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My Twisted World The Story of Elliot Rodger By Elliot Rodger Introduction Humanity… All of my suffering on this world has been at the hands of humanity, particularly women. It has made me realize just how brutal and twisted humanity is as a species. All I ever wanted was to fit in and live a happy life amongst humanity, but I was cast out and rejected, forced to endure an existence of loneliness and insignificance, all because the females of the human species were incapable of seeing the value in me. This is the story of how I, Elliot Rodger, came to be. This is the story of my entire life. It is a dark story of sadness, anger, and hatred. It is a story of a war against cruel injustice. In this magnificent story, I will disclose every single detail about my life, every single significant experience that I have pulled from my superior memory, as well as how those experiences have shaped my views of the world. This tragedy did not have to happen. I didn’t want things to turn out this way, but humanity forced my hand, and this story will explain why. My life didn’t start out dark and twisted. I started out as a happy and blissful child, living my life to the fullest in a world I thought was good and pure… Part One A Blissful Beginning Age 0-5 On the morning of July 24th, 1991, in a London hospital, I was born. I breathed in the first breath of life as I entered this world, weighing only 5.4 pounds. My parents must have been filled with happiness and pride that day. They had just witnessed the birth of their first child, and they named me Elliot Oliver Robertson Rodger. I was born to young parents. My father, Peter Rodger, was only 26 when he impregnated my mother, Chin, who was 30. Peter is of British descent, hailing from the prestigious Rodger family; a family that was once part of the wealthy upper classes before they lost all of their fortune during the Great Depression. My father’s father, George Rodger, was a renowned photojournalist who had taken very famous photographs during the Second World War, though he failed to reacquire the family’s lost fortune. My mother is of Chinese descent. She was born in Malaysia, and moved to England at a young age to work as a nurse on several film sets, where she became friends with very important individuals in the film industry, including George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. She even dated George Lucas for a short time. My mother and father had been married for a couple of years before my mother became pregnant with me. In fact, her pregnancy was an accident. She had been taking pills to prevent pregnancy, but when she visited my father on one of his film sets, she fell ill and the medication she took for that illness thwarted the effect of the anti-pregnancy pills, and so their lovemaking during this period resulted in my life. Only a couple of months after my birth, I went on my first vacation. My parents took me on a boat to France. I was already a traveler! Of course, I have no memories of this trip. My mother said that I cried a lot. At the time that I was born, my mother and father were living in a house in London, but shortly after my birth they decided to move to the countryside. We moved to a large house made of red brick in the county of Sussex, with vast grass fields surrounding it. The house even had a name: The Old Rectory. This was where I spent my early childhood, the first five years of my life, and it was beautiful. The memories I have of this period are only memories of happiness and bliss. My father was a professional photographer at the time, just in the stage of becoming a director. My mother gave up her nursing career to stay at home and look after me. My grandma on my mother’s side, who I would call Ah Mah, moved in with us to help out my mother. I would spend a lot of time with Ah Mah during these years. This was a time of discovery, excitement, and fun. I had just entered this new world, and I knew nothing of the pain it would bring me later on. I enjoyed life with innocent bliss. I can remember playing in the fields and going on long walks with Ah Mah to pick berries. She would always warn me not to touch the stinging nettles that sometimes grew in our fields, but my curiosity got the better of me, and I got stung a few times. There was a swing in the back of our yard, which I had many good times on. The first birthday I remember was my 3rd birthday. My parents threw a party for me in our field. I had a helicopter birthday cake. I can remember one of my friend’s parents cutting off the first piece and giving it to my friend. I threw a tantrum because I was expecting to get the first piece… It was my birthday after all. My father bought me a toy tractor that I could ride around in, and I would play with it all the time after that. Sometime after my 3rd birthday, we all went on a vacation to Malaysia, my mother’s home country. I have only flashes of memory of that vacation. I enjoyed it very much. We visited a few of my mother’s relatives. For preschool, I was enrolled at Dorsett House, an upscale all-boys private school in the countryside, near where we lived. I was forced to wear a uniform, which I hated because I had to wear uncomfortable socks up to my knees. I was very nervous and I cried on my first day there. I can remember two friends I made by name, George and David. I would always play in the sandpit with them. I didn’t like school at Dorsett House very much. I found the rules to be too strict. My least favorite part of it was the football sessions. I never understood the game and I could never keep up with the other boys in the field, so I always stood by the goal-keeper and pretended to be the “second goalkeeper”. My favorite part was playing in the woods after lunch. There was a particular climbing structure that I had a lot of fun with. My preschool class once went on a field trip to the park, where I had the misfortune of getting lost. As my class was eating lunch, I ventured off to another area of the park, and when I returned, my class had moved on. I remember panicking and asking strangers for help. It was a terrifying experience for me. I was eventually led to my class by the strangers I talked to. I remember one funny incident when we were taking school pictures. They forced us to sit crosslegged, which I hated doing, so I absolutely refused to sit that way for the picture. The teachers eventually conceded, and the picture was taken with me being the only one sitting differently. The holiday season was the best part of the year for me. It must have been very cold in England, but I don’t remember the cold. I just remember how much fun I had. I was filled with joy when it started snowing outside – I loved playing in the snow. My father helped me build a snowman once. We would start with little snowballs, and roll them around our field until we formed the body, and then we would decorate it. During Christmas, my parents always had parties and gatherings. My father’s best friend, Christopher Bess, who was also my godfather, came to our house frequently. We would often go to my father’s parent’s house in Smarden, Kent. I would call my grandmother on my father’s side “grandma Jinx”. My memories of my grandfather, George Rodger, are faint; he had fallen very ill at this period. My father’s brother, uncle Jonny, had a son one year younger than me, who was named George, after my grandfather. I always played games with cousin George in grandma Jinx’s garden. The two of us got along well. On New Year’s Eve our neighbors once set up a bonfire party in the field next to our house. I was fascinated by how big the fire was. I had never seen anything like it, and it astounded my little mind. This was also the first time I saw fireworks. My father gave me one of those sparklers to play with, which I was enraptured by. There was one very special place that my father would often take me to. It was at the top of a range of beautiful rolling hills that I termed the “London Hills”, because I thought that London was on the other side of them. We would go there to fly kites. I can remember these experiences vividly. The hills were full of tall straw-like grass, and the weather was always windy – perfect for kite flying. It