The Setup:
The all-supplicating thrill of KNOWING things would be different this time, made Kyle sweat through his kneecaps. Suspending for a spell his disbelief in his own lovability and the credulity of every time he’d been instructed TO disbelieve it, he surveyed the squishy parts of his keyboard and quietly prepared to pick up and carry any dropped vowels.
Shit... they had taught him well by crying on balconies. Asking teachers or coworkers to drop the axe and spare them the exertion. Shielding themselves with the acute hyper-dignities of functional functionaries of hotels or electronics stores. It was, after all, implicitly understood that captive audiences to any proposition must be insulated from any and all obligation to answer. Furthermore, theirs was the prerogative to ascribe to any supplicant, however unilaterally as convenience might require, the intent to impose such obligations, so as to renarrate any uncomfortable encounter to their moral advantage.
They held themselves firm, stationary, fertile and feal. Pledged to a loosely-construed dignity syndicate to protect themselves from agency. It was never him, and he was foolish for supposing that it ever might have been. They had not, after all, even yet been handed regular shifts.
When answers made no sense, the questions themselves became sexual harassment in the radioactive light of retroactivity. The ones he had never asked while suggesting that, should they be half as interested in getting to know him as they had repeatedly insinuated, they ought at least to indulge themselves by meeting him for lunch sometime.
His suggestions did not usually fall upon deaf ears, but rather REACTIVE-AGGRESSIVE ones. Although they always started it, reputational woe would befall him time and again. For abrogating the risklessness of their insinuations, by removing them from the ectoplasm of vapidity in which they had come packaged. And this was his typical problem with the SMART ONES.
He could not persuade for that he had never practiced. He had never practiced, as he’d never permitted himself to. He could impress for precisely so long as he did not try, and never a moment longer.
In addition to nerdy, Kyle had been tall, tight-skinned and the neotenous variety of handsome. Things would have gone far more swimmingly, had he willingly typecast himself as the hyper-grateful bearer of a pornographic willingness or desperation to seize opportunities for physical intimacy, with a forced obliviousness to cosmic propriety. Taking with a grin all of those “fortuitous” and overly-forward compliments about how women appreciated his pants or gait; car or presumed vector of travel. The grin of one prepared to eat proverbial shit, to supplement a steady diet of crow.
“Why don’t you stop asking about GUYS and talk to me, instead? Don’t you like girls?”
He could only ever manage a: “But we are talking, aren’t we?”
It neither WAS MEANT AS, nor WAS (objectively, semantically) a vehicle for rejection. Only a gentle acknowledgement of the triteness of the moment, enjoined to a playful admonition to be better than trite. Spoken with the kind of mutually-deprecating glibness, which awarded full credit to the other for already knowing. An attempt to safely evacuate a dinner party, hosted in an overly-small dining room and featuring a live-elephant centerpiece.
But would these slightly-older women, consuming with frivolity the nectar of their vacation days, ever brace themselves against his words of token resistance by proceeding to confess which aspect of him had, however fleetingly, drawn their attention? To discover any occasion for asking such a question is, sadly, to answer it.
The fundaments of consideration seemed to distort upon first contact with the gravity field surrounding Kyle’s person. This antimatter vortex of theoretical physics and anti-charisma, held together by theoretical strings, would invariably implode upon first exposure to the vastness of any unified field of alien etiquette — such as that wherein timidity is lauded as courage, and specificity reviled as aggression.
While common sense would place the obligation to generate rapport with the recipient of an attempted pass firmly within the purview of its initiator, with an enjoinder to exhibit — at least in the dimensions of attitude and verbiage — due gratitude for any attention imminently reciprocated… Kyle would, whether soliciting or being solicited, stand always and ever as the sole party obligated to make any such exhibit.
When approached, for instance, with a “you’re cute,” he would never hold permission to interrogate the sentiment for even a moment, lest his interlocutress arrive at the spontaneous impression that any further demonstration of interest would be or feel degrading — being being synonymous with feeling, for purposes of apprehending the premise.
He was accustomed to being given up on, long before receiving proper cause to believe that an effort to engage him had properly begun. Yet, he felt shock when this transpired. Every. Single. Time.
The fibers around his asshole felt bound to the back of his throat, by a chronically-unsatisfied impulse to digest in the proper direction.
