Journaling… I GUESS.

by Gloomy (all_purpose_bunny)

Summary:

Dexter’s first “journal entry”. As he’s stuck on the Interstate 10 due to terrible traffic, he entertains what he thinks is a pretty dumb idea given to him by his new therapist.

Notes:

Mentioned this in tags but this isn’t really supposed to be super in character, although we’ve seen Dexter act like this during his mental breakdown as a doll—I want this series to focus more on the mental health issues he has or the ones I’ve given him, so he’s going to adhere more to those symptoms than he would on screen. Regardless, I hope you enjoy my first series on this account, and (respectful) criticism is welcome <33
- gloomy !!!

Chapter 1: Why Am I Even Considering Doing This?

My therapist probably thinks I’m insane. And I actually don’t blame her one bit—because to an extent I am, I’m just pretty decent at hiding it. I’ve been through it all, really—killing animals, killing my dad, doing drugs, other petty crimes to make me feel something other than the growing void in my chest, fucking so many people you’re surprised you’ve actually kept track of the amount of people you’ve fucked (also just to make me feel something other than the now gaping hole in my chest). I could really go on, but it’s not really helping my case here to whoever finds this—I mean, not that I’m saying I’m not crazy; I AM batshit insane. But it is what it is; stuff happens. Where was I supposed to be going with this? Oh, right, why I’m actually doing this journal crap to begin with.

I’ve been in court-mandated therapy for all of my life, really, and when you’re someone like me, from the start they already know they can never fix you. I’m never going to be normal, even if I’m great at pretending I am. But they still have to kind of pretend I can become normal, you know? So they throw me on all these medications I don’t need or throw “coping mechanisms” at me that only really work for middle-aged white women CEOs of successful companies going through midlife crises about their success—stuff like that. Stuff you know isn’t going to work, stuff you still have to at least try because the court expects you to comply, or else you go back to juvie, whatever else happened, I’m driving right now using speech-to-text in my notes app right now, and I’m—just—whatever. I’ll go back and fix this to look more presentable later.

So I do it, and like I suspected, the only thing it taught me was how to be even more of a sociopath because now I’m really great at pretending to have a “healthy coping skill.” Which I don’t think I’ve ever had except for maybe art and music. But it’s good enough that by the time I’m 18, they slap a big Antisocial Personality Disorder sticker on my head and go, “Well, at least he can pretend he’s normal and isn’t doing dumb shit anymore,” and I’m like, “Yeah, that’s kinda the point, sorry,” and they’re like, “Okay, fine, you can function as a human being; go out and make something of yourself, I guess.”

And so I do that. In the past 15 years, I graduated college, worked in IT, and got bored of that, so I went to trade school and became an exterminator because I’ve been doing it for free for too long. Now I own my own business making hella bank in a little town full of tiny little people who are probably just as sick as me—I’m convinced there’s some sort of town cult that isn’t really acknowledged here or whatever, but I could care less unless it’s directly screwing over me or my mom. Right, but needless to say, I’m what some would call a success case… if it weren’t for the fact I actually haven’t let go of a lot of the bad habits I say I did. Like, it’s not as bad, but it’s still there. And if I still want people to actually regard me as a success story, I kind of have to curb those things. That, and I think my mom may have found out I cut myself again.

So recently I went back to therapy. And it was awkward going willingly, because all my life I was forced to go because a judge wanted me to. My therapist seems a lot cooler than my others, and she knows about all of the crazy life experiences I’ve had, but she’s still kind of required to throw some middle-aged white woman crap at me because she doesn’t know what she’s working with, so like, fair, I guess. This time, journaling. Unfortunately, I’ve accidentally trained myself to actually give things my therapists throw at me a try from years of being required to. So here I am. Stuck on Interstate 10 at 6:32 PM; for whatever reason traffic's so bad right now, and I'm talking to my phone like a lunatic. It’s whatever. Journaling, I mean. It’s a little fun, talking to myself in the car, I’ll admit, but it’s not like I plan on actively doing this.

One, it’s not going to actually work long-term as an outlet because I rarely actually have the time in my life to do stuff like this; I’m just fortunate enough to be caught in bad traffic. Two, I kind of don’t want it to work, if that’s not really immature of me to say. I don’t want to be one of those people who are like, “Journaling changed my life! You should try journaling! If it works for me, it works for you! It’s so amazing!” Those people piss me off. Actually—anyone having the audacity to recommend me such a surface-level coping skill pisses me off. You have no idea what I’ve been through in my life, and not to try and rank trauma, but if it was a competition, I’d be giving you a run for your money. I mean, how blinded are you by your happy little life that you think everything can be solved by using an ugly little pen to write in a rhinestone-covered journal with Bible quotes in it? Poetry’s not fixing my unprocessed sexual trauma, asshole. Maybe that’s mean of me to say because if it’s helped people in the past, then that’s great, I guess. But you don’t have to make the fact that it helped your entire damn personality. I’m the one with the disorder; it’s my job.

This kind of feels like a novelty experience, actually. Like a silly little thing you do once to tell everyone that you did at some point. My equivalent of bragging about something actually cool like seeing the Eiffel Tower or the Great Wall of China. But therapy addition for an audience of sociopaths. “My therapist gave me a coping skill during our second session… and I actually used it! It was so fun to experience” or whatever people say about traveling when they actually brag about it to others. I don’t know; every time I traveled for fun, it was usually a lot more private. I didn’t post any photos I took or tell others; I kind of just did it because I wanted to. That’s how I operate for a lot of things, really. I want to do it, think about if I care about whether or not someone’s going to dislike it, decide “no” most of the time, and make myself happy because I deserve nice shit too. Even if it’s at the expense of people I pretend to care about. I mean, I don’t have the energy to actually manipulate people or do elaborate malicious crap like I did as a kid; I don’t know how I did it, honestly. I put a lot of effort into it somehow—

Oh shit, it was a car crash causing traffic. That looks—bad. Really bad. That is a crime scene at this point type of bad.

…

Whatever, I’m past the jam now. I’m going to be home in about ten minutes now that all of that is over, and as fun as it was to be crazier than I already am, I’d like to sulk in silence and think about how dumb it was that I entertained this at all to begin with. So, yeah. Audio's done. Probably never touching this again.

WATCH WHERE YOU'RE FUCKING TURNING, YOU STUPID CUNT—

Chapter 2: Introducing My Own Identity? Do I Even Have One?

Summary:

Dexter finds himself coming back after showing his therapist his last entry; at least this time with a paper and pen. He talks about his session and is given with a seemingly simple task: introduce yourself to your writing. What seemed easy-peasy now seems like the zipper to some sort of identity baggage that Dexter isn’t ready to unpack right now.

Notes:

Tags Added: Identity Issues
PROCEED WITH CAUTION AND AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Typically when anyone begins therapy, it can be a really awkward time that feels a lot like back and forth. And learning to write actually helped me personally bridge that gap between my therapists. I want to project my journey of learning how to do that onto Dexter. He gets a lot of his hatred towards those “journal girlies” from me, because they’re what stopped me for a long time from wanting to journal. Just ruined the vibe, lol.
But something else I projected (his is a bit different) is both his and my own realization that we don’t really know ourselves or what we identity as. WHO we identify as. (I’ve already started working on that in my own therapy, but Dexter hasn’t. I want this to especially play into one of his already established diagnoses in this series, Antisocial Personality Disorder. People with ASPD are actually very prone to intolerance of boredom, feelings of emptiness, and a lack of sense of self. In this chapter and the next I want to show that side of ASPD a little more love and representation.

Hello, I am

Hi

Hello

I’m actually doing this again for some reason. At least I’m writing it this time and not on the road screaming at people who don’t know how to turn their blinker on in a sane amount of time for me to notice them trying to pull into my lane like a juggernaut. So at least my thoughts are more intelligible to myself now, and I’m not just rambling on and on like a madman. It looks like I still feel at least a little inclined to try these things. I’m sure this’ll probably be the actual last time I do this. That isn’t the focus of this… “writing piece”, though.

For some reason, I actually showed my therapist my last “entry”. Not the audio, no; that was a mess in every sense of the word. I showed her the transcript from my notes app, which I DID NOT heavily edit to make myself look better. If I’m going to willingly put myself in therapy, then there’s no point in lying in a space that’s supposed to help me become a “better person” or whatever. It’s funny how I’d have to insist that within a space no one else is supposed to have access to but me, but more often than not, being an antisocial force of nature causes people to automatically second-guess every single thing you do when they find out what you really are. It sounds pathetic; it feels pathetic, really. But it is what it is.

Anyways, I showed it to her. She thought it was hysterical, so at least it means I’m inherently funny as fuck. But outside of that, she said she really appreciated the courage I had to show her this despite not having to and the “honest vulnerability I allowed myself to express”. I asked her what she meant by that, and she told me that often people already have this preconceived belief about going to therapy. People have a lot of preconceived notions about it, actually, and she knows I do as someone who’s only recently started going to therapy “for myself”, as she worded it. Family and friends might tell you it makes you weak; you might think it makes you weak. You might be embarrassed of the problems you have that make you want to go to therapy, and because already needing therapy can make people feel as if they’re being judged, they may even feel like their therapist would judge them too. There are a lot of shitty therapists out there that do, unfortunately, judge as well, so hearing those horror stories, on top of that already shitty pressure you get from everyone else around you too, it can be hard to actually be honest in therapy.

And I suppose I get that. At some point in the past, all I really knew how to do was just lie and conform. Not necessarily because I was scared of being judged, I don’t think (although considering I was a hormonal teenager, that was probably a fear at some point), but because to an extent I kind of already knew I was being judged. I mean, do you expect a court-supplied psychologist to really be all that great? I talked about what was required, but you can’t say too much if you want to hurry up and get out of the justice system. They don’t think you can change, so all you have to do is the bare minimum—learn how to pretend you changed just enough so that they’re satisfied with letting you go.