was a time of utmost happiness and joy for me. My father taught me to fly a kite by myself. The wind was so strong that I feared it would lift up my frail little body and carry me into the clouds. Once I got the hang of it, it was exhilarating. We would fly our kites together and run with the wind. I will never forget that place. My favorite childhood film was The Land Before Time. I used to watch that movie all the time with Ah Mah. It was about a baby dinosaur named Littlefoot who had just lost his mother and was journeying through a dangerous world to find the “Great Valley”, a land of prosperity and peace. I remember the feeling of utter sadness I felt during the scene when his mother died, and the triumphant and happy emotions that swept over me when he finally discovered the Great Valley, after going through all the hardship to get there. I watched this movie so many times that just thinking about it brings the emotions back. It was a big part of my childhood. Already a world traveler, I went on a trip to Spain with my parents and my parent’s friends Patrick and Lupe. It was the fourth country I’ve been to at such a young age. We stayed in an exquisite castlelike house that I believe was owned by a friend of ours. The house had a tower that I was extremely curious about. At one point, my parents and their friends ventured up to the top of it, but they made me stay below because I was too young. I was sorely disappointed. As they were climbing the tower I went outside to look at the cacti surrounding the house. These cacti also sparked my curiosity, and I foolishly decided to touch a cactus. I ended up getting cactus needles all over my hand, and it took a long time for my mother to remove them. Shortly after my trip to Spain, we went on another trip to Greece. We stayed at a hotel near the beach. It was very hot there. The weather was new to me, as I was used to the cold British climate. The trip to Greece was significant because during this time, my father received the news of the death of my grandfather George Rodger. He died of natural causes on my 4th birthday, at the age of 87. It was the first experience I had of the death of a close relative, and the first time I saw my father cry. My 4 year old self could not imagine my father ever crying, and so when I saw him cry that day, I knew how shaken he was. It was a very sad day for all of us. We immediately flew home. I believe that it was during the time after my 4th birthday that my father came to the decision to eventually move to the United States. As he was just becoming a director, he believed Los Angeles would offer more opportunities. We took a short trip to California to gain an initial look at it. I don’t remember much of this trip, but I do remember having a good time. At the age of 4, I, Elliot Rodger, had already been to six different countries. Who can claim that, eh? The United Kingdom, France, Spain, Greece, Malaysia, and the United States. It was also during this time that my mother became pregnant again. I was going to have a sibling. My parents decided to have another baby, this pregnancy being planned, so that I can have a sibling to grow up with. We later discovered it was going to be a girl. Before my 5th birthday, my mother went into labor to deliver the baby. I can remember the night vividly. I was very ill that night, a bad omen. I stayed at home with Ah Mah while my mother and father were at the hospital, and we watched movies together. I was fraught with anticipation the whole time. And then my parents came back late in the night, and with them they brought a little black-haired baby wrapped in a bundle. I had a baby sister, and they named her Georgia. I have no memories of what happened on my 5th birthday. Shortly after it, we were making plans to permanently move to the United States. The news excited me, but I was sad at the prospect of leaving my life in England behind. My father took a short trip to the U.S. by himself to scout out houses. I remember talking on the phone to him while he was there. He told me he found a very nice house for us to move to. I asked him if it had a swimming pool, and he said it did. This news made me very happy. And then the time came. We started packing everything up at the Old Rectory. On my last day at Dorsett House school, my teacher was giving all of us candies when my mother came to pick me up early. I said goodbye to all the friends I had there. That was the last time I saw them. My father was given the offer to buy the Old Rectory for about 400,000 Pounds (we were only renting it at the time), but he declined, a decision he would regret later on, as it would have been a worthy investment. I cried as we drove away from the Old Rectory. All the experiences I had there; playing in the fields, driving my toy tractor, tending to my garden, going on walks with Ah Mah, swinging on the swing; all those experiences were gone. I was about to start a new life. We boarded the plane and took off to America. Part 2 Growing up in America Age 5-9 The plane ride was like a dimension between worlds. I was about to enter a whole new world. A whole new life. But none of that went through my little 5 year old head at the time. I slept for most of the journey there, and I can remember looking out the window at the vast stretch of clouds below us. I wondered what it would be like to go down there and run along them as if they were a landmass, not thinking about the fact that I would fall right through! When we arrived in America, I was very tired. We collected our luggage and loaded them onto a new SUV that my father rented. The image of us driving out of the airport is still fresh in my mind. I often think of it as my first step into my new life in the U.S. I was so sleepy when we reached our new house that I didn’t even bother to look around yet. The house was partly furnished, and we already had a sofa and a television. The first thing we did was watch a movie. The movie was Independence Day, and I fell asleep at some parts, but managed to watch most of the movie. In the morning I was full of energy. I eagerly clamored up the stairs to search for my new room. I looked at all the rooms before singling out the one that I wanted as mine. When I told my mother about my decision, she told me that the room I picked was meant to be my sister Georgia’s room. I got a bit upset, but eventually settled for the room next to it. The house was quite big, with white walls and a beautiful backyard that led to a gated swimming pool area. It was located in an upscale part of Woodland Hills. The town of Woodland Hills has great significance in my life. It would be the town that I grow up in. A large portion of all my life experiences, good and bad, would take place in this town. I can recall the first time I said the name on my lips… Woodland Hills… my new hometown. Soon after settling into our lovely new home, we were disturbed by a problem typical of California: An earthquake. My mother woke me up in the middle of the night, and we all hid under the kitchen table. The earthquake actually turned out to be very small, with even smaller aftershocks following it, but I was still scared. Having never experienced an earthquake before, the only impression I had of earthquakes were the huge, land rupturing earthquakes I saw in The Land Before Time. After this experience, I began to see earthquakes as common, minor disturbances. And there I was, a young 5 year old boy who has so far lived a happy and joyful life about to embark on a new journey; the journey of growing up in the United States of America. I felt a surge of enthusiasm at the prospect. I now considered myself an “American kid”, as I told my parents. I got accustomed to all the American T.V. shows, and I started to adopt an American accent. I was looking forward to my new life. Soon enough, I was enrolled in school. My father did some extensive school-searching after our arrival, and he found a small private school on Shoup Avenue named Pinecrest. I was to attend kindergarten there. Pinecrest… My 5-year-old self at the time could not imagine how significant this place will eventually become for me. A great turning point of my life will eventually take place there, a tragic turn for the worse. But that will come