Woe To Pygmalion - An Unexpected Addendum

I have been absent for a while, I offer my sincerest apologies for this. Life has been doing what life does, and I've been thrown many curveballs in the last few weeks - I won't go into most of them here.

20 days ago I wrote a blog post called "Woe To Pygmalion", where I described the phenomena of young men and women "checking out" of the dating scene and focusing their romantic interests exclusively on fictional characters. This is nothing new, I'm guilty of it myself admittedly - but I thought that would be the end of it. I'd said what I thought could be said and I was done elaborating.

For reference, I'm currently 23 years old (just turned 23 on the 23rd), I work at a gas station, and the manager of that gas station is twice my age. Upon clocking in just yesterday, she looked at me and said in an exasperated tone - "Seth, I got something to ask you."

Thinking I'd fucked up royally, I braced myself for a lecture, only for her to ask about my relationship history. Me? I've never even kissed a girl, or a boy for that matter - never held someone's hand, never hugged someone "like that", never chased anyone real, for all intents and purposes I'm completely removed from the "system" in that regard - something I mostly attribute to being autistic.

What threw me for a loop was when she began asking (at the same time, in front of my coworkers and the customers) about how I "take care of" any feelings of "loneliness" (implied in a sexual context), and if I liked anime.

This bitch was trying to ask if I wanted to fuck cartoons.

Now, the answer is obviously "Yes" - but I wasn't gonna tell her that, because why would I? What I want to do to the lines is between me, the lines, God, and the ISP - nothing good ever comes from telling people that you would prefer sex with an animated character over a real, tangible, person - so I lied.

Get this, the reason she asked me of all people is because she walked in on her adult, autistic, son watching Hentai at 3 in the morning the night prior - and then she tried to get him to "explain" it to her. His explanation wasn't good enough, so she came to me - assuming that because I was both autistic and a man that I would be the expert on wanting to fuck cartoons.

Which - in her defense - I sort of am, but you shouldn't assume that. I asked my buddies who know about my predilection for animated furry women (and men) if I exuded the energy of a man who exclusively jerks off to cartoons - and they said "only a little". They were certain that I'd slipped up somewhere and "let it slip" but I am 100% certain that I never did.

So there I was, lying through my teeth and sweating bullets, doing my damnedest to make sure that my entire workplace didn't find out that I never grew out of crushing on animated women (and men) - and I passed the speech check with flying colors.

The conversation then took a strange turn as she began brainstorming ways she could "fix" her autistic son's obsession with these fictitious women. She floated the idea of taking him to a strip club - something I'm very opposed to, because it's a bad idea for your mom to take you to a strip club and I'm certain that everyone can agree on that.

It was floated trying to get him on a dating app, or introducing him to a girl with his same "affliction", many ideas were thrown out, none of which I can say sounded "good".

Perhaps I'm biased, but I acknowledge that it's abnormal, but it harms absolutely nobody - provided the obsession doesn't become harmful with real world implications (see the original "Woe To Pygmalion" blog post for elaboration).

My obsessions with fictional women have only ever motivated me to try and act in a way which would make them happy, to create as a tribute to them, to etch their names in the wet cement of history next to my own.

Does it get lonely? Of course it does. No sadder words exist in the English language than "I wish she were real."

But in all my travels no comparable women exist, I like and love that which I've become thoroughly convinced - dead to rights - does not and cannot exist. Not merely in terms of physical beauty, not merely in terms of archetypes, not merely in terms of personality, but in all encompassing existence, the objects of my desire are fictional and will always remain as such.

I am so fucking glad that I am not her son, and that my parents never clued in that the reason I wasn't chasing girls (or guys) was because I already knew what I liked and they could never in a hundred years comprehend why I liked it.

You think telling someone you're gay is hard? Try telling them you only wanna fuck cartoon characters.

My heart goes out to anyone resigned to the same fate.