content warning: this blog post deals with sex crimes
it still seems like it was not that serious, at least not as bad as some other things that could have happened. i never really felt like a victim. i recently mentioned it to my mother in an offhand remark assuming she already knew. after all, they took my phone away over it. this was roughly 2010, and the phone they took away was a t-mobile sidekick, a technology notable for being the coolest thing ever in 2010 (and maybe all other years) as evidenced by its key role in Electronic Arts’ hit digital sportgame Skate 3, an object also known to belong to the set of coolest-ever things. i was in middle school, and losing my t-mobile sidekick was heartbreaking, on account of how cool it was.
i used my t-mobile sidekick and my acer laptop (which my parents had strangely not taken away) to read and post to a video game forum i became obsessed with. after the confusing alienation of years of special education among children my age who, if they could even speak, were anyway just as bizarre, spiky and maladjusted as i was, it was a transformative experience to socialize with people who seemed so put together. it was cooler still to me that many of them were adults, some of whom i began to see as role models. online was so much better than real life, which to me was characterized by pain and loneliness.
yet i never properly integrated into this community. how could i? i had no social experience to draw from. i was annoying, rule-breaking, inappropriate, disruptive, mean, annoying—things i happened to be in real life, too. it broke my heart that i couldn’t seem to fit in anywhere, not even online where it looked as if there were a space for everyone.
of course the furries would take me in. that’s where my people are. i’m not sure how it is now, but in that time furries were still damaged, isolated weirdoes like myself. i found myself hanging out in an IRC chat room related to the video game forum with many of them. i chose to be one of them, really simply because they were any community that accepted me, despite all my problems. i designed a little character for myself. i sought out all the related comics, the merchandise, the music, the porn.
ultimately i spent a lot of time talking with adults on the internet. there are bound to be adults with ulterior motives if you chat with enough of them. i talked to them on forums. in chat rooms. on f-list. many of them became what i could only conceive of as friends. with some, we called each other boyfriends. i was 12, 13, 14. i was a child. they were adults. they took advantage of me. yet even looking back it doesn’t really feel like that. i can see their cases. they were just weird fucked up kids too. most weren’t that much older. 19, 20, 21. but at the end of the day, i was groomed and they were groomers.
it is strange to think that, aside from my experience with one older boy who transparently wished to manipulate and diminish me, my memories are still mostly fond. a memory of a thing that felt good but turns out to have hurt you is still a good memory. in whatever way i understood love, i loved these people, and i still feel sure some of them really did love me.
as it turns out, my mom did not know about any of this. she was saddened but seemingly not surprised. i had been a complete menace on the computer as a child. i got myself into trouble often. not in cool hacker ways but embarrassing angry kid ones. so i guess they thought this was that and didn’t realize what really had happened. maybe they just thought i was reading smut or something. i dunno.
TMI warning on this following paragraph jesus christ. i feel sick imagining that this text is going to be public under my name. why did i make this stupid blog
i’ve since worked through all this on my own, and can look back on it analytically, without much emotion. i know that i am a victim, even if my feelings don’t say the same thing. i’m okay now, despite some residual weirdness; i think my hypersexuality is in some part a result of a developmental stunting this may have contributed to. i am also recently learning that i may not experience romantic attraction in a normal way. i evidently never have been able to understand how to function in a relationship, monogamous or otherwise. it’s hard for me to differentiate between friends and lovers. i don’t know if i am aromantic or if i am all-romantic. i would kiss most of my friends if they wanted to kiss me back, but i know most people do not feel the same way. cultural and neurological differences. there must be some reason sex never spilled into my public-facing work despite my obsession with it. i have created porn before, but i never shared it. it always felt wrong. i mean, i know there is a number of kids out there who look up to me, and, by the way, if you are a kid reading this, why don’t you read my fucking disclaimers and content warnings and click a different website or something! or just play my games and ignore everything i say. for heaven’s sake
anyway, this blog post isn’t really therapy for me. instead the goal is to continue what this website is all about: spilling everything i can think of, in case someone else might benefit from it. i have always been sick of the artists i look up to keeping everything so secret, and hiding the process. well, my process is informed by my whole life, as are the processes of all other artists. i understand this is a stretch, but it still feels necessary. maybe a skilled psychoanalyst could connect this blog post to some quality of my games i am unconscious to. while i am not a good enough artist for it to matter all that much in the immediate sense, if the next Pixel reads this blog post and is inspired to do what i have been doing, i’ll have done my job.
despite all my shame and embarrassment, i feel that publishing this is more aligned with my values than keeping it hidden, and there are really no more things i can think of about my life that will be harder to publish than this. well, fuck, except that one other thing