later, in a darker chapter of my story, when I enter my preteen years. For now, I was a kindergartener who was enjoying life to the fullest. Kindergarten at Pinecrest didn’t turn out so well. I had a very unpleasant teacher who was impatient with how far behind I was in my schoolwork, as I had missed a couple months of school due to the move. During playtime, this teacher would keep me in the classroom to do extra work in order to catch up. My parents didn’t like this teacher, and one of their friends recommended another school for me, a private school nearby named Farm School; it was named after the farm that was attached to it. After only a couple of weeks at Pinecrest, my parents took me out of it, and I would not return again until I go there for Middle School six years later. My first day at farm school turned out to be a good start. I had two teachers, and they made an effort to introduce me to the other kids. There was one particular boy named Joey who they assigned to show me around. He was nice to me at first, but would soon turn out to be a rotten little prick who I would always get into fights with. He then became my greatest enemy at the school. The first real friend I made in the United States was a girl named Maddy Humphreys. Isn’t that ironic? The first friend I made in the United States was a girl! She was the first female friend I’ve ever had, and she would be the last. Maddy and I started playing together at Farm School, and eventually my parents became very good friends with her parents. Maddy’s father is the famous British musician Paul Humpreys, and her mother is named Maureen, though we would call her Mo. They had a nice house in Hidden Hills. Our families got together often to have barbeques and dinners. I was a 5 year old boy playing with a girl my own age like any normal boy would do. I was enjoying life in a world that I loved. I was happy, and completely oblivious of the fact that my future on this world would only turn to darkness and misery because of girls. This girl who was my friend, Maddy Humpreys, would eventually come to represent everything I hate and despise; everything that is against me, and everything that I’m against. I was playing innocently with this girl, in the manner that all children play. We even took baths together; it was the only time in my life that I would see a girl my age naked. When I think about the experiences I had during my friendship with her, it makes me think ominously of the fact that all children, boys and girls, start out the same. We all start out innocent, and we all start out together. Only through the experiences and circumstances of growing up do we drift apart, form allegiances, and face each other as enemies. That is when wars happen, and that is when the true nature of humanity rises to the surface. At this stage of my life, of course, my war hadn’t started yet, and it wouldn’t start for a long time. I was enjoying my life without a care in the world, not knowing that all of my joy is destined to turn to dust. My Kindergarten year at Farm School was filled with exciting, new experiences, all healthy for a growing boy. I had friends, I had playdates, I socialized with the other boys at school, despite getting into lots of conflicts with Joey. I only got into trouble once, over a quarrel with another boy during playtime, and I was sent to the principal’s office. Having never been in such trouble at school before, I recall being overcome with nervousness and fear, which caused me to cry for an hour. I especially enjoyed our arts and crafts time, and I loved it when our class would go on visits to the school’s farm. After a bright and joyous school year, it was time to graduate. I was swelled with pride as I wore my graduation cap at the ceremony. I loved that school very much, and I was sad to leave it. Kindergarten was over, and soon enough I would enter elementary school. My 6 th birthday soon followed. My parents arranged a Disney-themed party at a play center that my mother had been taking me to frequently. I invited everyone from my Farm School class, all the boys and the girls, except for Joey. I deliberately omitted Joey as an act of revenge for being mean to me throughout the year, and I felt a sense of satisfaction in doing so. The party was cheerful, and there was a man dressed as Merlin to host the festivities. I sat at the end of the table during my birthday meal, wearing a wizard hat. As my cake was presented to me, I felt only elation and glee as I took in a breath and blew out my candles. Life was good. 6 Years Old My favorite part of the day during this jubilant period of my life was our afternoon trips to the park. Specifically, Serrania Park. This park was beautiful and green, with concrete pathways cutting through fields of grass and a fun playground for us kids to play in. I always took to playing on the slides, and sometimes I would go on the swing, though my father had to push me. I remember getting jealous of other boys who were able to swing by themselves, boys who were even younger than myself. It was the second time I realized my lack of physical capability. The first time I had such an inkling of my shortcomings were those disastrous football sessions at Dorsett House. Eventually, my father got around to teaching me how to swing by myself, and after some practice, I was able to do it. After that, I would always soar up and down on that swing in the Serrania park playground well into the hour of twilight. I was very small and short statured for my age. I never gave this much concern during my early childhood, but this fact fully dawned on me the day my family took a trip to Universal Studios. At the time, I loved dinosaurs. I was fascinated by them. I had just recently watched the movie Jurassic Park, and when I found out that there was a Jurassic Park themed ride at Universal Studios, I couldn’t wait to go on it. We queued up in the line and waited for an hour. When reached the front, the park staff presented me with a measuring stick, and I didn’t fit the requirements. I saw other boys my age admitted onto the ride, but I was denied because I was too short! The ride that I was so excited to enjoy at the theme park was forbidden to me. I immediately fell into a crying tantrum, and my mother had to comfort me. Being denied entry on a simple amusement park ride due to my height may seem like only a small injustice, but it was big for me at time. Little did I know, this injustice was very small indeed compared to all the things I’ll be denied in the future because of my height. We resorted to trying out the E.T. ride, which I was admitted to. I had a miserable time on this ride, however, because the dark atmosphere and the mechanically moving alien statues that lined the queuing area scared the hell out of me. By the time we got to the actual ride, I was crying in fright, but later calmed down as the ride turned out to be mild and relaxing towards the end. I always enjoyed my family’s get-togethers with the Humphreys. These get-togethers became a common occurrence in my life. Maddy became a very close friend of mine. She was the only friend from Farm School who I continued to see after I graduated. They had a huge back yard area, and the two of us would go on adventures. She also grew up watching The Land Before Time, and we would watch the sequels together whenever they released a new one. Sometimes when I went to her house, she would have other female friends there, and I played with them too. I had no trouble interacting with girls at that age, surprisingly. My six-year-old self was playing with girls, unbeknownst to the horror and misery the female gender would inflict upon me later in my life. In the present day, these girls would treat me like the scum of the earth; but at that time, we were all equals. Such bitter irony. It was now time for me to start First Grade. My parents enrolled me at Serrania Avenue Elementary School, which was just down the street from Serrania Park. I wouldn’t remain at this school for long, however, because only weeks into my First Grade year, my parents decided that they were going to move to Topanga. Most of the kids at Serrania Avenue school will end up going to Taft High School nearby, a place that will cause me great suffering in