Back on topic, though, she appreciated the honesty, which is cool, I guess. She doesn’t expect me to be super thrilled about being here despite me coming here myself. She doesn’t mind that I think journaling isn’t going to help me (and agrees that the people who shove it on others are the worst); she’s glad I’m at least giving it a thought, but she also doesn’t want me to just try things just because I’ve been conditioned into feeling compelled to. Says therapy will go at the pace I want it to go at. The kind of things that kind of make you realize that you landed yourself a semi-decent therapist. So lucky me, I guess. But there was one thing she asked me about. She asked why I didn’t really talk about who I am. I asked her what she meant, because I remember talking all about myself. But the way she sees it is that there’s a difference between talking about what experiences and emotions formed you and talking about what you’ve formed into. And in a private, written space, she says that I can write not just my emotions however I see fit, but also about myself. I can introduce myself—to myself, I guess.

She says that for her clients that are new to journaling and don’t know where to start, identifying yourself on your own terms can help you form an idea of what you want to focus on in your writing. Some of her clients do it every single entry to just start where they’re planning on writing. Like, “Hi, I’m John Doe, and I’m feeling…” something along those lines. Introducing myself to myself, huh? Well, because I’m probably not ever touching this notebook again and I already wrote up until this point, I could at least give it a try.

Hello, my name is Dexter James Erotoph. I’m 33 years old, and I’m Ukrainian-Buryat. I guess you could call me pansexual or bisexual; I don’t really care about labels. What I want out of therapy is

I have no idea what I’m doing with my life.

I have

I don’t

I want

This is not as easy as I thought it would be at all. This is actually kind of hard. Why can't I identify myself? I guess she's kind of right. I can talk about myself all I want, but there really is a difference between talking about yourself and describing yourself. But I guess most people don't know how to do it either, at least I'd assume. Going by her logic, most people talk about themselves all the time, but how do they describe themselves? You don't really see people actually do it, at least not in the way that I've been instructed to. Describing myself almost feels like some sort of creative feat rather than actually stating facts. Like I’m creating some sort of character profile. Is it because I’m just so used to lying about who I am? Is it because I’m just so used to not being honest about who I am? Does this say something about me? That I have no sense of identity or something? Reading back, all I’ve really done is just lay out facts about myself—but are facts really the only thing I know how to use to identify who I am? Whoever that even is? Do I have an identity at all?

That is… a can of shit I don’t want to unpack right now, actually. The last thing need is an identity crisis. Writing this was a mistake, I feel awful now. Goodbye to this sad excuse of self discovery.

Chapter 3: Identity is Hard, But Here’s A Place To Start

Summary:

Dexter explains to his therapist that he found it suprisingly hard to actually identify who he is outside of things he likes, or basic facts. To start his journey on learning how to identify who he really wants to be, his therapist (who he now introduced as “Eliza”), decides to steer the conversation towards one of the most common places people find themselves confused: Sexual orientation and gender identity. How does he really feel about all of it?

Notes:

Tags Added: Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Transphobia, Dexter Erotoph is Queer
PROCEED WITH CAUTION AND AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Something I don’t see in a lot of therapy fics are people giving names to their therapists. Not to say that it’s the worst thing in the world, but a huge part of therapy, at least to me, is that a good therapist wants you to see them as an equal you can come to. They aren’t above you, which is why so many therapists tell you it’s okay to call them by their first name. So I put that in this fic. Everyone, meet Eliza, Dexter’s pretty cool therapist.
Continuing on with Dexter’s blooming identity issues, I’m in a similar boat to Dexter. IRL, I call myself genderfluid and non-binary for simplicity, but most people aren’t capable of understanding the complex side of that identity. For Dexter, that’s such a daunting thought for him that he just refuses to use labels all together, because he doesn’t want his labels to backfire on him.

Fine, I’ll admit it: Journaling isn’t all that bad. I don’t know how much of it has helped me so far, considering this is just my third time trying it out, but it is kind of nice having a place where no one can read your thoughts but you. Maybe my hatred towards casual or “healing” journaling is fueled by the people you see who think it’s the key to all of their problems. I mean, they are pretty annoying. But I guess I’ve been just as equally annoying about hating it as they have been about loving it. Still not telling anyone about this, though. This is a little bit too submissive for me to be into.

Anyways, I didn’t really show my therapist my last entry because, for the most part, all I did was talk about what we talked about. But I did tell her about the issue I had. The identity thing. That kind of bugged me. She was pretty decent about it and wanted to reassure me that it’s not uncommon for people to struggle with identifying themselves in that way. You have all of these things influencing you all the time; it can be hard to identify yourself outside of the things that influence you. Most people don’t know how to identify themselves outside of the things they enjoy or are influenced by. For example, you can enjoy sweet or spicy food all you want, but do you genuinely identify as enjoying sweet or spicy foods? You can say you enjoy classical music all you want, but do you genuinely identify as an enjoyer of classical music? The way she worded it made me feel… a little bit better about myself? Like, at least I’m not the only one who’s realized I don’t know how to define myself outside of basic facts.

She did point something out, though: my sexuality (I told her about what I wrote). Sexuality can be something I identify as and can be a good place to start when trying to discover who you are, so she asked me more about it. I told her I don’t really care about labels, but if I had to be put into some category, I’m at least bi or pan. She asked me about my relationship with labels, if I have an issue with them, or if it’s just preference. And honestly, I told her it’s a mix of both. I’m totally fine with people who use labels and prefer using them as a key identification for who they are, but I don’t know if I’m capable of that. Not to sound like an old bigot, but first there weren’t enough ways to identify, and now there are a lot. A LOT. I have no issue with the people who identify as all sorts of crazy things at all, actually. I fucking hate cats, but I saw someone online say their gender identity was connected to cats, and if anything, that’s really cool. Sexuality and gender are anything but linear. But… that’s not me.

There’s too much for me to keep up with now, even if I did want to use a bunch of labels to identify myself. And how do I really know I identify with a label at all? Like Eliza (my therapist) said, I can hate or love cats as much as I want, but is that something I identify as? A cat lover or cat hater? No, it’s not. How do the people online who identify as anything know they actually identify with it and don’t just really, really like it? I kind of apply that to my sexuality too, I guess. At most, I can absolutely say my sexual and romantic orientation is queer. But what if I call myself pansexual or bisexual, and then it turns out I’m NOT those things? The actually rational side of me says to simply just “come out twice”, but the irrational side of me is worried about what that could say about me. Let’s say my mom is homophobic and transphobic. My mom isn’t those things at all, but let’s say she is. And let’s say that I think I’m transgender and decide to start transitioning and coming out. Later I decide I was wrong about all of that and tell everyone I’m back to being cis. How would that influence my bigoted mom in that scenario? What if it pushed this idea that being trans or gay is just a “phase”? What if it made her think being trans or gay is some sort of curable disease or mental illness?

Labels can be great for people to use, but there’s so much nuance to them and societal expectations that come with them that, while I don’t have anything against them, I kind of do at the same time. It’s not worth the trouble, so at most I’d just call myself queer. And I explained it all to Eliza (not as gracefully as I did here, of course). It’s thanks to our session I’m even able to put my thoughts on all of this into words as well as I do here. Eliza told me that all of my thoughts on this are valid, and it doesn’t make me an ass to question these sorts of things. And she also told me that, like I attempted to say in our session, sexuality and gender and all of that stuff aren’t linear like people want them to be. There’s no right way as a whole to be queer. But her new question is—how do I personally want to be queer? I told her I don’t know. She said I’m not supposed to. I tell her I think I kind of should by now. She asks me why I think that. I tell her that I feel like most people by my point in life should know who or what they identify as. She tells me that’s not true.

We always hear these stories online and on TV of people knowing that they’re transgender from the moment they’re born, or people already knowing by elementary school they don’t like boys or don’t like girls. And while those stories are one type of representation, they don’t represent the equal amount of people who are queer that didn’t know from the start. In fact, she thinks there are more LGBTQ+ people who don’t know than there are people who do. She asks me how I feel about all of it because our session is about to end, and I still don’t know. I still feel like shit for being confused, but I guess now I’m more clear and comfortable with the fact I’m confused, if that makes any sense. So now I’m sitting in my driveway, writing all of this down in my notebook. There’s still a lot about myself that I don’t know. There’s still a lot I don’t know how to identify in myself. But I know that at least for now, I’m confident in at least identifying as queer while I decide on what I actually want to be. So

Hi. I’m Dexter James Erotoph, and I’m queer.

Chapter 4: What If My Identity Was Forced Upon Me?

Summary:

Eliza has given Dexter another writing prompt to help him sort through this new sense of identity: Does your “Queer” identity influence any other aspects of your life?
This wasn’t an easy question for Dexter though, as it leads him down a shitty traumatic rabbit hole of wondering just how much of his queer identity was influenced by the worst person he knows:
His sexually abusive father.

Notes:

Tags Added: Dexter Erotoph is Jewish, Mentions of Politics, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Sexual Trauma, Hypersexuality, Asexuality, Daddy issues
PROCEED WITH CAUTION AND AT YOUR OWN RISK!
These next couple of chapters are going to cover a topic that is very important to me, and one I wish it was as important to others, too: Dexter’s paraphilic disorder. Dexter’s Erotophonophilia is such a huge part of his character, and I hate how often this fandom tries to actively deny the fact that he has an inherently “gross” disorder. It really goes to show how conditional most people are when it comes to disorders that can’t be aesthetic. Paraphilic disorders engine shame, distress, and guilt, and we’ve seen Dexter show these things in the show and ARG. So if you’re willing to read, I’d like to attempt to educate you through Dexter’s eyes about what it’s really like.

After my last entry, Eliza left me with another prompt, if you could call it that. Based on the fact that I choose to identify as queer, how does it impact other aspects of my life? Social life, dating/sex life, maybe political life or religious beliefs, etc. And to be completely honest, not a lot outside of my dating and sex life is really affected. My relationship with religion is complicated. My family is also Jewish, and my mom’s practiced Judaism all her life, but it’s not something I’m very active in. I’ll pray at the table to be polite and celebrate the holidays, but I have mixed feelings on the idea of a god right now, so that’s not really influencing my feelings towards my sexual identity. Socially, I’m not very open about the fact I’m queer, actually. People know, at least some people do, but it’s not ever really a big discussion topic. I’d actually kind of prefer it to stay that way. So it doesn’t do much either. In terms of politics, I have my views, definitely more democratic, but again, not much of a conversation I come across often, and considering the current political state of the world, I’m not eager to bring my opinions on that up either. So the only thing that I can confidently say my “identity” affects is my dating and sex life. And that part of my life is very complicated right now.

