By early March, I had started to see posters being hung up all over the school for this so-called “Pride Prom”. Apparently, it was going to be an LGBT-exclusive prom night held on 6 June; the first of its kind in Saint Frederick history. At this point I gave up on having any kind of strong reaction to this kind of stuff. This was the way it was and there was nothing I could do to change it.
In careers class, we had constructed our own resumes, and were expected by some point in the year to use them to apply for a job. I decided on EB Games, for two reasons: it seemed like the least soul-sucking job around, and Noah was also applying for a position there. He was my friend and also much more of a gaming nerd than me, so I figured he would be the ideal co-worker.
The EB Games I worked at was located in the huge mall on the edge of town, and one of the few places in all of Romanborough that, generally speaking, was bustling with life 24/7. I was still used to being quite secluded with myself when not in school, but I knew I had to evolve from that; working at a video games shop in a busy mall seemed like the most appropriate means of accomplishing that. I wasn’t even much of a gamer myself – I hardly played anything outside the occasional Hearts of Iron IV and Space Engineers with the boys, as well as a bit of Hollow Knight and Shovel Knight – but perhaps this job would also make me more of a man of culture in addition to the general social experience.
I emailed the place that weekend sent out a customised version of the application letter we had written in class. Within just eight hours they had replied, saying they would love to see me on Monday.
So, I went in for my interview with the manager on Monday, and it actually went smoothly enough. I had a momentary bout of hesitation when he asked, “So who are you exactly?” but I think I gave a decent enough response.
Whether I did give a flattering depiction of myself as a person probably did not matter much in the end anyway, because just two days later I got an email back saying I had the job.
That Friday, 15 March, was the first official day of a new era in my life as a cog in the machine. The deal was that I worked the afternoons of Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, from 4:30pm to 8:00pm. That was it.
I was ecstatic to discover almost immediately that Noah had virtually the same schedule as me; only difference was that he also worked Tuesdays. But we would be together all the time on my end. This twist of fate was probably too lenient on me, but I seem to have a habit of always ending up with the best outcomes by chance. Involuntary coddling, you could say.
Noah had already been working at the place since Tuesday, so he offered me the helpful guidance of showing me around the tiny little block in all but fifteen minutes. Since there was nothing that we immediately had to do that moment, we both got behind the counter and just stood around, waiting, supposedly, for our first customer to come in.
I looked around at all the shelves of video games, consoles and collectables, and then up at the TV in the corner, which was playing an ad for Samurai Snowdown. The counter we were leaning over was housing games mostly for the PlayStation 4, none of which I recognised. I looked over at Noah, and he was doing something on his Apple watch. All I had was a Samsung phone. Then I looked out at the mall – beyond the windows which were decorated in shelves of Skylanders figurines – and I saw a small but distinct crowd of people all scattered about the area. We were situated right next to the escalator to the second floor, and there was a fountain and some benches along its perimeter. Some people were sitting down, others just walking by and trying to shop, to get their things and be on out of there.
I looked at all of this and I thought about how I could have never pictured myself at a place like it, doing something like what I was doing. Just a year ago, when I was hauled up in a tight little apartment bloc in the depths of British suburbia, I had come to categorise myself as a perpetual recluse. I was homeschooled, far away from anyone I ever knew, and had no job or even any real priorities to truly speak of. I knew that this couldn’t go on forever, but I still had a belief in myself that I could carry on throughout my life without the need to indulge so heavily in the outside world. I needed to be independent and not rely on other human beings for my happiness, or really any emotions of mine for that matter. That was that I told myself.
But now I stared at this empty gaming shop, with the faint sounds of light bustling outside, with this other guy I had come to view as my friend looking just as bored as me. I ran hands up and down my torso and my legs. The black and red shirt and pants that made up my EB Games uniform were probably the most striking colours in the entire place.
Noah was watching me do this. He asked with a light snicker in his voice, “What are you doing, man?”
And I realised then and there how completely unsure I was of anything anymore.
I had little time to reminisce, because almost right after that our first customer came in. Noah greeted him first, and I awkwardly followed suit. He was a big, chunky, neckbeard-looking guy, and he did not respond to us.
Eventually he left without a single word. And that was our first customer. Or, I should be saying, my first customer. And the more I saw Noah deal with people on his own throughout the rest of the day and Saturday, the more it only made me feel that I probably shouldn’t have been there.
That was also the same weekend that the Christchurch Mosque shootings happened. When we returned to history class the Monday after, Mr. Dawson looked more solemn than ever. And so did Vicki. Dawson spent probably a quarter of the class telling us all about the massacre, the rise of the alt-right, and how we were all in the prime age of being indoctrinated into it. I asked Terrance if he thought this was as ridiculous as I thought it was.
“I dunno man, I don’t really get into politics that much,” he replied, in his signature genuine but laid-back tone.
Mr. Benson, meanwhile, told us that he had some ‘special’ assignments planned for us that had to do with what had happened over the weekend. I asked Toven what I had asked Terrance.
Toven was more sympathetic. For once he actually spoke to me. “Yeah. It’s pretty shitty.”