the future. Perhaps some of the kids in my class at Serrania will end up turning into those who would bully me at Taft. I don’t remember any of the kids from my class there, so I will never know the answer to that. It’s very disturbing to think about. I quite enjoyed my brief time at Serrania. My parents sometimes made me stay an hour after school; I believe this was because they figured it would help me make friends. I can remember this after-school playtime being a positive experience. There were always games that I played with the other kids. And thus I was a bit frustrated when my parents told me they were going to transfer me to another school after only a couple of weeks of settling into Serrania. That frustration would soon cease, because the years that I would spend at Topanga Elementary school would be some of the best years of my life. The last years of being a carefree child. I started First Grade at Topanga Elementary School a couple of weeks before we prepared to move to Topanga. Topanga is a secluded, mountainous community surrounding a canyon that runs through the Santa Monica Mountains, located in between the San Fernando Valley and the Pacific Coast Highway. We had only passed through this community a few times, when we would take trips to the beach. It has a certain rugged beauty about it. On my first day at Topanga Elementary, I was very nervous. Since it was about a month after the first grade term started, I was going to be the “new kid” at school. I remember the nervousness taking over my body as my mother drove us up the steep road that led into the school proper. My new class was just lining up to start the day as we walked onto the main courtyard. My teacher, Mrs. Matsuyama, was very nice and understanding. My mother said goodbye and I got in line with the other students. The first kid I saw there was a chubby boy named Bryce Jacobs, who was staring at me strangely. As we got to class, Mrs. Matsuyama assigned one of the students to show me around and help me adjust. This student happened to be none other than Philip Bloeser. Philip was always very mature for his age, and he was nice to me on my first day. He became my first friend at Topanga Elementary. The day turned out to be one of great fun. Class time was not too boring, and we did some fun arts and crafts activities. For recess and lunch, there were two playgrounds: the Upper and the Lower. The first and second graders would go to the Lower playground, and the third, fourth, and fifth graders would go to the Upper. The Lower playground was smaller, but it had some nice amenities, especially the sloping hill to the side of it, where I would enjoy running up and down “kicking dust”, a game I instantly created due to the dust-like dirt on this hill. When my mother came to pick me up, I recall having so much fun that I didn’t want to leave! That’s a first. In the past, I was always eager to go home after spending hours at school. The drive to and from school was a long one, or at least long for my six-year-old self. My favorite part of the drive was the descent from Topanga into the Valley. The view of the broad expanse of the Valley was breathtaking as it opened up before us after clearing the final hill. I would make that trip through the winding roads of Topanga Canyon every day for the next couple of weeks, before we moved to the new house. Sometimes my mother would pick me up, and sometimes my nanny would. I don’t remember the name of this nanny, as she was only with us for a brief period of time. I loved the new house the moment I laid eyes on it. It was a beautiful, round, wooden house located up the road from Valley View Drive, in the better part of Topanga. It had two stories, a swimming pool, and a lovely deck that provided a view of the lush mountains. I instantly named it the “Round House”. I was sad to leave our house in Woodland Hills, our first house in America. I would miss the good times I had there, playing with Maddy and my other friends, swimming in the pool, the close proximity to Serrania Park where I spent a lot of time enjoying the elations of a carefree childhood. Our new Round House in Topanga, however, turned out to be a worthy replacement. My room at the Round House was a bit smaller than my old one, but I remember it being very cozy. Shortly after we moved in, Ah-Mah came to visit from England, and she baked my favorite peanut cookies. We had some very happy times during the beginnings of my life there. My father’s new directing career was taking off quite well too, and he would go away a lot to direct commercials for prestigious companies, leaving my mother and the nanny to look after me. The only downside of this was my father’s absence from my life. Despite this, I always looked up to him as a powerful and successful man. Adjusting to my new environment in Topanga was quite easy for me, especially since school was so much fun. I was now a Topanga Kid. During recess at school, I started noticing this boy with slightly long blonde hair who also enjoyed kicking dust. Before I met him, I always mentally nicknamed him the “King Arthur Kid”, due the regal look his hairstyle gave him. It was only a matter of time before our dusting kicking antics would collide with each other. We then teamed up and starting playing the game together, and this was the start of a long and interesting friendship. This boy’s name was James Ellis, and he would become my best friend for the next 14 years of my life. Sometimes, the two of us would join with Philip Bloeser and some other boys, and play fun games like handball, war games, and tag. Soon enough, I would start having frequent playdates with James Ellis. His house was just down the hill from mine. James’s father was named Arte; and his mother, Kim, became one of my mother’s best friends. Christmas arrived quickly, and for my present I got my first video game console, a Nintendo 64! I had little knowledge of video games before this. I barely knew what they were. My father is the one who introduced me to them. With the Nintendo 64, my father bought the games Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. I was fascinated with this new form of entertainment, and my father and I would bond a lot over our video game sessions. Of course, while playing these video games, my innocent, happy self knew nothing of the significant role video games would play during a large portion of my life… and the sanctuary such games would eventually provide for me from the cruelties of this world. For now, they were just a form of entertainment like any other hobby. Life was good at the round house, but soon enough I had to witness my mother and father get into a lot of arguments. I was too young at the time to understand what they were arguing about, but I knew they were not getting along. It didn’t really concern me all too much, because every other aspect of my life was wonderful. I had playdates with James Ellis every week. Sometimes he would surprise me with a visit after school, as we lived so close by. I went over to Philip Bloeser’s house a few times as well, and I met his younger brother, Jeffrey. The Bloeser’s also became good friends with my mother. They lived in a nice house up the road from our own, with a deck that provided an extraordinary view of the Topanga mountains. At some point I learned about the possibility that parents can separate… divorce… no longer live together. The prospect baffled my little mind. I once sat down with my mother on our outside deck and asked her if she and father would ever divorce. She told me it will never happen, and that I had nothing to worry about. I was relieved by that. Little did I know, such a thing would happen in only a few months time. My first grade year ended splendidly. I made a few lasting friends, and I had a blast at Topanga Elementary. I always considered myself a good, well-behaved student, so I was a bit disappointed at the few times I got in trouble. My class had a system where if we do something wrong, we would change our card color from green to yellow, and then to red if we did any more troublemaking. I thought I would never have to change my card, but I had to change it to yellow a few times for minor things. When first grade ended, I made the resolution that in second grade I will never be forced to change my card. After my last day of school, I was looking forward to a long summer break, my favorite time of the year. I was a bit dismayed when my parents made me attend summer camp. My father had to go away a lot for work, and my mother needed to have some time to look after baby Georgia. Summer camp wasn’t all that bad, I had some fun. It consisted of kids from First through Fourth grade, and we played lots of games and watched movies. 