I don’t want to go into a lot of detail right now, but a lot of my childhood was spent being sexually abused, so my relationship with sex is obviously going to be a little different than what most people have. On a more surface level, I kind of fluctuate between trauma-induced asexuality and trauma-induced hypersexuality a lot. During college I’d go from fucking girl after guy after person to sitting in the shower for hours mentally tallying up all the people I screwed and going full abstinent mode for a month. And then the cycle would repeat—and it still does. I still don’t really know to what extent I like sex. Is it fun and fulfilling for me? Is it just distraction and filler for my life? Both? A third option? I don’t know what to make of it. I know that it’s pretty common for people like me to fluctuate and struggle with this kind of thing, but it doesn’t make it any less shitty and annoying to deal with. I probably shouldn’t feel this way, but again, I feel like because all I see are people my age who have their lives together, I’m the odd one out here.

On a much darker note, I know a lot of people hate the idea that being raped as a child makes you gay or trans, and I absolutely agree for the most part; however, I would be lying if I didn’t say I suspect the main reason I have a preference for men the way I do was because of my trauma. When it comes to women, I really don’t have a type. Pussy is pussy in my eyes. But for men… dick isn’t just dick. It’s really hard for me to like a guy if he’s not my type, and my type is very telling of the issues I went through as a child. Big, burly, maybe hairy; likes fishing trips, camping, woodworking, maybe hunting. I want a father. I want a “daddy”. My shithead father didn’t even look like a father. He looked like a freak. And he raped me and my mom multiple times on top of that, so obviously I didn’t get standard father son relationship you’d hope for. So obviously I’d want someone like that. Someone who looks and acts like a dad. Someone I can look at and immediately know I’m safe with and loved by. Someone who, once they heard about my trauma, took me up to the mountains to fish, chop wood, and snuggle close to me in our cabin. (And pound my ass into the shitty cabin mattresses so hard I forget all about my sexual trauma.)

But obviously, I can’t help but question what I said earlier. If my circumstances are what made me so attracted to men to begin with, because I didn’t have good men in my life. My dad gave me a lot of things: trauma, a lack of empathy (he definitely also had antisocial personality disorder), some pretty terrible fetishes that are either hereditary, trauma responses, or a mix of both—he gave me his looks that make me want to claw my eyes out every day! But to an extent, did he make me gay? Or did he at least heavily influence that gay side of me? Would I even be bi-pan-queer or whatever if my dad wasn’t the piece of shit statistic that he was? I think it’s 50/50 at most. I was already going to become a sex pest regardless, and him doing that just added to it. I feel like having sex with the same sex is a stupid college regret most people experience at least once, right? Who’s to say in another universe where I wasn’t sexually abused that it wouldn’t maybe awaken something in me? (I’m trying to cope right now.)

This was supposed to be about how me being queer affects my sex life and dating life; I completely derailed everything with my daddy issues. But it gives important context at least. Anyways, it’s hard to find guys that I prefer who also prefer me. A lot of older men are a lot more wary of dating younger folks than you’d think, but it’s fair, honestly. Not a lot of younger guys are capable of actually understanding the full capacity and seriousness that comes with the kind of relationship I want. It’s actually kind of scary seeing these kids turn 18 and immediately throw themselves at porn tropes without actually fully comprehending that a relationship like that comes with a big responsibility. This isn’t me trying to brag, but funny enough, I apparently look super young to most older men I try to meet too. I’ve actually been asked on multiple occasions, “Are you really 33?” I’d love to find a way to relish in the joy most people would have when told that they look younger than they actually are, but that fact about me is cockblocking me now, so it’s not as enjoyable as I’d thought it would be.

Another thing is that there are a lot of (trauma-related) “interests” I have that… not everyone is necessarily into, which is completely fine; I’m able to recognize that my tastes definitely aren’t suited for everyone. But at some point, I’d like to find someone who does have the same tastes as me, and that’s not really an easy task. I don’t want to sound weird, but those gross things I like actually make the idea of sex sound appealing to begin with. Vanilla is fine, but that’s all it is. “Fine”. “Okay”. I’m willing to do it, but so many people just want only vanilla, and that’s a relationship that honestly sounds so unhappy. I hate it, but all of my gross and unethical fetishes help me feel genuinely safe in sexual settings. I can actually envision myself having sex thanks to my fetishes. Whenever I think about vanilla sex or social media’s very boring adaptation of BDSM, it can feel like it’s coming from a different room or somewhere else, these thoughts? They’re right here. They’re me. And I hate it.

I hate it.

I hate being a sexual pariah.

I am now, unfortunately, kind of horny thinking about all of this now. And not the fun kind of horny. Like the “God, I’m such a disgusting piece of shit” horny that I’m going to hate myself for jerking off to and probably cut myself for acting on it in any capacity. Guess I’m back to abstinence. The idea of anything sex-related right now makes me want to rip my skin off.

I knew talking about my dad would do this to me. I’m going to bed, fuck my life.

Chapter 5: The True Extent of My Dark Depravity (Pt. 1)

Summary:

In the first part of this long entry, Dexter learns the first part of recovery is actually admitting you have a problem to begin with. After stalling both in and outside of writing and shedding his first therapy tears, it takes all of his courage to talk about the more shameful aspects of his sexual trauma.

Notes:

Tags Added: Paraphilias, Paraphilic Disorder, Erotophonophilia, Biastophilia, Rape Fantasy, Murder Kink, Trauma Kink, Consensual Non-Consensual
PROCEED WITH CAUTION AND AT YOUR OWN RISK!

I don’t have the right words to convey how important to me these next few chapters are really going to be for me. I’ve rewritten them quite a lot because I want them to perfectly encompass not just my headcanons for Dexter, but also really display what it’s like to have a distressing paraphilic disorder. Especially since I chose for his to be gained through trauma, I want this to be perfect. I want to show people that the idea of a “perfect victim” does more harm than good.

I cried in therapy for the first time in my life today. Nothing ugly like sobbing into my hands or dry heaving into tissues, but just general silent tears I couldn’t hold back. Most of the time I feel pathetic for stuff like that, but it’s therapy. A place where I’m allowed to be pathetic, at least I’d hope so. So I don’t feel too bad about crying.

I was crying about my last entry. I showed it to Eliza. Our session was a lot longer than usual because she wanted to give me more time to formulate my thoughts on all of this. We talked about a lot of things I don’t usually talk about, so the extra time was needed. It was nice of her to do that. (I’m her last client of the day most of the time, so from what I know, I wasn’t impeding on much of her schedule.) Even after our 1 hour and 38 minute long session of helping me put my experiences and feelings into words, I’m still confused on how to talk about these sorts of things. The last time I talked about it all was when I was 17, and even then court-mandated therapy didn’t nearly get this deep in discussion about… why I am the way I am. I don’t know how to word it on my own still, so this’ll sound more like a summary of our session than anything, but as long as something helps, right?

After I showed her my entry, Eliza asked me how open I’d be to maybe opening up about some of the sexual trauma I have. I tell her I’m still not sure if I can handle talking about it too much, but I can try and force something out. She tells me that I only have to say what I want to say and that I don’t have to force anything else. She asked because she was wondering if I’m not ready to talk about that, then maybe I’d be a little more open to talking about the “trauma-induced kinks and fetishes” I mentioned. Eliza says that having fetishes and kinks you feel are a result of trauma can be really distressing and hard to deal with on your own. Because I seemed to display some of that discomfort in my writing, she wanted to maybe unpack some of it and understand where it all comes from so we can find better ways of coping than thoughts of self-harm and feeling like I want to rip my skin apart. I’m a lot more open to that conversation.

She asked me if there is a name for what I would describe as my “biggest sexual fantasy” and if I’d be willing to describe it to her. If there wasn’t a name for it, maybe we could come up with a temporary name for it. There is a name for my biggest fantasy, but it’s a fantasy that is not very socially acceptable, to say the least. I’d like to say I didn’t give a fuck, but that would be the biggest lie I’ve told in a hot minute. I’m actually really scared to tell her, because what if she thinks I’m dangerous and reports me and I get thrown into prison for a crime I haven’t committed since the age of twelve? Or a psych ward? She can obviously see it based on one, my facial expression, and two, the good three minutes of silence that follow, and she’s attempting to slowly ease me out by telling me whatever it is, she is going to support me through it and find what’s best for me, and that I don’t have to tell her if I don’t want to, but I do. I really do want someone to talk to about this. I’ve just never told anyone outside of anonymous horny online forums.

I tell her it’s gross and that I’ve never hurt anyone because of it and never will and that I’m just as ashamed about it as I am aroused. She says she’s heard it all, she believes I’m a good person somehow, and that she wants to work through that shame. I probably made her promise a million times that she won’t think I’m crazy, probably making me look crazier than I would if I just spat it out already. I think I’m writing so much because I don’t even like saying it in writing, actually, especially in writing, because once again: WHAT IF THIS IS USED AGAINST ME? How do I hype myself up in writing form to actually continue writing this? I NEED to write it. Eliza wouldn’t like that talk, but I at least want to. That makes me feel like I need to say it at least.

Is this what recovery is actually like? Like real recovery? It’s not going to be linear, obviously, but is it normal to almost want to delay recovery or reject it altogether because you just don’t know what’s going to happen? I want to fix things, at least I think I do. But god, I hate facing myself head-on like this. I don’t want to put thought into my rape and murder fetish. It’s just there to get me off in the moment and make me feel guilty afterwards.

Wow. I actually did it. I tricked myself into writing it by going into a depressive rant and forgetting about my overwhelming paranoia. It’s probably not good that I’m so good at lying I can even lie to myself, but that’s really not the focus here right now.

That’s what it’s been. Rape. And murder. Sometimes even a mix of both, depending on what I’m in the mood for late at night, all alone, with nothing to occupy me but my disgusting thoughts about my trauma. Those are the fetishes that make sex actually feel appealing to me. Those are the fetishes that actually make me feel safe. Because frankly, in my childhood, it’s all I’ve ever known. Being raped. Being threatened with murder. And even though it turns me on in the moment, it also makes me want to kill myself just the same because of just how absolutely depraved it is.

