Has anyone actually met anyone on these “dating” apps?? 
1. Re-define your ‘ideal partner’ not as who best complements the person you’d like to be, but who can love and live with the person you are now. Open yourself up to the odd but honest parts of you – you’re more likely to find a compatible partner and fulfilling relationship, both with someone else and yourself.
2. Realize the things that make you ‘different’ are the ones that make you outstanding – whether you consider yourself social outlier or a budding creative genius is all up to you. It’s so painfully simple, yet somehow we all struggle to be okay with the fact that the traits that make us different from others indicate that we’re capable of things nobody else is – not just that because we aren’t like the tribe, we don’t belong.
3. Give in to yourself completely: despite what most people think, intensified self-monitoring or policing doesn’t actually make you more palatable to others – it just shuts down different aspects of who you are. As they teach in Gestalt therapy, the idea that avoiding the inherently negative aspects of who you are will change or dissolve them is actually what causes the problem. It takes a lot of energy to suppress the shadow sides of yourself, so when you do, you give power to them, making yourself susceptible to acting out. Long story short: accept even the ugly things about you. Doing so is the key to them not ruling your life.
4. Have enough confidence to at least consider the possibility that the ways you think differently are better than the norm, not worse. When we realize we’re different in some way, we tend to immediately believe it’s for the worst. It’s not that you have to run around thinking your opinions are superior to anyone else’s, but do consider that the way you think and what you feel is just as valid, and may offer a different or more positive perspective on an issue – the only problem being that you weren’t letting yourself see it that way.
5. Most of the time, conformity is the reward for everybody liking you… except you. “Fitting in” and making yourself seem more acceptable does feel good, but not for the right reasons. This is to say: it ultimately backfires. What you eventually discover is that almost everything feels better than behaving in a way that ensures everyone will like you – because that is the most watered-down, half-assed version of who you are.
6. How ‘normal’ someone is is essentially how well they adhere to the construct of ‘right.’ When you’re feeling most self-conscious about being ‘weird’ or ‘different,’ remember that most of what we think as normal is a social construct, and changes through decades, or across countries, and even between social circles. When you’re comparing yourself to the norm, try to remember that you can only perceive an idea of what that is, not the reality of what we all are.
7. Use the things that stand out to you as ‘odd’ as guidelines toward what you’re here to do. No exceptional thing – creation or love or life – was bred out of a desire to keep coloring within acceptable lines. Assume that what makes you different is a signal toward what exceptional thing you could be here to do. People like to say that there’s something every single person can offer that nobody else in the world can, and I like to think that’s true. Our individuality is more than just something to identify with – it’s something to offer others.
Hello, my name is Gwen Kansen and I have Asperger’s Syndrome. I’ve known since I was 13. I’m 28 now. I’ve spent my whole life trying to fit in. I feel like I’ve worked so hard trying to be somebody else that I don’t really know who I am.
People with Asperger’s are different. For a long time I didn’t see that. Or rather, I didn’t want to accept it. But it’s true. We think differently, even if our feelings are mostly the same. Now I’m trying to figure out what that means.
I moved to New York to be a fashion designer. I’m still a student. But it’s exhausting. My classmates don’t talk to me. I got canned from my internship. Some of my professors have told me that they don’t think I’d make it in this field. They said it to be kind, but they also sounded kind of incredulous. Like how could I have ever thought I could do this? Two of them asked me point-blank if I have a learning disability. I said yes.
It hurts, that it’s that obvious to people. And it really hurts that I’m not going to have the career that I wanted. Honestly though, I’m relieved. I guess I was waiting for someone to tell me that it’s okay: I don’t have to torture myself like this anymore.
I’ve always had trouble keeping jobs. And friends. I feel like I used to relate to people better though. When I was younger we were all doing the same thing: college, dating, getting our first jobs. But I’m behind other people my age now. I don’t really know what to say to them anymore.
People with Asperger’s want to connect. We do. That’s the first misconception people have about us – that we’re robots.
Another one is that you’d know immediately if someone has it. The truth is that we’ve spent our entire lives studying social interactions. Like a science. A lot of us have trouble sustaining things because it takes so much energy to come off as normal. The more overwhelmed we are, the more obvious it is. Still, the more high-functioning people among us can get through dinner and even a party without giving ourselves away. We have to learn things intellectually while you learn them intuitively. That’s the main difference.
Something important to note: I don’t always know what I’m feeling. That’s common for people with Asperger’s. It’s called alexithymia. I know I come off with the wrong tone sometimes because of it. Tone is a good way to tell. We’ll be getting along fine for a while and then we’ll say something that sounds off. Like we’re taking the situation too seriously. Or not seriously enough.
Humor is another tell. Sometimes our jokes are on-point. Other times though, they’re just not. Some days we’re more in-touch with our brains than others. On my “on” days, I’m deadpan. I give good advice. I like to think I’m almost charismatic. I see this as my true self. On my off-days I feel hazy and detached and it takes a lot longer for me to figure out what’s going on.
We have a hard time filtering information. All information. Not just social. We fixate on details and ignore the big picture. I learn things by connecting one piece of information to another in a very systematic way. Here’s an example: I went on a few dates with a guy who was an orderly in a mental hospital. He didn’t seem that curious about the patients. I get that it might have been hard to have sympathy for them a lot of the time, especially since one of them tried to stab him. Still, I don’t think he’d asked himself what it must be like to not know what’s real and what isn’t. I realized that if he didn’t have the patience to do that, he certainly wouldn’t have the patience to deal with me.
I also learn by comparing myself to others. A lot. It’s how I know if what I’m thinking or feeling is appropriate. My therapist says I judge myself through my friends. I compare myself to stuff I see in the media too. I read stuff on Thought Catalog like 13 Things You Feel When You’re The Slacker Friend. And then I ask myself wow, is that how I feel? (I do this more than I should.)
Many of us are like that. I have a friend with Asperger’s who is obsessed with movies. He says it’s because he appreciates a good vision and character development, but everything he knows about people he judges through the lens of movies. I’m not sure if he realizes this or not.
Some studies show that autistic people have higher connectivity within brain regions and less connectivity between them. That might explain why so many of us have special interests: it doesn’t require much switching of focus. It could also be why we’re so good with details. Things stand out to us separately and we have to tie them together to figure out what’s going on.
Having Asperger’s is perpetual detective work. It makes sense that a lot of us are smart. We have to be.
Women experience Asperger’s differently than men do. We’re supposed to be more social. So instead of throwing ourselves into our special interests like the boys, many of us start to develop personas. In fact a lot of girls with high-functioning autism get misdiagnosed as borderline because we tend to have an underdeveloped sense of self.
When I was little I always wore the same purple polka-dotted dress. One dress, all the time. My mom had to wait until I was asleep to wash it. And I carried around an encyclopedia about dinosaurs. I’d tell the other kids about dinosaurs until they walked away from me. At which point I’d follow them into the hallway and they’d shut the door. It hurt my feelings, but my purpose was still clear. I was a dinosaur dictionary. No multitasking necessary. When I hit puberty though, things changed.
When I was in middle school I used to model myself on bitchy prime-time characters from the WB. I made friends with these two girls who were also trying to rule the school without the necessary social chops. (I don’t think they had Asperger’s. But they had something.) We used to insult people, like walk up to people and insult them, because that’s what they did on the television show, Popular.
But the two girls were closer to each other than they were to me. They kicked me out of their group and they made me believe that the other students were against me. I don’t think that was true though. I think kids can see when someone’s trying to be something they’re not. But I got depressed. I dropped out of school. My mom sent me to a psychiatrist because I didn’t want to leave the house. And I got a diagnosis.
A lot of people with Asperger’s feel like they’re on the wrong planet. It’s actually a website: wrongplanet.com. I don’t think the divide is that big. It’s hard to know how big it is, really. But most of my friends have Asperger’s. Or something else like bipolar or borderline. I meet people with problems naturally. It’s like we have radar. Since I moved to New York though, I started going to support groups. It’s harder to make friends here. And I know we can’t endure our bruised egos alone.
I have had a fair amount of “normal” friends who I don’t have to contain myself around. And it’s the best feeling ever. Most of my conventional social life: clubs, spring breaks, road trips – I can credit to them. A lot of the time it’s been gay guys. They like girls with personas. Especially over-the-top ones like mine. Awkward + sexy = campy. And I’m cool with that. If I can make people laugh, that’s great. Even if it isn’t intentional. But I also get along with other brainy, introverted girls by default. One of my best friends, Caitie, is analytical and bookish like I am. But she’s not on the spectrum.
I have some platonic guy friends too. They say they like me because I’m honest. Sometimes because I’m “logical.” My best guy friend is nothing like me: he’s conservative, military, and pretty much only has sex in serious relationships. He likes hanging out with me because he can get a female perspective without sex getting in the way.
Honesty is my strong point. It’s most autistic people’s strong point. That part of the stereotype is true. Granted, a lot of the time we’re blunt without trying to be. But people appreciate that. They like it when we cut through the bullshit. Even if it isn’t a heroic act of insubordination on our part. Penelope Trunk put it best: people with Asperger’s look outside the box because we don’t see the box.
You’ve probably heard that we’re loyal. That’s also true. People with Asperger’s want your approval. And like anyone else who’s dealing with some rough shit, we’re often kinder to others because of it. Another good thing about being different is that you meet more interesting people. Do you know a bisexual, alcoholic Communist in a wheelchair? A 350 pound chick with a country accent and an IQ of 85? A bipolar ex porn-producer whose mom died of AIDS? Probably not. Because you don’t have Asperger’s.
I did find another way to be social: I used to have sex with a lot of people. And I do mean a lot. I know that could come off as a sob story, like oh, I have Asperger’s, I got used. But no, this bitch has agency. There’s a thrill-seeking gene that’s just as real as the genetic basis for autism. I wanted the thrill. And, mind you, it was pretty thrilling. But it was also the easiest way to talk to regular people. I had my weird friends. That was the perspective I got about life. It was insular. But normal guys wanted me. I got to learn things I wouldn’t have learned from being stuck in a bubble with other people like me.
It was an identity thing too. I wanted to be something other than the weird smart girl. I got a bad reputation in college, but I didn’t hate that either. I kind of liked it actually. I wasn’t the hapless freak that people avoided. I was empowered. You were with or against me for something I could control.
I’ve had plenty of relationships despite all that. Guys like being around me because they can say pretty much anything and I won’t be offended or stunned. I’ll just look at them with my impassive stare and discreet awe and let them teach me about their world. They think I’m just the laid-back chick they’ve been waiting for. But that doesn’t last long.
An ex of mine laid it out for me: I was confident and funny. I liked things like anthropology and hiking. People at the bar we went to thought I was cool. He didn’t expect me to be a depressive. He was really good with people – a lot of guys I’ve dated have been really good with people. People with Asperger’s gravitate towards people who are socially gifted because we want them to teach us things.
I kept asking him questions about people we knew because I wanted to get his perspective. And I repeat myself a lot. I’ve always repeated myself: it’s called perseveration and many of us do it. He said he had to hold himself back from yelling at me because I annoyed the shit out of him. I’m sure other guys dumped me for similar reasons. Which doesn’t make them bad people. Most of my non-crazy exes would be great for someone else. I don’t want to have to hold myself back in a relationship, anyway.
I have a boyfriend now. I met him in my support group. We’ve been together for a year and a half. And it’s the longest, and best, relationship I’ve ever had. I feel more comfortable around him than I have around any other human in my entire life. And he feels the same way. We act the same around each other as we do when we’re alone. That’s a big deal.
I guess I have mixed feelings about men. On the one hand, I love them because they don’t judge me as much. Men don’t care if someone’s aloof as long as they have something interesting to say. On the other hand, I resent them because I have a hard time believing they’ll be this supportive of me once I’m no longer attractive.
My boyfriend told me I have a social advantage because men want to talk to me, therefore I’ve had more opportunities to develop social skills. However, I think he has the advantage. He’s content with being good at video games. He’s designing an indie game now. He got respect by being good at what he does. Not by being charming or hot. (Which, by the way, he is.)
Autistic men learn to emphasize their strengths. They know they have no way to be valued besides performance and knowledge. The men in my support group are loud and bold. They say whatever comes to mind no matter how fucking weird it is. They demand to be heard.
The women’s support group is much sadder to watch. We know we’re judged for things we just can’t win at. We’re a group of very smart women who know about history, astronomy: all kinds of obscure shit just like the men. One girl loves to draw blueprints of bridges. And many of these women have had to be pushed to speak because they’re terrified of being thought of as weird. We still aren’t used to it. Even though people have been treating us that way for our whole lives.
I’d rather be a freak or a slut or a bombastic, arrogant loser a million times over than be like those girls. Terrified to offend; apologetic for existing. We teach women to spend their lives appeasing others and it’s done tremendous psychological damage to women on the spectrum.
If I were a man, I think I’d have come to terms with who I am much quicker. I’d have actually read all those George Bernard Shaw and Dostoyevsky books on my shelf to distract myself. Maybe I’d be a paleontologist by now. Instead, I’m stuck de-programming everything I’ve internalized about how a woman is supposed to act. It’s okay to not be charming.
It’s okay to be standoffish and obsessed with yourself and your interests even if it doesn’t make people like you. And we shouldn’t worry so fucking much about whether people like us anyway. Men are happy with being competent. Sometimes they’re even happy if they’re not competent. They just do what they want. Why shouldn’t we?
I’m scared of getting older because I know people will see me as that weird old lady instead of the quirky ingenue that I’ve tried so hard to be. I’m just going to have to make peace with that though. And take my own advice.Part of maturity is not worrying so much what other people think of you. Which is very hard when comparing yourself to others is the only way you’ve been able to develop awareness of what’s going on around you. But it’s a balancing act. I hope one day I’m able to enjoy being part of the world instead of trying to figure out ways to force myself into it. It’s manipulative, really, even though I don’t mean it that way.
People with Asperger’s are scared. But we don’t have to be. There’s something out there for all of us. We just have to change our expectations a little. But that’s okay. Everyone does.
I find it highly irritating the fact that nobody seems to believe me when I say that my full legal name is how you see it. I’ve been accused of using a false and misleading name of which I find very offensive. Is it because I’m Asian? Is it?