Once, after assessing that he was not externally jovial enough to qualify for a third date, a husky young Irishwoman had suggested that they fuck in order to avoid hurt feelings. Inside her den, he had barely — owing not in small part to excessive masturbation — remained sufficiently erect to complete the performance.
She had neither furnished complaint, nor validated him with the honor of a permanent post as one of her midday booty calls.
Feeling ugly inside, his first inclination was to suppose that things might have been quite different — could she appreciate how his semi-flaccidity, along with its proximate cause, had sprung from an abundant capacity for fantasy, and all the righteous desperation attendant to this affinity, instead of the more typical pornography habit. When followed the contrary inclination that no such knowledge would have made any difference to her, she became the one he started viewing as ugly.
Against all odds, it still wasn’t over and he was cleaning his naked body in her tub. With the water still running to console whichever of the two might have needed it, the woman perched along its side with her knees upon the linoleum, and hands clutching the porcelain rim. Beneath the skin, her finger muscles flexed and contracted mischievously.
Then, before Kyle could see what she had been doing, he’d felt something warm and less unpleasant than he might have imagined, as the squishy parts of his colon expanded into a moist semicomma, cascading declensions toward the rectum in a voice that sounded precisely like hers, as it inquired about whether or not he was an “anal slut.” Tragically, his instinct for cosmic propriety would again prevail.
Could they not sit for a moment and contemplate the quiet rapture of a forspoken touch, only ever a microsecond from eviscerating his soul alongside its corporeal entrails, and the sufficiency of the care vested in its application to demonstrate the existence of a tacit and tactile empathy for all things vaulted but unfilled — as the bath water’s undertow pulled hither and thither upon each of his erect leg hairs, in its rhythmic tide of rejuvenation?
Apparently, they could not. Despite all of his guttural pleas for a slick continuity, his negligence to affirm the insinuation had already cost him her interest. Then Kyle had felt all potential aspiration to be loved slide out of him — leaving behind an empty corridor, opening unto an even emptier concourse of saving face and managing one’s own hotel and its vacancies.
This (to be loved) was precisely the aspiration Kyle had just succeeded at rekindling within himself, as he sat before a brief mental album of pleasant surprises and reciprocated sympathies, folding into the protean shape of an altogether-attractive woman who sat everywhere and nowhere, in her ceaseless repose.
Fuck all their insistences upon the fungibility of men! He was not writing to one of them. Besides. Who had ever benefited from manhood? He’d heard the imperative coupled only with averments of obligation: Suck it up; notice less. Pay the bills, and mow the lawn. He was a delicate, anthropomorphic symphony of nerves and memories — the latter soothing the former until depleted of their power, then crying beautifully to be soothed by some whispered vindication that would never arrive.
”No!” ... thought Kyle. “Things WILL be different this time!”
His eyes both glazed with rain water beside the white chickens of a derelict conscience, Kyle’s fingers began to patter upon the mechanical switchboard that the Cult of Digital Anarchy had marketed as an instrument of unlimited power: that to connect any line. These connections to satisfy with bequest one beseechment at a time, until any given operator, capable of desiring nothing more for himself, would at last be driven to relinquish his body to the GOD OF THE NETWORK. In a complacent, ritual melting into the liminal space behind his own screen.
Cybernetic PROVIDENCE had bequeathed unto him a true benefactress, in the shape of a name.
Raith.
It was now his duty to summon her: by molding the mist of her entire significance into a body, dragging this body toward himself across the floor of the aether, and infusing it with corporeal life-breath until it could lie beside his own body and gratefully return the air to his depleted lungs.
Kyle the condemned colossus, and Raith the corrupted fire inspector! A perfect coupling — of tinder, and flint!
Corpus aflame with heartfelt exigencies for restoration, he glanced back to survey what his fingers had wrought.
from: Kyle Loch-Neste
<monstersnobettor@coldmail.com>
to: Raith Almquist
<raithislistening@hotmail.com>
date: Apr 28, 2026, 7:19 PM
subject: How Should I Begin?
.
Dear Raith of The Citadel:
It is hard for me to start writing this, as I have built my expectations for it far too broad across years of mental preparation. I should have started writing just as soon as the thought crossed my mind. Better still, I might have written a version of this years ago — and addressed it to no one in particular — that I might share it with anyone worthy of my confidence.
