Society (As Shown by Katashi and his 41-Year-Old Internet “Friend”)

I met the 13-year-old boy online.1

I’ve been wondering what it’d feel like to be “dangerous” for months now. To slink behind the law’s turned back, to feel powerful, to fell the rush of emotions--confusion, insecurity, fear, control, and lust--it was a fairy tale. The idea of some forbidden romance, too beautiful for the world to understand--it enchanted me. That’s what I thought, initially. But I soon found out that there was so much more…2

I guess I sound like a pervert…Well, by society’s standards, I am. I know I am. And I know it all sounds so very very wrong…and there ARE creeps out there that are incredibly fucked up…but for once I want the world to just shut up and listen to me. Do it for the children.3

Anyway, so I was forty when it started. I’m forty-one now. My name’s Michael Thornsky. I’ve never really liked women, though I dated a few. I found them silly and too high-strung and jaded and conformed into whatever they felt pressured into by society. They were all boring. And I was never into men, really, either. I tried only one on, once--tried him on like a sock, because that’s all he seemed to want to be for me--and again, I found it dull. And I never liked little girls either, because they grew up too fast into their painted-up Barbie-doll counterparts. But boys…they had potential in them.4

Growing up, my father was an alcoholic who ended up leaving us. I had a younger brother who my father shook as a baby. He gave him Shaken Baby Syndrome, I think it’s called now. So my father ended up causing him severe brain damage, and my mom had to take special care of him because of his retardation. It--I mean, my father shaking him-- eventually caused his death when he was five. My mother was a binge drinker and ex-drug addict who, only on occasion, indulged herself in drugs. I was kicked out of the house when I was seventeen.5

For a year after that, I slept on my friends’ couches. My “friends” and I didn’t know each other that well, but I knew them enough that they’d let me stay in their houses. Finally I ended up on the street in the summertime of the next year, and I got my first job when I was 18. I held a myriad of odd jobs for two years after that before I got a job as a cashier at Wal-mart. Two years later, I made it to an executive position in the Wal-mart store I worked at.6

Other than that, not much has happened in my life. I’ve never done much of anything. I’ve never made any contribution to society in any way, never done community service, never discovered a cure for cancer, never designed a new kind of car, never flown a plane, never written a book. I only thought a lot, felt a lot, watched a lot. You could have called me blue glass: I was calm, passive, and people just looked through me. I just stood and observed, saying little because I had nothing that I wanted to say to the world. It wouldn’t benefit me by talking endlessly, I wouldn’t learn a thing by talking other people’s ears off as some did to me. But I could learn by listening, by not talking. People saw me as dull, and didn’t realize that I was absorbing them, learning about how and why they act. Once I understood that everyone has a motivation for everything they do I could understand most people perfectly. I couldn’t hate people anymore. I had a wealth of information stored up in me, my thoughts and vague philosophies of life were like gold. But it was all wasted. I still felt empty, empty that people only saw me as glass. I wanted more knowledge, I wanted to experience the world for myself, feel more violently. I wanted a boy.7

After months of toying with the idea, I finally entered a chatroom. I found all kinds of child pornography on all kinds of sites. There were even live-streaming videos on some sites, wallpapers and pictures on other sites. In the chatrooms, most of the guys in there were looking for new sites with more videos, because of course it’s all illegal and the authorities are always finding these sites and shutting them down. Most of the guys were into cybering with young teenage girls. Some just watched the porn others made, others went out there and made it, or others were the typical online predators and stalked Myspace and other chatrooms looking for girls to meet. Some of them boasted how they’d gotten away with meeting six girls so far without getting caught. A few guys were into teenage boys.8

In one chatroom, one of the guys--a supposedly 70-year-old man--was suggesting going to some anime and manga chatrooms to get kids. I had no idea what the hell anime was then. It’s Japanese animated movies, and manga is the comic books. But anyway, some of the anime chatrooms are very graphic, and I’m not talking the pedophiles. It was the kids being graphic, cybering and what have you in public chatrooms. I was especially excited to discover that in this Japanese anime and manga stuff, there was the yaoi and shota genres. Er--yaoi has gay men, and shota is about kids in sexual relationships with adults. And it wasn’t just the pedophiles interested in the shota, it was the kids too.9

That basically made it incredibly easy to meet kids who weren’t too conservative or overly-cautious. Hell, they were practically groveling in the mud for all us older guys. It was surprising at first, but it was pleasant to know that it was just making life easier to me.10

