likepolishingfirewood:

new rule: you can’t volunteer to make someone a mixed tape like some john cusack circa “Say Anything” indie God out of my dreams, and then not respond to a fucking text message. it’s just MEAN.

Kennedy has a new blog on Tumblr, a new life in Seattle, and a new distrust for men. (Thanks flaky dude from last weekend!) We were discussing her most recent date and she asked me what I thought she should do regarding this maybe-interested/maybe-not guy. My advice:

I, being the type to not trust men, say you are one of many girls he is pursuing concurrently using the unfortunately effective technology of mass text messaging and copy/paste. My advice is to maximize orgasms while minimizing pain. I suggest dating as many people as possible at the same time so any single man’s attention is irrelevant since you are too busy anyway. Basically, don’t get invested. Men are shit.* Let’s not forget that just because one of us is operating under some sort of romantic delusion at the moment.

I should’ve probably added the disclaimer that following the above advice is the first step to lifelong commitmentphobia, but I figure Kennedy’s already well on her way toward that.

Anyway, it was interesting to talk about boys because I haven’t done it for months. Literally, months. The people I have been keeping in touch with in the States are mostly in serious relationships, so no one’s gushing about their drunken error in judgment from last weekend. You have to understand, I used to relish in drunken errors! And yes, I do mean my own. Everyone else was mostly horrified but I loved my crazy dating antics (almost as much as I love myself), so ever since I went off the market and stopped being so damn entertaining (to myself), I’ve been dying to live vicariously and single-y through someone else.

Until Kennedy and I chatted, at least. Then I remembered that dating was largely a complicated, terrible affair. Being single itself wasn’t so bad (and often times, it rocked), but when you were sick and tired of being alone and decided to get out there and look for someone with whom you could share takeout bills and pregnancy scares, the process for finding said partner came with so many rules and expectations that you would’ve thought “dating” was something invented by a particularly heinous schoolteacher. For example, what’s with waiting to call and not seeing each other on consecutive days? Or the do’s and don’ts of first date hanky-panky? Or generally keeping your feelings for someone guarded until he hands you a big rock? For reasons that escape me, playing hard to get has been marketed as the key to getting a mate, despite its incompatibility with our biological impulses and all evolutionary theory. On one hand, it reduces men to masochistic idiots who want the unattainable. On the other, it encourages women to behave manipulatively. Way to fulfill a stereotype!

The only thing that’s worse than playing hard to get is doing the opposite: pretending you like someone you don’t have the least bit of interest in, which actually seems to be a dating maxim itself. I’ve done this before and I’ve had it done to me, and my theory is that this behavior occurs when the disinterested party is afraid of offending the uninteresting one. (Like, what are you supposed to say, “I’ve been dating you for the water pressure”?) Also, I sometimes date guys for longer than I should simply for lack of other options. DO NOT DO THIS. I am terrible at breaking up with people, but seriously, suck it up and deal with being alone, because if you don’t, this is what will happen: Invariably, a more attractive option will come along. You will be forced to kill off your dalliance of the past few weeks without much warning. Your victim will go through all five stages of grief as their dreams of cohabitation slowly disintegrate while you watch on somewhat embarrassed by how long you took part in this charade. No one is happy, and if you fail to give adequate notice, you may even have a recent ex-lover phoning you at 2 a.m. while you try to play Just The Tip with the person you dumped them for. All in all, not hot.

Oh, last reason off the top of my head for why dating sucks: “dating” is a favorite activity of assholes with girlfriends. (Another possible theory, Kennedy. Take notes!)

Okay, let’s end this baby on a positive note since I’ve just spent several paragraphs criticizing an institution in which I no longer have to take part and everyone’s probably like, “Hypocrite!” So I would like to recap by saying that although I stick to the claim that dating is a sham, my last two relationships did start with first dates — the traditional kind that comes with dinner and ends in 69 — but that being said, let’s not attribute the successful outcum  to the dating process. After all, any non-kissing action on the first date is supposed to be a romance killer. Thus, I’m pretty sure the relationships evolved in spite of the rules and expectations, not because of them. So you see? It’s actually all in your hands! Be a maverick! Don’t wait to fuck! Answer your goddamn text messages as soon as you receive them! And stop listening to dating advice from oversexed college girls! Seriously, I don’t know jack.

* Men not actually shit.