Having my fb shut down multiple times and forced to change my name to my “real” name, so just to put it out there. My name.
Yours sincerely,
Phuc Dat Bich
The world of Scooby-Doo is—let’s face it here, people!—weird. Very weird. Super weird. But it’s hard not to fall in love with its strange Gothic atmosphere and the super duper optimistic nature of our protagonists, who might be in high school, yet seem to lack any sort of adult supervision whatsoever, or who might be in college, were their world to possess even a smidgen of normalcy.
The world of Scooby-Doo is a bickering sphere populated by bitter misers who seem to follow the same modus operandi no matter what situation they may find themselves in. It goes something like this when explained in the language of adults:
STEP ONE: Find yourself annoyed by the banks, which might be two seconds away from launching an investigation into your alleged (sure, we’ll go with that) tax fraud. But you know something about the rest of humanity that others might not: That people are stupid.
STEP TWO: Plea bargains might mean you have to give up your creepy, lonely Coolsville villa perched atop a cliff overlooking the sinister sea. You can’t have that. Villas are expensive (well, maybe not to you, but it’s a villa). So you decide to dress up like a scary diver from the deep (or something or other).
STEP THREE: Your plan is a major success. The locals will notice that you’ve vanished and will never link together the very real possibility that the scary man from the deep with the diver’s helmet draped in Party City seaweed is the same miser with all the ill-gotten gains in the unfortunately located seaside villa. Because people are stupid.
STEP FOUR: Rinse and repeat, timing your appearances from the depths of the sea accordingly with your kidney dialysis appointments at the hospital in the next township, where conveniently, no one will have noted that you’re supposed to have vanished or something like that because there are no news channels out in these parts, only backwoods superstition and carrier pigeons.
STEP FIVE: Sleep cozily in bed at night in the villa the Sheriff’s Department has neglected to obtain a search warrant for because everyone’s holed up in their houses too scared to move. Go to the empty supermarket and do your grocery shopping simply by putting things into your cart and walking out. Why not? No one will see you.
There is a second element to this equation. Somewhere out there in this strange world exists an absent parent (actually, not strange at all) who indulges his daughter, an absent minded auburn haired stunner with an inclination towards donning purple frocks. He sends her a message through his secretary: “Child, please accept my monthly procreation stipend into your bank account by the first of each month. Now, off with you.”
So the child (her name is Daphne) takes Daddy’s money gladly. She chooses to invest it in more purple frocks and a van which she proceeds to get her staff of personal maids to paint all the colors she perceived to be her lacking in her life during her time on Manson’s ranch. Along the way, she buys the affections of this tall, sandy haired jock named Fred (who wears a signature ascot) who is more than happy to take charge of their joyrides, seeing as Daphne was tragically born without a personality.
Well, that might be just a tad unfair. Both of them have always admired Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys, though to their knowledge, neither of their idols took mind altering substances (I’d argue that they must have, if their inability to tie their shoes without bumping into major criminals is to be believed). So Barbie and Ken decide to recruit an intelligent mousy-haired spitfire named Velma, Shaggy, their dealer, and his talking dog (who may or may not be real).
The world of Scooby-Doo is weird. This bears repeating more than once.
So these kids, embroiled in 1960s counterculture, take their groovy van to parts unknown. No place they find looks like it could in any way resemble the planet we live on. The countryside is doused in thick fog, bears fruit to thick, unyielding forests and is, for the most part, entirely desolate. The cities themselves look like Brooklyn before the hipster invasion. Which leads us into:
STEP SIX: Arrive in desolate town. Run into scary diver from the deep while taking advantage of the surf at the intriguingly empty beach. Convince the superstitious locals to stop acting like carrion for ONE GODDAMN SECOND, piece the disappearance of the aforementioned miser together with the sudden appearance of the diver. Shaggy will insist that the supernatural is indeed at work. Scooby will wet himself.
STEP SEVEN: After exploring the miser’s villa, Velma will discover some rather suspicious looking credit card statements. She might or might not tell anyone, for the sake of hogging all the glory later. Scooby will find some diving gear and a blunt, though he’ll share the latter with Shaggy. Eventually, Fred will suggest that everyone split up, presumably so no one can catch him admiring himself in the mirror of the master bedroom
STEP EIGHT: Sensing that Scooby-Doo is not exactly the type of creature you create a “Beware of Dog” sign for, the scary diver kidnaps Daphne. Kidnapping her entails one of two options: She can either find a trap door in the process of tripping over a dust molecule if she doesn’t agree to go quietly, which I assume is much easier to do than it sounds.
STEP NINE: Once Daphne’s disappearance begins to make waves (we’re talking tiny wading pool bursts of energy), the gang proceeds to go searching for her; Scooby is only convinced to go on this expedition when he’s fed pot cookies (we KNOW what those Scooby Snacks are, Hanna-Barbera, I mean, REALLY). The chase begins. An obscure psychedelic rock track not even the denizens of YouTube can locate all these years later will play over the expected chase scene. Daphne says, “Hi guys! I figured out something that might have been obvious to Velma earlier, but I need a line of dialogue right now.” So the gang proceeds to set up a trap that Kevin from Home Alone would call amateur.
STEP TEN: Thwarted by this trap (probably a fishing net picked up from the back end of Home Depot), Fred will pull off the scary diver’s mask and everyone will be absolutely STUNNED to see that the old miser is not dead. The authorities will show up with fresh doughnuts (because being afraid to step outside leaves you with a lot of time to figure out how to make your own) and the aforementioned miser is carted off to the slammer. Happiness as we know it will be restored.
But I still haven’t been able to figure out if this criminal mastermind (yeah, right!) had some Scooby Snacks himself. He’ll inevitably say, “I would have gotten away with it too, had it not been for you meddling kids and that DOG!”
Does he see what I can’t see? Is this what will happen once pot is legalized nationwide? Will I have a talking animal friend who will be excited to solve crimes with me? Will he be accepted as legion?
That doesn’t sound too bad at all. If anything, all that weed teaches us that skepticism, not superstition, is the way to go. Not a bad thing to teach your kids, though I’ll happily leave dispensing or not dispensing weed to them up to you.
Tom has ulcerative colitis. Tom is also lactose intolerant. In five minutes Tom is going to sneak away from his cubicle and ravenously consume a cheese danish that he had hidden on top of the refrigerator in the break room. He has been told not to consume dairy for several reasons, but he cannot help but indulge this one guilty pleasure. Tom doesn’t know that I’m sitting in the security office each day as he ducks behind the fridge to force a pastry into his mouth. He certainly doesn’t know that I’m watching. He definitely isn’t aware that my job is so boring and his life is so predictable that I know he’ll be running to the bathroom in about 45 minutes. He’ll be in there for 10 minutes.
There are 327 cameras positioned across three floors here at the Madison Office Complex. Each room has multiple cameras that record to a couple of media storage towers in the basement. My job is to handle any security issues as they come up. However, ever person that works I this office is about as dangerous as a box of stuffed animals. In seven years of working here, the most I’ve had to do is show out an employee’s abusive husband. For his little jealous stunt, she was fired. I don’t agree with it, but they don’t pay me to approve.
In seven years of monitoring the most boring building in the city, I had to learn how to make my own fun. Management requires that I do a visual inspection of all the exits twice a shift. During this time I often stop to talk to one or two individuals for a brief period of time. Other than that, the only information I have about the drones I tend to comes from observation and eavesdropping. When I am not making sure the doors remain locked and the employees aren’t doing anything dastardly enough to warrant my attention, I sit in the office and make up stories about what each individual is doing.
Franklin is an office manager that isn’t my direct superior. His boss, who happens to be my boss, asked that I install two cameras in his office. Everything Franklin does is recorded to the media storage system in the basement. I used to leave his feed up on one of the screens, but after the first couple of days I realized that there’s no real schedule to his compulsive masturbation and pornography consumption. Seriously, the guy probably pulls it at least six times in an eight-hour shift. He tried to shake my hand once. I did so to be polite and all, but soaked my hand in disinfectant directly after.
Franklin and Tom are the only two individuals that do anything remotely abnormal in the office complex. Seriously, with the exception of Fatty the Danish Slayer and Fappy the Clown, no one on the video feed does anything abnormal. In fact, for quite some time, everything has been too normal. I’m not supposed to access the video feeds that are saved to storage, but I have access. Around the time that I noticed the abnormality of those two, I noticed the almost mechanical nature of the others. I’ve been reviewing the security footage in my downtime. If I take any two days of footage and run them side by side on the same screen, the only variation between the two would be the actions of Tom and Franklin.
I don’t know why it has become so unsettling. For years, I’ve considered the workers to be little more than drones that exist to deny insurance claims and feast on the hope of others as it is destroyed in the name of profit. I guess the idea that something could actually be wrong with them wasn’t something I was ready for. It’s easy to sit in my office and look down on the people I am tasked with protecting. I quite literally look down at the security monitors for eight hours a day. It is this perspective that allows me to find these things disturbing. It allows me to see the synergy and synchronicity. In short, the workers operate less as independent units and more like a hive.
It took me a while to notice.
A good example would be Bradley.
Bradley works the mail room. He pushes his little cart around to pick up and drop off packages. To the untrained eye, his routine would seem sporadic. Having watched him every day for several years now, I can tell you that the man is precise down to the second. That in and of itself wouldn’t be disturbing. Maybe he is just punctual and cares about his job, right? Fine. Whatever. The thing is, often times he will turn a corner and extend his hand to receive a package that he could not have possibly seen from an individual that couldn’t have seen him coming. Everything is so precise. Everything moves like clockwork. No group of humans has every been as efficient as this office.
Another thing that strikes me as beyond odd is that with the exception of the two outliers, no one in the office drinks coffee. Seriously, I’ve gone through the trash to confirm it. No one drinks coffee. No one drinks soda. No one consumes energy drinks. If they drink anything at all, it is water from the cooler. Moreover, the way they drink it is just plain odd. Each individual will move toward the water cooler in an orderly fashion and fill their cup only to return to their cubicle. There is no idle chit-chat. There is no gossip. The individuals I stop to talk to are polite, but I can tell that they are only making conversation to avoid suspicion. If left to their own devices, they would work an entire shift without saying a word that wasn’t required for business operations. No one is that dedicated to their job. You cannot convince me that more than two hundred employees in one building would share that trait.
Franklin and Tom started eating lunch together last week. Whereas the rest of the employees eat in their cubicles, the two outliers eventually found each other. From the comfort of my office, I watched as the two of them discussed something they were trying to keep quiet. Each would pull a hand to their face when talking to obscure their mouth and muffle their voice. The cameras in the break room don’t record audio. Only the cameras in Franklin’s office and in the supply closet offer me that level of access. Most of the security monitors aren’t even capable of sound. In order to listen to the audio feeds, I have to log into the system with my laptop. I have to be careful about that though. Any idiot with Google and physical access to a network and clear usage logs, but there is a security camera in my office. I’m not supposed to know about it, but I found it in the video feeds when I logged in on my laptop to listen to the supply closet once.
Don’t ask.
The outliers are either about to start spending some quality time together or they are onto whatever the fuck is going on in this office. I want to approach them, but I’m afraid to reveal what I know. To the wrong person all of this would sound crazy. I’m aware enough to know that this could all be the result of prolonged isolation and the lack of meaningful social interaction manifesting as paranoia and delusion. Believe me, I would be relieved if that were the case. I’m a lot more willing to accept my own mental instability than accept that there may be something sinister going on here. I need to sleep more, but it has been something I haven’t been able to do for weeks now. I suppose I’ll sleep when I am dead.
Franklin’s office is on the third floor. Tom works a cubicle on the first floor. They shouldn’t even know each other. Each floor has its own break room. That they would choose to meet on the first floor indicates a need to break from some sort of protocol. I had to find a way to interact with them without revealing myself. If I was right, maybe I could work something out, but if I was wrong I’d come off as crazy. Trust me, you don’t want to see the reaction people have when they think the man assigned to protect them has lost his marbles. I was hired after my predecessor attacked one of the agents in the office pool. They made me watch footage of his outburst during my training. I can only imagine what was going through his head.
I opted to go with a Post-it note. It was simple and effective. As everyone filed out of the building at the end of business I left a note on each of their monitors. They read,
“They never use the supply closet. There’s a bug in the break room.”
The worst case scenario there was that they would call me to investigate it and I’d have to pretend to look for a culprit. Sure enough, the two of them met in the supply closet during their lunch break. I recorded their conversation:
Franklin: Thanks I got your note.
Tom: My note? I got a note from you.
Franklin: Forget about it. We’re already in here. So did you get the test results?
Tom: Yeah, nada. I had my guy run every test he could. There is nothing in the water but water.
Franklin: Dammit!
Tom: Now what?
Franklin: I don’t know. I’m pretty sure there’s a camera in my office. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had one near your cubicle. I’m not supposed to know this, but corporate has more than three hundred pinhole cameras set up in this building.
Tom: Shit. Do you think they know?
Franklin: There’s no way to know for sure. The best we can do is act normal for now.
Tom: Right. Well, let’s get some lunch.
After that, they proceeded to the break room. It confirmed my suspicions, but it didn’t engender any level of trust that I could think of. Tom and Franklin had no reason to have that conversation in the office. It was too convenient. I should have seen it sooner. Tom and Franklin weren’t onto any grand conspiracy. They were likely part of it. I should have seen it sooner. Even their erratic behavior followed a pattern if I zoomed out enough. There was some slight variation on when Tom would sneak off for his danish, but it was always between 2:10 and 2:15 in the afternoon. Franklin would pleasure himself as often as six times a day, but I went back to review the footage. He always did it at the same times give or take five minutes in either direction. Their behavior wasn’t random, it was operating on a variable scale. They were part of the machine.
I cannot begin to tell you how fucked I am if I lose this job. It’s $40,000 a year to sit in an office and watch idiots work. I do a few walkabouts and check the doors, but nothing ever happens here. Even if there is something strange going on, it isn’t worth losing my job. Seriously, I wouldn’t care if aliens were using medical insurance to conquer humanity. If they continued paying me and didn’t require me to drink whatever Kool-aid everyone else seems to be drinking, I’d collect my paychecks and remain silent.