I met 13-year-old Katashi in one of the shota chatrooms. His real name was James, I found out later, but as most of the other kids on the site, he took some Japanese name that he insisted on being called. I think his meant “hard” or “firm” or something along those lines. It was a lively chatroom, and they were arguing over the immorality of pedophilia, a typical discussion that was brought up nearly every day and involved a heated debate, but never a resolution. Most of the kids in there were absolute idiots, boys and girls alike, and didn’t make any intellectual contribution to the argument, their only contribution being inciting the anger of the others who had good points. I wasn’t particularly interested in the discussion, though. There was a particular young boy with a fiery personality who was dominating the debate. His points were precise, convincing (of course, he was arguing in favor of shota being a legitimate type of literature and morally acceptable, or at least as literature), and his comments to the idiots in the room witty and caustic. He argued against religion, society, humanity as a whole with eloquence unmatched by any other in the room. He had a plain contempt for society and a lot of its values, but his contempt was within reason and wasn’t blindly stated. But his efforts were largely squandered on the others, of course--he was wasting his breath.11

I joined in on the discussion, supporting him and putting in a few other comments but not taking any greater part in the discussion. He didn’t pay much attention to me. When the dissidents started to dissipate, he left the room. I left as well, and sent him a message. He replied a few hours later and we started chatting. He gave me his instant messenger. Within three days I had him hooked.12

Katashi told me most things about himself freely. He knew I was many years older than him, and a guy. He didn’t seem to worry though. With a cold sort of carelessness he told me how he lived with five other siblings, two of which were stepsiblings, one a half-brother, and the other two his biological siblings. He didn’t care for any of them, and they felt nothing toward him. He lived with his mom and step-dad; his step-dad was a mechanic, his mother a nurse. He was somewhat gothic and was depressed a lot. He seemed suicidal in all but the act itself, but he wasn’t whiney about it. He also said he was “bi-curious,” another one of those new nonsense words today’s generation has come up with. And he liked to draw, as most of the anime kids did. That was all I really knew about him.13

Katashi lived only an hour away from me. A week or so after meeting him, I convinced him to try to come out to meet me. I told him I could come pick him up if he wanted, but he said a friend of his was driving out to visit some cousins who lived 15 minutes away from me, so he could have his friend drop him off. 14

Two weeks after meeting him online, he came to where we’d agreed to meet, at some drugstore. The friend who dropped him off didn’t seem to think anything of it, seeing Katashi meeting some “strange” old man, and didn’t take enough interest in me to even say hi or give me a smile. He just left. I smiled at Katashi and he simply looked back at me. I made small talk as we walked down the road to where my car was parked--I didn’t want the friend seeing what my car looked like or where I lived, just in case. So we got in my car, Katashi sitting in the seat beside me staring forward out the window, and I drove home.15

For the first hour or so that Katashi was there, I showed him around my house. I guess I was nervous at first. I asked if he was hungry, I gave him a soda and pulled out some chips and heated up a couple cheeseburgers that I’d bought earlier that day. I asked him more about his life, not really listening. My nervousness turned to anxiety and excitement. At first, I thought I was delaying it because I was just scared--but then I decided that I was really just prolonging the excitement, deepening it. I couldn’t believe that the kid hadn’t noticed it at all, didn’t seem nervous or scared. Once he got some food in his belly, he seemed to perk up a bit more, talking about random things in his life, though he still spoke with a certain carelessness. He trusts me, I had thought to myself. He seemed to want to talk, to be understood. I offered him a few cliché bits of advice on life, trying not to sound too patronizing. But I wasn’t really paying any attention to the conversation, just more on the building excitement low in my stomach.16

I had been sitting in a wood chair at the table as he sat on a couch. I got up and shuffled around in my kitchen, hastily made a sandwich, and then sat down next to him, casually putting an arm along the back of the couch behind him. As he talked I gazed at his head, the individual hairs of his plain brown hair blazing golden in the midafternoon sun from a window. He had a nose that was a little too big--tall, but not squished or fat--and thick eyebrows which made his face look harsh. From the angle I was at, I could see how long his eyelashes were, the only feature that softened his face. He wore a black band t-shirt that said “PANTERA” across it and he wore some huge bondage pants--from that music store Hot Topic--that fell to the floor, the bottoms of them frayed and torn. His pants were ripped and roughly sewed at the knee, exposing skin. I wondered how long it would take to take off those pants--the way kids wore their pants these days, I figured that it would not take long. My lips curled upward slightly as I thought this. My hunger grew even greater, swelled, and I nervously licked my lips. I felt suddenly glad for the safety of the mind--if only he knew what I was thinking right then…17