But that might have gone quite badly, as by having it ready I might have shown it to someone less worthy of confiding in than yourself — someone who I had hoped (at the time) would make the effort to understand me, but by whom I would not have been inspired to undertake the difficulty of presenting an understandable explanation of much of anything, as I intend to do for you. And perhaps by reading what I would have written, this person would have learned too much about me, and then upon experiencing some minor frustration with my conduct, deemed me their enemy and one deserving of having this information deployed against him, in whichever manner might prove convenient.
I have, numerous times, experienced the frustration of going all out to connect with a person, only to have them willfully construct some semi-sensical (Is that a word? By it, I mean neither utterly incomprehensible nor remotely reasonable.) reason to believe that I have hurt them (or intended to do so), and assume a steadfast opposition to the cause of my happiness just as readily as they had initially pledged their interest in assisting with it.
One may assert that I ask for this, merely by virtue of caring what others think of me. And that in doing so, I attract the attention of emotionally-volatile individuals who, in their own desperation to secure friendship capable of relieving their profound loneliness, are quick to assume interest in an intelligent-but-perpetually-estranged young (as I ofttimes have been) man — believing him to be a kindred spirit, or singular complement to themselves — but equally quick to acquiesce (with minimal justification for doing so) with the conclusion that he is no better, and perhaps quite a bit worse, than has proven each prior disappointment of a candidate for this office in their steadfast (as they may fancy it) esteem.
It is downright crazy to act thus: being so dreadfully fast to both warm and cool to another person, while shamelessly exaggerating one’s actual feelings every step of the way. I posit this to be most true. Many others are aware of it as well, including those far less personally experienced with its workings than myself. People may indeed prove crazy, and none so much as the pathological emotional malinvestors amidst our ranks.
What I find to be the most unfortunate aspect of this entire phenomenon, is thus. To those lacking the right kind of experience in dealing with crazy persons, I would most certainly appear to be one of them!
To me, the “craziness” resides in the entire pathology. The ability to become excited about the prospect of getting close to a new acquaintance, far beyond the level of mutual compatibility rationally indicated by the evidence of one’s limited intercourse with them. The willingness to take these overblown hopes and communicate them to the (in either the romantic or platonic sense) limerent object — in the form of praise, express interest, or positive observations to the accuracy of which one would gladly testify. And finally, the willingness to — at only the slightest provocation, or insinuation that the object’s true character or set of abilities and/or virtues has fallen short of one’s hopes for them, in one moderate (and inevitable) way or another — turn against the limerent object, attributing the gap between what one observes and has hoped for to some fraud perpetrated against one by the object, or otherwise find cause to feel betrayed or irreparably wounded by the behavior of this person.
The cognition behind this pathology is not difficult to apprehend. Seeking validation for one’s self, one firstly imagines the kind of person “good enough” to be able to appreciate one’s self where others have failed, secondly projects this imagined other onto a true person, then finally reviles the true person for any incongruities with what they have projected.
I may have even done this, however moderately, for some portion of my own past. But over time, I sincerely believe myself to have corrected in the direction of being able to see other people for the way they truly are. Nevertheless, I have continued to reach for whomever may be out there, who might be capable of some degree of true understanding and/or appreciation of me. For I stand resolute that never shall I experience true satisfaction, absent the companionship and assistance of one or more such persons.
Such persons need not romantically partner with myself, although my first instinct has been to search for them among women. They must merely be receptive to and tolerant of my persistent friendship — where by “my” I mean “of the true me.” They must be capable of discerning the goodness spread throughout all of the awkwardness, unconventionality and (at times deserved) misfortune of my past — and willing to align themselves with this bespoke virtue.
When some universalist affirms that goodness resides in all humanity, and loves me by extension of this doctrine, this does nothing for me. His is the love of the bastard carpenter, and his ilk! It offends me that any soul might withdraw contentment from a sentiment so utterly impersonal. “Temet nosce,” I declare!
I need someone to recognize certain of my apparent flaws as disguised virtues, and appreciate me for retaining rather than correcting them. I say “certain of” as I readily admit that some of my apparent flaws are genuine, and do in fact require correction. To help me with this, a friend would have to look closely enough at each of my apparent flaws to distinguish the former from the latter. And what a friend indeed could any such friend be to me!