Telling Eliza all of that is what caused me to start crying. And maybe I lied; it wasn’t as silent and graceful as I originally made it out to be. Still wasn’t ugly crying, but it wasn’t very pretty either. She was nice, though. Eliza says that darker kinks and fetishes, such as rape, murder, and even incest, can be really common in people who have survived those things and similar, and that if you learn how to properly manage it, fantasies like that can actually even be a healthy way to process your trauma. But first, she wants to tackle the tears. Why I’m crying. The way she worded it was something along the lines of “We don’t have to get rid of the tears. You’re allowed to cry. But I want to understand the tears.” Why am I crying? Is it because of the subject matter and my past? Am I ashamed of having these fetishes? I told her it’s probably a mix of all of it. I’ve never talked about it before, at least not like this. And these things make me feel gross inside for liking them the way I do. Make me feel gross outside for liking them, too.

She tells me that my guilt and shame are expected by her when it comes to this kind of topic, and it’s a sensitive subject, so even if I wasn’t ashamed, it’s okay to be disturbed. It’s an inherently disturbing topic. She tells me that if I’m ready to talk about it, she’d like to discuss the rape fetish first, because she feels it might be the easier one to discuss this session, because she has more insight on that than she does on the murder fetish. She said she wanted to do more research on the other fetish so that she could be better equipped to tackle that topic the next session. I’m still paranoid by this point, but if she was going to report me somewhere, I don’t think she would have told me how common those kinds of fantasies are, at least.

Chapter 6: The True Extent Of My Dark Depravity (Pt. 2)

Summary:

Dexter finally finds himself in a space where he can at least talk about some of the fetishes he gained from his trauma, and he takes his first steps into unpacking a very common fantasy found in survivors of sexual abuse; rape fantasies, and the nuance between fantasy and desire.

Notes:

No New Tags Added
(PROCEED WITH CAUTION AND AT YOUR OWN RISK!)

Something I had Eliza highlight here that I wish was talked about more is the nuance and context behind rape fantasies like Dexter’s. I feel like the arguments behind rape fantasies are very black and white. No, having a rape fantasy is not inherently unhealthy like one side argues, but it’s not always capable of being healthy 24/7 like the other side suggests.
For Dexter, he’s going to find that rape fantasies personally DO help him find comfort in his past, and he’ll learn to manage the guilt that comes with it. But if someone doesn’t find rape fantasies comforting and is distressed by them, than they do not have to use them.
What both sides need to do is recognize everyone is different, and trauma will be processed differently. Both finding comfort and finding discomfort is valid for all victims, and no one is incorrect for coping in a different way.

I went to bed last night because I was drained and don’t have work today, so continuing: the rape kink. She wants to know more about it, and I’m lying down on the therapy couch feeling so ridiculous for all of this, even after all of the reassurance. Eliza asks me if, in my fantasies, I have a preference for being on the giving or receiving end. Occasionally I have some fantasies about doing it to someone else, but most of the time my fantasies involve… having it done to me. She asks me what I feel like whenever I fantasize about doing it to someone else. Whenever I fantasize about doing it, it’s usually me doing it to my dad. It makes me feel angry at him for doing it to me, makes me want to force him to scream and cry and cum the way he forced me to as a child, makes me want to swap roles and force him to know what it’s like, but more than anything, it kind of makes me feel powerful, and satisfied knowing he’d finally know what he put me through, even if it’s bad.

Eliza says that “revenge-rape” fantasies are a pretty common way for victims of rape to cope. The way she worded it to me is that fantasies are nothing but that. Fantasies. Fiction in your head. They can tell you a lot about someone’s feelings, emotions, and experiences, but a lot of people don’t read rape fantasies correctly. Me having a fantasy doesn’t reflect the fact that I actually want to rape someone, right? (That’s what she asked). What it really reflects is that I want my power back. When I was a child, I was tiny, frail, and scared. I couldn’t have fought back against him and actually stopped it. When I was raped, I literally had no power, and any power I had was forcefully taken away from me. I was made to be weak. And after an experience like that, you can go years still feeling like you’ll never get that power back. She’s right. I haven’t felt sexually powerful in years because of it; even when I top others, I feel weak. I actually think I prefer being on the bottom so much because I don’t know how to handle the power that comes with being on top. But the fantasy, it allows me to change that. In my mind, I can imagine that I’m as strong or powerful as I want, without that fear or discomfort or weakness. I can imagine that I’m taking back my power from him and stealing his away. I can imagine that he’s losing his power the same way I lost mine. And because it’s all just fantasy, fiction in the mind, I can imagine these things without anyone really getting hurt. I can make myself feel powerful without actually raping my dad back. And that’s exactly how I feel. Couldn’t even rape him if I really wanted to.

She asks me how I feel so far. I’m still a little conflicted, but I’m not lying down therapy-style anymore, at least. Eliza says having these types of talks is going to make me feel conflicted, and it’s better to embrace the conflict here in what she hopes is a safe environment for me. I can’t help but ask her if this is really normal for me to have. It sounds crazy to hear that fantasizing about raping your dad and even remotely enjoying that thought is actually capable of being healthy. She tells me yes. The human mind is very complex, and everyone is going to cope differently. For some people, this kind of fantasy could be really harmful and dangerous for them to have. It’s not for everyone. But we’re having this session to figure out if I think it’s right for me. If it is right, she’ll help me slowly work my way through the guilt until I can manage it on my own. If I don’t think it’s helping, she’s always open to helping find alternatives to help me curve that fantasy into something else.

Eliza wants to know about the other side of my rape fantasies—the ones where I’m getting raped. The ones that are admittedly more elaborately put together than the ones where I’m the offender. This is the main fantasy I actually… get off to the most. The dad one is more of a when I’m angry and feel like my life is out of control. How do the submissive fantasies make me feel? They make me feel a lot. Scared, horrified, vulnerable, shameful, but… almost in a horny, nice way. And guilty, as discussed, obviously. What is that one like? Very graphic. She had to help me formulate a lot of this when explaining it to her, which is the only reason I can describe it here so well. The story of origin changes depending on my mood. Maybe my drink was spiked, maybe I was being stalked or someone broke into my house, maybe it’s a partner, sometimes I just skip backstory altogether because I’m too horny—the overall focus is that I’m being sexually assaulted. Preferably by the type I described before: big, burly, strong, daddy vibes. Originally I’m scared; I want to scream and fight back, but I start to slowly enjoy it because of how good he is. He knows how to grab my thighs the way I like, we’re in my favorite position, and he’s using my favorite dirty talk. I don’t know how else to describe it other than the “perfect” rapist. Someone who’s forcing me into feeling everything I want and need. And I can’t help but like it. At the end of the fantasy, he forces me to finish and then starts telling me how much I liked it. I cry and beg him to please leave me alone, try convincing him I disliked it, and try convincing myself I dislike it, but it’s not true. It was the best orgasm of my life. And if I feel like I’m not satisfied, sometimes I even fantasize about a second round where he forces me to admit it.

I kind of sit there awkwardly reevaluating if this was a good idea to share or not, honestly considering booking it out of the door in shame. If it wasn’t obvious enough already, I kind of really hate feeling vulnerable in any capacity. But Eliza wasn’t going to let me do that because somehow, with her therapist powers, she could sense that. She actually thanked me for allowing myself to be vulnerable, which felt bizarre—because I hate when people are somehow able to actually empathize with me, someone incapable of giving standard empathy back. But she tells me the same thing as before. This is a really common type of trauma fantasy. And this actually may be empowering me too, just in a different way. She asks me about why I hate feeling vulnerable so much. Is it connected to my sexual trauma? I tell her it’s because of a lot of things, admittedly, but sexual trauma probably does screw you up in that field of emotion. And then she asks me something else.

Based on other sessions I haven’t written about, there are probably other sexual practices I’m into that require what could be described as a willingness to “submit” right? I’m confused and, to an extent, weirded out because I don’t understand the relevance yet, but I digress. Yes, I am. And in those sexual practices, I have complete control over how these things play out, right? Maybe a safe word or some other signal for things to slow down or stop altogether if I’m not liking things. Eliza asks what I feel the difference between those things and my fantasies is to me. I think about it, and honestly? There isn’t much of a difference. Sure, the fantasy is admittedly more disturbing, but if I don’t like what I’m thinking about, I can easily change it to be something else that I do enjoy. Same thing with a respectable partner: if I don’t like what’s happening, there’d likely be safety precautions in place for that. And I tell her that, and she nods. My fantasy, also to an extent, serves as a way for me to become familiar with vulnerability on my own terms. In real life, the experience was terrible, painful, and traumatizing, but in my fantasy, I’m finding ways to make it less difficult to remember. I’m pretending that he knows how to make it enjoyable for me. I’m imagining that my attacker knows how to make what was one of the worst things I’ve ever been through into one of the greatest sexual encounters in my life. He’s almost forcing me into vulnerability in a way I can actually handle.

Chapter 7: The True Extent of My Dark Depravity (Pt. 3)

Summary:

Dexter’s long session is about to come to an end, and he can’t help but wonder why he feels so guilty for responding to his trauma in a way that’s so incredibly normal. And there’s a lot of things that could feed into that, but Eliza can’t help but wonder if there’s another side of him that’s also stunting his growth: What about his antisocial tendencies?

Notes:

Tags Added: Narcissist Personality Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder
(PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION AND AT YOUR OWN RISK!)

There are a lot of different ideas that go around surrounding therapy, and the healing process. Everyone heals in different ways, and at a different rate, but somehow people have managed to find a way to put a scale on those different methods of healing and recovery, somehow making something incapable of being linear, linear.
But that entire scale gets thrown out when it comes to neurodivergent people all together. From the start, we’ve always processed emotions and viewed the world we grew up in differently than others, and there aren’t enough people who talk about how unfriendly the popular idea of recovery is for neurodivergent minds.
So how does that work for someone like Dexter? Someone whose neurodivergence makes him unable to process complex emotions, let alone complex trauma?

So then I ask her, if these things can actually be healthy for me, then why the hell do they make me feel so guilty and ashamed to enjoy them? Why am I feeling disgusted for using something that actually helps me heal? She tells me there isn’t a particular single answer for that, because everyone’s circumstance is a bit different. But a common one can be that most people don’t know how to separate fantasy from desire. A fantasy is literally fantasy. It’s fiction, and it says purely within fictional spaces, whether it be your thoughts, writing, drawings, music, etc. A lot of people create fantasies that would be immoral, illegal, or unethical if carried out in real life. That’s why they stay as desires. A desire is capable of being a fantasy, but most of the time it’s not one, because people are capable of recognizing that not all fantasies can be desires. She asks me if I actually want to rape someone or if I want to be raped again, and I give her a hard no. So I know how to separate my rape fantasies from real-life desires.