7 Years Old My last memory of my parents being together was my 7th birthday, and I would always cherish it. We didn’t have a party for my seventh birthday, but more of a small get-together for lunch. Maddy and the Humpreys were our only guests. We celebrated it at Gladstones, my favorite restaurant at the time. It was in the Pacific Palisades, right on the beach. I had my favorite meal, lobster. It was a very happy day for all of us. I was turning seven. That was a big number for my little mind. I had spent seven years on this fascinating world, and my life was at a good start. I had loving parents, I had friends to play with, I was having fun at school, and I had all the toys a little boy could want. A stranger would look at this seven year old boy and think that he has a great life in front of him, that there is nothing to worry about. Indeed, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about… But I was just a child. I still had a few more years to enjoy life in carefree bliss before I would eventually discover how twisted and cruel this “fascinating world” really is. My parents seemed happy that day. I remember them laughing and having a good time. It would be the last time I remember them being happy together. Perhaps they really weren’t, perhaps they were just putting up a front so that I could enjoy my birthday. I couldn’t even fathom the possibility of my parents separating. Very shortly after my seventh birthday, the news came. I believe it was my mother who told me that she and my father were getting a divorce; my mother, who only a few months before told me that such a thing will never happen. I was absolutely shocked, outraged, and above all, overwhelmed. This was a huge life-changing event. My father was to stay at the round house, and my mother would move to another smaller house in Topanga. It was arranged that me and my sister will mostly be living with our mother, and we would go to father’s house on the weekends. My father was required to pay child support to my mother so that she can look after us. My life would change forever after this. The family I grew up with has split in half, and from then on I would grow up in two different households. I remember crying. All the happy times I spent with my mother and father as a family were gone, only to remain in memory. It was a very sad day. Just like the move to the U.S., it would be like starting a whole new life with a new routine. Despite the initial sadness I felt from my family splitting in half, my new life situation wasn’t all that bad. It was still practically the same life, though I lived with my mother in one house and my father in another. My mother’s new house was small and red in color, located up a steep driveway from Topanga Canyon Boulevard. I would call it the “Red House”. It was the smallest house I’ve lived in at that point. It only had two bedrooms, and I had to share a room with my sister Georgia. We had a bunk-bed, and I slept on the top. I was quite uncomfortable with this change at first, being used to having my own room and living in bigger houses. My mother’s kind and loving nature, however, made up for this, and she turned the household into a fun environment which I enjoyed living in. After spending the first week at mother’s house, father came to pick me and my sister up for the weekend. Georgia had become very attached to mother after this week, and she burst into tears when we drove off. I too, was a bit distressed at having to go from one house to the other every week, but I would soon get used to it. The Round House was very different without mother being there. When we entered, I felt a wave of sadness creep over me as I was reminded of my life when mother and father were together. The house was full of memories; happy, cheerful memories that were lost in the past. With my mother missing from it, there was a sense of bleakness and loss to the place. Father did his best to cheer us up. I could tell that he, too, was very saddened by the recent events. My father soon rented one of the rooms of the round house to his good friend Dan Perelli, one of his first friends in America. Dan used to live close to our house in Woodland Hills until he was struck with financial troubles, which I’m assuming is why he started renting a room from my father. I would always call him “Uncle Dan”. From this point on, Uncle Dan would stay with us as a lodger for a few years. The time to start Second Grade arrived. My new teacher was named Mrs. Weisberg, and she was very kind. The students in my class were mostly the same as my First Grade class, with only one or two new students who transferred from other schools. I made a few new friends, such as Shane and Tommy. I was very disappointed to find out that James Ellis would not be returning to Topanga Elementary for second grade. In fact, his family would be moving out of Topanga to the Pacific Palisades, where they would be renting a house from their friends, the Lemelson’s. My father’s stay at the round house was very brief. He suffered some temporary financial setbacks on top of the divorce, so he decided to move to a smaller house on Old Topanga Canyon. It was a very abrupt move, and I would never see the round house again. One day, after he picked me and my sister up from mother’s, he took us to the new house and that was it. The house was a small, two-story house in a more rustic part of the Topanga mountains. The upstairs portion had only a bedroom and bathroom, and it was rented to Uncle Dan. All around the outside of the house were very small hills and hiking trails that led up to the mountains. Overlooking these hills was a massive, imposing rock called “Big Rock”. When I first saw Big Rock, I told myself that one day I’ll climb to the top of it! I took a liking to this new environment, and every time I visited father on the weekends, I would always be outside, exploring and adventuring. There were always new places to discover in that secluded region. I didn’t venture too far into the wilderness, however, because of the danger of coyotes and mountain lions. After only a couple of months since my seventh birthday, a new and very important person would come into my life. After father picked us up from school one day and took us to his house, I saw a woman with dark hair and fair skin standing in the kitchen, and she introduced herself as Soumaya. She would become my stepmother. Father told me she would be living with us from now on. At first I thought she was just another friend who was temporarily staying with father, similar to what Uncle Dan was doing. My father having a girlfriend so shortly after divorcing my mother didn’t even occur to me. I couldn’t understand it. Soon enough, though, I realized that Soumaya was, in fact, his “girlfriend”, and they were together just like how my father and mother were together. It was the first time I learned the concept of a “girlfriend”, and it was hard to grasp. Before that, I always thought a man and a woman had to be married before living together in such a manner, and that it would take a long time for such a union to happen. Father finding a new girlfriend in such a short amount of time baffled me. I was completely taken aback. Because of my father’s acquisition of a new girlfriend, my little mind got the impression that my father was a man that women found attractive, as he was able to find a new girlfriend in such a short period of time from divorcing my mother. I subconsciously held him in higher regard because of this. It is very interesting how this phenomenon works… that males who can easily find female mates garner more respect from their fellow men, even children. How ironic is it that my father, one of those men who could easily find a girlfriend, has a son who would struggle all his life to