A Christmas Story

[Twenty-four hours after receiving a pair of cheap Bluetooth earbuds for Christmas]

me: Good morning, honey.

her: Good morning, what’s goi—?

me: Shush. Look at me. Are you looking at me?

her: Uh… yeah.

me: [gestures to ear buds in ears]

me: This is who I am now. I am Bluetooth Headphone Guy. Everywhere I go, this is what the world will see.

her: Mm-hm.

me: That’s right. This is me! Even my dumps will have a soundtrack! I am a golden fucking god!

her: Okay.

me: My name is Daddy. D-A-D-D-Y, Daddy. And don’t you forget it!

her: Can I go back to sleep now?

me: [already walked away, humming *Sex & Candy*]

Memories

My first sexual fantasy came to me in a dream. A dream that I had every night for weeks, and then sporadically for months on end. And it was –perhaps unsurprisingly– quite fucked-up.

I don’t know exactly where my child-brain got the raw material for the dream. My babysitter hadn’t yet given me a guided tour of the female reproductive system, but I did have a neighbor girl who kept trying to expose herself to me… that could have had something to do with it. More likely, it was the result of my parents’ questionable decision to let me watch both Logan’s Run and The Stepford Wives.

Either way, every night, they’d come to my room… the sacrifices, I mean.

You see, something had gone catastrophically wrong out in the world. I didn’t understand everything –I was just a boy, after all, so they hid the details– but it seemed that someone, somewhere, released something terrible into the wild. An exotic contagion had worked its way through the adult male population, ultimately rendering it sterile. Humanity lived on in anxious misery, knowing that the only thing standing between it and extinction was a single generation of boys who were still convinced girls had cooties.

The only solution? Brave young lads such as myself would have to dedicate our lives to looking beyond the cooties, toward our genetic destinies; with our world crying out for help, we couldn’t afford to falter. It was decided that the ruined, wasted men of the world would send their wives and daughters to boys like me, to be used as training material… as fodder for a fire to be lit in the empty hearth of womankind. The program was voluntary at first, but after burnout proved to be an issue, lottery conscription inevitably began.

So the sacrifices came to us, one, two, or a few at a time; some dedicated (or at least resigned) to serving a Greater Good, and some longing for a choice they couldn’t have. They were assigned to our homes for short tenures, but through their vital, compulsory work, the reproductively mature men of tomorrow would prove to be the finest force of fast-fathering fuckers to ever bestride one godforsaken planet!

Of course, I was a kid, so the backstory was the most interesting part of the dream. The action consisted entirely of women in fur coats and heels filing into my room, approaching me, dropping their coats to reveal bikinis, and then… well, the rest was a bit of a mystery. There was some light petting, stuff happened, and I woke up. Again and again, night after night.

Sometimes the sacrifices were happy and enthusiastic about doing their duty; sometimes they were sad, and I had to comfort them while they taught me to use their bodies. Sometimes I would fall in love with the latest girl and want to keep her; sometimes she would disappoint me and I would have her sent away. The only constant seemed to be a baseline understanding that my sexuality was all-important and must be served at any cost.

Which, honestly, is a crazy idea to have in your head when you’re six.

daddy, what was the 80s like?

We just finished watching the series finale of Halt and Catch Fire, which spent its first few seasons in the ‘80s, so I suppose I have a thought or three.

  • The clothes were embarrassing. The music was mostly shitty. The movies were mediocre. Television was literally the worst it has ever been.
  • Everyone was worried about being nuked or contracting AIDS.
  • Everyone was also worried about the devil, for some reason. He was backward-masking messages into our rock-n-roll records, he was molesting kids in daycare, he made Jim Bakker trip and fall into Jessica Hahn’s vagina… you name it, the dude was everywhere in the ‘80s.
  • Adult supervision was scarce and half-hearted, so we largely raised ourselves. Phil Donahue and Oprah helped.
  • Bush. Lots and lots of bush.
  • I voted for Walter Mondale in my school’s mock election. He received a total of three votes.
  • I was sitting in my friend’s pickup in the school parking lot —listening to Hall & Oates, I believe— when they announced that Challenger had exploded. It was heartbreaking; “astronaut” was still a common aspiration back then. (Years later, after Challenger and Columbia, I cried like a little bitch when visiting NASA’s memorial at Cape Canaveral.)
  • Half my time as a teenager in the ‘80s was spent listening to adults talk about being a teenager in the ‘60s. Motherfuckers wouldn’t shut up about it.