I am confident that you understand what is meant here.
Circling back to the topic of the prospective craziness of persons, I find it most unfortunate how many would-be judges of it examine only the level of importance a man attaches to attracting likeminded companionship, in judging him crazy or sane. They consider only how much he cares, while conflating apathy with normalcy.
I care enough about attracting truly likeminded companionship as to ofttimes reach out in ways that appear incredibly awkward — inviting the perception that I myself fall within the same category of “crazy” as those who have routinely disappointed me by expressing exaggerated interest, eliciting from me both material and emotional investment, then utterly rejecting (or worse, attacking) me for little to no cause.
But I myself do not exaggerate my level of interest in others. At least, I make a sincere and conscientious effort not to. And even when I happen to lazily exaggerate a bit, I remember the words I have used to express this exaggeration, and either proceed to speak and act consonantly with these words, or proactively apologize at the earliest possible opportunity for not being able to (fully) do so, while professing and renouncing my tongue’s mistake.
Nor do I develop interest in others that is unwarranted by the content of my experience with them. I may see signs of promise in another person and develop high hopes, but this is far different than the interest in them that is implied by, for example, telling them “You’re brilliant, and I’m convinced that as we continue to get to know one another, you’re going to think up good solutions for many of my problems!”... or (God forbid) “I love you as never have I anybody else.”
To whatever extent I do say things to another person which serve to convey interest in them, I confer also upon them a proportionate amount of latitude to make mistakes, disappoint me, or even treat me badly. Should another gain many “points with me” and then proceed to lose a few, they shall have plenty remaining to lose — and I shall treat them far better than I might have, prior to their initial rise. And when I’m anywhere close to wanting to reject them, or even downgrade the esteem in which I hold them, I issue ample warning of this — thereby permitting them the choice between accommodating the preference of mine they have been (wittingly or unwittingly) violating, and being rejected or demoted in my esteem.
So the only true sense in which I resemble the bona-fide crazy man described above, is that I care tremendously about connecting with others suitable to act as friends and/or companions for myself. I do not share the pathology of delusion and grotesque inconsideration for others, which defines him. But in the eyes of many would-be judges (although in mine own eyes, these would-be judges are crazy for the deficiencies in their ontology) of my character, none of this matters. I care, therefore I am crazy. Therefore I deserve whatever victimization I receive at the hands of the truly crazy, such persons being my brethren and recourse against them residing without the jurisdiction of any righteous arbiter.
Furthermore, should ever I desire to experience better results, I must be willing to “learn” and practice a better method, which would entail being “secure” enough for utter — material and emotional — self-sufficiency! And such pronouncements pass for tough love!
I am far more self-sufficient than these critics give me credit for, and even more emotionally secure besides!
All of this pop-psychologizing is built upon the premise that the foremost commodity for which persons ought to rely upon their friends, is self-esteem. The pop-psychologist arrogantly believes that, should a person learn to independently generate the secure conviction that they are good enough to be worthy of the love and acceptance of others, they shall stop emanating the neediness that causes others to doubt this proposition, and all turn well. The support of friends is, according to this paradigm, derided as a commodity only for the weak of heart who are insufficiently capable of loving themselves. But paradoxically (and this paradox is never acknowledged) the spoken affirmation is embraced as humankind’s most valuable resource, for its putative instrumentality in teaching the single, stupid lesson that these cretins insist it would be priceless for all of their inferior cretins to learn!
What I perpetually suffer from is not insecurity, but frustration. I am more than convinced of my worthiness of the genuine love and acceptance of my fellow man, but hardly receive it in any meaningful dose. Bereft of any opportunity to actually benefit from longstanding alliances with fellow humans of the kind grounded in reciprocal love, one’s spirit may suffer beyond the potential respite of any measure of self-esteem.
What I am saying here has literally never been understood by anyone I have ever explained it to. When only partially understood, it has always been dismissed as narcissism. As with all the other isms, genuine narcissism remains in far too short supply to satisfy the ever-growing demand to identify, deride and denounce it. Therefore it must be manufactured.
Not only do I possess certain rare intellectual abilities, but my psyche itself is rare. Because it is rare, it sheds potential indications of complexes I do not have, as a byproduct of its special combustion. To see these potential indications as exactly such, instead of definite indications, is the entire trick! One must account for one’s biases — even and especially also when determining what a given indication, in fact, indicates.