But a lot of people don’t know how to understand that. She’s met a lot of people and seen articles and social media posts spreading this idea that someone’s fantasies are a direct reflection of their morals, which isn’t true. There are still a lot of sections of our society that are still pretty “sex negative,” if that’s the best word for it, later thinking it might be better to call it “pseudoscientific.” To someone who’s uneducated on the topic, the idea that having rape fantasies is unhealthy actually sounds pretty believable, because rape is a pretty terrible thing; why would you enjoy thinking about it? But someone who’s educated, like her, is able to tell that while there can be room for concern, a fantasy in itself doesn’t cause harm; it’s a fantasy like that becoming a desire that would worry her. She also thinks that some people might feel bad about just the general idea behind things like sexual fantasies because of preconceived notions and beliefs they got from the people around them. Sure, that feeds into the pseudoscience thing with taboo fantasies, but on my own thinking about it, it really does feed into a lot of other sexual topics too.

She was going somewhere with this though, somewhere that ended up really… jumpscaring me at how much sense it made. Eliza asked me if I felt my antisocial personality disorder was affecting my sex life, too. It felt like such a curveball. I was just shell-shocked into silence because I felt like I knew where she was going with it, but not at the same time. The way she put it was this: children at the start are capable of identifying base emotions such as happiness, Sadness, and Anger, and as we grow, we acquire more complex emotions triggered by how we interact with the world and people around us, such as Guilt, Empathy, Remorse, etc.. Children who have Conduct Disorder and develop into Antisocial Personality Disorder like I did, have brains that were stunted in the sense that our brain chemistry isn’t quite capable of producing those emotions. We interact with emotions differently as a whole; because of that, we view social interactions and the world differently as a whole, and that damages our ability to develop those more complex emotions triggered by other people. We don’t learn how to feel remorseful like others feel it, we don’t learn how to feel guilty like others feel it, and we don’t learn how to feel empathy like others feel it. In other words, we have emotions, but they’re very, very limited.

Eliza wonders if that’s why so many people, especially people on the Cluster B Personality Disorder spectrum, are so prone to feelings of emptiness, lack of identity, and negative emotions, because we don’t have other emotions to fill that void. Such a feeling of emptiness is probably going to lead to more negative emotions than positive. And in order to fill that void, a lot of us turn to thrill-seeking and destructive behaviors. People with NPD’s sense of emptiness leads to negative emotions like depression and self-hatred, and in order to combat the emptiness, they exaggerate their self-worth. People with HPD’s sense of emptiness leads to negative emotions like feeling unimportant and unloved, and in order to combat the emptiness, they exaggerate their lack of emotions in an attempt to stay important. People with BPD’s sense of emptiness leads to negative emotions like fear of abandonment and being alone, and in order to combat the emptiness, they stop at nothing to make sure the people they love never leave. Now Eliza leaves me to explain how I think my ASPD makes me feel. That gaping, malicious hole in my chest lacking emotion makes me feel… dead. Empty. Desperate to feel something. Anything. Literally anything. So to combat it, I’ve done drugs. I’ve cut myself. I’ve fucked 217 people in my life. I’ve lied. I’ve broken the law. And it gives me a thrill of something I don’t understand. Makes me feel alive in a place where I’m not even supposed to be.

Eliza now asks me to throw trauma on top of that. Someone like me barely even knows how to process emotions like guilt, empathy, and remorse, and now someone has done something to me that forces me to have complex emotions like Shame, Grief, Embarrassment, and, you guessed it, Vulnerability. Things my brain was never built to properly process. Tying that back to what she was saying before about my guilt towards my sexual fantasies and how it’s easy to have preconceived ideas and biases against the science behind sexual psychology. In the past, did I ever have any preconceived ideas about therapy, sex, or psychology? Of course I did; of course I still do. Therapy was for normal people who thought they had problems. Sex was gross and entertaining all in one. Psychology was stupid bullshit that was all emotional talk. But upon further research Eliza did, there isn’t a set treatment plan for people like me. Sex was complex for me because I had it ruined for me. Psychology only talked about the perspective of emotions I didn’t have. And what do all of those things add up to? You guessed it. Again. Vulnerability as a result of circumstance. I associate all these things with vulnerability. An emotion I'm not equipped to handle.

She finally said, not asked, but stated (paraphrased to an extent), “Dexter, I think your guilt towards these things is driven by a lot of things. But more than anything, I think that YOU think that even needing a fantasy to cope to begin with is a sign of vulnerability. I think that YOU think needing fantasies to cope makes you inherently weak.”

I wanted to properly respond, or at least nod my head, but I started to cry again. And it was ugly crying this time. Dry heaving into tissues, sobbing into my hands, the waterworks. I’ve only ever cried this hard alone or a few times in front of my mom. But I just didn’t have the words to tell Eliza how painfully right she was in that moment. I think I’m weak for fantasizing about something like rape. I think I’m weak for needing to go to therapy again because the system couldn’t do it right the first time. I think I’m weak for not being the success case I’ve made myself out to be. And I’m not capable of handling the feeling of weakness healthily. I’m not capable of handling the feeling at all, so I don’t. And I let it build up for years and years until I break down in the middle of a therapy session at the age of 33. You want to know when I first started having rape fantasies? 19. I’ve been like this for 14 years. Feeling weak. Not knowing what to do about it. Letting it get worse. Letting it make me miserable. I’ve always been weak. Probably looks weak right now. But if it’s any comfort to me in the future, Eliza didn’t mind seeing me weak. She actually embraced it. She was happy I was letting go of years worth of built-up emotions I didn’t know how to handle once I managed to sputter it all out in my frayed state of being.

The rest of the session ended with her talking to me about how, as distressing as it can be for people to experience emotions we aren’t made to handle, learning how to overcome that distress is a very important part of my healing journey. And I just took my first step by releasing almost 14 years of negative emotions suffered alone. She talked me down from my mini-breakdown and made sure I was okay before I left. And that she was going to do more research on my other… “problem” before we talk about it next session, or if I’d prefer, we can always talk about it another session if I’m not ready to talk about it yet. It's so cheesy to admit it, and it sounds so unrealistic to what I'd typically believe in, but she's right. My chest actually feels lighter. Empty, but lighter.

Chapter 8: Much More Depraved Than Depravity Itself (Pt. 1)

Summary:

Dexter and Eliza sit down as promised to uncover the next problem that’s been plaguing Dexter’s life, his murder “attraction”. Unfortunately, it’s not as easily defined into the categories presented to him by Eliza’s research as he hoped it would. But talking it out and finding what’s best for Dexter is what these sessions are for, right?

Notes:

Tags Added: Erotophonophilia, Murder Kink, Murder Fantasy, Paraphilias, Paraphilic Disorders, Dissociation
(PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION AND AT YOUR OWN RISK!)

This is finally the Chapter that broke the 7 day streak of posting, and probably marks the last time I’ll update every day. Not because anything bad happened, but we’re diving into the depths of this story where I really do want to focus on presenting the issues talked about here correctly. Posting every day wouldn’t give me the time needed to reflect and research the things I’m unsure about
I struggled with this chapter a bit because as passionate as I am about the psychology of paraphilic attractions and paraphilic disorders, it’s a hard one to talk about in a way that makes me feel like I’m doing justice to the topic. Especially with the circumstances I’ve given Dexter, I want to find a good balance between writing something that can educate my readers, all the while making it personal enough to present as a diary.
I’d love to make a purely educational piece of writing on the topic, but AO3 isn’t quite the place for that. So it has to have just as much story as well to give it a place here. So please be patient with me while I struggle to find the perfect mix of both!

Today, after a very friendly and thoughtful check-in on how I was doing after our last session, me and Eliza addressed the OTHER elephant in the room… the other thing. The whole MURDER thing. The one I’m admittedly a lot less ashamed of and the most ashamed of all at once. I have a lot more complicated feelings on it that aren’t as centered around being weak as the rape thing is, actually. But before we did that, Eliza wanted to present me with some things she had researched after our last session and wanted to share some insightful information. She said she went back to some of her textbooks to find more insight on how to further proceed with our discussions on my sexual… deviances, to phrase it one way. (Just because I let 14 years worth of self-loathing out last time doesn’t mean it’s no longer uncomfortable to talk about all together.)

She asked me if I knew what a “paraphilia” was, or at least knew what the word meant. I’ve heard it, but I never really looked into anything outside of “non-standard attraction”. She said that’s a simple way to describe it, but there’s more to it than just that. Basically, though, "paraphilia" is basically a more proper term for "fetish," a non-standard attraction to an object or concept or whatever else that’s just as arousing as standard attractions (genitals, boobs, you get it). Meanwhile, kinks are non-standard practices of something that can be both sexual and nonsexual. Like ageplay can be nonsexual, or dominant-submissive lifestyles can be nonsexual. Then there are paraphilic DISORDERS, which are fetishistic attractions that bring distress to the one who has it, endangers the one who has it, and/or endangers their peers or object of attraction (minors, animals, the general public world.)

The reason she told me all of this is because she wanted to try and understand my general standing on my rape and murder “attraction”. She remembered that in the past, I stated that my “attractions” were some of the only things that made sex sound fulfilling to me. And I’m allowed to also participate in the kink portion of it (I didn’t write this earlier, but I told her I’ve done rape-play kink stuff before; I haven’t done anything about the other one yet), but while I have an enjoyment of the kinks, my “attraction” could be more accurately described as a fetish, or paraphilia, possibly even a paraphilic disorder due to my obvious distress from this “attraction” (paraphilia is a nicer word than fetish, so I’m just going to be calling it that). She doesn’t want to say I have the disorder or by any means jump to diagnosing me with anything yet, namely because she still doesn’t know a lot about my circumstances. We’re also hoping that my main symptom of distress can be treated with time and grow much more manageable as we progress with our session.