littleshakespeareanbaby:

littleshakespeareanbaby:

Being called cunt in a mean and patronizing makes my tummy do somersaults tbh

*update*
Being called sweetheart and honey in a patronizing manner makes me super squirmy and gives me butterflies and makes me want to do anything you tell me to

Come here for a second, sweetheart… I want to show my friends something. Just stand here next to me— no, not like that! Turn around, facing away from them; you don’t want to ugly-cry in front of our guests, do you? Good girl, that’s it. Now you hush and be still while the men talk.

(I’m sorry, guys… she’s sweet, but kind of thick and always sticky. That’s why I call her Honey.)

So, anyone want to see her do something painful and stupid? Want to stick something in her? You won’t believe the pitiful shit a cunt like this will do for attention! She could be off somewhere doing something useful with her life, but all she really wants is to be right here, with you guys, wondering if there’ll be anything left of her in the morning… gross, right?

But fun!

How Things End

[CONTENT NOTE: Here be dragons.]

Hello, Daddy? It’s me, Erin.

Yes, Daddy; Erin your daughter. Yes, that’s always funny.

I’m not trying to–

No, no, you’re right. I’m sorry. That’s not–

I love your jokes, Daddy. Really.

Can we– can I–?

It’s just that I have something to tell you.

More than one thing, really. A lot of things. I had to– I had to write some of it down, so please, if it’s okay, please let me get through it.

Don’t get— don’t be— you don’t need to be defensive, okay? I just need you to listen.

Can’t you just—? Please? Thank you.

I’ve been thinking about it for so long, talking to you like this. About us and— whatever this thing is. This thing between us that we can’t give a name, because, I don’t know… because putting it into words will make it real? Because if we talk about it, something will finally have to change? It scares me so much, knowing we can never go back from here… but it’s time. It’s just… it’s time.

You fucked me, Daddy.

You fucked me, and taught me to like it. More than like it… you made me need it. It’s been fifteen years since the first time, and I— I still fucking crave you, on like— on a cellular level. It’s like my body doesn’t feel right if you’re not using it. Can you even imagine that? Your whole life, feeling wrong in your own skin… and the only thing that makes it better is the worst thing in the world?

No. No. Of course you can’t. If you could imagine what it’s like to be me —if you could see that far outside yourself— then none of this would have ever happened. I guess I grew up in your blind spot.

It’s not that I hate you. Or maybe I do, a little. I should. But I love you more. I love you so much that I’ve tried to claw through my own skin and rip the love out of me. For a long, long time, I wanted nothing more than to kill it, and if the rest of me had to die in the process, then fine— fuck it.

But I see differently now. I see that your love is like your green eyes and your allergies and your dick; it’s just something you’ve put inside me that’s made me what I am. You’re in my genes, in my blood, in my head… you’re what I see when I think “man”, and it’s your weight I feel when I think “sex”.

It took a while, but I’ve figured myself out. I’ve learned that I can’t stop loving you and continue to live in this world, and you know what, Daddy? I want to live. I want to fucking live. So I choose to love you and accept it. I choose.

But the thing is— the thing is… I— I’m pregnant.

I’ve known for a while, and it’s going to be a girl.

And Daddy, I need you to hear me and understand, okay? As much as I love you… my daughter will never know you. She will never see your face or hear your name. You died in a war, or a building fell on you; I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet. The important thing is that she never spends even one moment of her precious life wondering about you.

I hope you get why it has to be this way, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t; my mind is set on this. I can’t bear the thought of you touching her, for all the right and wrong reasons. She never needs to feel the way I feel, and if I’m honest, I would hate her a little if she did. You’ve always been my sickness, you know? I can’t and I won’t share it.

But she won’t be here for months yet. And I— I still have that craving.

…

I’m outside your front door, Daddy. Please open up and say goodbye to me.

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