Part of the reason why I write about my life is because I am scared of not remembering anything about it. I have a terrible memory, no doubt an ironic symptom of childhood bullying that taught me the art of forgetting terrible memories. (Truth: I routinely have problems with recalling things that happened before the age of 12). Unfortunately for me, I never quite unlearned how to forget. Now that I am full-grown and expected to remember things like faces and names, I find myself standing around dumb-founded as all my friends recall events at which everyone but me seems to have been present. I routinely fail to recognize guys with whom I’ve gone on single dates, or even people I went to high school with. It seems I am a spectator to other people’s memories but never the one doing the remembering herself.

And it’s not just memories either. It’s skills like how to use JSTOR (thank you, high school debate) or how to swim (thank you, community pool) that I must relearn because I’ve somehow magically forgotten despite everyone’s insistence that there are some things, like riding a bike, that you remember forever. Well, trust me, if there were ever a person who could forget, it’d be me. In Ibiza, for example, this was precisely my problem. Here I was with miles of unpolluted ocean before me, and I was terrified of wading too far out because I hadn’t swum in years. I was always scared to go into pools as a kid until I braved swimming lessons during early elementary school. Then I promptly forgot and had to learn again, this time during a summer around age 10. I don’t think I’ve really swum again since. Eventually in Ibiza, I gave it a go at a shallow beach but I conceded defeat after several gulpfuls of seawater. This was a performance from someone who used to relish jumping off diving boards several yards above her head.

And so I consider my life history a sort of project. Narcissistic it may be, but most of my writing concerns relationships; and my knowledge of relationships is inseparable from my understanding of myself. It’s too bad my mental timeline starts somewhere at last week. To help myself remember the important things, I sift through blog entries from high school, reread old instant messaging conversations, or simply ask questions to people who were paying attention when life was happening. I am endlessly recording and recalling the details of my existence in hopes that turning my laptop into a life library will offer some permanence to my fleeting memories. Last summer, I even paid a friend $40 to transcribe 200+ text messages. This spring, I requested from Harvard my mental health records from 2006 to 2007. It’d been a tumultuous year, and I thought these logs might come in handy some day, not just for “memoir research” (the reason I cited on my request form) but for … well, me. When I go home for the holidays, I dig up paper diaries of my youth and old notes passed from friends to my middle and high school self. I actually still have plenty, including mean ones that declared me a slut at as young an age as 12 and nice ones from girls who are still some of my closest friends today. I’m the type of person who doesn’t throw things away, despite easily blocking out large chunks of my childhood. I’m pretty sure that none of these habits are common, that I am straddling a fine line between forgetfulness and repression,that I likely appear crazy or self-obsessed or both . (That last one may be a correct assessment, since I am, after all, applying journalistic techniques to research my favorite subject: myself.)

The funny thing about reexamining the past is that I always find something new. I have a hard time remembering, and so the Lena of yesterday never seems familiar. I might as well be going through the personal documents of a stranger. Besides, I’ve changed so much that it’s hard to get a grasp of who I was or wanted to be at any given point in time. It’s a good thing that I do a better job than most of keeping track of feelings and thoughts in the moment or else my account of my life would begin somewhere at 17. Luckily, I’ve maintained multiple blogs for the past five years in which I have a record of everything from my adolescent sexual experiences to college admission anxieties to freshman year disillusionment to first loves and last loves. The girl preserved reads like a fictional character to me. Whoever I was then is always too far removed for me to get a good hold on her now. And it’s sad. It’s tragic that I forget.

It’s tragic because forgetting means throwing out the good along with the bad and though I think leaving behind the latter is a matter of self-preservation, it’s the former that makes life worth living, isn’t it? Besides, there are lessons I could learn from myself if only I had the will to remember them. I must admit that there are some things I did better at 15 than I do now. Somehow, things seemed clearer then, even when it came to what I wanted to accomplish with my writing. There are other things I’ve simply stopped knowing how to do, like letting myself fall in love without worrying about what risks it might entail.

Last night, while trying to dig up resume drafts from my inbox, I found an old email exchange with an ex-boyfriend I dated two summers ago. In it, Summer Guy (his pseudonym on my blog) said one of the most important things anyone has ever told me: “Your writing is beautiful; don’t ever stop.” To which I responded, “I’m more flattered than if you had said I was beautiful. Thank you.” The rest of the emails were about our relationship, about falling hard and fast, about — as I called it then — “love … or its short-term equivalent.” We were writing at the height of our passion for each other, and I found what I said to him remarkable because for once, reading the old Lena brought about a feeling of nostalgia, a sense that I had indeed felt that way in that moment. I remembered her. This hasn’t happened in a long time for me. Recognition of my former self, in place of embarrassment at who she was — or even worse, bafflement — has largely been rare, and yet last night, I could recall what it felt like to love someone.