Anyways, after that brief moment of education, we started finally talking about the who, what, when, where, and whys. Eliza asks me if I know how my murder paraphilia, or erotiphoniphilia erotaphanophilia erotophonophilia formed (as you could guess by how many times I had to cross that out, I am not going to be regularly calling it that). What started it for me? Is the idea of murder inherently arousing, is it a result of trauma, or is it something else? I mean, yeah. Knowing me, it’s for the most part trauma. But I actually kind of struggle to talk about how it formed in this conversation because I’m not quite sure if it’s… fully in the paraphilia category. She asks me what I mean by that, and I ask her if I can kind of give her some unfortunate background information about my life. We’ve never properly talked in depth about what exactly happened in my childhood, or at least any specifics outside of telling her I was simply raped as a kid; I’m just not ready to tell the whole story… So this is the first step of truly opening up about it all, I guess.

As discussed before and written before I was, again, raped a lot by my dad, for a lot of “reasons” in his eyes. Whenever I acted out, whenever I fought back, whenever I just did about anything that ruined some sort of “public image” he probably shat himself each night trying to maintain. I don’t know his thought process; I don’t want to try to know it. And there admittedly weren’t a lot of ways I could cope with it. He didn’t like it when I dissociated; he didn’t let me at first. Whenever he saw me get quiet, he’d beat my face back into reality. So then I learned how to halfway dissociate while screaming and crying the way he liked me to. And there are a lot of things I could have focused on when dissociating, like pretending I was in a world with my favorite Pokemon characters, or maybe accidentally splitting my identity in half—but even in the middle of dissociating, I was only halfway there. I still had to put effort into giving my dad enough screaming and crying to fuel his ego. I couldn’t even escape it all properly.

So more than anything? I thought about how nice the idea of blowing my fucking brains out was. Or blowing his brains out. All I could really find to comfort me was the idea of dying. I was too scared to do it myself, but the idea of someone else doing it for me sounded almost intimate, even. Like an owner putting down their beloved pet after growing up with it their whole life, I wanted to be that animal. Maybe someone sweet, like my mom. Or like, a kid I had a crush on at the time. Or maybe a nice teacher that saw past my behavior and could tell something was going on, just not exactly knowing how bad it was. Or maybe killing him felt like slaying a beast plaguing the neighborhood village, striking terror into its people; the idea of killing him made me feel like I could be a hero, almost. Long story short, murder? It was my escape. It wasn’t until puberty hit and I became a horny teenager that I think lines got blurred and it transformed into a fe paraphilia.

But before that, I don’t know if the bad things I did as a result of this infatuation before that were inherently sexual for me. Like whenever I killed animals, I thought about how lucky they were to die, but did that really arouse me? I don’t know. I don’t even think killing my dad was arousing for me either. Maybe it was a thrill more than anything. After all, I was and still am pretty dead inside, and I’m still a junkie for things that give me a rush, even if I can’t indulge in a lot of it anymore. Or maybe I could argue it’s some sort of “mental arousal”, or something that satisfied me mentally in the way that having an actual sexual thought would. I’m still not entirely sure if it’s completely sexual for me now. I can get sexually aroused from the idea of murder, which definitely makes sex sound a lot more fun and enjoyable, but what’s the ratio of sexual arousal to weird mental satisfaction?

Chapter 9: Much More Depraved Than Depravity Itself (Pt. 2)

Summary:

There’s a lot of things that contribute to Dexter’s Erotophonophilia. And it’s better for him to tackle all of the things that contribute to it one at a time, at an equal level. But now may be a good time to first talk about how Dexter’s not fully at fault for things evolving the way they have.

Notes:

(NO ADDITIONAL TAGS ADDED, BUT PLEASE PROCEED WITT CAUTION AND AT YOUR OWN RISK!)

Sorry for the long pause from the fic, I wanted to step back and do more research while also focusing on some personal life stuff. Hope you weren’t waiting too long!
Admittedly I’m not super happy with this specific chapter, namely because I struggled with it for so long, and I still feel like I didn’t do the topic the justice I wanted to give it, but I hope I got its message across.
Certain groups of people ARE more at risk for more dangerous behavior. That isn’t meant to be racist, ableist, sexist, etc. but it is important to acknowledge that some people are more at risk than others of going off some deep-ends, or engaging in destructive behavior. Especially in Dexter’s position, yes, while antisocial personality disorder does have a harmful stigma of being the “serial killer disorder” as a result of a lack of research being done outside of convicted felons, even stereotypes do have some truth to them.
Antisocial behavior is much more accurately categorized as a spectrum. A spectrum of self sabotage, and destruction, like any other disorder. And while a disorder should never be an excuse for someone’s bad decisions, it sure does at least give light to some of the reasons behind why people do the things they do. The things Dexter have done aren’t okay and he’s already been legally held accountable for most of it, but can you seriously BLAME what started out as a scared, vulnerable, traumatized child being misguided?

Eliza thanked me for sharing that part of my story, knowing I’ve been kind of struggling to open up about the things that I’ve been through in the past in greater detail. She asked me how I felt, and I told her I felt kind of odd, or uncertain. I hoped that talking about my murder paraphilia would be easier because I don’t feel as ashamed of it—at least not as ashamed as I am about the rape paraphilia—but talking about it out loud made me realize that there’s way more to this than I typically put thought into, and frankly, way more complicated than I’d like it to be. It’s almost reversed, in a sense. Typically you’d assume that the thing someone is the most ashamed of is super complex and has some complicated backstory and trauma that comes with it, and the things you’re less ashamed of are easier to unpack because there isn’t as much emotion attached to them as the other thing, but in reality my most shameful fantasy was super easy to understand, and now my least shameful fantasy (?) is the most difficult to comprehend.

Eliza said yeah, it’s crummy how things can do a complete 180 on you when you fully lay out all the facts you have, but hopefully therapy can be the place where it all comes together in a way we understand. However, she thinks I brought up a good point with the thrill-seeking. It’s good to realize that an issue’s origin isn’t always linear or singular. More often than not there are all sorts of things that contribute to a problem forming or getting worse. And it’s okay for it to actually be a mix of both thrill-seeking and genuine arousal, but she thinks I need to realize that regardless of the “ratio” of which one contributes more, they both contribute to some extent, right? So then let’s tackle them both equally. After looking back at her notes from our last session, she wanted to tackle the thrill-seeking portion of it first, because she had realized that there’s a side to not just this, but me as a whole, that I don’t consider often with these sorts of problems. She wanted to talk more about my ASPD.

Just how much do I notice my antisocial behavior affecting my daily life and functionality? If not much now, am I able to look back and say it interfered with my functionality and daily life a lot in the past? I thought about it, and admittedly it affects me even now. It might be obvious to others who interact with me when I’m in a bad mood and don’t have the energy to pretend to pretend to have empathy—but I PERSONALLY kind of do have to put more thought into it, because a disorder like that literally makes it my personality. You don’t think a lot about your personality and how it affects you like that because it’s basically a part of your casual lifestyle. It’s practically the biggest chunk of your mental state that you give to others. It just comes naturally to you to be the way you are. So obviously I see my personality as less “antisocial” and more of the norm for me—because it is my norm. So you don’t really realize that your personality is a big part of your problems unless people point it out to you. Anyways, yeah, it admittedly affects a lot more areas of my life than I’m able to recognize most of the time.

She wanted to put something into a bit of perspective for me. So, my antisocial personality, it makes it harder for me to develop complex, socially triggered emotions like empathy, remorse, guilt, etc., because from the start I’ve always viewed the social interactions that would produce those emotions differently. So differently, in fact, that I’m barely capable of producing such complex emotions on a genuine level. And that can also affect things like morality, which is what she wanted to focus on for a moment. Your morals are an emotional foundation built up of your emotions and past experiences, and your morality plays a big part in shaping who you are, what you stand for, and your personality. But I have a personality disorder. So, for better or worse, terminology-wise, my morality could be considered “flawed,” in a sense, because my personality makes me see the world differently from the rest of the world.

Morality plays into a lot of what people like and dislike. Some people hate TV shows because the show's message, or maybe the main character, doesn't have the same morals as them. Some people don’t buy from certain brands because the companies did something or support something that they’re morally against. This also applies to sexual orientations and attractions too. The way she put it is that morality plays a big part in the thought process that comes with people not being able to separate sexual fantasies from genuine desires. For example, ageplay. Some people can’t separate the sexual fantasy of roleplaying all childlike, wearing cute clothes, or whatever else ageplay entails—I don’t know much about it—from the actual desire of wanting to abuse an actual child. Morally speaking, abusing an actual child is terrible, shouldn’t be encouraged, and comes with a serious consequence. But a lot of people can’t morally separate the two, because one reminds them of the other, and to them that’s one and the same, right? I’m going to be honest here and say I’m pretty much of that as well; maybe it hits too close to home for me, but I fucking hate ageplay.

But anyways, my morality is different. Now, it’s not to say that I’m inherently a sexual predator or abuser of some sort, but statistically speaking—people like me, people with ASPD—we have a lot of weird ways to pass the time. We search for thrills and instant gratification in all sorts of ways. A lot of the things we find enjoyable, and all of the power or influence we may take advantage of, most people can’t do those things because their morals stop them from it. But we don’t have standard morals. Most people have these moral walls that keep them from enjoying gross kinks or having unorthodox paraphilias and fetishes—but we kind of don’t have those. Eliza doesn’t say any of this to make me feel bad, but looking back on most of my life, from the start I was never really capable of having the personality that would allow me to form “standard morals”. On top of that, for a long time I both needed an outlet for the abuse I was facing at home and also was in desperate need of something that made me feel alive, so I killed animals, because morally it’s better than killing a person. But that morality is, in a sense, “flawed” compared to most moral standings. And then I got older, and I found myself realizing that the idea of murder evolved to be just as sexually arousing as it is comforting and thrilling—which most people’s morals wouldn’t let their thoughts evolve in such a way.

Eliza asks me how I feel about it—my murder paraphilia/attraction/comfort—whatever it is. What emotion does it make me feel outside of confusion? I honestly don’t know. I’d say maybe shame? All of it feels convoluted for me. And she doesn’t expect me to not feel these ways, but she then asks me if I’m ever feeling upset with myself for it. Not like ashamed upset, but do I ever feel upset that my attraction evolved the way it did? Admittedly, yeah. Kind of. I don’t know what the word for it would be; upset doesn’t feel super right, but I guess I’m not happy with where it is now. Eliza says that she wanted to talk a bit more about morality and personality today because she had a feeling that was the case. She wanted this part of our session to maybe point me in the direction of understanding that a lot of the things “wrong” with me were sort of built up by chance.