I got this job solely on the basis of nepotism. My boss is a fraternity brother. Even with that connection, I had to remind him about the time I helped him hide his gay porn stash before the cops raided the house to look for drugs. I’m not qualified for much else and I have a criminal record. No one wants to hire a former security guard with a shit degree and three DUIs. I’ve maintained the status quo for seven years. I don’t know why it has become so goddamned important to understand the abnormalities of this building as of late. The more that I try to understand it, the more I realize I am way out of my depth.
After my little attempt to reach out to Tom and Franklin, other employees have started showing some weird behavior. Janet in accounting has made it a point to start flirting with me during my afternoon walkabout. Honestly, I’d think it was cute if not for the fact that there is no light in her eyes. It is like having a conversation with a robot that it pretending it wants to fuck me. She’s attractive enough, I guess, but there is something inherently unappealing about a woman with no soul pretending to be an awkward girl with the precision and skill of a surgeon. Everything is too perfect. At this point, I am sure that they are onto me. All I can do at this point is do my job until such time as they do something to indicate that I should either run for my life or start getting used to the idea of flipping burgers.
For all that they know, they are not omniscient. I can tell that they are trying to deconstruct me and find my weakness. After my passive rejection of Janet’s advances, it wasn’t very long before Bradley made an innuendo about my package indicating a desire to being intimately familiar with my genitalia. I pretended not to notice, but I can only imagine what they will try next. It isn’t that I would be opposed to dating someone from work. It is just the idea of sharing bodily fluids with some sort of weird pod person. I still don’t know what is going on, but what I do know is enough to ensure that I am not going to find myself aroused by the advances of anyone.
One of the many reasons that I have held this job for so long is because it has been comfortable. I like that I do not have to spend that much time dealing with people. I find social interaction to be awkward at best. The few conversations I initiate are out of some lingering sense of wanting to be part of the human condition. That being said, the increasing frequency with which the individuals that work here have begun trying to connect with me has become infuriating.
It is beyond frustrating to think that I only became worthy of attention when I noticed something wrong and decided to investigate it. Seven years of working here and I’d be willing to wager that the majority of the employees in this building didn’t know my first name until they sent out whatever psychic memo they used to communicate via the hive mind they operate under. They lack anything resembling individuality and thus I did not matter as an individual. It’s clear that they are not interacting with me as if I am a person. Each social interaction is carefully executed attempt to garner information and assess my mental state. They aren’t trying to be my friend. They’re antibodies.
I’m a malignant cell in the organism that is this office. The change in behavior is not a break from procedure but instead another protocol that has been put into place in the event of an individual like myself upsetting the natural order of things. I covered the camera in my office. I’m not supposed to know that it is there and covering it is certainly going to warrant investigation on their part, but frankly I’m losing my ability to give a shit. Each day is an ever present reminder that I’m only here to fill a position that has no purpose. This building doesn’t need a security guard. Even if it did, I’m not allowed to carry a gun. If some psycho were to come into the office and put round after round of ammunition through their bodies; my job would to phone the police. Seriously, I don’t even carry a stun gun.
It is one thing to know that I am being watched. It is another to know that they are patient enough to play a long game. For the past couple of days, I have been doing little things around the office to upset the order in which things seem to work so fluidly. Of course, this means I had to disable the security feeds. The cameras are still running. I can still watch the live feeds in my office, but the media storage server has been off for days. I got a call from corporate informing me that the media storage system was down and that I should increase my walkabouts. This played right into my hand. I cannot know if they made this change as a natural response or because they know what I’ve done. They’ll be sending an IT guy later in the week. I’ll deal with him when he shows up.
My first experiment was simple.
I went down into the mail room and used a pair of vice grips to bend one of the wheels on Bradley’s mail cart. As expected, it caused him to move with a bit of an impairment. This disrupted the office slightly at first, but before long everyone had adapted to the change in pace. When that failed, I took all the printer paper and dropped it down the trash chute. The following day there was some upset over the lack of an ability to print, but this was quickly remedied when they ordered a new batch. The only thing I was able to do that seemed to have any real effect was dumping a considerable portion of caffeine powder into the water cooler.
The caffeine really did the trick. The employees started to get up from their cubicle more often. After a while it became clear that they were going to the bathroom in succession to compensate for the introduction of a diuretic. They were more inclined to talk and their speech was slightly hastened. I took to adding roughly the same amount of caffeine to each jug placed on the stand. This went well for a couple of days until Gladys, one of the secretaries, had a heart attack. She was pronounced dead-on-arrival at the hospital. I should feel bad about taking out one of the drones, but I don’t. In fact, it was Gladys that gave me an idea worth pursuing.
Gladys’ absence created a small portion of chaos in the flow of work in the building. It occurred to me that I could offset whatever sinister thing was going on by taking out key points in their organization. Without Gladys, the other secretaries had to take on the extra load of calls. Following that line of thought, it became clear that there were four employees that I had to remove in order to completely disrupt the order of it all. As detestable as the drones are, I’d like to think that they can be saved. This was my chance to test that notion.
Janet in accounting handled payroll. Without her, employees wouldn’t be paid on time. Bradley in the mailroom handled the delivery of claim forms. Franklin was in charge of approving or denying difficult claims and James in human resources was in charge of hiring replacements for anyone I removed from the equation.
James was the first to go. It was simple enough. While he was in his office reviewing resumes for individuals that could replace Gladys, I changed my route on the walkabout to make several pin pricks in his brake line. It wasn’t enough that it would drain completely, but if he slammed on his brakes, it would have little effect. Two days later he died in a single vehicle accident when his car careened off of a hill at a sharp curve in the road. Without anyone to hire replacements, I set about removing other key figures in the office.
Franklin was easy enough to get rid of. His anti-anxiety pills looked very similar to a type of off-brand Adderall. For those of you unfamiliar with the effects of amphetamine abuse, I’ll keep it short. He was already a compulsive masturbator. This made it to where all he did was jerk off and panic. His panic attacks triggered more masturbation which led him to take more amphetamines. The amphetamines made each orgasm more intense than the last, leading him to push harder and harder to continue with his pursuit of pleasure. With each iteration of his masturbatory habit it became harder and harder to maintain an erection. This led to more erratic behavior on his part in terms of how he would achieve orgasm. I was sure to mention auto-erotic asphyxiation to him in passing a couple of times over the course of that week. Within three days of that schedule, he had found himself in a position where he had to consider the unthinkable. They found him in his office with a silk tie around his neck and his penis still in his hand.
My physical access to the server room and a useless degree gave me just what I needed to get rid of Bradley and Janet. I sent a series of lurid emails back and forth between their accounts only to send them to the trash folder directly afterward. I was sure to spread this out over the course of a couple of weeks and each time I spoofed their network IP when sending new messages. Finally, I dosed Bradley with a sedative and prepared a noose. Janet received an email telling her to come down to sign for a package. When she entered and found Bradley she was too shocked to notice me behind the door. After her injection, I prepared a noose for her as well. A suicide note was printed on the third floor. A review of their email would later show they had been having an affair.
This disruption of the system had proven quite effective in disrupting the order of business. If there was a pattern to be found with the behavior of the drones, I couldn’t find it. For several glorious weeks I watched with pleasure as workplace efficiency dropped. The employees were a bit more sluggish. The new mail guy hadn’t learned everyone’s name and took longer to deliver packages. Likewise, the new woman in payroll hadn’t quite learned the system and there was a discrepancy of a day or two when it came to the deposit of payroll. This variation rippled outward. The lack of order translated to the lives of employees. I could only imagine the frustration that came from being late on a bill or having to wait to make a standard purchase. This utter destruction of routine led to frustration.
Franklin’s replacement didn’t share his issues. Within a week of his hiring, I was instructed to remove the cameras from his office. He was an ill-tempered man named Jordan. Jordan seemed to think that he could give me orders. Part of me wanted to remove him from the equation as I had with the others but his ill-temper and poor social skills actually comforted me. There was something about my somehow shittier job that made me feel better. The dysfunction of it all was comforting. Without anything resembling order, the hive-mind couldn’t function.
In giving me the freedom to move around they had unwittingly allowed me to strike a serious blow. I could still see traces of their influence. Some of the drones had already started to fall back into routine. After carefully analyzing their behavior, it became clear that I had approached the structure of the hive correctly, but not in the right areas. I had attacked the known distribution nodes, but I should have focused on the information hubs. The second floor call center was the heart of the business. If I could disrupt the call center, I would effectively render the hive of its ability to collect information. This was simple enough. I came in early several days in a row and stocked the break room with homemade chocolate chip cookies. If any of them had been constipated, the Ex-Lax chocolates in the cookies certainly fixed that.
The drones are starting to wake up. I hate that I have to remove the unruly ones. A cubicle monkey on the first floor flipped his shit today and started tossing papers in between screaming curses at fellow employees. As I was escorting him out of the building I whispered in his ear, “You’re free. Now get out there and enjoy life.”
He smiled. I don’t think he knows all that I’ve done for him, but he was aware that he had escaped the hive. It’s guys like him that keep me going anymore. As the disruptions and violence become more common in the office I can tell that I’ve really made a difference. Moreover, my swift and steady response has resulted in a pay raise and talk of a promotion. It may not be long before I’m in charge of an individual who has my current job. I cannot help but think that they are attempting to buy me off, but as I said before, as long as they don’t directly attack me or fire me, I’ll continue to do my job.
They fired me yesterday.
Several employees had reported me to human resources for having “erratic behavior” and being “generally creepy.” I know it was the last few drones who I hadn’t removed. I was at least able to talk the new director of human resources into giving me a letter of recommendation. As I have said before, I don’t think it is very likely for me to find another job like that. It burns me up inside that I put all that work into tearing down whatever terrible plot had been in place only to be turned out on the street.
They took my keys, but they didn’t change the locks. I have a spare set. It’s the weekend, no one is here. I’m leaving some presents for the drones. After that, my work here is done. If they find me at all, I’ll be hanging in the mail room. Until then, I think it’s time to catch up on some much needed sleep.
When you first start dating and you mention anything about your poop including smell, size, how often, etc. you know you’re reaching a particular comfort level that you never would’ve ventured to had you not been officially together. Before you’re a couple your mindset is “I’m a girl. Girls don’t poop.” After you’re official it not only changes to, “Everybody poops,” it may even go as far as “Wow, I really need to take a shit right now.”
If you’re hooking up with a guy who you’re just casually having sex with chances are you’ll be all taken care of in terms of hair removal: legs, pits…lady bits, but when you start to get comfortable with a significant other, grooming becomes less of a necessity and more of a luxury. When you’re in the mood, you’re in the mood and you could care less what hair you do or don’t have in that moment.
If you leave tampons, pads, or any other product made for specifically for vaginas at his place, and he doesn’t mind or say a word about it, you’ve reached that comfort level. When he leaves his beard oil at your place, you know you’ve reached that same level on his end.
The first time you let one loose in front of your significant other, that’s comfort saying, “Hey, I’m here.” Whether it’s heard from a mile away or silent but deadly, if you two are openly farting in front of each other without a care in the world, you know you’re comfortable. Couples who fart together, stay together. Right…?
When you forget your toothbrush one night sleeping over at his place and he gladly allows you to use his, he’s implying that your germs are his germs. Your germs are one, and no matter how disgusting or bad for your dental hygiene that may be, neither one of you seems to care.
When they’ve got a pimple on their back and you go at it full force with both fingers until it pops just the way you want it to, you have reached that disgusting level of comfort that crosses most boundaries. When popping pimples becomes a form of bonding, you’re that couple.
When you tell him to go to the pharmacy to pick up anything that relieves diarrhea, you’re not shy about whatever embarrassing problems are happening to your body. Your like a Pepto Bismol ad with no shame. Sometimes you can’t help whatever weird things your body does, and you’re comfortable enough with him to know he’ll understand that. Embarrassing becomes a word much less-used in each of your vocabularies.
This dude just had no rhythm. At all. It was a really weird set of thrusts. So I thought fuck it, I’ll take control and started riding him. To which he continued the weird, uncoordinated and non-rhythmic thrusts.
He rubbed his dick between my butt cheeks until he came, not realizing he wasn’t actually in me.
It was not deliberate.
It was with my ex boyfriend. I’m a pretty small person (5’0 and 95lbs) and he is big, plus had gained weight (6’3 and 250lbs). He was on top of me and refusing to use his arms to support his upper body, causing him to rest his entire chest weight on me. I kept telling him to prop himself up, but he kept saying his arms were tired. I was basically suffocating. I started wheezing very loudly and needed my emergency inhaler. To make things worse, he got mad at me for “ruining the moment.”
TLDR: Fat bf gives me asthma attack
With a girl whose blowjob technique involved a lot of teeth. She also tried to “deepthroat” me, which just ended up painfully bending my dick, since she didn’t quite understand the “throat” part.
I was at a party and me and this were getting chummy. We were both drinking but I got more drunk than her. As the party dies down to our immediate friend, she takes me back to a room and asks if I want a blow job. I slur out a yes, and she starts going to town.
I’m not sure what happened next, but one of us moved in suddenly and her jaw clenches on my dick and breaks the skin. My dick starts gushing blood, and she starts freaking out, but I so drunk that I thought it was hilarious. I wrapped my dick in some tissues to stop the bleeding and head back to the living room to show my friends.
Apparently I burst into the room with my pants around my ankles loudly signing “She tried to eat my cock, she tried to eat my cock, Hi ho the dairy o, she tried to eat my cock.”
After my performance I went to bed in the dinning room. The girl left crying in shame with all of her friends, so none of my friends got laid, but my were still nice enough to put a band aid on my dick, and give me a towel to use as a blanket.
I met a guy on eHarmony. After our second date, we went to his apartment to, basically, get drunk and have sex. He goes down on me and after a few minutes, I end up in excruciating pain. I look down and see blood everywhere. He bit off a piece of my fucking vagina.
I’d dated this guy for a few weeks. Then came sex time. We were naked and making out, then I moved to go down on him. His crotch smelled very strong of cologne, and never dealing with it before, I started sucking him.