As it would turn out, we were put into groups and had to create these long series of tableaus representing things that had to do with the Christchurch shootings, such as far-right indoctrination, social isolation and stuff like that. I got grouped up with Toven, Taylor, Vicki and a couple others. Vicki, of course, was the unofficial director. I honestly can’t remember what our tableau series even looked like, but I do remember Mr. Benson saying it was the most ‘clear-cut’ of them all. So, I suppose once again her undemocratic leadership only worked to our benefit.
Truth be told, I didn’t feel particularly ‘clear-cut’ about anything in my life at this point. On one hand, there were areas in which I was doing far better than ever: I had something to call a network of friends and I was actually a working man; but I also felt that one itch that every soon-to-be-16-year-old had, and that was an otherwise complete lack of direction in life. I had some hobbies – writing, drawing, learning history, playing around with Inkscape – but there was nothing I could specifically pinpoint as a be-all-end-all to where I was going to go or how I was supposed to justify my existence.
I never talked about these feelings I had with anyone. Everyone else already seemed to be a novice at pouring their hearts out, and it did not make me feel any more comfortable about it. Instagram post after Instagram post, Discord message after Discord message, actual real conversation after actual real conversation from my fellow adolescents all around me, about how they too had no direction in life and how quirky that apparently was. I was not the type of person to be ‘quirky’ about anything. I just went through my day, got it over with, and repeated.
I thought this little program of mine worked just fine, until one conversation I had with Noah – on the job, of course – in early April.
“I gotta ask you something,” he began, as we were both lounging behind the counter.
“What is it?”
“Who the fuck even are you?”
My first thought was that this was a leadup to some kind of weird joke of his. He did that a lot. In fact, one of his favourite things to do was tell you he had some extremely important and life-changing news, only to bookend it with, ‘But first a word from our sponsor, Raid Shadow Legends!’
So, I didn’t take it too seriously at first. I snickered a bit and replied, “What do you mean, dude?”
“I’m serious.” He said my name. “I’ve known you for like, five months now and I still don’t fucking know who you are.”
I wasn’t really sure what to say, but I figured it wasn’t a joke anymore. “I’m not getting it.”
He looked at me like I was a total buffoon. “Dude, like... I feel like I’ve just been talking to some fucking NPC for five months. Maybe not exactly like that, but... like, you’re cool. You’re a cool guy. But I don’t know you man... It’s like you just, hang out with us to try and blend in, not because you really consider us friends. Like, I know you got this job just because of me. But I don’t fucking know who you are, man! I don’t have a goddamn clue who I’m working with.” He paused. He spoke again soon enough. “You know what I mean?”
“I’m not trying to stalk you or anything, Noah.”
“I’m not saying that. I just don’t want you to be doing shit like this because you feel some kind of pressure or something to hang out with us. I mean, it’s pretty fucking obvious you don’t actually give a shit about this job. Here I am, fucking going up to every customer who walks through that door, making sure they’re getting what they goddamn want. And what the hell are you doing? Most of the time you’re just sitting on your ass back here, or you’re in the storage room ‘organising’ shit. I mean, come on.”
There was nothing I could say to that. He was right about me not particularly caring for the job. I probably wasn’t a ‘working man’ after all.
He continued. “You don’t really add anything to our conversations... you don’t try to stand out at all... you’re just sort of there, in the background, letting others do all the work. I don’t know if that makes any sense to you, but that’s the best way I can describe it.”
I still couldn’t find a reason to say anything back.
Noah, in his own words, did that work for me too. “Speak to me man! Is there anything I’m fucking saying here that’s registering to you at all?”
I had to act on the spot. “I mean... well, you’re right about me not really liking this job.”
“Yeah, I can sure as hell tell you don’t. Why don’t you just quit? I don’t really need a partner anyway. I can take care of all of this on my own.”
That actually stung. It was the first time in a long time that I had felt something like that. “Y-you serious, Noah?”
“Yeah I am. And... I’m not saying we’re not friends anymore. But I think you need to find yourself a bit. Do a bit of soul-searching or whatever. That’s my honest advice.”
I quit that weekend. It was more out of frustration with Noah than anything else. I even left the Discord server out of the alienation I was feeling. And it turns out it was all just in time, because not long after our mid-term progress reports came out; I was doing well enough in history and drama, but I was actually failing math. Mom told me I was forbidden from having a job for the rest of the year and that I had to put school before anything else. I was just glad she didn’t make me get a tutor.
On the plus side, I had earned just over $800 from doing basically nothing for four weeks.
With my newfound freedom, I spent less of it actually studying harder and more of it just mindlessly browsing the internet, as I had been doing for years on end. This time though, I wasn’t watching history videos or fiddling around with graphic design and mapping software; I felt too depressed to care about those things. Instead, I found a new solace in the sordid world of pornography. I had been watching or otherwise looking at porn for years, but it was becoming more of an unhealthy obsession than ever before. And it wasn’t just real people that I liked; my main faucet of indulgence soon became hentai and ‘fanart’ of video game and cartoon characters. I didn’t even play a lot of games or watch a lot of shows, but I was just fascinated with how these artists were able to sexualise them all so immaculately.