Laying it out—I was given a lack of empathy and morality by my shitty dad. And then he did shitty, immoral things to me that probably further fucked with my perception of right and wrong—I mean, I literally fantasize about being raped by older men on lonely nights. And I was also reasonably a suicidal and homicidal child on top of that. And then by the end of it all, I hit puberty, and some sort of lines got blurred where all of that suicidal ideation and murderous rage actually sounds really hot now. Again, it’s not to say that I’m doomed to become some rapist or killer, but considering the cards I was given—was any of that in my control? I can’t control being born different, I can’t control being sexually abused as a kid, I can’t help being a hurt child not knowing how to express my pain and suffering in a healthy way, I can’t help wanting to put an end to the man behind all of my pain and suffering, and puberty is where most people realize they have some really weird interests—it’s also not to say I’m not able to take responsibility for my actions and face the consequences—I promise you I complied as much as I needed to in the system to make up for it; I’ve taken accountability. But can I be blamed for where it all started, with a child who was simply just suffering?

Chapter 10: Much More Depraved Than Depravity Itself (Pt. 3)

Summary:

Tackling the contributing factors one at a time, and because they were already on the topic of Dexter’s ASPD, the two of them decided to start talking about all of the thrill-seeking that may contribute to Dexter’s Erotophonophilia. And it certainly allows Eliza to raise a few (supportive) concerns with Dexter’s lifestyle.

Notes:

Tags Added: Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Animal Cruelty
(PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION AND AT YOUR OWN RISK!)

Tenth Chapter, woohoo! This certainly isn’t a very big fan fiction amongst spooky month fans, but this is actually my first series on AO3, so I really appreciate the support! Thank you so much :)). But on with the analysis of things this chapter is supposed to highlight:
So we’re finally talking about Dexter’s animal abuse. A lot of people in the fandom are able to recognize that at its core, the way Dexter chooses to act on his “needs” are unhealthy, but what’s the science behind it? Well, what Eliza says is true, and it’s not just true for Dexter—this comes with most maladaptive behaviors.
Whether it be throwing tantrums, breaking keyboards, forms of self harm, or thrill-seeking, by believing that these are the only ways you’re capable of relieving emotions or feelings you dislike, there is science showing that you’re accidentally conditioning your brain into only wanting to relieve itself of these negative feelings when these negative actions are performed.
Dexter may think he’s found a great way to both satisfy his needs while also giving back to the community in some way, but in the long run he’s making it harder for him to find BETTER coping skills in the future, because he’s unintentionally tricking his brain into thinking that the only way he can relieve his emotions and arousal is through animal murder and abuse.

And by the way, I know the tags already say this story isn’t canon compliant, but again, here’s a reminder of just that, considering I mentioned 2020’s quarantine here. The sake of that was to put this story in a more modern time outside of 2013 (which also lines up with the brief mention of politics before), and also again, signify how bad his method of coping is, and how isolation during covid amplified his newfound reliance on his job to “satisfy his needs”.

After I rambled on about that for a little more, we thought that because we were already semi on the topic, we would start to talk about how my thrill-seeking and ASPD contribute to my murder paraphilia. I’ve told her about my killer streak in the past with animals and briefly about the one singular human, but it’s mostly been animals. She asks me if I like animals, and I say no. I don’t get the appeal of pets at all, unless it’s a service animal of some sort. I don’t see why so many people are putting so much love and effort into something that doesn’t really love you back. Do I think animals don’t have feelings or emotions (Eliza asked me that)? For the most part, yes. I’m sure that they have their own equivalent of love, but it’s not unconditional love by any means. For example, if your roommate comes with a dog and you don’t interact with it at all—not feeding it, bathing it, taking it out on walks, absolutely nothing—is that dog going to “love” you the same way it “loves” your roommate? No, you’re just a person in the house it sees. But it “loves” your roommate because they do stuff for it. It’s an exchange relationship for most animals—humans make it so that the animal has all of its needs cared for, and in exchange, humans get a (subjectively) cute, nonhuman “friend”. If your roommate started kicking and abusing it and neglecting it, it would very quickly get scared of them or become violent. It’s conditional.

Eliza’s thankfully not here to tell me I’m such a terrible guy for not wanting to date someone with pets, or tell me I’m wrong because she personally likes animals, or whatever else people say when they hear I’m not an animal guy. Whatever opinion she has, she’s willing to agree to disagree. Eliza asks me what kind of animals I killed as a child. I tell her mostly pests—rats and mice, bats if I ever saw them, cats, bugs, maybe birds and squirrels? Stuff like that. She asks me why I’d personally classify cats as pests. I suppose most people wouldn’t really classify them as one, so it’s a good question, and hypothetically speaking, any animal is really capable of becoming one—but I just can’t stand them even more compared to most animals. They’re a weird mix of independent and dependent at the same time; they’re incredibly picky with everything you do for them. They can’t decide if they want to be pet or not and then scratch and bite the shit out of you for not being able to read their mind—I had to go to the ER once for stitches because of one once; that fucker had it coming if you ask me. Maybe it’s emotional bias? Which is ironic, considering my mom absolutely loves cats.

Anyways, cats are pests to me. I hate them, everything about them. By the way, this is a session where she drops another emotional bomb of a conclusion/realization on me, but I’ll write more about my internal thoughts about it later when I’m done talking about the actual session itself. After some really awkward silence of her flipping through notes, she asks me about my job. Why did I pick the job I have? I mean—I was bored of computers and IT and wanted to try something not a lot of people consider. Being an exterminator makes some pretty good money too. And, if I’m going to be fucked up in the head, I might as well find a way to make it useful, right? Give back to the community? Eliza asked that based on my statement, “If I’m going to be fucked up in the head”, it would be safe to assume that I’m actively feeling some sort of thrill or arousal when on the field, right? I mean…duh, but “Right”. I’m not going to deny that.

Do I feel like my job is an outlet for these feelings of mine (question she asked)? I suppose, yeah. And how reliant am I on my job to serve as an “outlet” for my “needs”, so to speak (also a question she asked)? To be honest, I’ve never really thought much about it like that. But I’m also not going to deny that now I AM being prompted to think about it like that, it’s not entirely inaccurate. There’s actually been a lot of holiday seasons where we were obviously closed, and I was pretty itchy to get back to the field. Or maybe sick days where I just really want someone to schedule me to get rid of their rat problem. Maybe it’s fucked up of me to have originally thought in such a way without thinking about its consequence to my own health (I’ll elaborate in a moment), but honestly? I’m still seeking that high; I really just want to kill things. She then asked me if I feel almost a little reliant on my job to “keep me thrilled”, so to speak. Maybe? I don’t know.

But here’s the whole “big realization” she gave me. Eliza asked me if I thought that this “need” was inherently good to feed into. I said no, but it depends on how you feed into it in my eyes, and she agreed and reworded it. Is the way that I’m feeding into this need CURRENTLY a good idea? Originally my thought process was like, “Not entirely, but again, if I’m going to be fucked up in the head, I might as well find a way to make it useful”. But she actually disagreed with me. Eliza thinks that my job isn’t actually healthy for me, and she wants me to hear her out on the logic and really think about it for a while. And obviously at first I wasn’t too thrilled to hear my therapist low-key tell me to quit my very own company, but she said to hear her out, so I will. So just in general, whenever anyone is stressed, upset, or frustrated, there is this idea that releasing all of those negative emotions through physical activity is therapeutic and healthy or invokes a sense of “catharsis”, and yes, it can be. But most methods of doing so can actually be pretty harmful for your overall mental health.

There are a lot of studies apparently showing that the more you release negative emotions, the more likely negative emotions are going to build up. When you’re angry, for example, and punch holes in the wall or smash family heirlooms, any form of “catharsis” you feel is temporary. But you want catharsis; you need it because you’re just so angry. So you might keep breaking things and yelling at people because you keep getting that very small moment of “relief”. But now, you’re conditioning your brain to think that the only way it can relieve itself of all the stress and anger you have is to get violent and act out. That’s why so many people say things like “take a deep breath, calm down”, because as annoying as it is to hear in the moment, it’s actually better to do things that lower your emotional arousal than give in to them. But of course, this doesn’t just apply to anger. This can apply to a lot of harmful behavior. It can apply to my thrill-seeking. Eliza asks me again if I feel reliant on my job. And I don’t know what to think of it. I guess maybe not on my actual job (outside of making bank), but am I getting a false sense of catharsis from this? I guess I am. It explains all of the off days I’m itching to go back to work. Explains why I was so pent up in Covid that coincidentally two neighborhood cats went “missing” during quarantine, but who cares about those little shits?

I ask her what she thinks I should do. How I should process all of that. I mean it makes sense, but what does that say about my way of life these past 5 years? That my trying to find a way to turn my mental illness into a profit was bad? That I’ve been screwing myself over and conditioning myself to get more mentally ill? What does this say about all of the progress I’ve made—I know I lied about making progress in the past, but I still made some even then—was I not making progress from the start? Eliza tells me she can’t tell me what to think, but she doesn’t think I’ve been screwing myself over too much. And that I shouldn’t feel bad for simply trying to at least make some sort of positive out of a decently negative thing. Me giving back to the community, or at least, attempting to. And quitting my job doesn’t have to be my only takeaway from this (but if you ask me, god, is it still pretty damn implied). I need to explore the idea that my job isn’t helping me as much as I thought it was. See where it takes me.

Hi, I’m Dexter, and I don’t know what to think.

(Do I still need to work on my identity problems? I haven't done the intro thing in a while.)

Chapter 11: I Don’t Wanna Explore That Now, Let’s Explore Something Else

Summary:

Dexter was admittedly feeling very perplexed by his last session with Eliza. I mean, who wants to think about starting over from scratch when so comfortable in your career? In an attempt to distract himself and in a brief moment of “horny stupidity”, he makes a choice that he doesn’t realize just how much will positively change his life.

