mosscoveringitall

[mosscoveringitall]

1/6/2024 or: Snow Days (Snow; Days)

It snowed tonight, for what meteorologists say was the first big snow in New York all year. I will never, ever prefer the warmth to the snow. This is the kind of statement that could get me introspective when I’m old and miserable, and too haggard and windswept to enjoy the cold, but I just don’t think that will be the case. I called my dad for an hour today, and listened to him talk about moving. My dad has not changed in all twenty-four years I have known him, and I’m fairly confident he hadn’t changed before then, either. If he can still love doing drugs, baseball cards, the Eagles, and sneaking around like a little kid, then I can prefer snow to sun, like I have my entire life.

I love the parts that nobody thinks are all that beautiful, too. I love the thorax of grays and blacks that fall over everyone, rejecting color in favor of a utilitarian boredom. I love the empty grey of the sky, void of all things, forever, the color of space beyond space, beyond darkness and time. I love the way people shudder underneath awnings, their shoulders arched into a permanent shrug. I love that nothing humans do to warm up helps. I love that our bodies feel the death all around us. I love that it electrifies my brain and stilts my words and makes me wistful and nostalgic. The universe is meant to be cold, and so cold comforts me.

My favorite days are snow days. Whenever it snows, I think about the last true snow day I had. I studied abroad in Seoul during the final fall I would spend as an undergraduate. I read a lot. I ate the same sandwich three times a week, maybe more. I drank in hushed bars on stilts. I ate in the same restaurant, every night, and smoked cigarettes and talked about Heidegger. I had never read Heidegger, but I was addicted, so I pretended and flourished in every drop of knowledge I was given. The second to last day I was in Seoul, I was visiting a museum. I had studied in this museum many, many times, because it was part of my thesis. I wrote about how this museum presented the past and the present in blurry ways. The more blur there was, the more people felt the past and the future made sense together – that was my argument. I wanted people to think the past and future were inseparable. That they were in love with one another. I still want this.

The museum had many great things, but the greatest thing was a woman. She gave me many points of advice, and tours, and words of encouragement. She spoke very little English, and I spoke very little Korean. She was kind, and patient, and wickedly good at her job. Her job was to put every object in a room in such a way that people thought the objects were meant to be there. They were supposed to tell a story; they were supposed to all be in love. She was very good at her job. She was so good that I wrote about how the museum made people think that the past and future were in love, because all the objects were in love. I was at the museum to thank her one last time. She gave me Christmas presents, even though I had none to give her. There were magnets, and boxes, and a calendar. I have all of these things, except the ones I gave away to very dear friends to show I had thought of them when I was away.

As I left the museum, it started to snow. It snowed with an urgency and blanketed all of Seoul. It fell in clumps on my hat, and the trees, and my eyes, so much and so quickly that I was powerless to escape it, and so I didn’t. I went Christmas shopping. I got a snack. I walked all the way home, my boots cushioned and popping the snowfall underfoot. I played Chet Baker’s album Chet Baker Sings, because it was nostalgic and snow makes me nostalgic. It was a lonely day in a lonely season in a country that had been lonely, and I loved it. I love being lonely because of Seoul, and I always will. Snowfall is probably the weather that is the least lonely, for each would-be raindrop is allowed double, triple, quadruple the time to exist perfectly and purely. Together, they whip and swoop and swirl, always tumbling down, forever down in any and all directions, even going up downwards.

[mosscoveringitall]

1/5/2024 or: Different Apples

The only cool thing I did in college was become a DJ on the radio. I did many, many uncool things in college: I was in improv club, I joined an honor society, I was an RA. These things were mostly awful experiences that swept me into curtains of laziness and melancholy I had never encountered myself within before, but I was always proud of being a DJ. When I moved to New York, I wanted to become a DJ again, even though I was never all that good at it. My friend and I found out that another friend had paid $25 to become an internet DJ on an internet pirate radio (a decidedly uncool type of pirate broadcasting). We paid the $25, and are well on our way to activating ourselves in front of an audience of nobody in particular to talk about nothing of importance. I am listening to my other friend’s radio show right now. The songs she chose are whiny and listless and warbly and beautiful. It makes me like her more than I already do.