Finally, I could take it no longer. I leaned over and rammed my mouth against his, still open and half-uttering a word. I shoved myself at him roughly, pushing forward, tongue intruding past his lips. He didn’t respond at all--he was probably shocked, terrified, I thought. I shoved my tongue down further, waiting for him to gag and begin fighting me. I wanted him to try to fight me first--I would then be provoked to fight back. I would show him that I was stronger than him, that he couldn’t stop me from possessing him as I wished.18

He didn’t fight. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back. I reached my hand out to hold his neck. His arms lay at his sides. At last, he started choking, snapped his eyes open and pushed at my arm. It was like a gazelle suddenly turning and running from a lion--I was instantly on top of him, my hands pinning his arms to the couch. The next thing I knew, I was unbuckling my belt with one hand, without looking and with such a speed that I never knew I had. In moments it was undone, I was pressing down on the boy’s body, a full-grown man’s hot weight bearing down on the little pale body of an innocent little brown-haired boy…I would take him, I would take him, I would rip that innocence away, make him explode…19

I stopped. Katashi wasn’t fighting me, wasn’t even moaning with longing or anything. He just lay there, watching, smiling, grimacing a little. Why did I stop? I had no idea why. This kid unnerved me…I was about to rape him--did he realize this?? Of course, I thought. He’s not stupid, he knew what he was gonna get when he agreed to come here. He knew I was going to have sex with him--or was I?20

“What’s wrong?” Katashi asked, frowning.21

I just stared, eyes wild, the pressure between my legs mounting, but my mind ignoring it. What the hell was wrong with this kid??22

“What’s the matter?” he asked again. “I thought you were gonna fuck me.”23

He said it so smoothly, so casually and without feeling, as if accusing a friend of not buying him something as simple as a soda.24

“I--”25

“What?”26

“Why aren’t you resisting me?” I blubbered, my mind still reeling with confusion.27

“I’m not one of the ones who screams for help or puts up a fight just for show. If that’s what you’re looking for, then look somewhere else.”28

I was shocked. “Well--why aren’t you responding, then? Why aren’t you feeling anything? Not even--You’re just sitting there, not even moving. You didn’t even kiss back.”29

Katashi raised an eyebrow slightly and gave me a look. “I don’t know. What, are you not going to have sex with me now? Pussy.”30

Nonplussed, I pushed, “Do you always do that? Act so, like, so…indifferent?”31

“Always,” he said simply.32

“You’re not a virgin?” I asked.33

“No.”34

“…Have you ever done it with an older man?”35

“Twice,” he said.36

I didn’t know what to say other than, “Why?”37

“Why what?”38

“You’ve done it before, you KNEW what was gonna happen--why do you like it?”39

“For the same reason that you do.”40

I blinked. Why did I ever want to do this? What was it again? Oh yeah…I wanted to “experience” life, to “feel” life. I didn’t want to be glass anymore, I didn’t want to be empty and transparent. But most guys like me--well, they’re NOT like me, most all of them did it for the lust, the excitement of controlling a person and taking from them. I wanted to MAKE something…I wanted to make myself, make feeling, make SOMETHING. But of course this kid thought that I was really in it for the lust, so he’s actually wrong…41

“You don’t do it for the lust. You don’t do it for perverting someone or watching them cry or fight or scream as you’re hurting them,” Katashi said. He read my thoughts. He actually DID know.42

I shook my head, leaned back over, and plopped back down on the couch, my fly still open and my belt undone and hanging loose. “You do it…to FEEL something?” I accused.43

“Yes.”44

“Why?”45

“Why not?”46

I frowned, stymied. I tried from another angle. “Why would you willingly want to subject yourself to that, though? And don’t say ‘for the same reason you do.’”47

“You say ‘subject’ like it’s a bad thing. Besides, what HAVEN’T I been subjected to?”48

I tried to remember what he’d told me earlier about himself. His two older step-siblings were both drug addicts…one had served time for it…and Katashi himself had gotten wound up with the law when some of his friends were caught using crack. He used sometimes of course, but wasn’t caught then. His older biological sister had accused their step-dad of raping her, but had no proof, so she was now living with some friend…His step-dad was a harsh man who knocked him around on occasion. Katashi had shown me a picture of himself and others with the man posing in the corner of the picture, and he looked real rugged and possibly mean--who knocked him around on occasion…49

I glanced down at Katashi’s arms. They were streaked with white and purple lines, scars. He wore no bracelets or watches to cover his wrists.50

“You did some of that with a pen?” I asked.51

“Yeah.”52

“Didn’t that HURT?”53

“…Hardly. It gets boring.” He wasn’t even acting all macho and tough when he said that--it was the truth.54

I just shook my head. I couldn’t get over it, his apathy. “But it's not right for you to not feel like that! You act like…like you’re dead.”55