The more I thought about it, the more envious I became of all the talent I saw in front of my screen. These people were so good that they had Patreons and other self-funding platforms, and people were paying them inordinate amounts of money just to draw what they wanted to see. And some of them were doing it as a full-time job! Sure, drawing could be labour-intensive – I knew this firsthand – but it still seemed like it would be one of the easiest jobs to do once you actually got into the groove of it. And for the sheer baffling count of hentai that already existed on the internet, it was still not always easy for me to find what I wanted. I was a lesbian fetishist before anything else, and I felt that not enough artists were catering to people like me. I thought to myself that, if I worked hard enough, I could be the change I wanted to see.
So, I invested some of the $800 I earned into buying a brand-new set of pencils – some for rough sketching, some for ‘polishing’ – as well as a couple new erasers. I wasn’t ready for any digital software yet; I was still pretty terrible at anatomy and other basic things and I needed to flesh those out first. So, I started watching tutorial after tutorial on how to draw the female body, how to draw breasts, and everything in-between. It was all very tedious, but I disciplined to at least practice a little bit every night. This was going to be my new lifeline and I was hellbent on staying true to this self-promise.
In the meantime, I started creating accounts on websites like FurAffinity, e621, Newgrounds and even Hentai Foundry, trying to learn how to network and establish some kind of personality for myself before I even started posting art. I still didn’t really understand what Noah had told me, but I knew that I wanted to be better than what he thought of me. I had to be some kind of different. That’s what it came down to.
That was what I focused on all throughout April. By the end of the month, I could draw sketches of women with proper anatomy and proportions fairly easily, and I felt proud of myself. I mean, hey, that was a lot better than even some prominent hentai artists I was already seeing online. It was true that not all kinks and fetishes called for an abundance of anatomical expertise, but I still felt superior for having gained such abilities on my very own terms. I was actually passionate about something; I was grinding for it; I wanted to make into something that actually sustain me.
Finally, I felt like I actually had some kind of justification for why I was here, alive. Things seemed at least mildly ‘clear-cut’ for the first time in probably ever.
In school, though, things could have been going better. I stopped hanging out with the Art Kids, and it had been two months since I had associated myself with the guys from my own previous art class. I still had Terrance, Barack and Leon in history class, and they were cool enough. Drama class was a bit trickier since we didn’t have a consistent seating arrangement; all there was a big open room where we did all our performances in, and a bunch of chairs and tables off to the side for us to drag forward. But there was always Toven and Taylor if I was feeling desperate. Not that the rest of the drama kids were insufferable, I just never got close to any of them. Math, unsurprisingly, was out of the question; I didn’t sit next to anyone anyway.
In Spanish class though, I began to get a bit closer to the kid who sat next to me: this short dude with a weird smile named Parker, who was all but the third kid I knew in school who always wore a beanie. At the beginning of the term, we mostly ignored each other, but that changed when we were grouped up with these two other kids that I knew from English class for a project. We had to make a video of the four of us acting out a scene in Spanish, and one of our members – a black girl named Tess who had filmed Noah and I months earlier – got the idea to do a some cringey classroom roleplay for our short film.
Both Parker and I knew this idea was stupid, but we decided to have our own bit of fun with it. Parker got to be the character who went around the classroom annoying others by recording them, and I was the weird loner kid who was ‘plotting his revenge’ (or ‘tramando mi venganza’) on a conspicuous sheet of paper. When our film played in class, we held each other’s hand as we tried to take in the cringe of it all.
After that day, we started talking more. I learned that he was one of five youths in all of Canada who had a black belt in jujitsu, and the red sweatshirt he always wore was actually a shirt he got from one of his matches that he won. He was insanely humble about it though; when I congratulated him, he simply said, “Eh, it’s whatever.” Aside from this spectacular savant of his, he also had a passion for urban exploration, and showed me videos he took of maneuvering through old abandoned buildings downtown. I told him he should make them public, but he looked at me like I was an idiot and said he would be blacklisted from the jujitsu community if they found out about this hobby of his.
Urban exploration was something that always piqued my interest, and there were more than a few times that I thought about just finding some abandoned or otherwise decaying building in my area and waltzing on in for the thrill of it. But the intense and oftentimes irrational fear of reprehension always halted me. It was irrational because, truthfully, nothing much at all was looked after in Romanborough, let alone deserted buildings that nobody besides drug traders used or cared about. But now I had a real, concrete reason to just finally do it, and that was to impress Parker. I figured it was the least I could do for inadvertently insulting his status in the Canadian jujitsu community.
So, I set out one Sunday afternoon and made it to this former office building near the edge of town. It was shut down and condemned years ago, but I saw once passing by that there were a few open windows. I climbed through one on the first floor, and just walked around, filming what I saw. It was mostly rather boring, but I got about 10 minutes of footage, and that Monday I showed it to Parker in class. He chuckled a bit and turned away.
That made me feel a lot better.
So, there was Terrance, Barack, Leon, Taylor, Toven and Parker.
And then there was Vicki.