find a girlfriend. I soon became accustomed to Soumaya being part of father’s household. She hails from the Akaaboune family, a very prominent family from the country of Morocco. For the initial period of her being a new member of the family, we got along well, and she was quite fun. But soon she would start to discipline me in a harsh way that I wasn’t used to. I felt that because she wasn’t my real parent, she had no right to discipline me in such a way, and so I rebelled. That’s where the first conflicts arose. There would be many more to come in later years. Along with the addition of Soumaya, I had two new nannies. The first nanny was a French woman named Celine, though she was only with us for a brief period, so I don’t remember much of her. My second nanny was a German woman named Christine. Christine would stay with us for a year, and I became very fond of her. She would always look after me during my time at father’s house, and whenever I went on my adventures into the hills, she always accompanied me. Halloween this year marked my first time going Trick-or-Treating. My mother took me to my friend Shane’s house, and we walked around his neighborhood collecting candy. Still obsessed with dinosaurs, I dressed up as a dinosaur for that Halloween. Trick-or-Treating was a new thing for me, as it wasn’t so popular in England. When it was all over, I was amazed that I had so much candy. Even though James Ellis no longer went to Topanga Elementary, he was still my best friend, and I saw him a lot. Mother would take us to his house in the Palisades almost every week, where I would play with James, and Georgia would play with James’s sister Sage. He got me interested in a new phenomenon that gripped many children of the era: Pokemon. When I got my first Gameboy console, I started playing Pokemon Red Version, and I was hooked instantly. I then started collecting Pokemon cards, and James and I always compared and traded them. The Pokemon anime cartoon became my favorite show on television. It was a very fun, captivating hobby, and every boy at my school had a folder of Pokemon cards. It provided something to have, something to show off, something to talk about. The best cards were the “shinies”, and everyone coveted them. Mother was still friends with George Lucas, so we got invites to the red carpet premiere of Star Wars Episode 1. I always was and always will be a huge Star Wars fan. I had already seen the original trilogy many times, and I considered myself very lucky to be able to go to the premiere of the new Star Wars movie. It was an absolutely astonishing experience. It was just me and my mother – Georgia was too young, so she stayed at home with a babysitter. Episode 1 is infamous for being the lesser movie of the three new prequels, but as a kid I enjoyed it very much. Afterwards, I met some of the actors, and I shook the hand of Jake Lloyd, the actor who played Anakin Skywalker in the movie. My Second Grade year flew by like a breeze. I don’t remember much of it, but I did have a blast. During recess and lunch, I played a lot with Shane and Tommy. We would play Pokemon on our Gameboys, and sometimes we would have playdates where we played Nintendo 64 games such as Banjo Kazooie, Super Mario 64, and Donkey Kong 64. I failed in my goal of never having to change my card, which really disappointed me. I went through most of the year without changing my card, but right when the year was about to end, I was caught talking in class with a friend named Danny Dayani, who sat next to me, and I had to change my card to yellow. I blamed Danny for it, because he was always talking in class, but I still had to change my card. After a fast and fantastic year, summer came quickly, and with it my 8 th birthday. My 8 th birthday was mellow, but pleasant. I remember my mother inviting a few of my friends from my second grade class and we had a cake. During my weekend at father’s house, we all went to the restaurant Typhoon in Santa Monica to celebrate it. It was quite a fancy restaurant next to a small airport, and they had a lot of exotic dishes that I tried. 8 Years Old As I was now eight-years-old, father decided that I was old enough to climb Big Rock. Whenever I was at father’s house, I would always see Big Rock looming in the distance, and I was just itching to climb it. I had already conquered every other rock in the area… there was only Big Rock left. And so I set out with father and a few of father’s friends to finally climb to the top. The furthest I had climbed on this rock was about half way up with Christine. There was a very steep rise which I wasn’t able to ascend without some help. The second half of the journey was quite a challenge, but it was so exhilarating! I was very nervous the higher we climbed. The best part, of course, was reaching the top, and the sense of accomplishment I felt. I finally did it! Looking down, I could see the vastness of the Old Topanga Canyon region, and father’s house looked tiny down there. I was too scared to venture close to the edge, and I felt a sense of dread at the prospect of falling from such a height. The way down was even more challenging, but I felt so proud of myself for climbing that rock that it wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. I was very excited to start Third Grade. As Third Graders, we now got to play in the Upper Playground of Topanga Elementary, and I considered myself one of the “big kids”. The Upper was vast, with a bigger playground, more handball courts, and four basketball courts. My classroom was located in a bungalow adjacent to the Upper, and my teacher was named Mrs. Buntin. She was a young teacher; I believe she was in her late 20’s. Being used to having very old teachers, I was surprised at how young my new teacher appeared. I continued to play with the same friends during recess and lunch, where we would spend our time comparing and trading Pokemon cards. In the midst of elementary school, I didn’t interact with girls much, but this was normal. I was at that period of life where the boys played with the boys and the girls played with the girls, completely separate from each other. Girls were the last thing on my mind. Maddy was still the only friend I had who was a girl, and I only saw her on the occasions when our families would have a get-together, which became more and more rare after Maddy’s parents divorced and Paul Humpreys moved back to England. It was as if the girls in elementary school were part of a separate reality. Despite not having much interaction with them, they treated me cordially, as they treated all other boys of my age. This was fair, and I was content with this. I hadn’t gone through puberty yet, and so I had no desire for female validation. My eight-year-old self had no inkling of the pain and misery girls would cause me once puberty would inevitably arrive and my sexual desires for girls would develop. Sexual desires that would be mercilessly spurned. Some of the boys in my class would grow up to be embraced by girls, while I would grow up to be rejected by them. But at that moment in time, we were just innocent children growing up together. All innocence is destined to be shattered and replaced with bitter brutality. I was living in ignorant, innocent bliss. And I was happy with it. This period of my life, aside from my early childhood in England, was one of the best periods. Life was fair and life was satisfying. As kids, proving our self-worth and gaining validation among our peers was achieved in a fair manner, by how good we were at the games we played, or how big our collection of Pokemon cards were. No one had unfair advantages. This was perfect, and this is how life should be. And… boy did I have a lot of fun. James’s family had to move to yet another house in the Palisades, and mother would always take us there. She became great friends with James’s parents Kim and Arte. James and I would battle on our Gameboys, trade Pokemon cards, and walk to the recreation center down the street to play in the pool, and then for dinner we would all go to the restaurant Mott’s in the center of the Palisades. I was quite proud of my collection of Pokemon cards. I had gained a few “shinies” over the last few months, and I enjoyed showing them off to other