I don’t love him anymore. At least not in the way that I used to. And though I consider us good friends, I enjoy Summer Guy’s company most from afar … or preferably in short spurts with breaks for good measure. But despite only harboring platonic feelings for him nowadays, recalling how much I once loved him made me smile. It reminded me that relationships are great, and believe it or not, I need the reminder. I’ve been spending the past month trying to convince myself that relationships are the precise opposite of great. Instead, they are emotionally precarious, troublesome, and unnecessary. Maybe I’m clinging desperately to my independence for fear that I will lose some part of myself in the process of falling for someone else. Maybe I simply don’t know how to respond to someone who exceeds the expectations I’ve habitually lowered in light of attached suitors and so-called liberal lovers who later balk at my ideals. Maybe I’m not willing to run the risk of abandonment. But though I’ve been afraid for weeks to make this concession, I must say: by and large, love is worth it. The fact that an email from a former boyfriend can conjure up this rare spark of recognition of the feeling is proof enough.

Love didn’t used to terrify me, and I certainly didn’t think I was scared of it but reading those emails I wrote to Summer Guy made me see how differently I am now behaving in this relationship. Because unlike the community pool, love is more like swimming in the ocean. Once you’re far out, there are no lifeguards or railings, and more often than not, your final destination is not forward but back from where you came. For the girl who used to throw herself headfirst into the water without hesitation, it seems like I’ve taken one too many steps away from the sand to remember that the view is worth it, that drowning is more fear than real possibility, that even those who never properly learned how to swim — or who have long forgotten — are capable of staying afloat.

I’ve been getting a fair share of critical comments and emails for appearing overprivileged and “jet-setting” all over Europe, which would actually not bother me so much if it weren’t for the fact that neither is true. Contrary to claims made by commenters on my blog, I don’t come from a wealthy family (which is why I qualify for HFAI) so Harvard is pretty much my only claim to privilege. As far as claims go, I have to admit that I’ve got it pretty good, but simply going to an Ivy League school doesn’t make the rest of your life. It’s not like I showed up to Harvard and suddenly, I was given the trust fund I’d always wanted. Before this year, I worked during every summer since age 15 and during every academic term since college began. But after my last job ended in December, I vowed to concentrate more on my writing, so I decided to ditch paid-by-the-hour internships in favor of freelance work and personal projects. I completed my most recent assignment a week and a half ago, in the days between my London and Spain trips. Sure, I’m awfully lucky that I get to run around Europe, but writing remains a huge component of my life and I’m pretty much always working on columns or my manuscript here.

And though this is beside the point, I think I’ve made it fairly obvious that the majority of my time here thus far has been spent in an un-air-conditioned dorm room with my sometimes-suicidal best friend. Her roommates are probably wondering when the hell I’m going to leave. It’s not like I’m rocking out in lavish hotels. I’m essentially a squatter in student housing, not the Marie Antoinette these online snarks are looking to stone. I mean, when I was hungry today, I had to go into the kitchen to steal someone else’s cake and eat it. Seriously.

Anyway, I’m writing this somewhat defensive entry because I find it irritating that there’s a stereotype of Harvard kids as being spoiled brats who have had everything handed to them in life. Certainly, this holds true for a portion of the population, but on the whole, the students here are probably some of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen, and there are plenty of them who aren’t working for money but rather for causes and beliefs that don’t even benefit them. Occasional pretension aside, my peers deserve a lot of credit for that. Of course, plenty of us — even someone like me whose annual family income qualified her for free school lunches back in the day — have had inherent advantages, be they particularly supportive parents or the necessary college prep classes. Still, those advantages shouldn’t discredit the many things we have earned for ourselves. In my case, I think this summer of travel has been well-earned, given the fact that it’s the first leisurely summer I’ve had since … just about ever.

