Age Dysphoria

I probably should have known that I would come to enjoy this much more than I thought possible when I found out it was "soft shota". Really, I used to play the HELL out of these types of simple, text-based "dating games" when I first discovered the internet back in the early 2000's, several of which I remember being based on an anime called Yami no Matsui (which I will undoubtedly someday watch). I was very lonely in my early teenhood as all my friends from before moved away, and I proved unfit to make any new ones beyond my adolescent fumbling attempts to get into the pants of every boy I could find, somewhat tempered by my oft-visited belief that those days were already behind me. These games were my method to find a world where I was only enough in control to find my own path, yet not enough in control to disallow myself a semblance of a happy ending; it was a world where there were people who were still homosexual outside of childhood — something I could not encounter in reality.

 

There is a certain deep, nostalgic sadness to all of this. In my own childhood, I found joy in all the typical prepubescent experimentation with other boys, that others oft encountered. There were none who did not delight in taking off his pants after a little coaxing, and so I drugged myself with the belief that we all liked boys "that way" and that it was something that would not change. Placidly, I ignored what I saw in movies and advertisements, filled with heterosexuals, as something that my generation would conquer. Every boy I found was gay, every single last one would let me touch his penis and would touch mine, and even one of my friends who was always spouting off about some girl he wanted to screw would masturbate at my side to whatever pornographic material we could secure in a pre-internet age. However, eventually these times came to an end. Boys that enjoyed our "games" would drift away, others suddenly one day resisted all attempts from me to lavish my growing affection upon them. All began talking about girls and breasts and pussy and how much they WANTED it, which was something I could not understand. What about what WE had? Wasn't that enough...?!

 

 

(Spoilers of the game to follow.)

 

So it seemed to be the hauntingly parallel course, here. The adorable Hideaki who shared the same type of glasses as me, with whom I shared the same love for hard work and studies, got a girlfriend. Shugo, who tried to teach clumsy old me how to play sports and who seemed to secretly be screwing around with several younger boys, was a peeping-tom and a pervert for girls since he was a baby. Even adorable Chiaki, who openly molested me on my first day at the new school and seemed to have a Laharl-esque paralyzing weakness for females, crushed on Taka. Certainly, we got to have lots of fun together that one night, but my heart sank when he said he thought of me as a brother. I've heard THAT before. I know just how it ends.

 

I suppose there is still the summer to come, but this IS the last year of elementary school. Why do I already know how this will all turn out? I know that an uncertain, even doomed future is no reason to waste the potential of today; and yet it hurts to know. It hurts when I reflect on that "theory" of mine.

 

 

...That, it will all end. It turns out, from my point of view, that homosexuality is a mere phase of development. It's something almost every boy experiments with in childhood, and yet something so quickly forgotten and left behind when puberty arrives. I've seen it in my life, and I see it with the boys in this game. Slowly, inexorably, they will drift from my arms and into the arms of some girl. And I've never feel so angry and hurt as I do when they tell me they don't want it with me any more. I don't understand. Why must everyone move forward when I cannot? Why am I "stuck" in this boyish little phase of homosexuality and unable to grow up into a normal heterosexual? Why have I, in adulthood, become increasingly sure that I am the only one in the world this way?

 

This is the real reason I'm a pedophile, too. Because I know that every last shred of affection a boy has for other boys begins to unravel as soon as hairs start appearing on his balls. When he stops thinking of his friends "that way" and starts thinking about girls "that way". When what makes him hard is no longer my touch, but the thought of the touch of a female. It's cruel. I live in a cruel world when my only true happiness is a phase that melts away in a few years, a phase that society has deemed as being a dozen years past my grasp and retreating further into the distance every day. Is it any wonder that I am still alone?  

 

I can't remember the last time any piece of media has affected me like this, absorbed me like this, controlled me like this. I can appreciate movies and the plot of games, and sometimes I lose myself for a moment to the suspension of disbelief. I allow myself to get misty-eyed and to cry out at the screen when a dramatic scene happens. However, always it remains an aloof, distant observer comprehending something. An appreciation, yes, but not much emotion. But this...? I've forgotten my entire life for the last couple of days; the hours melt away and the tinny voice in the back of my mind — the one that tells me I'm neglecting my job and wasting time — grows ever more ignored. My every thought and dream became bent toward the completion of some unseen, unknown goals; every faculty of my mind trying to memorize the names and faces of these boys, remember where they live and what they like, gauge the status of our relationship and what to say and when. Does the fate of my entire life pale in comparison to my attempts to help a fictional friend fight some guy? Shall everything I've worked so hard for in my actual adulthood be thrown to the wayside in favor of an imaginary world of drawn boys where I can be whom I really feel I am meant to be? I've never really grown up, after all. I can drive to work, pay my bills, sell my stuff, talk to people about life-changing matters, pass out business cards with my name on it, and even wear a fitted suit... but in the end I'm just the same 11-year-old boy pretending to be an adult. Playing "house". Playing "dress-up". Thinking that I will never grow up and like girls like I'm supposed to, like everyone else does.

 

I don't belong in THIS world; I belong in THAT world! That world: the one that reminds me of when I was young and happy; the one where there was no reason, only feeling; that world where "love" wasn't marriage and commitment and joint-fucking-tax-returns, but fifteen minutes hiding in a bathroom or bedroom or in a treehouse or behind some bushes, with our soft skin and warm breath, trembling hands and firm little erections; that world where there was no such thing as heartbreak because there was always some other boy to "play" with if one didn't want to or couldn't. What meaning is there in parties and seminars and multi-thousand dollar commissions, fancy cars and large houses, respect and knowledge and having newbies look up to me... without THAT?

 

 

I apologize for all this damned mess. Writing out my thoughts to myself in long-form is a form of personal therapy, and what started out as an honest review of my feelings for this game got out of hand. Probably, nobody reads this kind of stuff anyway; I could simply click "don't save" and be done with it, but I just feel stupid writing this for half an hour and then not posting it. As if my effort was completely wasted.

 

Tomorrow is Monday. I have to get up at 6:30am and go to work. I don't want to be there. I don't want to be anywhere. It seems the only place I want to be is a place that is out of my reach — separated from me by either the endless sands of time, or by a thin sheet of glass backed by pixels.

 

 

(Also, Space Sheriff Kai needs to be a real anime.)