It was cologne, and a lot of it. My mouth was full of it, my eyes & nose started to burn, and I started throwing up. I couldn’t get that taste out of my mouth and off my face for days. It was Drakkar Noir.
Guys, don’t ever fucking do that.
I was with this girl and she was kind of an emo chick. I can deal with that. She also liked it kinda rough which I was also kind of okay with.
Then we are having sex one night and she wanted me to choke her. So whatever cool I do a little choking and try to make her happy. She keeps saying she wants to be choked harder and harder. I keep doing this and she finally tells me to choke her until she taps me on the shoulder. She wanted to be fucking choked out practically. I finally start choking her the way she wants but at this point I’m scared this girl is going to die. I release my death grip and she slaps me in the face and says, “choke me harder you bitch.”
So I just start fucking her and choking her as hard as I can and I’m about to cum. I want to get this shit over with and nope the fuck out. Apparently she could tell I was about to cum and she told me to cum inside her. NO FUCKING WAY was I cumming inside this fucking crazy girl.
So I pull out and cum on her tummy. She is not pleased. She swipes the cum up with her hand and fucking spidermans me. Here I am sitting here with my own cum on my face and this bitch fucking pissed off because I didn’t kill her and risk impregnating her to form a crazy master race. I left and never saw her again.
She was an inexperienced virgin and she didn’t want to lose her virginity, so she suggested anal. I was like ‘‘awesome, great idea.” Then few minutes into the action, there comes a hot steamy green apple nasties . She ran into the bathroom and nearly spent there over an hour for embarrassment. I played it off and said it’s not a biggie. We tried again, and it was smooth this time. Practice makes prefect, I guess.
Shower sex with an ex. It was uncomfortable, water makes terrible lubricant, and her footing slipped from the side of the tub and she knocked her head on the wall.
Was banging a girl in the back seat, it’s good times, with the car rocking and windows steamed. Before too long she’s cumming and then I start cumming, so I grab her by the hips and clamp down and start banging it home, but I guess my thumbs were on her bladder cause she straight up pisses on me.
And lo, at that moment, a cop knocks on the window. She freaks and tries to jump off and I take a knee in my freshly drained balls. So now I got a cop laughing at me, piss in my back seat, and shattered balls.
Cop was all, “Just go, you’ve been punished enough.”
Found some white creature that was alive inside girl’s vagina after I’d been going down on her.
It was some white creature that was wriggling around.
I can’t remember the specifics of it now. I just remember she went straight to the doctor the next day and got some antibiotics which cleared it up. Thankfully it wasn’t an STD or anything.
I also remember spewing and washing my mouth out like never before.
Made me think twice about vaginas.. for at least a couple of months.
:(
Had a fling a few years back. Everything was going well then she asked me to cut her. It was a strange request but after some hesitation I agreed to fulfill her odd request. She broke apart a new shaving razor and handed me one of the sharp bars. So we get back to it and she tells me to cut her.
Not understanding how this fetish works, I gingerly swipe at her arm and make a little scratch. Annoyed she demands I try again but harder this time. So I oblige and there is a little paper cut looking slice on her arm.
Apparently that wasn’t good enough so she demands I try again but even harder still. Being one who didn’t want to disappoint I dig the blade into her arm even harder. It worked that time, really well. At that moment it was as if someone pulled the Emergency brake on the love train as we both look in shock at her arm seeing the inside sticking out like this.
It was at that moment we realized it was time for a shameful trip to the hospital to get stitches. So that was the night I spent in the ER with blueballs. Would not recommend.
When I was 19 I met a guy on OkCupid. He seemed interesting enough but something about him was a little weird, I couldn’t put my finger on it. We talked for a while, we had some stuff in common, favorite bands and movies, etc.
He wanted to meet me so I invited him over to my house. We got drunk and had sex on a futon and fell asleep. When we woke up he said, “I have something to tell you,” and I said “what,” and he said “I’m on the sex offender registry, I wanted to tell you in case we ended up getting serious.”
I thought it was a joke until he pulled up his picture in the sex offender database for the state we live in. I told him I would not like to enter a serious relationship with him at this time and asked him to please leave my house. So that’s probably the worst sex I’ve ever had.
I once was fucking this chick that I had known for like 10 years and I’m pounding the shit out of it and I can feel something poking my dick. I assumed it was some type of birth control….but it wasn’t.
She wanted me to finish in her mouth so she started blowing me and I was fingering her and I felt it again so I pulled it out and I could smell this rotten egg smell as soon as did. It was the shell of a boiled egg. I didn’t ask any questions I blew my load she swallowed I left never talked to her again.
Long time friend was looking to become boyfriend. And idk about anyone else but I like to test the car before I buy. For weeks he talked himself up and I finally said sure lets give it a go.
He kissed like an excited Doberman, I kept having to wipe my mouth when he would stop and let me breath from the water boarding I was being tortured with. We get down to the sex against my better judgement. It’s bad, not only is his dick not as promised but his idea of sex was putting it in, jerking about a bit and rolling off me.
Then he’s like let’s go to bed, so I’m like I don’t want to do that, I lie and say I’ve got work tomorrow, he tells me he’ll get up early and leave and pulls me in for the most uncomfortable cuddle session, with his flaccid dick still in his nutted condom pressed against my ass. It was horrible. I never returned his calls afterward. -10/10.
Was having sex, she was riding cowgirl with lots of bouncing. Perhaps I zigged when I should have zagged. Long story short my boner got right angled. I had an ugly purple-ish golf ball sized knot off the side of my dick for about 3 days. Then when the swelling went down, the bruising started to spread out…right down too my balls. My balls didn’t hurt, but they were an ugly color. Only time in my life I googled “broken penis”.
TL;DR : Dont get your dick bent.
This happened to me two days ago! This girl and I had spoken previously about being FWB and I thought why the hell not? So we both decide that when we want to do the dirty, we will just send the other one a text and figure out when/where to get it done.(Wall of text inbound)
So I get home from work one night and I get the text and I am game! I’ve been on a bit of a dry spell lately and I’m in the mindset that this will be great! Wrong. I was wrong. Fast forward to her coming over, we are in my room starting to get hot and heavy and when she starts to grab my junk. What followed was probably one of the most confusing sexual encounters of my life.
She grabs my dick and starts shaking it side to side, kinda like she’s trying to activate a glowstick. I tried to show her what I liked but she was adamant on continuing her attempts(I’ve since named this move the Sidewinder!). I decided it was time to just get in and go for it. It proved to be very boring and I thought to myself, “Maybe if she gets on top, that’ll help”. Wrong.
She gets on top, plops down and makes NO effort to actually make sure I am inside of her. I told her I wasn’t, but she seemed to be enjoying herself so much, I wasn’t sure I could get through to her. I actually went soft and just laid there while she grinded against my limp dick for probably 5 minutes. I eventually found a reason for us to stop and she went home. I took a very long shower when she left.
I had this friend in college. Sweet girl, A+ personality, we were very close. She had a BF back home who was abusive both physically and verbally, and cheated on her constantly. Finally she took our advice and left him for good. The goodbye consisted of the usual angry insecure no guy but me will ever want you, your ugly, Your terrible in bed, blah blah blah. As he was her first and only lover she had taken this to be truth.
She tried to pick up other guys but was often turned down as she is not exactly a good looking girl. Our group of friends could all see with more and more rejection she grew more and more concerned this d-bag was right. One day she asked me if I would have sex with her, no strings attached just to prove another man could want her that way. I feared saying no would destroy her and confirm the doubts installed by this jerk, so I took one for the team. I got good and drunk as not only is she not pretty but my type is curvy dark featured women. She is a petite blonde with no boobs or booty to speak of. Picture Smeagol from lord of the rings naked and ready.
On top of that her downstairs STUNK! It was so bad, after I brought her to climax I faked my own. It didn’t end there. She noticed the condom was empty. I apologized assuring her it was a case of whiskey dick and not her, or this all would be for not. So she felt we should both deserved a grand finale, and that we could take a break smoke a cig and try again. Well I’ve come this far, no turning back now right? I insisted this time I take her from behind as it’s “my favorite.” In truth it is but the real reason being I needed her not to notice me squeezing my eyes shut and picturing every porno and great lay I ever had.
The following day she tells our group of friends what we did and gave me a sterling review, which resulted in a few of the attractive women in our clique to throw themselves at me. Her confidence was renewed, and she must have upped her game and done something about the smell as she’s been a heart breaker ever since. In conclusion worst sex I ever had, and Karma does exist.
A girl approached me about being her FwB. Considering she was actually really cute that was a simple no brainer. So our first time “hanging out” comes along and the sex is so odd. She had told me she had some kinks and I’m pretty open so I wasn’t intimidated. But I had never experienced anything like that before.
“Two fingers on the back of my shoulder. Now press your thumb hard on the inside of my thigh.” …ok.
This went on the whole time we were having sex. I’m thinking “damn are we having sex or building something from Ikea”.
Fast forward a few days and she wants to meet up again. I agreed and I kid you fuckin’ not, when she was riding me she had my arms moving in the same way the “YMCA” dance. I burst out laughing and she got upset for making fun of her kinks.
Sex was terrible but I still laugh about every time I hear the village people.
Started dating a college guy while I was a high school junior, because he seemed cool and mature. All of the sudden, during a drive to the movies, he says “Just so you know, my dick is pretty small.” I was kinda taken aback, because it legitimately came out of nowhere, but okay. Maybe he’s just self-conscious.
Fast forward to later that night, we’re fooling around a little in the car. He takes it out, and it’s gotta be like two, maybe three inches max. Okay, well, at least that makes a blowjob easy. So I go in for the blow, and before I even put my mouth on, I’m hit with this overwhelming stink of rancid odor. Came right back up and switched to a handy. Finished him off, then the dude didn’t even reciprocate. Had the nerve to call up a few days later saying that he could sneak me into his mother’s house for a quickie.
Nope.
Went to Mexico and got two hookers for a threesome. First time with hookers, first threesome. Fuck it. With condoms at all times, btw.
All going great until she asks me what I want to do next. Anything I want. Duh, butt sex!
I was tired from banging both of them so I said, you get on top of me. Mistake #1.
Feels good. WAY tighter cause, you know, butt sex.
Mistake #2. Jackhammer it because, you know, hooker. She says, please go slow!! So I slow down….
She jumps up, it’s dark, and proceeds to have a bunch of liquid drop from her vag. I thought. Runs out of the room. Hooker #2 watches her just as I was and didn’t understand. Until the smell…
Wasn’t vag liquid. Apparently, the jackhammer triggered her next bowel movement, which happened to be liquid, and it’s ALL over my stomach and legs. The 2nd hooker goes, “Dios mio…” and sits there. At that point, we both cover our noses and I say, look, I’m not cleaning this shit. You two are getting paid, get something quick!
She spends the next 10 mins cleaning me up. I ask to shower. I hear hooker #1 making fucking poop noises from the bathroom with the shower. I have to wait, naked, until she’s done crapping.
She exits. I shower, thoroughly. Come back out. The kicker….
Both are in the bed and say, come on back and we do some more.
Nope. Taxi’d out and back to my resort.
Text responses originally from R/AskReddit
I saw an ad for a white woman who wanted to get pregnant by a black guy and abort the baby.
Detroit area. A guy wanted to trade for a coffin. Claimed it was never used, but it was still f*cking creepy.
He wanted a mini bike, good rc cars, or guns.
Recently saw this one:
“Hi,
I’m an engineer who has built an AI with a vagina. I need someone to come fuck my robot and let me watch.
I can’t fuck it cuz i’m like its dad.”
Guy who wanted someone to pop his hemorrhoid with their teeth tops my list.
A few years ago I heard about a guy in Europe that put out a craigslist ad in search of someone who was going to commit suicide. He wanted them to do it in his home for the sole purpose of eating them after they were dead. The police set up a sting and arrested the man.
This has been posted before, but is always good:
I love looking through Craigslist ads for shits and giggles. One day I found this ad asking for a female “model” that said NO NUDITY, so I message him to see what his kink is.
This guy replies asking me to put on yoga shorts and roller blades, and have someone video me skating, then falling, scraping my knee, and take pictures of myself aiding the knee. Disinfecting, putting a band aid on, etc. He offered me $100.
In high school, a Kijiji link was passed around. It was a local person (gender unspecified) who was willing to pay someone in order to be able to watch their kids. It was a long, rambling post about missing having children around and wanting to hug a child. It was really poorly spelled and there were parts of it that didn’t make sense at all.
Looking back, I feel sad because it was probably some mentally challenged person just wanting to be a babysitter, but the entire post was incredibly creepy.
Sometimes I browse the casual encounters section for random cities just looking for funny posts. Found a guy in New Orleans who was willing to pay a few hundred dollars for someone to shit on him. That’s it. Exchange money, shit, and leave.
I was a broke college student at the time, and I’ve gotta say, if I lived in New Orleans…I mean, there are worse ways to make money. A few things off the Taco Bell value menu doesn’t cost much. Several hundred dollars of profit. I’m not saying I’d definitely do it, but if the opportunity presented itself, fuck it, maybe.
I unknowingly answered a creepy ad
The ad itself seemed legit, although the rent was so low it was a bit questionable. Being a broke college student, I figured why the hell not at least check it out.
The address given turned out to be a run down lower middle class house; not an apartment building like I was expecting. Okay, so it’s someone renting out part of their house. Not my thing, and I’m about to put the car in reverse, when a middle aged man with a huge beer gut comes out the front door.
He’s so excited that someone answered his ad. Well all right, I’m here, might as well see the place.
We go in the front door, and he’s showing me the first floor, while I’m looking about for the entrance to the apartment.
“Oh,” he says. “It’s upstairs.”
Upstairs turns out to be just that, up a flight of stairs. There’s no private door or entrance, it just opens up to a huge room. A huge room crammed full of mismatched secondhand beds and dressers. There’s barely room to walk.
“I got all the furniture myself,” he says proudly. “I figure I can fit probably 20 girls up here. There’s a shower downstairs that you all can use. I just feel real bad for college age girls that ain’t got no place to live. Did all this myself so that you girls can have a place to stay. I don’t care if y’all run around in your underwear and have pillow fights, just have a good time, my only rules are no guys in the house, ya know?”