Notes:

Tags Added: One Night Stand, Car Sex, Blowjob, Fingering, Anal Sex, Prostate Orgasm, Daddy Kink,
(PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION AND AT YOUR OWN RISK!)

Alas, the chapter that finally explains the M/M, Multi, and Other shipping tags! Yes, I’m actually a massive fucking RatVan shipper and I accept NO criticism of that!!! >:CC
But don’t let this fool you into thinking the story is purely romance based now—it’s not in the slightest. This is more than just me putting a ship I like into a serious fan fiction series.
This chapter may seem tasteless, or unnecessary, but this chapter has been planned for a long time, and for good reason. Dexter truly doesn’t have anywhere else to share these thoughts and experiences. It’s hard enough for him to open up about these things to begin with, considering all of the trauma-induced shame he’s had towards sex and his fetishes for most of his life, and not to mention its shame he’s still working through. So all he really has is this journal, and Eliza (and you, in a sense).
Thankfully, there has been much more awareness going around about how trauma can interfere with people’s ability to develop intimate, romantic, or sexual relationships in their future. There’s been more awareness about how to help those you love in your life heal from trauma that could be holding them back. But again, it’s never linear, or the same for everyone. Opening up this chapter of his romance and sex life gets to show you how Dexter personally will find healing in learning to commit, and love again.
It opens up leeway for me to have Dexter open up about past relationships that left him stumped too. Which is why the main ship (RatVan) is M/M, but I added Multi for other ships with possible canon characters to be added (wink wink), and maybe even some diverse situationships, open relationships, and polycules, for the Other tag!
So I hope you enjoy this introduction to watching Dexter find Mr. Right along with him. (Yes, they stay together in the end, I love RatVan too much for a breakup).

(Also if you’re curious, 9-12cm is 3-5 inches, so that would make Frank a good 6 and a half inches. So yeah. It’s hitting deep)

I haven’t written outside of simply talking about my therapy sessions with Eliza in a while, and admittedly that’s a bit lazy of me. I don’t HAVE to work on these things right now, but also I said I would. And maybe it would be better for me to keep trying these things I’m being recommended. Like the identity introduction thing. That’s still something I struggle with, and I’ve just been neglecting unpacking, which is my bad. Eliza has been great, but WOW, has she been dropping all sorts of bombs as of late. I’m not used to any of this—having a good therapist. And hearing that your job isn’t as healthy as you thought doesn’t really help. Not just my job, actually; my company. My brand. The thing I’ve built from scratch and have poured years of hard work into isn’t healthy for me. I know she told me that she doesn’t want me to quit my self-made legacy—but she also kind of did? And the worst part is that she’s not entirely wrong about it either. Like, I have kind of known for a while that this isn’t the most ethical, but it’s not fun to hear your therapist really outline how you’re not really doing your mental health justice either.

Is my job really that based in the thrill it gives me? What do I do about this? The logical side of me says to slowly find a new job to build up over time and maybe eventually sell my company, but I don’t know what the illogical side of me is telling me. Do I kind of want to stay and try to find a way to make my job healthy? Is that possible? Is it me wanting to stay a part of the conditioning of my brain I’ve been accidentally doing? Now that I’m so used to using my job as an outlet, I don’t want to find anything else, and I’ve gotten too used to it, like science suggests? Thinking about this right now isn’t doing me a lot of good. I didn’t want to think about it anymore after our session, or last night, so I did something. I went on Grindr and hooked up with a guy. I know I should stop throwing myself at older men whenever I run away from my problems, but I just needed some semblance of affection and intimacy to take the edge off of things in the moment, even if I was going to hate myself for it later. And maybe I should stick to using this journal as a form of therapy and not a sex diary, but I just really want to write about this and feel like one person is invested in my gross little sex life.

The guy I ended up seeing last night was named Frank. I sent him a direct message telling him he was in my area and I’m looking for something to spice up my night, and he said the same. We talked normally for a bit, about what we did and what we like; he’s a mechanic. Maybe this is really lame of me, but he had a few corny pictures of him doing stuff like fixing cars or leaning against them shirtless, and to be completely honest, I was actually super into it. I feel like a teenage girl fawning over shirtless celebrities in Tiger Beat magazines during the 80s admitting that. We went to Gensomooru’s dining hall for a bit of a mall date to hang out and meet each other properly before messing around. Because it’s, well—Gensomooru of all places, I wasn’t expecting the best, but Frank absolutely blew me away somehow. He’s charming and funny but also really weird, in a good way. And he was so emotionally engaging. I’m usually the one feeling like I have to lead dates because people can be so indecisive and indirect or just too shy (which is fine and expected, but I do like more confidence), but it was so nicely odd that he was actually able to keep up with everything. Keep up with me. It’s crazy how six hours ago I was boldly sending him ass pics, and now he had me in this awkward giggling state where I’m just completely ogling at him.

So we get back to his van, and I’m honestly still feeling out of whack from everything that’s been going on, but also I needed to get laid last night. There’s no way this guy was going to absolutely blow me away with such an amazing date and then not at least grace me with the privilege of sucking him off. But we don’t jump to that obviously, but I kind of hint at wanting more by leaning into him and asking him all shyly, “Where are we going now?”. Thankfully, he’s driving me to a secluded area to fuck, and before I get any sort of judgement from my future self, I’d like to remind you that this wasn’t in the middle of nowhere, just more secluded than a mall parking lot. If he tried to kill me, someone would have likely heard my screams. Anyways, we made out for a bit, but we were still kind of talking as we got ready to mess around. He asked me if there was anything I wanted out of this, so admittedly I got a little risky here. I asked him if I could call him Daddy, and he laughed and said yes. He asked me if he could call me things like baby boy to match the theme, and I said, Absolutely, please do., And then through more small talk about his life and my life, we slowly stripped each other until we were completely naked on top of the towel laid across the back of the van's floor. Apparently, that and a small bottle of lube were back there the ENTIRE time, and I didn’t even notice. Thank God he was on the same page as me. You’d be surprised how many people I’ve exchanged nudes with only to get nothing more than a kiss from.

I got to give him the much-anticipated head I had been craving all night, and he was pretty big. I’m going to be humble; I’m pretty average. I’m not someone who’d ever measure myself, but eyeballing it, I’d probably be 9-12 centimeters. It’s good enough to make someone happy. He’s a good 1/4 bigger than me. So I was struggling even more than usual. Admittedly, as much as I love giving blowjobs, my gag reflex is absolutely terrible. More often than not I have to do a lot of side mouth action while stroking and kissing, and that’s all I could really do with him. He really enjoyed it, though; he wasn’t grossly insistent on me deep-throating him like some guys are. I mean, I still let him try and guide me through it because it’s hot, but he didn’t hold my head in place when I was obviously trying to back out for air. It’s really nice when my jaw hurts on my own terms. Oh, and he actually was very hygienic, which is very appreciated! Admittedly the idea of having sex with dirty men is kind of appealing, but in execution it’s certainly not as attractive as I’d thought, and that is an experience I am never having again. But I can still enjoy a guy being a little sweaty after walking around a huge mall and some natural odor. I guess better wording is that I’m into more contained dirtiness, because the smell of his sweat was actually intoxicating.

He fingered me afterwards, and it was surprisingly very sensual and intimate. The entire time he was telling me things like “Tell me where things hurt; tell me where things feel good.” And he was still calling me “baby boy”, too. He was very thorough about it. He curved his fingers and pressed into everything he could, asking for feedback and watching my reactions very intently; it was somehow very attractive. He did that felt until he hit my p-spot (which admittedly had me making some very unflattering noises), and he just slowly moved in and out of me until the shock of it had settled down, and I started to enjoy it (and could then make my moans sound just a bit nicer). I forgot just how awkward it is to be fingered, though, especially when your partner is adding another finger. Very weird to physically AND emotionally adjust to as well because you’re both anticipating a change of pace and also awkwardly holding off on said change of pace… but it felt too good to dwell on. I know that I’m pretty good with my hands; it’s one of the things I’m not even remotely humble about. So it’s really crazy to have someone blow you away to smithereens in the same way you can do it to others.

The actual sex was obviously the best part. Maybe I haven’t been doing the best at conveying it here, but I think my favorite part about the entire night is just how attentive he was to me. He was willing to indulge in some DDLB talk. He paid attention to when I was choking during head so I could breathe. He paid attention to when things hurt or when he hit my p-spot when he was fingering me. And when he was actually fully inside of me, he slowed down when I needed him to, he sped back up when I was ready, and he respected that as much as I love being bred, a first date isn’t a good time to come inside, and instead he came on my stomach. I’ve told people in the past about my experiences, and they’ve assumed I’m actively seeking out shitty, abusive men—I promise I’m not; I’ve just gotten a lot more unlucky than most. Not to mention a lot of people use things like BDSM as a cover to be genuinely abusive so it’s really easy to find the wrong people. But even when I’m not having my boundaries broken, most people treat hookups like they’re just supposed to be unfulfilling pump and dumps. I get not wanting anything serious, but why does it need to be unfulfilling? If Frank doesn’t mind me calling him Daddy for a night and paying attention to what I respond positively to, why is that so hard for other people to do?

Here’s where things get a bit complicated—this isn’t really a hookup anymore. After we were done, we cleaned each other off with some wet wipes, and he drove me home, but on the way back he told me that he wasn’t originally looking for anything else tonight, but he had a lot of fun tonight. He asked me if I’d be interested in maybe seeing him again at some point. Usually, I’d say no. I actually wanted to say no, because that’s my default for most hookups. Because most hookups can’t make me feel like both people’s enjoyment is actually important. But Frank cared about how I felt last night. Frank cared about how good I was feeling, and I did my best to make him feel good too. I didn’t write much on it until now, but I indulged him on some of his kinks too. The part of me sticking to a lack of commitment hates to say it, but Frank is one of the first guys in a long time I’ve met that actually made me want to humor romance again. So, I said yes, and we’d stay in touch. He gave me his phone number, I gave him mine, and he dropped me off at my house with his goofy and devious smile that, somehow, I’ve already grown to kind of miss. But maybe that’s just the excitement of just how absurd this talking is.

So anyways, I have now fucked 218 people in my life, and I guess I’m at the start of kind of seeing someone right now? My next therapy session is unpacking more sexual trauma, so I’ll tell Eliza about my potential man after that session.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Journaling… I GUESS.