Katashi stared blankly. “And?”56

That nearly killed me. Now I’m not an overly emotional man, or even just an emotional one, but just hearing the way he said that made me want to break down and damn near cry. He was so dead…for all he knew, I could’ve been planning to murder him! I could keep him here, kidnap him, or move out of the country even and keep him locked in a hidden room under the stairs and only let him out when I “needed” him…He was putting himself up to those risks without even caring! How could a boy as young as he become so jaded!?57

“What made you this way?” I asked.58

“What didn’t?” he replied sarcastically. I thought that was all the answer I was going to get, but he actually continued. “Everything has. My parents, my step-dad, my siblings, the food I eat, the drugs I take. The teachers who stop caring as soon as they find that you’re not ‘gifted’ and only a lost cause. The therapists who over prescribe you with medications until eventually you can’t afford it any more and just stop. The media--it’s always interesting, always beautiful, always deep if you’re half-dying of starvation--oh what a beautiful mind you must have, a beautiful, selfless reason to stop eating when you don’t have to. And music, it speaks your mind and dumbs it down and makes it sound way more pretty, more holy than it actually is. Appointments, requirements, due-dates, prerequisites, job interviews, community service, 'experience.' You have to get good grades and play a sport and do community service to get into college, you have to get into college to get a good job. You need a good job to get a pretty wife, have kids, be happy. If you don’t get good grades, don’t go to college, you won’t get a good job and you’ll die. Fast food, it’s always fast, faster, you have to race people and kill people in order to get the prize at the end, just to eat. Everything’s so multicolored and multigrained and muti-complex and wonderful and high-strung. And what for? For the hungry. For unborn fetuses. For God. For humanity. Humanity suffers so that humanity may thrive. But the generation that was meant to thrive has to suffer as well, so the NEXT generation may thrive…Because that’s what’s expected of us. Because--”59

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold it right there!” I exclaimed. He looked up suddenly, his angry face now holding innocent surprise. “You--” I faltered. What could you say to that? “…That’s how I used to feel, I guess. When I was younger…But I wasn’t as young as you are.” I rubbed my face, shaking my head. “You’re way too young…”60

“It’s not like I can help my age,” Katashi said.61

“I know,” I replied.62

Silence fell between us.63

Then I asked quietly, “Are you like glass?”64

“What the hell--?”65

“Like people just see right through you and write you off as being stupid or dull, but you can see them perfectly well--you observe them, understand them.” The words came to me without even thinking, or without evening having thought of them before.66

“…Sure.”67

“You want to learn more about them, you want to be like them--all of them, to feel and know EVERYTHING?” I asked, the words tumbling out of my mouth as I picked up some steam. I started to feel excited--but not in the way I had felt twenty minutes earlier. This was a different sort of excitement.68

“No,” he said.69

I stared at him, my momentum lost. “What?”70

“I don’t want to be like them.”71

I blinked. He wasn’t like me after all, we weren’t the same...I wanted to be like others, but he--for some reason--didn’t. In all else we seemed to be the same. I was disappointed. “Why not?”72

“You feel nothing, but YOU want to feel in order to fit in somewhere. I feel nothing, but I want to try to feel because then I can prove that I CAN’T feel. If I CAN feel, then I’ve found my weakness. If I feel, I’ll be like them. If I don’t, then I’m immune to everything. That’s why I want to try to feel.”73

My mouth was hanging half-open, half about to utter a word. I closed it.74

“THAT is how we are different,” Katashi said, standing up.75

“You’re like a monster…” I said. “Almost,” I added, realizing how impolite that had been.76

Katashi paused. “No, I’m not,” he said matter-of-factly.77

“You’re not?”78

“No.” He started to leave. “Because I DO feel.”79

I just blinked at him, probably looking like an idiot with both my mouth and my pants still gaping open.80

“I’m no better than anyone else in this world,” Katashi said. “Thank you, Michael.” He started to leave, but paused, seeming to have changed his mind. He blew me a kiss and left.81

I sat on my couch like that for a very long time, replaying all of it in my head. There was some meaning in this whole thing, somewhere, I knew. And the kiss--the only sort of emotion he ever really showed me--what did it mean? I had made him feel, I decided…I had made him feel. I had done it, I had brought him down and made him human, the thing he hadn’t wanted. Did he love me? Possibly, I concluded. I didn’t know. I still don’t. Does he hate me for making him love me? Most likely, I decided.82

But was there a greater meaning in all of this, higher than just him and myself? Was he a monster because he wasn’t human, or was he a monster because he discovered that he was still human?83

Am I a monster because I’m not human, or am I a monster because I’m only human?84

I still grapple with that question to this day.85

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