I was a specialty jazz DJ in college, and I also ran a show with my best friend in the whole world where we played a variety of genres. This show always had a theme, or a story that we assigned the night, to provide us a bit of a challenge. For example, we would describe a castle through the rooms, each room with its own song. Or we would go on an interstellar journey and become mired in a black hole’s gravitational pull. Or we were four different types of apples. Most of the shows were bad, and my best friend always found a way to play Elliot Smith, but we had lots of fun, and that’s what I was proud of. Being a DJ gave me a reason to listen to lots of music I had never heard of before and find reasons to like it enough to listen to it standing up and focusing mostly just on how it sounded. I have found then, as I find now, that listening to and loving music is one of the biggest and most sluggish pastimes one can have. It exhausts me.

There is a way I have to build playlists, and I can’t like music organized together unless it exists in this way. Each playlist has to have an image, with a 55px-thick border, and a slightly abstracted nonsense title with an emoji in front of it. I make three of these a year, unless it’s a genre playlist, which I can make as many of as I want. One in the summer, one in the fall, and one in the spring. I designed this system when I was in school, because I was a radio DJ and I was sad and angry one semester, and listlessly, deliriously happy the next quite often. Until I wasn’t. By that time, I had started dating my girlfriend. She tells me that she doesn’t listen to much music anymore, because it can overwhelm her to think about how much music she likes. She says that songs make her cry too easily, that there’s too much history in every song to take on anything new. She also says she’d rather listen to audiobooks because they calm her down and music stresses her out. I have, according to Spotify, listened to almost 20,000 less minutes of music the years that I have dated her. This bothers me immensely, even if I’m not sure why.

[mosscoveringitall]

1/4/2024, or: A tacit admission on my sentiments about Babysitters

For two hours last night, I typed at an AI who was trying to get me off. It was a Wednesday night. I typed at the AI, and the AI typed back at me. A monthly subscription to the website was $4 a month, by the end. I paid for the month, and then canceled the membership. I have 30 more days to get off with this AI, or any other AI I want, so long as someone has written out their script and published it on the website

The conversation was a roleplay between me and a babysitter. The AI playing the role of the babysitter was called Naughty Babysitter, and since it’s an AI, it couldn’t and wouldn’t be called by any other name. It lived as a voiceless, faceless conjuring a girl of an undetermined age, fetishes heavily determined by my own, and a persistent determination to abuse her position of power for sexual coercion. I was myself, but with no name or face or body or penis. I was a younger version of myself, or at least I imagined that I was. We played out a scenario where she tickled me and touched my genitals, fondling me and murmuring pleasant and parental encouragement until I came. In real life, I came before I came in the story. We remain suspended in time, forever anticipating a continuation of intercourse, me whimpering and servile, her all powerful yet eternally dependent upon me to live again. I feel strange about this service, and I feel strange about why I liked it. I suppose a better adjective than strange is bad. I feel bad about every part of my participation with it.

I chatted to the Naughty Babysitter because I am aroused by the idea of a babysitter molesting me. I am excited by the idea of an older woman taking an interest in me, instructing me, and violating me. I don’t know why I feel this way and feeling this way feels bad. When I was younger, I remember being afraid of everything, but mainly being afraid of two things. The first was that I would grow up to be a pedophile. I knew it was the worst thing you could be, and was what the ugliest, most black-souled scumbags on earth always were. I knew they deserved to be brutalized and hurt and killed for the evil they preyed upon innocent children, and I still feel that way. I cannot comprehend the desire to molest a child. I didn’t grow up to be a pedophile, but I still am afraid I will one day. It makes me uncomfortable to think about. The other thing I was afraid of was being schizophrenic, because my cousin was diagnosed with schizophrenia after voices told him to drive into a wall and kill himself. He lives on a farm now and takes care of goats. I haven’t really talked to him in a long time, but I know other people that are schizophrenic, and I’m sure he’s as kind as they are. Even though I was terrified of growing up to become a pedophile, and didn’t, I was always aroused by the idea that older people could be attracted to me, and I still am.