Unlike comments about my sexual history, I take criticism about perceived privilege and exorbitant spending (of other people’s money) very personally. I consider “brat” far more insulting than “slut”, because though I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with sexual appetite, I do think that ignorant wastefulness and entitlement are major character flaws. Besides, the truth is that I do feel bad about not working this summer. I put myself through enough guilt without needing commenters to remind me about it. And this guilt is definitely an irrational manifestation of the capitalistic, work-a-holic system in which I grew up. Why do Americans feel so bad about taking a vacation!

This autumn, it’ll be back to work for me … and it’ll be much more work than usual too. I’m taking the year off from Harvard, and I’ll be the Boston area, close to friends and lover (note: that was singular, not plural). I’m looking for a part-time gig to balance out my freelancing. Having my own hours as a writer is fantastic but at my age, at least, it’s no way to pay the bills on the regular. So ideally, I’d like to be working at a non-profit that deals with women’s issues, LGBT advocacy, or disadvantaged youth. Come September, I’ll be more than ready for real life and the comfort of work. I wouldn’t trade this summer for anything, but I wouldn’t extend it either. Besides, when traveling becomes a full-time occupation, it ceases to be a vacation.

I didn’t expect anyone with any modicum of common sense to disseminate these rumors further than they’ve already been disseminated, but clearly I was wrong. It’s bad that completely anonymous strangers with no stake in my life have chosen to so thoroughly gut it and put it on display on my behalf. It’s worse that perfectly intelligent people believe what they say and encourage this rumor-mongering by reposting the defamatory content. You guys work for thisrecording. Don’t you have to fact-check or something before you just post something to the Internet? Anyway, that’s enough, now. I’ve been ignoring this mess for two months and it’s time for an explanation. A long one.

Even Julia Allison, who epitomizes the trials and triumphs of blogebrity, said after a tumultuous Tumblr run that “none of this has been worth it.” I don’t know what I’ll eventually get out of Sex and the Ivy, or out of The Chicktionary for that matter, but I’m also reaching the point where I can no longer see any benefit to doing what I have been doing for the past 22 months. A book deal? A reality TV show? A job at some “edgy” new media company too self-congratulatory to actually be edgy? None of these options — and all of them have been offered — are terribly interesting to me, perhaps because they require that I sacrifice my independence and creative control. What I’d really like to do is to graduate and to become a nomad, to read what I want to read and to write what I want to write, and (most of all) to just be left alone, at least as far as my personal life is concerned.

That last thing has always been the problem from the beginning: people misunderstand my choice to reveal certain elements of my life. It does not entitle them to dig for the parts I do not share or to actively interfere in events that have nothing to do with them. That’s why it’s not worth it anymore, or at least, that’s why I’m approaching a point where things are no longer worth it. I used to get irritated by the harassing emails that ruined my day; I used to get angry when other people — be they Gawker or my classmates — just didn’t understand me. But those things I eventually got used to. Something far more sinister is happening now, a line I didn’t even know existed is being crossed, and it makes everything that has preceded it seem awfully trivial in comparison. I wrote in a letter to Kennedy recently:

I wonder, of course, if this is all worth it. I wonder this all the time, from the beginning really, since the stakes rose with every month and it seemed like any given moment in time was a huge risk, that that moment was really it, really as bad as it was going to get for me and was I in or was I out?

Well, nearly two years later, I’m pretty sure that that moment is, in fact, this one.

I started blogging publicly two years ago in August 2006. I had just been dumped by a Republican investment banker, was living at home in LA with my mother and then-14-year-old sister, and worked 40 hours a week at marketing and PR internships. Freshman year at Harvard sucked. I considered that summer recuperation. I was certain sophomore year would get better. I had, after all, just gotten out of my first adult relationship. Did I really need further preparation than that for my 19th year?

The answer was a resounding yes. I had no idea what my blog would turn into. People ask, “But you had to know. With a name like Sex and the Ivy, what did you expect?” Not this. I’m on the verge of 21 and this is not at all what I had in mind. Actually, I couldn’t have predicted Year 2 of the Blogging Life even after Year 1. Because the first 12 months, bipolar and destabilizing as they were, were still exciting and educational once you subtracted the agonizing heartbreak and emotional dysregulation that came with dead-end boys and public scrutiny. The second 12 months? Pretty smooth sailing except for the nagging feeling that my world could crumble at any second. And it did. Once, twice, and again.