Not sure if this meets the criteria for creepy but the story sure as hell does. A kid that I was in Cub scouts as a kid and grew up in the same town as I posted an ad on Craigslist seeking a baby sitter. He didn’t have a kid. Well she responded to the post and went to his house. He let her in, showed her to the “kids room” than shot her in the back of the head or back (can’t remember which) then put her body in the trunk of her own car and drive it to the local park where he left it.
A guy posted an ad looking for women with “roast beef vaginas” —like vaginas that are all “hangy” and gaped open that resemble roast beef. He also posted several pictures of what he was looking for and the last picture was of a roast beef sandwich and I lost my shit.
On a weekly basis my wife will get emails from people on craigslist (mostly from the same guy) asking if she has breast milk to sell ever since she got pregnant. She usually posts in the wanted section for pregnancy clothing.
She was also selling a pair of extra wedding shoes last year and a guy offered to buy them if he could “kiss them off her feet.”
I was once browsing “casual encounters” cuz its kinda fun to do sometimes and I came across this real fucked up post wherein this guy wanted dudes to abuse him really badly. Like shit in his mouth and cut him with knives and like castrate him or something. Really fucked up, dark stuff, way more extreme than S&M.
There were pics of himself in a dark room, hogtied with shit and blood all over him. He had left some sort of personal information and I googled it and saw him on forums threatening to torture random people, it was really fucked up. In those forums there was MORE personal information and going into a google-hole, I found out that he has a business where he is a clown and entertainer for kids birthday parties, no joke. It was super disturbing.
A friend of mine answered an ad about an apartment. She wanted me to tag along because she didn’t like meeting people through the internet. Well, we arrive and it’s a little house. Ok, whatever. A room was fine. So we meet this woman and she has all these ridiculous rules:
You couldn’t use any of the appliances in the kitchen, and you were allotted a small portion of the refrigerator. Leftovers were not allowed. Food was not allowed in your room. You were not allowed to bring any ‘smelly’ food into the house. You had to be in your room between the hours of 6pm and 6am. No leaving or anything, because she locked down the house. You could use the shower between 8am and 8:30am. No guests. No music of any kind. And a whole load of other equally stupid rules. It was insane.
She had an entire sheet of them typed up. We my friend declined, the woman got irate and kicked us out of her house. It was nuts.
My friend and I were looking on men seeking women and we saw a guy who was looking for a woman to hang out with him while he had Swiss cheese wrapped around his dick. He said he didn’t need the girl to touch him, just hang out with him.
He said he liked Swiss cheese because it was creamy and smooth like a woman and the holes were satisfying. I didn’t think it was real until I came across his okcupid profile years later with more or less the same description. And I’ve heard of girls in my city saying that he drives around with the Swiss cheese on his dick and just looks at women.
A woman hosting an antebellum birthday party for her husband, looking to hire several large black men to be the “mandingos” in their django-style slave battles.
Look at this shit http://t.co/2x5VMQJ5Fh—
Filthy Milfy (@lexxluthaa) March 24, 2015
Just before New Years, I posted a personals ad in w4m. I got an email from a guy who offered to pay me $350 to convince him to not get circumcised. I talked to him for a little bit, and he expressed a desire to pay me for what I had said so far. I set up a venmo account after verifying that it was legitimate, and he sent me $350.
I transferred the money to my bank account, and then it really sank in that I had been paid money to convince someone not to get circumcised. His rationale was that “he would have spent a lot more to get the surgery, and it only cost him $350 to be convinced otherwise. I still can’t believe that it wasn’t some sort of scam.
Alright, so one day my dad decides it would be fun to have a go cart. However we weren’t rich so he says if he can find one for around $30 he would go for it.
Well he finds one on Craigslist and shows up at the guys house and buys the go cart. While he is waiting, he starts looking around and exclaims, “Wow, your neighbor sure has a messy backyard.”
The guys replies, “Yeah, you got a problem with that? We watch out fur each other round here.”
Well my dad finds that weird, but continues the transaction and heads home. The next day we are reading the newspaper, and on the frontpage is an article about a local murder. My dad starts reading further and notices that the address seems familiar. It turns out the body was found in a barrel in that messy backyard. The body wouldn’t fit in the barrel so the murderer cut it up with a chainsaw put it in that barrel and burried it in his backyard.
This is Southern, Indiana
Tldr; Dad bought a go cart on Craigslist. The neighbor had a chainsawed body in a barrel in his backyard.
My friend asked me to help him pick up a free waterbed from a craigslist post.
I was like, “yeah no prob.” We end up driving to this abandoned farm at the end of a long dirt road. My friend starts talking to this weird guy who brings us over to the bed he put on the listing. Confused, I point out “This isn’t a water bed, its a regular mattress.”
Upon moving it, I notice it has an oil stain and its rather heavy. I look at my friend seeing whether he wants it or wants to bail. He shrugs his shoulders and is like, “whatever a bed is a bed,” and being in college you get whatever you can get your hands on.
While loading it some PVC grey pipes fall out and I notice it has 4 pipes skewering the length of the bed. Confused I ask, “uhhh what are the pipes for?”
The owner looks at me with a maniacal smile and says “that’s for the water.”
At that moment I knew, it was time to leave fast. My friend and I quickly finished loading the bed into the truck and said thanks and left abruptly. We ended up dumping the rotten water soaked oil stained pvc pipe filled mattress in a dumpster on the way home.
I saw a posting of someone who wanted a man to come to an undisclosed address (at that point) and come in through the unlocked front door (at a specific time and date) and then stick their penis through a hole in a sheet hung between 2 rooms to receive a blowjob… I assume. I can still not even phantom doing that. Seriously WTF.
Keep your reservations about all topics to yourself, as it is obviously just how things are done and who are you to speak up? You may as well cut out any potential hassle you might get and go with the flow.
You can live your life the way that you see all around you, and you can get into a routine that never has to change. Why change? This type of life is probably going to be completely satisfactory, or at least you will reach contentment with it one day. No reason for you to wonder whether the grass is greener in a different job, or with a different person, or in different surroundings.
Let other, clearly stronger and more courageous people, dictate how you should do things. Let this behaviour start at school and ensure to never question any type of authority as you grow older through the years. Seems like a lot of confrontation and stress could happen if you get your own voice.
Go to school. Go to college. Go to university. Get a job. Work your 40 hours a week. Climb a career ladder (at a steady pace, let’s not get ambitious here!) Get a few promotions. Get a heavier work load. Get married. Buy a house. Pay your mortgage til you are 70. Have a couple of kids. Keep working. Have a couple of holidays here and there – you know, the regular places; Florida, a bit of Europe, all-inclusive holidays where everybody speaks English. Retire.
There’s only one type of life, and you can live it.
Seeing as you have learnt how to do that one particular skill, and you have stayed in this one particular company, you may as well keep tallying up your years of loyalty. Have you ever heard of someone from Accounting jacking in their job and studying meditation in some beautiful exotic place halfway across the globe? Let’s be realistic here. Best off to stay doing the same thing you have been trained to do your whole life.
Will it come in use one day? Highly unlikely. Learning a language is barely necessary – as you know that on the holidays you have been on, pretty much everyone has some sort of grasp of English. Learn to write? But you can write. You write a lot of documents everyday in your job. Learn to play an instrument? Expensive and time-consuming. It’s not like you would ever gain anything from it. Best to remain unremarkable with the same skill set you’ve always had.
You could wonder what it would be like to start your own business, become a vlogger, get into photography. But dreaming about something is enough. Quit the dream before you have even started it.
Keep all that weirdness in, and be a regular Joe. Please everybody by being the person that you think they expect you to be.
Loud equals opinions! Opinions equal personality! Personality equals something that makes you stand out. Blend like you were Kim Kardashian’s make up artist.
Go to the gym every now and again. Watch a lot of TV. Read a book before bed. Keep it limited to the usual things – best bet is to look at a couple of dating profiles, they tend to have the same sort of hobbies listed on every single one.
Monday – Friday; wake-up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed. Saturday; go to the gym, do some chores, go shopping, go for a drink at the pub. Sunday; repeat Saturday except subtract gym and add roast dinner. Repeat this process each week, every month. This may be interrupted by birthdays, some social events, plus Easter and Christmas break. But if you live the same way every week, you should be able to manage a life of complete average-ness.
1. You secretly think you’re a detective. You trust no one. You give a lot of side eye and take a lot of mental notes about people.
2. You’re simultaneously aware, however, that you would be a terrible detective. You would definitely forget to put gloves on before examining a crime scene and you can’t even look at actual blood without feeling queasy.
3. You will never fully grasp why people don’t just call the police whenever something’s wrong.
4. You would never go jogging early in the morning because that’s the time of day when dead bodies are always found.
5. You have a very strong opinion about which Law & Order is the best (SVU, end of discussion).
6. You’ve warned yourself a million times not to watch an episode of Law & Order: SVU right before you go to sleep, but you keep doing it anyway.
7. You have absolutely no problem suspending all disbelief to watch Ice T crack yet another tricky case.
8. You’re 99% sure you could get away with murder. Not that you would ever try—but if it came down to it, you would never get caught. Forensics can suck it.
9. You’re constantly spotting actors on the big screen who got their start portraying a serial killer on an episode of CSI.
10. Investigation Discovery is your holy grail. You can’t watch anything else on cable.
11. You’re fluent in the format of how every show unfolds. So when the detective thinks they’ve found the perp, you immediately check how much time is left in the hour. Twenty-five minutes? Not the right guy!
12. You regularly use terms like “perp” and “evidentiary support” without thinking twice.
13. One of your bucket list items is to play one of the characters in a murder reenactment scene.
14. You often wonder whether you’d be as helpful as the bartenders and taxi drivers who always give detailed replies to police inquiries related to customers they served or passengers they drove weeks before who’ve since gone missing.
15. Before you get into your car alone in a dark parking lot, you always check the back seat first.
16. The wife was murdered? It’s the husband and he has a mistress, obvs.
17. You’ve definitely practiced your mug shot expression in the mirror—just in case things take a turn for the worse and you’re arrested one day (under fall pretenses, most likely).
This Post Brought To You By Taco Bell.
You probably know someone with Asperger’s. Several people in fact. And you might misjudge us a bit.
In a way I get that. Everyone only has so much time for other people. But I think social ineptitude gets a worse rap than it should, considering how low it actually is on the scale of bad human traits.
I want to know why people are so put off by it. Is there an evolutionary reason? Is our hindbrain trained to think different = dangerous so we avoid everyone who doesn’t respond to things in ways that we’re used to? If that’s true, then why are non-homophobic and non-xenophobic people still so put off by us?
Why such a visceral reaction to weird?
As an awkward person who goes out, I find that about 40% of people will talk to me and the other 60% won’t. Some people are just naturally more tolerant. Which isn’t a bad thing really. It just is.
People with Asperger’s can talk to you. We’ve learned to make eye contact. We’ll listen to you, laugh at your jokes, and remember what you say. You’ll think we’re unique and genuine and there’s a good chance you’re going to tell us that you’ve never met anyone like us before.
But we space out a lot. We seem arrogant. We go on tangents about things we’re passionate about, like my boyfriend and Italian food, with an earnestness that our culture has deemed unfashionable. We might even come off as melodramatic. But you wouldn’t necessarily think we have Asperger’s. We’ll just seem weird.
I think people get put off by our behavior because it’s unexpected. You’re talking to someone who seems pretty normal, but then you’ll notice that they’ve said the same thing four times in the last couple of minutes. Or blurted out something weird. Or maybe someone you know says, “Hey, why does your friend keep staring at me?”
I understand why those things creep you out. But you have to understand how our brains work.
According to some studies, the autistic brain isn’t as interconnected as other people’s. We have more connections within certain regions. But less connections between them. We pick up on plenty of things individually, but then we have to consciously sort through and tie them all together to figure out what they mean. It’s hard work for us. When we do that all day every day the cracks are going to show at some point.
I start to get overwhelmed when I’m in a group. Or when I have too much to do at once. Or (and this is how I got a reputation as a drama queen) when I’m not sure how to deal with my feelings. People with Asperger’s learn to avoid situations that are too much for us. If we’re not “out” to you, we might make some shoddy excuse about why we can’t come out tonight/why we don’t like your friend/why we can’t keep a job. It’s to save face. I do it often. We don’t want to make you uncomfortable by unloading our problems on you.
So what do people with Asperger’s look like? I’m not going to lie to you: a good percentage of us really are that guy who talks too loudly about shit no one wants to hear. But hey, I’m friends with people like that. And they’re smart. If you want someone to talk to about anti-aging research or Ancient Rome with, these are your guys. You’ll learn a lot from them. And if you’re a guy, you can gain a sense of satisfaction from helping them out.
Women with Asperger’s are just as smart as the men. We like science and math too. If you want to talk to a woman who knows about quarks, quirks, and nuclei, we’re your girls. But we also like art. And fantasy. That girl in your class who sketches unicorns might have Asperger’s. And she’s lonely.
Many of us are less stereotypical. A lot of us like music. Something about the mathematical, repetitive structure of it appeals to us. I know “aspies” who hit raves and music festivals regularly. A lot of us get into alternative scenes because those are the people who, while usually not that awkward themselves, are far enough away from the mainstream to not care about how weird someone is.
Also (this is interesting) research suggests that shows we’re more likely to be transgender.
And of course, some of us are more obviously autistic than others. There are a lot of us who got diagnosed as kids (*raises hand*) who might have just almost learned how to pass. Or who never got diagnosed at all. There are so many people walking around who have no idea they have this. (Although there’s a good chance they’ve gotten slapped with something else by the mental health system.) There are so many borderline-normal-seeming people on the spectrum with jobs, friends, and families who’ve learned to arrange their lives wisely enough to get by.
When you hang out with someone with Asperger’s, you’ll have to be patient. Like I said, we repeat ourselves a lot. You might also have to pick our ass up. Because a lot of us have trouble driving.
So what are the good things about us? Well, for one, we’re analytical. People always say that about me. Autistic people have to think analytically because of how our brains are structured. When you connect things intellectually instead of intuitively then you end up being rational by default.