boys. Shiny cards came randomly in card packets our parents would buy for us. The card that I coveted the most was the Charizard card, and one morning when my mother opened a packet for me and I looked through the new cards… there it was. It felt like the best day ever, and I was swelled with excitement. I jumped up and down all around the Red House, and I couldn’t wait to show it to James, who already had a Charizard himself. Through being friends with James Ellis and going to his house a lot, we became acquainted with the Lemelson family, who were family friends of Kim and Arte. The Lemelson family is a very wealthy family who has been financially helping James’s family for a while. Rob Lemelson is the son of Jerome Lemelson, the inventor of the bar code, and his net worth is in the hundred-millions. Rob’s son, Noah, is our age and great friends with James, and eventually I became friends with him too, though we would never be close friends. Sometimes we would all go to the Lemelson’s house, also in the Palisades, and the three of us played together. For Halloween, we went to the Lemelson’s for Trick-or-Treating, and from then on it would become tradition to go Trick-or-Treating with them. I dressed up like a dinosaur again, because I couldn’t think of anything else to be. I wanted to dress up as Ash Ketchum from Pokemon, but no store had that costume in stock. The Palisades was full of wealthy families, so the candy they gave us would be in much larger amounts, obviously. I remember competing with James and Noah as to who would get the most candy at the end. Afterwards, we would have dinner at Rob’s house, and then we would dump our candy in piles on the floor to examine what we got. That was my favorite part of it. Early in my Third Grade year, my mother would often take us to a festival near Topanga Canyon Boulevard, where small concerts were held and people barbequed great food. A friend of hers had something to do with these events, and I played with the son of this friend. He was named Riley Anapol, and he was two years younger than me. A First Grader. I played with some other younger kids there as well, peers of Riley, and I had a good time. Riley became a common friend for a while. The significance of this is that Riley Anapol would eventually become someone I would harbor a great hatred for. Riley would grow up to get lots of girls, and I would grow up to be rejected by girls. But back then he was a friend, a peer, and we were playing together as equals. It’s funny how the world works. When the holidays arrived, my father announced that we were going to take a family vacation to Soumaya’s home country of Morocco and meet her family there, and afterwards we were to stop by in England. I wasn’t excited about Morocco, since I didn’t know much about it except that it was in north Africa, and I wasn’t too excited about the fact that we’ll be staying there for six weeks either, which meant that my entire winter break would be spent in a foreign country that I knew nothing about. But of course, I had no choice in the matter, and Morocco was added to the list of the many countries I’ve been to at such a young age. I looked forward to visiting England afterwards and seeing family there. Morocco was very strange and foreign to me, even more so than Malaysia, which was more westernized. I found it to be very backwards, though it had a lot of culture and the people were friendly. I remember disliking a lot of the meals, but enjoying the deserts and pastries. Soumaya’s parents were divorced, though they lived walking distance from each other in the Kasbah, a historic community located in the center of Tangier. Soumaya’s mother, Khadija, has a small but elegant house, and her father, Abdesalem, has a very large, almost castle-like house that is famous for being a location where a scene from James Bond: The Living Daylights was shot. This fascinated me, as I was a huge James Bond fan at the time. In the center of this house there was an open courtyard where I always played with a kid named Ayman, and his two younger brothers. They were adopted by Soumaya’s father a few years ago and live with him. After a long stay in Morocco – too long in my opinion – we made our stop in England to visit relatives. We stayed at grandma Jinx’s house, and I was able to play with my cousin George for a few days. On one of the days we stayed in England, my mother’s sister, Aunt Min, and my grandma Ah Mah came to visit and brought me a lot of English chocolates which I relished. All in all, it was a good trip and I was glad to be able to experience it, though the length of the trip cut into my school schedule, and I missed a couple of weeks of school. After the holiday season, my nanny Christine had to leave back to Germany, and this saddened me deeply. Chistine would always be my favorite nanny, and I was in a sullen mood on the day she left. The remainder of my Third Grade year went by quickly. I continued my Pokemon endeavors, increasing my card collection and progressing on the Gameboy game. I had a conflict with my friend Shane during this time. Because of some arguments we previously had, I started to play a game with him in which he would become my enemy and rival at the school. For me, I was just playing with him, but he took it seriously and the conflict escalated a lot more than I thought it would. We once got into a small physical fight in which I hit him on the arm and was sent to the principal’s office. That was the biggest trouble I’ve been in at Topanga Elementary. This little conflict with Shane lasted for the rest of Third Grade, but we would later reconcile and play again as friends in Fourth Grade. Before summer came, my father’s spontaneous career as a commercial Director took off once again, and he became very successful. At this point, he was probably the most successful he’s ever been. With this success, he decided to move to a bigger and better house. After doing some searching, we moved to a house in an upscale area of West Hills, near Woodland Hills. I loved this house at first sight. It had five bedrooms, which was more than enough space for our family along with Uncle Dan who was still staying with us. It also had a huge swimming pool with a spa, a large grass field to play in, a basketball court, and a nice view of the Valley. I was a Valley kid again. Despite father’s move to a much larger house and all the benefits that came with it, I still preferred my time at mother’s house, just because of her gentle and fun attitude and the energy of her household. My mother indulged in me more than my father and Soumaya ever did. She knew what I liked and what I didn’t like, and she would go out of her way to make my life pleasant and enjoyable. I was quite annoyed with the recent decision between my mother and father to extend my stay at father’s by two days of the week. From that point on, me and my sister would only be at mother’s house from Monday to Thursday, and on Thursday night we would go to father’s house until the following Monday. My 9 th Birthday was spent at father’s house, and father and Soumaya threw a party for me. They invited a few of my friends from Topanga Elementary, though the only friend I remember being there was Philip and his younger brother Jeffrey. James was invited, but he wasn’t able to make it. They also invited a few of Georgia’s friends, which really annoyed me, since it was my birthday, and not Georgia’s. It was quite an eventful party, and it took place in our backyard. My father hired a magician to perform tricks for everyone. 