Two of those apocalypses have been blog-induced. The first was the naked photo debacle. The second has been the systematic deconstruction of my most recent relationship in online forums. Actually, “systematic deconstruction” sounds much too fair for the circumstances. It sounds like some of the commentary might even have merit. In reality, trolls on my blogs are accusing the guy I’m dating of sexual harassment, assault, and general unethical behavior despite having nothing to go on but a blog entry with a disclaimer. Patrick’s identity (as in, pertinent information like his full name, address, and occupation) wasn’t even public until someone conducted a witchhunt and posted that information on Juicy Campus. Up until then, the most I showed of him on my blog had been the back of his head. And then various gossip blogs were emailed about our supposedly illicit affair (luckily, they had the good sense to ignore these “tips”). The rumor mill continued churning. Posters on the notoriously defamatory AutoAdmit decided to dismantle his entire life, our entire relationship. They took my blog posts about aggressive, consensual sex to mean that I was being coerced or assaulted when I’ve never so much as fought with Patrick or heard him raise his voice. The funny thing is, no one is actually concerned about my well-being, even if they pretend as if this “investigation” into my relationship is for my own good. How do I know their intentions? Well, for one, Patrick has received multiple emails telling him what an awful person he is. I’ve received nothing, and I’m supposed to be the grateful victim of this rescue effort. I ignored it all and assumed that anyone remotely relevant would never read the trash being written. Then the trolls began emailing people in Harvard’s sociology department, people in the administration, people Patrick works with. Strangers I only knew through names on course catalogs and official announcements read skewed accounts that portrayed Patrick like a predator. I can deal with criticism. This is complete invasion of privacy. This is defamation.

Why the hoopla? He is a graduate student and he used to be my teaching assistant, which makes our relationship about as scandalous as a senior dating a freshman. Nonetheless, it’s a fact that the Internet ate up, distorted, and spat back out. Google the mess. There are more pages than I care to read about this matter. This is the first time I’ve blogged about how we met or how we know each other. I assumed that doing so would just encourage rumors and inaccuracies, but now that things have escalated, there’s no reason to protect an open secret. So these are the facts: He’s 28, a Ph.D candidate in my department (sociology), and German by birth and citizenship. He owns a bulldog. He went to Yale. He used to lead my discussion sections and grade my papers. By the time we went out on our first date, it’d been months since he last did either. Far from punishing him, all university sources consulted in the ugly PR aftermath are on his side, have confirmed that he has broken no rules, and believe he probably has a case for libel. Contrary to internet speculation, he was not removed from the Graduate Student Council but resigned after a two-year term. His name is Patrick and the only error in judgment he’s made in this entire ordeal is dating a girl who writes a blog with detractors vile enough to not just interfere in her life but also in his.

Is that enough? Here’s more: We met in 2006 during my sophomore fall. My best friend and I whispered about the cute TF in between taking lecture notes, but Patrick was just a distraction from my 10-11am on Mondays and Wednesdays, not an actual fixation. He never made a move on me when I was his student. He had a girlfriend and was, after all, my TF. It wasn’t a possibility either of us considered. Our only personal interaction was office hours, where I first met his dog Hamlet. A year and a half later, neither ethical barrier remained. He found out about my crush by coincidence through a Q&A in The Crimson. Our first date was at The Beehive in Boston’s South End. I saw him again the next night. That first week, I spent four nights with him. And so on until we got to where we are now. What else? He makes me soy lattes in the morning. Half my life is currently stored in his basement. The only photos of us together are on Polaroids. We do grocery shopping at Deluca’s on Charles Street. We give each other books to read. He met Kennedy when he visited Germany last month and held me the numerous times I cried about her this spring. He is an atheist. What more do you want to know? He takes photos of me with a Leica M6. His sister is an artist. Enough? Or more? How much am I supposed to give to prove there is nothing to hide?

I have a blog where I write more of the truth than most people are ever willing to admit, but whatever I keep private is construed as controversy and scandal. I can’t date someone without being worried that his name will be published, and Patrick is not even the first to get “outed”. For all of the above reasons and many others, I see suicide on the horizon. Sex and the Ivy is not dead, but it’s on its way there. Two weeks ago, Bluehost shut down Sex and the Ivy because my scripts were running inefficiently (whatever that means). Patrick twiddled on my control panel, upgraded my Wordpress, called customer service for me, and convinced them to put it back up again. The guy whose reputation I’m ruining helped me fix the website that’s made him infamous by association. Think about that for a second.