Most of us don’t care about things just because they’re popular. Truly, we don’t. We’re also less likely to listen to someone because they’re charismatic. (Although not always in a romantic sense. I’ve sure as hell fallen for the alpha males.) But in most situations it’s about message, not tone. Some of that is because we know what it’s like to be that quiet smart person that nobody listens to. Part of it is because we’re such honest people that we’re naturally looking for truth. I kind of wish someone with Asperger’s had moderated the debates.
Most of us are tolerant. Very tolerant. In fact we’re probably a little too tolerant. We attract some strange people because of this. We don’t pick up on things as easily or get out as much so everyone and everything is fascinating to us. You can say something you think is totally obvious, and to us it’s like a revelation. Talking to us is going to make you feel special.
We’re especially good at listening to people’s troubles. I often feel like I’m the last person to know things, so I always get a thrill out of being someone’s confidante. And if we’re socially aware enough, many of us will give you great advice. We’re straightforward about what we see. People love it when we tell it like it is.
We’re like the court jester. A lot of the time we seem ridiculous. But sometimes we say things that are so great, so on-point, and so preternaturally wise it will shock you. And you won’t be able to tell if we’re doing that consciously.
Neither can we.
Okay. Here are the problems: We’re annoying. We’re sometimes embarrassing. We might seem condescending sometimes. But we don’t mean to sound that way.
And we’re picky. Many people with Asperger’s may seem to have stark ideas about what we will and will not do. Sometimes it’s just that we can’t be somewhere because it’s too overwhelming. Then you’ll have to take us home. But a lot of the time we’ll attempt to muscle through an uncomfortable situation with you so we can be a good friend.
Don’t make us do this. If we look uncomfortable, there’s a good chance we’re waiting for you to ask us if we’re all right.
We might come across as controlling. We like our routines and we like to talk about certain things and if you can’t deal with that then we won’t be able to spend much time around you. That’s not us being controlling so much as keeping things comfortable for ourselves in a world that’s not designed for us.
But some of us actually are controlling. That’s where theory of mind comes in. We have to learn that other people can exist functionally if they’re different from us, and that we don’t have to feel threatened by it. It’s a difficult balancing act: learning to gain some understanding and control over our lives without controlling anything else.
People with Asperger’s are like anybody else. We all handle life differently. Some of us become wiser and kinder because of our hardships and some of us become bitter and mean. As human beings, we get a bad rap. All the media does is tell everyone how awkward, self-centered, and repetitive we are, without telling you why.
I can promise you two things about us though. One, we’re interesting – 100% of the time from what I’ve seen. We are curious people who care about how things work. And two, if you become friends with us we’ll bend over backwards to make you happy. We’re like Chewbacca with his life debt. If you do that; if you help us, we’ll be loyal for life.
1. Send them a Snapchat lip syncing the classic hit “All By Myself” by Eric Carmen.
2. Then send a follow up Snapchat with the caption: “Well, am I ;) ;) ;) ???”
3. Next time you’re in bed together, passively aggressively sigh until they ask you what’s wrong. Longingly stare out the window (or just look at the wall if there’s no window nearby) and dramatically whisper, “Nothing…”
4. While they’re sleeping, change their alarm to Taylor Swift’s “Out Of The Woods.”
5. Leave before they wake up and literally wait in the woods for them.
6. Text them photos of wedding dresses with zero explanation.
7. Text them photos of otters holding hands with zero explanation.
8. Text them an artisanal assortment of emojis with zero explanation.
9. Text them photos of Steve Buscemi with zero explanation.
10. Make them a mixtape that is you just saying “boyfriend/girlfriend or nah???” over and over again.
11. Inquire as to whether or not it goes down in the DM.
12. Have your family gently interrogate them.
13. Take them out for coffee. Ask them to order for you to test just how well they know you. If they don’t know exactly how you take your Grande-No-Foam-Extra-Shot-Soy-Vanilla-Latte, KICK THEM TO THE CURB. THEY DON’T LOVE YOU.
14. Amazon Prime them a fruit basket. This isn’t going to tell you anything, it’s just a lovely gesture.
15. Recite them poetry in a dark room. Pay close attention to whether or not they stay.
16. Give their special bits a nickname. See how they react.
17. Ask to move in together.
18. Propose.
19. Tell them Magic Mike XXL is your favorite film of all time. (Shut up, it’s a cinematic classic)
20. Hide from them for 6 months. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Or something.
21. Summon up the courage to finally just ask, “Soooo, what are we?” But before they answer. Run away. You keep that mystery, boo.
A Texas-based husband and wife claim to have been abducted by aliens multiple times, including once where a fetus was stolen from Donna by the alien trespassers. Clayton claims that he was a child visiting a park the very first time he was abducted, and that he feels the aliens might be studying him throughout his life.
“I remember just floating up higher,” Donna Lee recounted about her experience, “And, all that was around were stars and blackness. And then, I blacked out.”
The couple have had their memories of this event awakened by a local psychologist, who ironically, doesn’t actually believe in aliens herself.
They have both drawn sketches of the aliens, and appeared on multiple media outlets to talk about their story, including this one on the O’Reilly Factor:
O’REILLY: All right. And you were abducted multiple amounts of times?
D. LEE: Yes, yes.
O’REILLY: Did you ever talk to the abductees? I mean, did they tell you where they were from or anything?
D. LEE: No, that I don’t have any remembering of at all, having the conversation, no.
O’REILLY: So they just swept you away somewhere? Where’d they put you?
D. LEE: Different places, different times. I’ve had memories of being on what I consider the ship, because I know it was someplace other than any place I’d ever visited before.
O’REILLY: So you were in some kind of — you were in some kind of vehicle?
D. LEE: Yes. It was a vehicle, a room. It was very cold, metal. A lot of metal. A lot of metal.
O’REILLY: Did you see — did you see the aliens?
D. LEE: Yes.
O’REILLY: What do they look like?
D. LEE: What I saw on that particular visit, they were tall, slender, blond. Looked human, but not human, not quite human.
O’REILLY: All right.
D. LEE: They didn’t really use their voices to talk.
The couple say they remain worried about being abducted against almost daily, but that they want to “live their lives” regardless.
In a chilling story that three different people were involved in, a 22-year-old named Amy was abducted right out the window of her lounge room by some sort of flying craft.
Amy’s husband Keith had already gone to bed, while her friend Petra stayed up to read in another room. Petra was abruptly disrupted by a blinding light coming from the lounge room, and the sound of shattering glass.
The rectangular beam of light was shining into the room, and according to Petra, she saw Amy being pulled out of the window by the light, still apparently asleep.
Keith then woke up, and both he and Petra searched the house and surrounding area for Amy, who was nowhere to be seen. Keith eventually called the police.
Amy eventually turned up miles away, with strange marks on her inner thigh, and bizarrely extensive body hair growth.
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the former President of the only Buddhist political state, avidly claims that he was once kidnapped by creatures not of this world.
He says they abducted him off his apartment balcony, and took him to their spaceship:
Yeah! yeah, yeah, yeah I was taken from my apartment in Moscow to this spaceship! And we went to some star. After that I asked “Please bring me back” because the next day I should be back in Kalmykia! They said oh no problem Kirsan, you have time.
When pressed for details of the aliens themselves, Ilyumzhinov says:
They are people like us. They have the same mind, the same vision. I talked with them. I understand that we are not alone in the whole world. We are not unique.
The ship was absolutely enormous. One of its chambers was the size of a large football pitch. We landed on one of the planets and picked up some piece of equipment. They told me everything in detail.
Allegedly, while Ilyumzhinov was abducted, his staff came looking for him and was unable to locate him until he inexplicably appeared in his suite hours later.
Robert Taylor was a forestry worker in Livingston, Scotland. He was heading to work in the woods in 1979 when he turned a corner, and saw a UFO parked in a field.
All at once, two small spheres came from the object. They made a sound as their spikes moved over the earth. They came to a stop beside him, grabbing his trousers, and began to drag him back to the UFO. The spiked objects were very similar to the UFO, only smaller. Taylor could smell a strong, sickening odor. He lost consciousness.
When he regained consciousness, the spheres were gone, but his red setter was still there. The dog was panicky, running around and barking. Taylor tried to calm him down, but found that his voice was gone. He was very weak, and when he tried to stand, he couldn’t. He crawled for a time until he was able to stand again.
He finally made it back to his pick-up truck and tried to radio his work headquarters via his two-way, but still could not speak.
Attempting to drive his truck back home, he got stuck in the mud, so he started a long walk of about a mile back to his house. He arrived at 11:45 AM. (Source)
His wife phoned the police once he got home, remarking that he “looked terrible.” The police began an investigation, having no true explanation for the bizarre tracks left at the scene of the UFO. No aircraft — civilian or military — was scheduled to be in the area according to comprehensive flight logs.
Travis Walton was one of seven men working in a forestry team in Snowflake, Arizona. When heading home from work one night, the team spied a blindingly bright light. Thinking it was a crashed plane, they drove over to the craft. What they saw, however, did not look like any plane:
Walton jumped out of the truck to get closer to the craft. Suddenly, a bright light shot from the UFO and sent Walton floating into the UFO. The remaining six crew members, panicked, and drove away from the scene to get help.
About 7:30 p.m., one of the crew members called the police. Deputy Sheriff Chuck Ellison answered the telephone; The crew member initially reported only that one of a logging crew was missing. Ellison then met the crew at a shopping center. They related the tale to him — all the men distraught, two of them in tears — and though he was somewhat skeptical of the fantastic account, Ellison would later reflect “that if they were acting, they were awfully good at it.” (Source)
After an initial scan of the area showed no evidence of an “UFO” the police began to suspect the men were using the story to coverup the fact that they simply murdered Walton. However, over the next few days, all six loggers were subjected to intense interrogations and polygraphs, and their story seemed to hold up.
That’s when Walton suddenly reappeared. Thinking he had only been gone for a few hours, Walton retold parts of the story he could.
He said he was interrogated by three creatures with bald heads and huge eyes. He apparently encountered many different creatures on the craft, who performed experiments on him.
Many people were skeptical of the story, but Walton and all the other loggers maintain their stories.
Linda Napolitano (originally aliased as Linda Cortile) triggered one of the most well-documented UFO abduction cases when she claimed to have been kidnapped out the window of her Manhattan apartment building by a flying saucer.
Linda describes her time with the aliens:
“I’m standing up on nothing. And they take me out all the way up, way above the building. Ooh, I hope I don’t fall. The UFO opens up almost like a clam and then I’m inside. I see benches similar to regular benches. And they’re bringing me down a hallway.
Doors open like sliding doors. Inside are all these lights and buttons and a big long table. I don’t want to get up on that table. They get me on the table anyway. They start saying things to me and I’m yelling. I can still yell. One of them says something that sounds like {Nobbyegg}. I think they were trying to tell me to be quiet because he put his hand over my mouth.”
Her abduction story has been corroborated by two United Nations bodyguards, who claim to have seen exactly the scene that Linda describes.
“There was an oval-shaped object hovering over the top of the apartment building two or three blocks up from where we sat.
We didn’t know where it came from. It happened too fast. Its lights turned from a bright reddish orange to a whitish blue coming out of the bottom. Green lights rotated round the edge of the saucer. A little girl or woman wearing a white gown sailed out of the window in a fetal position – and then stood in mid-air in this beam of light. I could see three of the ugliest creatures I ever saw. I don’t know what they were. They weren’t human.
Their heads were out of proportion, very large heads with no hair. Those buggers were escorting her into the craft. My partner screamed, ‘We have got to get them.’ We tried to get out of the car but couldn’t. After the woman was escorted in, the oval turned reddish orange again and whisked off.”
Years later in 2001, this photo would taken taken at Linda’s apartment. The aliens might have been visiting to check on her:
Both bodyguards would later go on to suffer severe psychological maladies after seeing what they did that night. Linda still maintains her story to this day.
Okay, not quite an abduction, but a bizarre visitation of another kind.
Robert Richardson was supposedly driving through Toledo, Ohio when he drove into a strange object, which he claimed vanished the minute that he stepped out to inspect it. Remaining next to his tire, however, was a shard of metal that appeared to have been apart of the mysterious object. Richardson took the metal and continued his drive home.
Three days later, two men in jet black suits and black sunglasses knocked on Richardson’s door. They immediately demanded the piece of metal. Richardson told them that he had it sent off to a lab for analysis. They ordered him to get it back, saying that his wife would be in grave peril if he didn’t.
Richardson ordered them to leave, and never saw them again.
Perhaps one of the best known cases in UFO lore, Barney and Better Hill were allegedly abducted by aliens in 1961.
It all started when they were driving back home from a vacation in Canada, and they saw something they could not explain:
At about a quarter past 10:00 PM, three miles south of the city of Lancaster, Barney noticed what appeared to be a bright star, or planet, which seemed to move erratically. Barney pointed this out to Betty, and they both began to keep track of the object.
The couple began to believe that they were watching a plane appear and disappear, as the movement of their vehicle caused the trees to come and go in obstructing their view. Later, Barney would state that he tried to convince himself that the object was a plane, but that Betty thought it to be something else – an unidentified craft of some kind.
As the two continued to the Flume, just north of North Woodstock, the object appeared to move in an odd way.
As they reached Indian Head, Barney actually stopped the car to have a look at the object with his binoculars. He saw multi-colored lights, and rows of windows on a flat-shaped object, which now seemed to be moving toward him.
As the object moved to within a hundred feet of him, he could see occupants inside. Frightened, he ran back to his car where Betty waited. They climbed inside and sped away. Soon, two hours of their lives would vanish into oblivion.
After resuming their journey home, they were not able to see the strange craft anymore. Oddly though, they heard a beeping sound. They then heard the beeping a second time, noticing that they were suddenly thirty-five miles farther down the road than a minute or two ago. They were now in Ashla. (Source)
Once they got back home, however, the strange occurrences didn’t stop. Betty forcefully insisted that their luggage be kept near the back door, their dress shoes were scuffed and scrapped, and both of their watches were broken — never to work again.
But it wasn’t over yet.
Betty began having vivid dreams about the craft and strange people in it.