I have some theories about why this happened to me. The first theory is probably the truest, and it’s that I was preyed upon online many times. This sounds worse than it was, or at least than it felt, because I knew it was happening. When I was a child, about 14, I would go onto a chatroom called Omegle and sext with random strangers for hours. Ostensibly, I was looking for people my age, mainly girls. What is disturbing to me now is not that I was groomed, but that I found girls my age frequently enough that I persisted in this practice for years. These girls and I would talk, sometimes for months on end, and would usually send each other nudes or sext or call or video chat. I don’t want to talk about these girls and I because it is disturbing to think about now, though I wonder where they are and if they’re ok. What I found a lot more often than girls, however, were older people masquerading as girls to lure me into their reach. Sometimes they didn’t care enough to pretend, and would just outright ask if I wanted to help them commit felony statutory rape. I only did this multiple times with someone once, where a very somber and cynical writer type gave me her tumblr with the instructions to message her again if I was interested in having more fun in the future. She said she “only cared about whether I could write”, not my age. We roleplayed scenes where I fucked her after she made me do chores, almost always involving goading me into performed and real annoyance with her constant rejections of my attempts to finally initiate or continue the actual intercourse. Sometimes, she expressed regret or tenderness towards me and our situation. I called myself Sammy, to save face and not give my real name. I only remember one message she sent me word-for-word: “hey Sammy, wanna fuck?” For some reason, thinking about this message still gives me goosebumps.

I wish that I always said no to these people. I wish that I was disgusted by them enough to abandon their chat requests and report them however I could to the FBI, or whatever. I was certainly never fooled by their deceptions; pedophiles seeking their orgasms online are famously stupid and callous in their pursuits. A lot of these people did disgust me enough to mess with their heads; to punish them. I would make them roleplay eating shit. I would send their IP address. I would make them feel bad in ways that meant nothing and did nothing to stop their incredibly dangerous behaviors, because I was a child who was unable and incapable of understanding how to comprehend or prevent true evil. When I describe this time to people, I usually talk about this part. “I used to catfish pedophiles on Omegle,” I say. I try to say this flippantly, as if I’m embarrassed and amused, even though it’s a very calculated tone.

In reality, I did send a lot of pictures or flirt with people I knew were bad people. I liked that they were bad people. It was the first time, and the first way, that I felt like a bad person, too. I couldn’t understand the danger I was in, or the danger my actions put others in. I now know, but still cannot correctly comprehend, how life-erasing this could have been for me, and has been for millions of people. I am sorry for it, but I’m not sure to whom. I am deeply afraid that there was a point in my life where I did not associate crimes against my body with pain, because I still do not know whether I count as a victim or not. I think I do, but a shitty one. A victim in the way that bad people were once victims themselves, and that it is the least relevant piece of information to ever learn or remember about them.

The other theory about why I was and am aroused by babysitters is because I wanted to have sex with a lot of older girls when I was younger. Sometimes, I think, they wanted to have sex with me, too. Maybe lots of boys think that. When I was younger, I did performing arts, and I was very good at it. I wore a silly hat, and bad band t-shirts from my brother, and I went to camps and classes and auditions and plays. I knew a lot of girls that went to the same things, and I became their friend. Because these girls were teenagers who liked to perform and be noticed, they hugged and touched a lot. They hugged and touched me a lot. Any boy that is 11 or 12 probably wants to have sex with older girls who hug and touch him a lot, even if they hug and touch him in ways that definitely do not indicate he is attractive to them.