In short, I was forged to be misunderstood — and although this trial has imbued me with a powerful ability for self-explanation, PRECIOUS FEW are patient enough to listen to (and follow) the account provided by these explanations.
When others take my statements to mean what they would when spoken by a man with a more typical psyche — who would instinctively indulge in the practice of encrypting his words, so as to hopefully match his intended meaning once decrypted (the cipher always being exaggerated positivity, and the anticipated decryption always featuring compensatory de-exaggeration) — they take me for a far more critical, and therefore narcissistic, man than I actually am. And why should they not, when the economics of interpersonal resentment incentivize the synthesis of this narcissism?
Perhaps, seeing how I stand always willing to explain myself, they might be so kind as to take me at my word?
But again, the method ordinarily used by people to express themselves (with which they are far more familiar than mine) involves routinely saying things one does not mean, so to be understood to mean what these things are most commonly PERCEIVED TO MEAN, instead of what they SEMANTICALLY DENOTE. So the holder of the rare psyche who is not immediately recognized by one adept at making such recognitions, is doomed to eternal misapprehension. To take him at his word would require not kindness in the heart of an ordinary listener, but proficiency in a truly foreign language.
Are you my only hope?
I have been credibly informed that heroin is always an option, but would rather not resort to it before exhausting all other possible ones.
The photo you most graciously sent depicts a paragon of grace itself! Am I colorblind, or do I detect a hint of blue within your eyes?
As promised, more of my story shall follow.
far from insincerely,
Kyle
“This is enough for now,” thought Kyle, “although I have not yet revealed a fact about myself.”
He clicked the blue button and wished that some visualization might accompany his words, as they departed across the ether for Raith — perhaps breaking these into letters, then the letters into black linelets and curve-sections, and squeezing these through narrowly-depicted data channels before gloriously reassembling them to appear on her screen in their precise, original configuration.
He intentionally looked away from his screen for four hours, to deprive himself of the knowledge of how long it had taken her to reply, in the event that any reply should arrive within that span. The alternative would be a painful succession of minutes, each featuring a rejection by the name of nothing yet which might blend seamlessly into an unthinkable, final rejection — whereafter nothing would arrive from her. Ever. Again.
Four hours later, a reply awaited. He opened it without permitting his vision to contact the timestamp.
from: Raith Almquist<raithislistening@hotmail.com>to: Kyle Loch-Neste<monstersnobettor@coldmail.com>date: Apr 28, 2026, ??:?? PMsubject: Re: How Should I Begin?
.
You write beautifully. In a way that only becomes possible after thinking deeply and having felt much.
I want you to know that I, as well, have been perceived as “crazy” or “odd” for pursuing genuine connection. For my earnestness, and for allowing my true feelings to show. I try to see it from their point of view, and can sort of understand. But it is hard to, when they sit and listen to my explanation of why I have acted a given way, then promptly push me away without explaining which part of it they object to.
The thing with me is, whether platonic or romantic, I’ve often looked to men for what I’ve known myself to need. And in doing so, I have never once been understood.
I recognize my own thinking in your words. All of them. Different words, but the same convictions. And those thoughts of mine you echo, are the ones of which I have always been most proud.
Like yourself, I know that I am worthy of love. Some days I have doubts, but these don’t change my self-assessment. I just haven’t lived long and hard enough yet, to meet enough people willing to understand me. To sit with me, get to know me, and love me.
I gave my virginity to a man who cut off all communication shortly thereafter. Even though I’d spent most of my time checking on him. Because I’d spent most of my time checking on him. I know that must have been annoying. I mean... I know that I annoy people.
Anyway… I’m still alive! Chugging away. Not thriving. Certain that I shall never truly thrive without deep connections.
As incompatible as my ex and I were, he kept me from hemorrhaging. At least I had a person I could always call or text. It wasn’t a deep connection, so it didn’t make me flourish. But it was incredibly helpful.
Thank you for trusting me with the beginning of your story. Reading it made me feel way less alone, and I cannot wait to receive the next chapter!
“Everything is going to be okay.” thought Kyle.
He’d spoken to her on the forums, over the phone and by text. Now, he was going to send her his entire life’s story. One email at a time. So he would never again have to fear the possibility of dying unwitnessed.