In the dreams, Betty, Barney, and the men walked up a ramp into a disc-shaped craft of metallic appearance. Once inside, Barney and Betty were separated. She protested, and was told by a man she called “the leader” that if she and Barney were examined together, it would take much longer to conduct the exams. She and Barney were then taken to separate rooms.
Betty then dreamt that a new man, similar to the others, entered to conduct her exam with the leader. Betty called this new man “the examiner” and said he had a pleasant, calm manner. Though the leader and the examiner spoke to her in English, the examiner’s command of the language seemed imperfect and she had difficulty understanding him. (Source)
According to Betty, she was then subjected to an examination. Afterward, she spoke to “the leader.” The Leader told Betty that she could keep a book that she found, but later insisted that he take it back, saying that “the others” wanted to wipe her mind completely. Betty told the Leader that no matter what he did, she would remember the events.
And I guess she did.
Weirdness is good. It sets us apart and allows us to be wholly different from the rest of the world, while still being innately the same. Humans tend to forget that what makes us weird are the things we are passionate about, and the levels that passion can reach.
We forget that those passions are allowed and are awesome whatever they are, whether it’s a passion for reading novels, playing chess or writing rock operas.
People learn to do things by imitation. We always have and we always will. It’s the surest way to improve your technique and learn the ropes of anything.
But the problem with this is that we learn who to be, too. And we learn not to be ourselves. We look at the successful people, the ones who played by the rules and we start to cut out the parts of our lives that don’t match.
And then we think surely we can’t still listen to punk rock or write open source software if we want to become star employees and make money. Or, if we really want to make it in a creative field, we have to fit what we’re doing into the mainstream.
We can’t be anything except the image of an employee or an entrepreneur or a creative that people want to work with.
We repeat this to ourselves either consciously or subconsciously and we start to feel embarrassed or ashamed of the way we were before we pushed ourselves into a shitty little box.
When you were a kid, it wasn’t like that. When you were a kid, you let your freak flag fly. You ran around dressed in pink storm trooper armour, embracing everything about yourself with complete abandon.
But when you grow up, you learn to put that side away, to find somewhere to lock it up so you can forget it was ever there.
We all go through this. Our passions just stop being important to us.
We learn not to be weird. And that’s a f*cking terrible thing to do.
When you can approach a problem or a challenge from your own individual and singular viewpoint, using your innate weirdness and the personality that sets you apart from anyone else in the world who cannot live inside your head, you’ll reach creativity.
No ideas have to be completely original, but a good idea is always a creative combination of several others that have been mashed together, turned upside down and reinvented.
When you attempt to run in sync with what you see as the mainstream, with the worker in the cubicle next to you who always says and does the right thing — rather than the raw thing — you’ll never be able to embrace that creativity.
The best solutions, ideas, products, they don’t come from conventional thinking.
They come from a creative twist that only a totally passionate weirdo could have come up with. That’s what you have to try to foster. If you stamp it down, you’ll be suppressing any chance you might have had to be remarkable.
If you try and turn yourself into a stranger, someone you don’t truly recognize when you look in the mirror and see grey where there used to be vibrant color, sooner or later that’s going to hurt you. It will crush you.
You’ll start to lose any kind of value in your life and you won’t feel comfortable in your skin.
That’s no way to live. It’s no way to be. It’s no way to exist. When you start to lose the pieces of you that give you a fire for life, sooner or later that fire goes out.
I don’t want to be there when that happens to you. It’s sad, it’s hard and it’s painful. Hiding from yourself is the surest path to self hatred, self pity and a whole lot of missed potential.
Do you want to look back in 30 years and point to all the times you blended in? Are those your glory days, your finest hours? When you spend your time on this rock bottling up your own personality, you will lead a life of regret.
Regret that drives people away and gives bitterness the empty space it needs to move in and make itself comfortable.
Regret that prevents you from being proud of your life and taints the memories, turning what should be your moment to stop and rest into a nightmare.
Regret that makes anything you did achieve seem empty and pointless, compared to the life that you know you could have lived if you had only opened up and let yourself out.
Regret that wakes you up in the middle of the night by whispering those two dreaded, hated words. “What if.”
When you’re not trying to hide away the real version of yourself, people will respond. When you’re demonstrating authenticity, not some contrived personality, that’s when you find a way to reach out and connect with other human beings.
I’m a huge fan of letting it all out there. Allowing the world to see the real person inhabiting your skin, rather than the image that you want to project. And I’m not saying that I don’t play a part too.
Everything I do is playing out a different part of my personality. But every part is always based on something genuine, something that comes from me. My Dad used to tell me that he thought I had no true personality.
The reality was, I had so many different personas that I could pick and choose between them for whatever situation I was facing. But in every one of them, I was connected with who I really was. And that’s authenticity.
The oldest art that humanity has ever engaged with is storytelling. We’ve been doing it ever since we first developed the ability to communicate with eachother.
Why do you think so many ancient texts have resonating, similar themes? They were based on the viral stories we were telling at the dawn of time. That probably sounds like marketing bullshit.
But the fact is, everyone communicates through the art of a shared story.
That first salutation in the office on a Monday morning — “how was your weekend?” — it’s the default question because it invites a story, and creates common ground.
When you embrace your weirdness and your passion, you’ll be ready to share the stories that are personal, the ones that are close to you, the ones people really give a shit about and want to hear.
You’ll be able to communicate those stories in a hundred different ways.
The people you truly look up to are fully aware of their passions. This is a fact. They could be entrepreneurs and founders, or comic book artists, or speed metal musicians — every creative is a passionate weirdo. If they weren’t, the world would be missing a lot of colour.
Henry Ford, Michael Bloomberg, Douglas Coupland, Salvador Dali, Gertrude Stein — these are passionate people. And their passions drove them to do things that affected my life. In immense ways.
You don’t have to be them. You don’t have to be a founder or a full time artist. But you’d be mad to ignore their accomplishments, and the things that they were able to achieve through their passions. It’s a sign that following and maintaining yours is a good investment.
You’d be surprised how accepting other people can be, when they’re presented with somebody who is a little different. Sure, there are always going to be a few total assholes, but I’ve discovered most humans are extraordinarily capable of showing love. And being OK with eachother.
You might think that your passions are going to set you too much apart, put up a barrier between you and other people. Generally, that’s not always the case. People will probably find your passion interesting. They will want to learn more.
Nobody really gives a shit if you’re in your late 30’s and still play Pokemon. They might not totally get it, but it won’t stop them from respecting you professionally or wanting to associate with you. Nobody really gives a shit if you’re an artist as well as a medical student.
Nobody gives a shit, so why should you?
* * *
You want my advice? Here’s what I think you should do.
Go write awesome stream of consciousness science fiction cyberpunk novels. Move into the forest and live without electricity.
Chase your dream job in a law firm and listen to the Misfits when you get home and take off your suit.
Collect sequinned hand bags or vintage video games or mugs with Christopher Walken’s face.
Take chances. Embrace what you love. Draw. Write. Play.
Start a software company that could change the entire world.
Or you know what? Don’t do any of that. Find a job you like doing and do it well, read every book in the world, do whatever it is you love. Embrace your passions.
Life is too short to waste while you lock yourself away and pretend your past and your passions never existed. So get out there. Do you. And be a f*cking weirdo.
Author’s note. This one goes out to Josh Madden. Thanks for inspiring me to stay weird man.
You’ve heard the famous quote: “We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love.” Replace the word “weird” with “fucked up” and the saying is spot on. We’re all messed up. Just in different ways.
You grew up with divorced parents. You’re still a virgin. You’ve been cheated on. You were the one to cheat on someone else. So what? Everyone has baggage. There’s someone out there who will be able to deal with yours.
You live in a world that tells you that you should feel comfortable with your body, but that you shouldn’t sleep around. In a world that tells you not to care what others think about you, but that you should shave and stay skinny if you want them to like you. It’s impossible to be perfect in this imperfect world. So don’t be too hard on yourself.
People kill for love. They die for love. It’s a powerful emotion that can drive a sane man crazy and turn a sweet woman into a psycho. There’s nothing logical about the way it works. True love is a bizarre thing. Only bizarre people can handle it.
Admit it. You have some pretty strange friends in happy relationships. You’ve wasted hours wondering how they could’ve landed someone while you’re still single, but the answer is simple. There’s someone out there for everyone. They’ve just found their “someone” faster than you have.
You shouldn’t change yourself for your partner, but if you actually hate something about yourself, guess what? You have the power to change it. Stop moping about how shy you are or how lazy you are. Break out of your comfort zone. Become the person you’ve always wanted to be.
You might be hard to love, but you’re not too fucked up to be loved. There’s a difference. Anyone worthwhile is hard to love, because they have high standards. They won’t settle for being treated like shit, so they require effort and attention. And that’s not a bad thing.
Why are you being so hard on yourself? What caused you to think that you’re such a fuck up? Before you focus on finding someone else to love you, you should really learn to love yourself. You need to get along with the person you see in the mirror every morning.
You know what that means? That you’re a survivor. It doesn’t matter if you have scars on your wrists or your heart. Either way, you’re alive. You’ve made it through. Who wouldn’t love someone as tough as you?
If you think you’re too fucked up to find love, I’m sorry, but you’re just plain wrong. Maybe there isn’t anyone out there who loves you in a romantic or sexual way yet, but you have parents, friends, and pets who love you. They prove that you’re not unlovable.
When I was a kid I went to a small elementary school in Los Angeles. In an area most people outside of L.A. would call “ghetto”. It’s not, but whatever. One of the main rooms where we all learned/played had a huge window. It was a wall to wall, floor to ceiling window. Across the street was a building that I don’t remember anyone ever walking in or out of, and next to it a liquor store.
One day me (7 or 8), my younger sister (5 or 6), and a room full of children were playing around. I was playing marbles or pogs, I sincerely can’t remember. I looked up from my game and saw a guy walking with a girl and another girl quickly approaching them. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but you could see the anger from the woman who was alone being directed at the man and woman walking together. I’m not sure what words were exchanged, but the man waved her off and attempted to continue walking on. The girl stop him from moving on and then struck him.
He pulled out a gun and blew the back of her head out. It was the first time I saw someone killed (unfortunately, it wasn’t the last). The teachers swarmed into the room and put us all on the floor. But, I couldn’t stop seeing it. Over and over. The back of her head exploding and becoming a red something I’d never seen. Her body falling to the floor. The guy running away. The other girl looked like she was screaming.
It was surreal. Almost like it didn’t happen. I can still see it happening. I can’t recall anything else about that day or the fallout of it.
I’m being 100% honest.
My mother worked as a nurse during the night shift at a hospital in Sydney. She said the other nurses who’d been there a while would tell stories about mysterious unexplained events during the night shift like things disappearing or people in comas sitting bolt upright and talking to the nurses fit a few seconds before returning to their comatose state.
She thought it was all bullshit until one night she saw an elderly patient who’d been bedridden for months walking purposefully past her door towards the elevators. She called her name and jumped up to check on her but she wasn’t there. She and a colleague checked on the patients room to find she had passed away only moments before. My mum’s not easily shaken, she was mostly just intrigued.
Being American Indian, my family has a lot of stories about supernatural stuff. One of these is the obvious skin walker, which is said to appear if you even dare to discuss it. So I went online and read some experiences people had with that kind of thing and came across a pretty scary story. Some guy and his friends had a three day weekend so they drove out to an old mission in California and had seen some creepy stuff skulking around the place. Clothes, skeletal bits, paintings on the wall. When they left they began to joke that they should drive faster before they got shot with an arrow or anything and one of them began to explain the concept of skin walkers and among all the bullshitting, the driver hit a coyote but said it looked too big to be one. They got out to find nothing anywhere near the car or under it so they got in and kept driving and as they drove away, they saw behind the a coyote looking figure only about the size of or bigger than a man walking over the ridge on it’s hind legs.
This is more my Dad’s story than mine.
He used to tell me a story about his grandfather living (renting) a house in northern NH and the door to the cellar would open at various times on it’s own. Come spring, his grandfather went into the cellar to create a cold room for veggies to be stored in over the winter. He noticed one of the cellar walls had collapsed (stone) and went to repair it. After removing a few stones, he found a woman’s shoe which was attached to a leg bone, which continued to become a whole skeleton.
He said it must have been a ghost that was opening the door and it was left at that. As I got older, I figured he was just trying to scare me.
After he passed away, 6 years ago, I found amongst his things a newspaper article recording this event of finding the skeleton. (It was during the turn of the century from the 1800’s to the 1900’s.)
It seems his grandfather went to seek help “they wended their way through the woods” and after removing the skeleton, the daughter was able to identify her mother from the clothes she was wearing. The daughter had assumed she had taken off west with a man.
My sister was like 5 yrs old, playing outside with a few kids, when a middle-aged man approached her and asked her to help him look at his gas meter. She started to go with him, but her friend (same age) screamed “No, Beth!! He’s a STRANGER!!!”, which caused the man to run off. Later that same week, that man was arrested for raping and killing a little girl, just a block away from where we lived.
Ooh! I went to a Jesuit college, so naturally we have hordes of ghosts and otherwise-unsettled spirits roaming our campus. My favorite is from my freshman year: A few years ago, an RA was moving into my former freshman dorm and getting all of the room checks/paperwork/general RA crap done. As he walked into the last wing of the building, he noticed that all the mattresses were flipped on their sides so that they were perpendicular to the bed frames. He restored them to their natural positions and called the other RA’s together to tell them what a funny joke they played. None of them had any clue what he was talking about, since they were all taking care of other dorms. The next day, he woke up early to go for a run, only to notice that once again, someone had flipped the mattresses back onto their sides in the middle of the night. He put them back normally, went for his run, and went about his business, checking rooms in a different building. The very next morning, the mattresses were — you guessed it — perpendicular to the bed frames.