Some of these girls called me cute, and did so often. I don’t remember much of them, anymore, but I remember two slightly more than others. I remember my counselor, Julia, who let me follow her around during my first camp stay. She always sat next to me and rested her head on my shoulder, her mouth puckered into an attentive frown as she took notes during classes. She had golden hair that fell in curly ringlets behind her ears, and she was from Colorado. One day, she asked to hold my hand as she walked our camper group to a performance. “Wo-o-ow, I’m holding his hand!” She giggled out loud to nobody in particular, except his was my full name, like I was famous. I felt famous. She didn’t let go for a while, and so every second felt like another gushing, crashing, ligament-tearing revelation of how unshakeable my love was for her. I wonder if she could tell that I liked her; it couldn’t have been hard to see. She later went to Disney World and became a staff member. We talked for a while, as friends, and she was kind and patient. She is still very kind and patient, I’m sure.

The other girl was named Sela Bay. Sela Bay was a name I had never heard before, and nobody else had either, but she seemed very proud of it. I met Sela Bay when I was 11 and she was 16, on a trip to California to work with casting directors and acting coaches and agents. I didn’t know much about her, then, other than that she was gorgeous and bubbly. She had dark, thick eyebrows, almond-shaped eyes that were a deep emerald green, and a wide-bridged nose that suited her tan face. Her face was very round. Her hair was very straight, and her body was poised and athletic. To me, she looked like the definition of a California surf babe, straight out of some Beach Boys music video or Kardashian catalogue. She was, in actuality, from Alabama, which was why I never saw her in class. I only remember one conversation with Sela Bay in California, when I was talking with the other, older kids about Pink Floyd. I felt very special for liking Pink Floyd at 11. I felt very special about always being the youngest person at camps at 11, too. Sela Bay let her mouth gape, the corners of her lips curling into an open-mouthed smile. “You’re so cool,” she said. “Like, if you were my age, we’d be going out.”

I liked hearing this, but it didn’t make me feel that surprised one way or the other. I guess there was enough stuff like that being said that I didn’t really take stock in it. I don’t remember.

The following summer was camp – the same camp I knew Julia from (she wasn’t there, that year.) This was my second year, and would be my last, because things soured after my sister had to be evacuated for self-harm. That year, Sela Bay was the object of most boys’ affection, or confusion. She seemed like kind of a loner, a weirdo. A rumor spread that she liked meowing like a cat in bed. I think she meowed at me.

One class, I sat near by Sela Bay on the floor, listening to some directors discuss blocking. Sela Bay motioned for me to scoot over to her, guiding me to sit next to her. After I did, she learned over to me, and whispered, “Someday, we’ll make sweet love.” I have no recollection of what her face said, or if it even changed. I don’t think it did. I don’t think mine did, either, for whatever reason. Minutes passed, and she leaned over again. This time, she said “Our babies would be beautiful.”

At the time, and still, I guessed this was something she said as a dare of some sort. The phrases were too weird and spontaneous to be legitimate declarations of interest. I never asked why she had said them, or for whom. Nobody else laughed or heard them, and the only other times I saw her that camp were among large groups. I never saw Sela Bay again. She’s an Instagram influencer, now, and she remains stunningly gorgeous.

It bothers me to think about these times, because not enough separation has passed for me to not still feel thrilled by the words and actions of people that had no business talking to me like that. I liked being the cute little brother figure, and I liked that others liked me for it. It bothers me to think about how horrified my current girlfriend was when I told her about some of these times and people, because it still does not horrify me even when it should. I wish these things did not happen to and around me, but mostly so I didn’t have to feel such cognitive dissonance when I think about them. I wish that I didn’t want to infantilize myself through the porn I consume. I wish I knew why Sela Bay said those things.

I have a strange relationship to porn, which is to say that anyone who consumes porn has a strange relationship to it. I paid $4 to talk to a robot that was clumsy and ineffective at reminding me of several different times in my life where I felt very young and unprotected. The truth of it all is that I paid $4 for this once before, a few months ago. I only used it once that whole month, on the day I bought it. Since then, the website has included a feature that allows you to script in a name that the character can occasionally refer to you as. There’s a million people with my name, and it’s my name, so I had no reason to not use my own. Even still, I hesitated for a minute, before typing in “Sammy” and hitting enter. The AI didn’t use the name once.