourself. But it’s way, way nicer for someone to do it for you.

But the niceness of it is an illusion. It’s a total illusion. Because I can achieve, and have achieved, many an orgasm without the assistance of another person. And, at the moment, at least, it’s not like it’s hard to do that, at all. More on this in a second.

But for me, and for people who for one reason or another have this in common with me, the most simple, occam’s razorish approach--to go find another person to do this stuff with--seems, or is, completely unattainable, because of whatever real or imagined physical or emotional problems we perceive within ourselves.

And because nobody taught me this shit. Nobody. When my parents talked to me about sex, they were like “hey axiom let me tell you about sex” and I was like “I mean, if it’ll make you feel better,” and they were all “when two people love each other blah blah blah,” and I was like “kay whatevs,” and in my mind I was thinking “this love thing is not for you, this sex thing is not for you, this world is not for you” because that’s how I feel about everything good or nice, especially the good or nice things that have the potential to be horrible and damaging.

And there was no class in school where the teacher said “look axiom, here’s the thing about orgasms and hormones and the way it makes your body feel and the way you’re going to want to act,” and there was no teacher who said “this is a safe and healthy way to approach being with another person, and this is a safe and healthy way to approach being with yourself.”

And I sure as shit never experienced a setting where someone said “these things you feel don’t make you a monster,” and even if they had, I wouldn’t believe them, because rape exists, and because abusive relationships exist, and because people fight and get divorced and are shitty to each other. Instead, all I feel is shame. I feel ashamed about sex, I feel ashamed about orgasms, I feel ashamed the other parts of me, and all I want to do is conceal them. This is perhaps more unique to me, specifically; see >writing again, and perhaps for that matter every post on this goddamn shitfest of a tumblr. AND NONE OF THAT STOPS ME FROM WANTING IT.

So I’m driven, I think like many people are, to conceal my behavior about sex and masturbation and orgasms. And because it’s hidden, it gets thrown into a pile with a bunch of other hidden things, and that’s why pornography is so awful, why it’s so predatory and nefarious, because it’s hiding there where you can only find it if you’re hiding, and because nobody is looking, or rather, everyone is pretending not to look, then it becomes evil. There is no regulation of pornography (well, except for laws about ages of consent and whatnot), there is structure in place to teach me how to use it responsibly, and there is no structure in place to teach people how to make it responsibly, either. It’s just a hole where damaged, hurting people get thrown into, and there’s sadists down there waiting to continue to damage and hurt you, and to keep you from leaving. And yeah, there’s money there, and that’s part of the problem, but it wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t so vile and exploitative. It’s possible, and I say this as a truly brainwashed capitalist, to make money and still do the right thing. It is possible. It just isn’t possible to make as much money as you would if you were doing the wrong thing. And nobody makes that choice. It’s not even a choice, really.

This is what’s been eating me up about orgasms, at least while I was taking the ssri. But I stopped. And now, not only is my libido recovering, but, uh, the... how to put this delicately (as if I’ve been delicate so far)... nerve connections in my genitalia, which previously (because of the ssri) took a lot of precise stimulation to coax into orgasm, now do so essentially instantly. I got no idea how long this will last.

None of my previous habits work or make sense. A lot of the above is predicated on there being a build up. Mr. Id likes his tension and release, like I said. The more tension, the stronger the release.

And look, alright, spoilers or whatever, this is going to be graphic. But I used to be able to get hard and keep it that way for a while without achieving orgasm. I’ll try and illustrate: lets say masturbating is like riding a bike down a hill into a lake. After years of frustration on this ssri, wherein I would get on the bike and ride down the hill part way and then have to stop because of a flat tire, then looking wistfully at the lake at the bottom and being angry at myself for not knowing how to perform basic bike maintenance, I not only figured out how to make it all the way down the hill (under rather specific circumstances; like, the bike needs to follow this path, and there needs to be some music, and I’ve got to choose a hill that has enough clover or whatever) I got good at, once I’d neared the lake at the bottom, veering away from the lake and riding up to the top again. True, the lake at the bottom was the eventual goal, but the sensation of the wind as I rode down the hill were also nice, and nice enough themselves that I would get on my bike just to ride downhill sometimes, over and over again, and only splash in the lake when I had something else I needed to do.

This is what the (>smut) post is about, really. There was a lot of hill riding there and not any splashing, and, as mentioned above, this really twisted my perception of reality around. Really, really badly.

And when I say years of frustration above, well, I’ll just tell you what I mean. I first started taking an ssri (not the one I ended up with by they all act pretty similarly) I was dating my ex. And I was like 19, and there was not a lot of splashing going on for me. There was, I hope, for her. And we certainly did a lot of bike riding, in various configurations. But, I dunno. It felt bad not to splash. Like, really bad. For both of us, I think. I felt like I was broken. And she felt like I wasn’t into her. And neither of us knew how to talk about it or to fix it. I’m not going to say that’s what happened to us. I know it isn’t. But it didn’t help. It hurt, a lot.

But now I don’t ride down the hill. I splash, yes, but it happens as soon as I get on the bike. It’s like I’m 14 and I’ve never ridden a bike before (lol 14, axiom? you never rode a bike until you were 14?) and I get on the bike and I push down on a pedal and I fucking crash and burn right there at the top of the hill, and the sprinklers turn on and I’m lying there in a heap getting sprinkled. It sucks. Well, it sucks in the sense that I’m used to enjoying the ride down the hill, sometimes over and over again. And I’m used to splashing into the lake when I’m done.

But there ain’t no hill no more. And there ain’t no lake.

The upside is that I’m done in like 15 minutes, even when I really don’t want to be. And MAYBE THAT’S WHAT’S NORMAL. I don’t mean the, uh, sensitivity, or my sense of balance or whatever I’m supposed to be comparing things with in my over-labored, pointless bike-riding metaphor. I mean maybe it’s normal to want to go for a ride and get a little wet, and then be done with it pretty quick and move on to something else.

I want, I want to be able to do this. I want it not to feel deeply unsatisfying, because even though riding around on the hill over and over again and splashing into the lake is satisfying it’s full of such dreadful moral problems and it’s a waste of my motherfucking time and it isn’t necessary and, honestly, I should just find someone who wants to ride a tandem bike with me, and even if I crash real quick, maybe that someone won’t mind and will keep riding with me for a while until both of us get to the lake at the bottom.

I just don’t think that will happen to me. I just don’t think it’s real or possible for me.

And I don’t know what the fuck to do with all my time that I used to spend riding. I’d say “well axiom you can write now :^)” but all I can seem to write is unfocused, rambling nonsense like this here blog post.

FUCK ME (PLEASE FUCK ME) I HATE THIS (THIS IS WHAT I AM) I DON’T WANT TO BE ALONE (I NEVER WANT TO BE WITH ANYONE AGAIN)

Stop the ride I want to get off.

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