I don’t know how many Patricks there are in the world, but I’m going to guess not many. And my friends? It might not seem too difficult to be buds with the local sex blogger, but acquaintances dropped like flies after I started blogging. Nowadays, I have a pretty good idea of who my real friends are, and their job is not easy. So I’m tired of making their lives even harder. I’m tired of making my own life harder. I’m tired of the word “libel” in bed, of forwarding each other defamatory emails and links, of discussing “legal options” over dinner. I’m tired of having to check Google alerts on his name. I’m not a masochist, and I’m certainly not a sadist. I can’t give anything anymore because people then expect everything. I’ll always write but I doubt Lena the Sex Blogger will survive the year, and as far as suicides go, this is one that will hardly be mourned.

I told him in the very beginning that I didn’t want to make his life complicated. I tried to explain about my blog, about the drama that had already ensued. He didn’t believe that it could get so bad. “What are you,” he teased. “Like E-list celebrity?” I laughed. I agreed it was ludicrous. But I’d been in the game long enough to know that people fixate on the most asinine things. I prepared him for the worst case scenario, but no amount of preparation could ready someone for the type of fallout that occurred here. If he left, it would be easy for me to be sad or bitter and to blame my blog for ruining my life. But he hasn’t left and if he does, it won’t be because of this. And so I find myself with an odd kind of burden. I can’t simply be sad or bitter. I have to do everything I can to make things as right as possible. Because caring about me is far harder than it should be, and yet still, he makes me soy lattes in the morning.

Read this for context. 

I talked to Susannah Breslin today about what it’s like in college nowadays and what I think about what others think and how I handle all the shit that’s thrown at my blog and views on sexuality. Mid-interview, I verbalized for the first time something that I didn’t realize until recently. I don’t care anymore what people think.This hasn’t always been the case. I used to care what my friends thought, then I cared what my readers thought, then I cared what agents and producers and capitalist goons thought. And I’ve always cared what reporters and other bloggers thought. (But maybe that’s because I give more credit to those who write.)

Now? Hm. I pretty much only consult with Patrick and Kennedy about what I write, which is essentially consulting with myself (since I live at the former’s apartment and speak with the latter on a near hourly basis). I don’t get upset when commenters hate on me, or when other bloggers hate on me, or when I realize I am completely un-marketable and most likely going to be poor for a very long time.

I think that’s the point. Having no options, that is. I wrote a sex blog for nearly two years and during this time, not only did I write explicitly about sexual acts and depression and all my fuck-ups but also, I had a crazy ex who leaked my naked photos on the Internet. I mean, I’m not marketable in love and not marketable in the labor force and not marketable in civilized society, really. And when you begin to realize that you are the antithesis of everything acceptable or American, that your Ivy League resume is chock full of life experience but nothing more, that the only people who will love you are the rare ones who forgive first impressions, it’s then that you stop giving a shit and start living the way you want to live.

Because here is the thing: there is so much shit said about me on the Internet that I couldn’t wake up everyday worrying about it or I probably would’ve offed myself by now. I have no option but to stop caring and when I stopped caring, I realized something incredible: I don’t have to care. Whether someone thinks I’m a slut should make no difference to me. Why is that something I should cry about? Why should any of us care what anyone else thinks? It’s both hilarious and sad that in order to love myself fully and completely, to be totally comfortable with the decisions I make, it took everyone else hating me and deriding my choices.

Also? I may be a whore by societal standards, but I am not an attention whore. I go to Harvard for chrissakes. Do you think I don’t realize that the only reason anyone gives my blog the time of day is because I am a living, walking, subversive abomination that they expect to crash and burn? Do you think I’m so deluded as to believe that most people are cheering me on? I may be egotistic, but I’m not quite that naive. So I realize that the majority of “attention” I get is negative. Why in the world would I court that? Google Adsense profits of an incredible $1/day? I don’t think so. It’s not about money. It’s not about all publicity being good publicity. It’s about I can so I will.

Here’s a summation for the critics: this is just how I am and this is just how I’d be, whether or not you’re reading. I don’t care for your attention anymore than you care for my whoring. The difference between us is a matter of liberation. I can fuck whoever and live however I like and feel fine about it all at the end of the day. But even those who despise me find it hard to look away or to bite their tongue or to not personally intervene and yell “NO YOU ARE WRONG”. Think about that for a second, and tell me: which one of us is captive?