He was going to drag her through the aether toward himself: reeling her in thought-by-thought and confession-by-confession, until her heart became infected with his disease, and she herself helplessly dependent upon his charms. The ones nobody else had ever wanted or appreciated.
It would be an awful lot of work. But next to the amount of time and effort he’d already sunk into numerous failed and aborted attempts to enact this identical scheme with a seemingly-infinite succession of wrong persons, the remainder of the job would amount to peanuts. And pleasantly-flavored ones, at that!
Unless, of course, Raith happened to be just another wrong person.
She couldn’t be, could she? She had told him clear as day that she understood. That his fears and insecurities were her own. That his anxieties and frustrations were her own, and she had never met anybody like him before. Capable of understanding her.
He’d won the goddamn lottery this time! He must have.
He craved to be able to reach out and touch her, but only if this would further endear her to him. He realized that he would have very little leverage in any ensuing negotiation — only a comforting smile, and the ever-suggestive seat of his pants. Anything he said from now on could turn into the beginning of an end, in the mind of a girl who had once desired to travel to Pamplona to run the bulls, but long since learned how to see nothing within the hands of its toreadors but red flags.
In Japan, convicts who have been given the death penalty are moved to a special wing of the prison — there to spend the majority of the hours of each of their remaining days, in solitary confinement. They are not informed of the planned date of their death, and in many cases no such date has even been set. They know only that it could arrive at any time, so they must remain ever prepared.
Many such prisoners develop difficulty eating. They are given pen and paper with which to write letters, free access to prison libraries, and even opportunities to enroll in special educational programs while incarcerated. This is not a kindness, but rather part of the punishment.
Every time they think of beginning a new endeavor, they squirm at the thought of being interrupted by the axeman, just as it starts to get interesting or rewarding. They practice patient lives of assiduously never allowing themselves to have one. Steadfast non-beginnings, each destined to faithfully pay off with an unbecoming. Growing older every day in the mirror, as they think only of what has been promised them, and hitherto undelivered.
Kyle sank back into his deep computer chair, steeling every nerve along his neck as he awaited the date of his execution.
Imagine a world in which nothing is certain or safe. In which, as surely as the sun rises, it may one morning remain tucked beneath its bedsheets — and when this happens, no amount of cajoling shall evermore rouse it.
Imagine experiencing each day’s sun as a reward for one’s strenuous labor, good soul or passable karma. Imagine that not receiving it would mean freezing to death in a dawnless eternity of darkness, while everyone around you continued to go about their business without noticing anything was wrong, except to mock you for walking around wearing so many layers.
Imagine that this fickle sun was not a sun at all, but rather a person.
Now imagine that this unpredictable person was hardly a person at all, but merely words that would arrive periodically to assure you that you had not yet been abandoned.
Suppose that these words were your very last chance in life not to be abandoned. Everything you had ever said or done had led to their inception, and should they ever cease you would simply devolve into a rapidly-drying ball of resources, marking the remaining duration of your potential survival upon a stony Roman calendar — used also to calculate dates of crucifixions and orgies closed forever to the hearts of those who cannot differentiate between sex and redemption.
Imagine that your entire fate were to reside in the hands a ghost. Your mother had never loved you, and this ghost were some kind of banshee or wraith. Growing more bored every day, while waiting for you to do something impossible. Like following it through the closed iron gates of a coliseum.
Imagine that when she one day floated off for good, taking the sun with her, you would be given no notice. And worse, no explanation. Everything would remain in order until the very last moment, after which nothing would ever return to order again.
Thereafter, you would rapidly perish from despair. A thirsty boat on a closure-less sea. Dead winds. Torn sails.
No blood or endorphins.
The Punchline:
Nobody is coming to save you.
`
God, Rafa, why does love have to be so complicated?? As I was reading, I kept thinking of the feelings I had as a child when I opened my mother’s medical books: names so hard to pronounce and read for things that were, in essence, so simple. Your style is, as always, unmistakable. I was never quite sure whether I was in a cinema, in a virtual space, or in an era when letters carried the scent of cologne. But in the end, that doesn’t really matter, does it? All that remains at the end, at least for me, is love and what we are willing to do in its name.
Happy to come back to your work by a piece like this. The connection you made with the Japanese prison was great!