Impressed, pissed off, and slightly creeped out, this RA decides to stake out the building 90’s style with an RA buddy that night after restoring the natural order of the mattresses from the dorm just across from the original. As the hours drift away to the tune of the Mission Impossible theme, he notices that all of the lights on this floor simultaneously turn on (a feat that should’ve been impossible to coordinate between the sheer number of rooms and shitty, 1900’s era built-by-the-lowest-bidder engineering). As the two sprint back into the dorm, they’re greeted by a young Jesuit priest who tells them that “the problem has been taken care of.” They find the mattresses in what is the widely-accepted position for the torture devices, and go their separate ways. The next day, the RA goes to the Jesuit quarters on campus to thank the priest, and sees a picture of him on the wall while waiting to meet with the headmaster. He points to the picture and says, “Father, do you know where that priest is? He was in [DORM NAME] last night, and I wanted to thank him for helping me out with a bit of a problem.” The elderly Jesuit laughs and says, “Son, Father So-and-so died when I was undergraduate here!”
To this day, Jesuit ghosts are known to haunt that same dorm, offering aid in conjugating Latin verbs and finding lost objects.
I used to work as a night watchman on a large property that was somewhat secluded, but still in a bad area. It had a long gated driveway. One night while starting my rounds I walked out the lighted front entrance and as soon as I did I heard a woman’s voice scream “OH MY GOD SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME!” It came from all the way down at the end of the driveway.
I automatically took maybe five running steps towards the driveway and then skidded to a stop, turned around and ran back inside the building and called the cops. Four cop cars and a police helicopter showed up, but found nothing.
I still dont know wtf was going on. I found it odd that it happened right after I stepped outside the building. That maybe someone was trying to lure me out there.
Have you ever heard the story of the rubber-eyed girl? How she’s described changes from time to time. in the 40’s they called her a ghost, by the 70’s she was a machine created by some lonely madman who lost his daughter, but recently she is considered an alien creature sent for unknown purposes. Regardless of what you think she is, all witness account can agree upon one single feature, her motionless, soulless, rubber-like eyes. Nobody is sure when the first abduction took place, girls go missing all the time for various reasons. It wasn’t until one particular night, that abductions were associated with the rubber-eyed girl.
A mother was home with her daughter, the husband late out at work (at least that’s what he told his wife to cover up the affair). It was time to put the daughter to bed. “No Mommy!” she pleaded hoping to play with her toys a little longer. “I’m not ready for bed! I want to play!” The mother, not in the mood for this over-played game slammed her fist down on the counter, no words were needed, the daughter closed her mouth, and shuffled her way to her room quickly. The little girl tossed and turned in her bed, unable to sleep, it wasn’t that she still wanted to play with her toys, it was something different… something uneasy.
She had this deep feeling of anxiety wash down from the top of her spine into the pit of her stomach. Something was very wrong. She hid under her covers in an attempt to keep herself shielded from whatever dark forces were around her, a technique daddy had taught her when she would get scared at night. He also taught her to calm herself down by counting to 10 slowly with deep breaths. “1… 2… 3.” she started, already feeling the tension start to wither away. “4, 5” she continued. Before she could say 6, she heard a quick whisper inches away from her face. Too mortified to take the covers off her face to see what was next to her, she froze, listening closely to see if she would hear the sound again. “6… 7…” an ethereal voice whispered into her ear, the smell of vinegar and blood in its breath.
Overwhelmed by fear, the little girl let out a screech as she shoved the covers off of her trying to hop out of the bed. Just after she pushed the covers off of herself but before she could get out of her bed, the creature in the room pinned her down on the bed, still whispering into her ear “8, 9… 10…” The little girl screamed in terror as she stared at its face, or should I say her own face. The creature looked exactly like the little girl in every way except for one, Its eyes… The mother rushes into the room, just in time to see her daughter dragged out the window by the creature. The mother runs to the window, tears pouring down her face as she screams at the creature to bring her daughter back. The creature freezes, turns around, and stares at the mother with an expressionless face. The last thing the mother saw before the creature disappeared into thin air taking her daughter with her, were those motionless, soulless, rubber eyes.
More than a few years back, my friend and I were hanging out and thought it would be a great idea to go and explore the construction site near his house, where new houses were being built at night. Being teenagers at the time, we thought this was a great idea and were soon walking towards one of the half-built houses. By the time we walked up and could see into the top window, we saw a faint light in what I imagine was the attic. At first we were pretty frightened but brushed it off as a reflection of the nearby street lamp.
We continued to the other houses forcing each other to peer through the pitch black windows and doors with a flashlight to see if anyone was in the empty houses. Walking back with a bit of an adrenaline rush, we looked back through the window and the light was gone. After going through the other houses, we weren’t as scared to go close to this one since nothing bad happened the other times. However, upon going into the vacant garage we heard slow and steady footsteps coming from above us and a very loud and solid thump like someone fell over.
We both booked the fuck out of there and once we were a safe distance away, we peered through the window again and saw the shadow of a large man. We then proceeded to shit our pants and run as fast as our 15 year-old legs could take us. We never went back to those houses and I guess I’ll never know what the fuck that loud thump was.
This happened last night actually. I was up late watching TV and decided I would sleep naked, so I threw my underwear on the ground and snuggled in the bed. I woke up next morning thinking nothing special, but when I stand up I have my underwear on me! I was like WTF. Straight up scariest/creepiest experience of my life.
This always freaked me out — not the creepiest thing I can think of, but off the top of my head, sure.
My dad would go hunting in the woods behind our place. Aside from other hunters, no one would go in the woods during hunting season, the forest was pretty huge and I’m guessing aside from animals, pretty isolated. It wasn’t until years later that my mom told me that one time when my dad returned from hunting he was very quiet and acting weird. She asked why, and he told her that deep in the forest he saw a tree and someone had carved the outline of a woman into the trunk, with a nail hammered in where her heart would be.
I don’t go into those woods anymore.
I’m a hardcore skeptic and devout Atheist. I’m the first person to call BS on any spooky stories and yet I have one of my own. We bought this old 1914 house in Missouri. Old crackety floors…original iron door handles. Anyway, wife is at work and I venture into the creepy basement to clean it out and get out some old relics from the house. Floors are shit and paper thin. I have my computer’s surround sound hooked up and blasting some heavy metal while I cleaned up down there. There is a dark ominous crawl space down there full of trash bags….I was reluctant to start opening up because my lonesome imagination started to think that there was dead bodies in there.
I start to venture closer to the crawl space and the music that is playing on my computer via playlist.com started to skip like a badly scratched CD. I was so petrified by my computer skipping like this I quickly ran up stairs and turned off my computer. I have never heard or seen of any instance of music skipping on a persons computer unless it was some random form of internet interruption. As big as a skeptic as I am…it gave me the chills.
My ex told me a story once about a guy driving home from work late at night on a quiet road and he comes across a man. They make eye contact but the guy just keeps on driving. Not sure how fast he is driving but a moment passes and he looks out the window and the guy is running along side his car with a crazy grin on his face.
Not sure where this story came from but I don’t like it. It reminds me of smiling man. Too much creeps for me. Anyone that grins/smiles/laughs in these stories frighten me.
At risk of sounding like a broken record, I’m going to say it – turn your phone on silent. There is so much science to prove that being more “connected” with the world makes you less connected with yourself and it also makes you more lonely. So turn off the cellular device and utilize whatever skills you have, whether that is going on a hike, writing a poem with actual ink on actual paper, or just drinking a cup of coffee. Do it without the distraction of instagram notifications.
This year, I’ve been learning how to make space for myself. I’ve realized that I need time to figure out how I feel about things and that both time and space are vital to my well being. For me, this has translated into not doing things (whether that is shopping, social media, eating, dating… etc) out of boredom. We all have methods of coping with (read: hiding from) our emotions and it is important to recognize and minimize those habits so that we give our souls space to breathe and process the world around us.
I’ve never been good at asking for what I want. I tend to walk through the doors that open for me and either accept it or complain about it until something better comes along. But this year, I realized that it was time to express my needs and desires and actually ask for what I want – whether that was in romantic relationships, friendships, professional opportunities, or just from myself. You may be the person who knows what they want and pursues it relentlessly – and if you are, i admire you – but I think we all could benefit from evaluating what we want and asking for it without hesitation or embarrassment.
This comes down to setting boundaries. I used to say yes to everyone, all the time. But I began to wonder what life would be like if I were less busy and actually had the balls to say no to people. Maybe I’d be more productive in things I was legitimately excited about, instead of being worried about tons of obligations. I’ve found that saying no to what I need to allows me to say yes to the things that I want to.
If I’m being honest with you all, I’d say that I don’t know how to let people love me. Like many of those around me, I tell the truth that fits the perception I want people to have of me. But I don’t let the whole truth. And if someone doesn’t know the whole truth, they aren’t able to love all of me. And that’s a shame, because there are so many facets of my inner world (and yours too!) that people can and should have the opportunity to love. So instead of running away from vulnerability, let’s take the rest of this year to intentionally make connections and let people love us!
I graduated from college almost two years ago and was so excited to never be graded on anything again. But last year, I realize how restless I’d become. I needed to branch out, so I’m learning as many new things as possible. Now, hear me out, I’m not saying we have to STICK TO the things we try or that we have to reach pro status at any of them; but I think it’s important to learn new things, even if it’s just learning ABOUT something. So far this year, I’ve tried learning German, how to freestyle rap, how to cook beets and kale so I’d actually want to eat them, about the political climate of Nicaragua, how to dougie, and all about the Zika virus. I think that being curious makes life much more fulfilling.
Colorful moments are everywhere; whether it is late night cake and tea with a friend, flirting with the cute guy in the waiting room of your therapist’s office, or enjoying the flowers in your neighborhood. It’s super important to take a step back to enjoy the little moments that make your life worth living. Yes, structure and goals and success are important, but what are outlines if you’re not able to color in them?
Adventure has been one of my keywords this year. I’m taking an archery class, skydiving, and taking a trip to Nicaragua this year. But what I’ve found about adventure is that it happens in the small moments. Adventure is born out of bravery and bravery is born out of fear. So look around at the things that you’re afraid of and choose to do them anyway. That is adventure.
Last year was the time when I realized that I wanted to be a writer, and this year is about me owning up to that realization. Unless you are literally the bravest and most honest person that ever existed, I think we all have that thing that we want to be but are afraid to admit it. I’ve straight up ignored people who’ve asked me what I want to do, but how bad would it be to say that I’m a writer? I think my brain makes it scarier than it actually would be. So let’s all own up to our dreams and speak out who we really are.
I’ve been obsessed with being liked and with fitting in for most of my life. I didn’t want to be made fun of, I wanted to have friends, and I didn’t want to be the center of any controversy. But the more I learn about myself, the more I realize that I’m totally weird. But you know what? WE’RE ALL WEIRDOS! So why not let our freak flags fly? Why not be obsessed with musicals or coding or Avatar or whatever we want to be obsessed with? Let’s let ourselves be weird because that’s the way we find the weirdos who are just like us!
“Is it normal to have urges to jump off a high place when you’re looking at the bottom from the edge? (Note: I have no suicidal thoughts.)”
“When I talk to myself…or, well, about myself, to myself…I don’t use my real name. I call myself Sethy. My name is not remotely close to ‘Seth.’ But every time I get embarrassed, usually by a memory, I start saying ‘Sethy is a stupid fish, stupid fish, stupid fish…’ out loud in a sort of ‘lalala’ way to redirect my brain.”
“I’m 26 and I have an imaginary friend. Her name is Kasey. I can rant to her about all my problems. Kasey is a good listener. Kasey makes me feel better.”
I sleep with my socks under my pillow? I thought it was normal but everybody I’ve mentioned it to has been confused or even weirded out a bit.
“I feel bad for inanimate objects. I can’t put inanimate objects upside down (because the blood would rush to their head), and I can’t leave an object alone without a ‘friend.’”
“I have an entire world that I will myself to drift into during my hour of snoozing (set my alarm extra early on purpose). I have friends there, a S.O., a pet bird and I’m happy. Then I have to go to work. Real life sucks.”
“I talk to myself, but instead of saying ‘I,’ I say ‘we.’ ‘Okay, we’re going to go home and do our homework before anything else,’ ‘Damn, we need to go get some food,’ ‘We’re late again!’”
I think my inner monologue in the second person. “She went up the stairs to her bedroom and tumbled into her bed”.
“VERY intrusive thoughts and talking to myself in depth. I’m talking like SERIOUS thoughts. I wont give any examples just in case. I will make decisions, make conversation scripts, etc., out loud.”
“Play anagram wars in my head. Type things on imaginary keyboards.”
“I associate numbers with colors. 4 is blue, 6 is green, 5 is red. I don’t understand it.”
“Lift up my blankets and smell after I fart in bed.”
“Anybody else like to put their finger in their belly button and then smell it?”
“Sometimes I go my entire period without using pads or tampons if I don’t have any, rather than buying any I just use toilet paper in my underwear and make makeshift pads. Please tell me I’m not the only one. I’m so ashamed.”
“A full body shiver after urinating.”
“Am I supposed to use shampoo on my pubes? It is hair, after all…I guess I don’t know where you draw the line, like…do bald guys just use regular soap on their head?”
“Anyone else squeegee themselves before getting out of the shower? My GF looks at me like I am crazy but it gets almost all the water off before I even step out to grab a towel.”
“I just tear out nose hairs with my fingers. I should probably use tweezers or just cut them, but I like the sensation of ripping them out by hand.”
“Pop whitehead zits and pick scabs not because I want them gone but because the rush of relief is amazing…”
“I have this pair of very fine tweezers that I use to pluck blackheads out of my face. They’re so small they can get right in there.”
“I pluck my pubes with tweezers. It’s really calming and the pain feels good.”
“I sometimes pull out my eyebrow hairs for no reason.”
“At a urinal, grab my dick and rotate it 90 degrees so the stream comes out sideways.”
“Sitting backwards on the toilet.”
“My whole life I take shits completely naked. I hate going in public because it feels really weird shitting with a shirt on.”
“Sometimes, if my dog is around, I’ll run my finger over my asshole and let her lick it clean.”
“When I poop I lift my right ass cheek off the toilet and squeeze as hard as I can (use my hands to push off the seat). Once it comes out I sit like normal again. Rinse and repeat till I think I’m done.”
“Pooing in the bath.”
“If I stick my finger in my belly button and wiggle it, my vag itches. My boyfriend tries to do it to me all the time after I told him about it.”