9 Years Old My ninth year was very interesting, and I went through a lot of changes emotionally and intellectually. It was the year in which I matured to a point where I would start observing the world more conscientiously. Before I turned nine, I was living life as a carefree child in a world that I thought was only good and pure. From this point onwards, I would gradually discover more about the world and society. I would face problems and frustrations that I wouldn’t even think about before. My life would still be positive and bright, however, and I would live it to its fullest. The first frustration of the year, which would remain for the rest of my life, was the fact that I was very short for my age. As Fourth Grade started, it fully dawned on me that I was the shortest kid in my class – even the girls were taller than me. In the past, I rarely gave a thought to it, but at this stage I became extremely annoyed at how everyone was taller than me, and how the tallest boys were automatically respected more. It instilled the first feelings of inferiority in me, and such feelings would only grow more volatile with time. I desperately wanted to get taller, and I read that playing basketball increases height. This sparked my brief interest in basketball, and I would play it all the time during recess and lunch in the Upper. Most of the basketball courts were unused, so I would play it by myself, or with anyone who cared to join me. During my time at father’s, I would spend hours playing basketball at father’s basketball court, shooting hoop after hoop long into the evening, and I also remember lying on the ground in the basketball court trying to stretch my body as much as I could in between basketball sessions. When I played basketball at school, some boys would join me, and when they did I saw that they were much better at the sport than me. I envied their ability to throw the ball at double the distance than I could. This made me realize that along with being short, I was physically weak compared to other boys my age. Even boys younger than me were stronger. This vexed me to no end. My fourth grade classroom was located in the center area of the school, and my teacher was named Mrs. Gill, who had an assistant named Mr. Devine. Fourth grade was a strange year due to the emotional problems I would go through, and I didn’t have as much fun at school as I did in previous years. In class, I sat near Keaton Webber, and I got into a few conflicts with him. We weren’t quite enemies, but I disliked him intensely and I would always consider him a foul prick. By nature, I am a very jealous person, and at the age of nine my jealous nature sprung to the surface. During playdates with James, sometimes he would have other friends over as well, and I would feel very jealous and upset when he paid more attention to them. Feeling left out, I would find a quiet corner and start crying. My mother and Kim were very understanding, and did the best they could to console me. On the rare occurrence that my mother would have Maddy and Mo over for dinner, or if we would go to visit them at their house, Maddy often played with my little sister Georgia instead of me, and this too made me jealous. I remember all the times I cried when this happened. Jealousy and envy… those are two feelings that would dominate my entire life and bring me immense pain. The feelings of jealousy I felt at nine-years-old were frustrating, but they were nothing compared to how I would feel once I hit puberty and have to watch girls choosing other boys over me. Any problem I had at nine-years-old was nirvana compared to what I was doomed to face. A few months into fourth grade, it was decided by my parents to change me and my sister’s living arrangement yet again. This time, we would be switching between mother’s house and father’s house each week. One week would be spent at mother’s, and the next at father’s. This was a fair split. At first I wasn’t so sure about it, because I always disliked any change to my life, but I found it to be a better arrangement. This enabled me to spend weekends at mother’s house, during her week, and I was very excited about this. I’ve only ever spent weekends at father’s beforehand. During father’s week, I would mostly be looked after by our two new nannies, Rosa and Amparro. They were of South American origin and didn’t speak much English, but they were very kind. I started to have intense conflicts with Soumaya. I hated the rules she imposed on me, which I believed she had no right to impose, as she wasn’t my true parent. I hated how she would force me to drink milk every morning and very foul-tasting soup for dinner. I made such a fuss about having the soup that she used it as a punishment. Whenever I did something wrong, she would force me to drink the soup. I once had a playdate with Philip at father’s house, and when I yelled at my sister because she was annoying us, Soumaya punished me by sending me to my room for an hour, embarrassing me in front of Philip. After this incident, I never had a playdate at father’s house ever again. This conflict with Soumaya started a trend in which I would love being at mother’s house and dread the weeks I had to spend at father’s house. On top of the conflicts with Soumaya, father was rarely there, as he was always out of town for his work. After spending a nice week at mother’s house, I would cry when Sunday came and I had to go to father’s on Monday. I would then spend the entire week at father’s house looking forward to going back to my mother’s. I remember those Mondays when my mother dropped me off at school for the first day of father’s week… I felt so sad that I cried when I saw my mother’s car driving away. Of course, I would hide the tears to avoid embarrassment at school, but I would feel miserable for that whole day. I always had a pleasant experience during mother’s week. She always arranged playdates for me, because she knew I was too shy to initiate them myself. She always made everything fun. On weekends after dinner, we would have “treat time”, where she would bring out a box of candies for me and my sister to choose from. I had a lot of playdates with Philip, and through Philip I also played with his brother Jeffrey, who was two years younger than us. While Philip was calm and mature, Jeffrey was the complete opposite. Jeffrey Bloeser was wild and boisterous, which often brought a lot of fun to my playdates with Philip. My mother once had a party at her house and invited all of our family friends. James Ellis came over, and so did Philip and Jeffrey. It was the first time I saw all of them together, and it made for an interesting experience. I got a bit jealous, however, when Philip and Jeffrey seemed to respect and pay more attention to James than they did to me. When we were playing on my Nintendo 64 and I was competing against James, they rooted for James, which really upset me. As my fourth grade year approached its end, my little nine-year-old self had another revelation about how the world works. I realized that there were hierarchies, that some people were better than others. Of course I was subconsciously aware of this in the past, but it was at this time of my life – at nine years old – that I started to give it a lot of thought and importance. I started to see this at school. At school, there were always the “cool kids” who seemed to be more admirable than everyone else. The way they looked, dressed, and acted made them… cooler. These “cool kids” as I called them, included Keaton Webber, Matt Bordier, Michael Ray, Trevor Bourget, Zalman Katz, John Jo Glen, and a few more. They were cool, they were popular, and they always seemed like they were having a good time. The peaceful and innocent environment of childhood where everyone had an equal footing was all over. The time of fair play was at its end. Life is a competition and a struggle, and I was slowly starting to realize it. When I became aware of this common social structure at my school, I also started to examine myself and compare myself to these “cool kids”. I realized, with some horror, that I wasn’t “cool” at all. I had a dorky hairstyle, I wore plain and uncool clothing, and I was shy and unpopular. I was always described as the shy boy in the past, but I never really thought my shyness would affect me in a negative way, until this point. This revelation about the world, and about myself, really decreased my self-esteem. On top of this was the feeling that I was different because I am of mixed race. I am half White, half Asian, and this made me different from the normal fully-white kids that I was trying to fit in with. I envied the cool kids, and I wanted to be one of them. I was a bit frustrated at my parents for not shaping me into one of these kids in the past. They never made an effort to dress me in stylish clothing or get me a good-looking haircut. I had to make every effort to rectify this. I had to adapt. My first act was to ask my parents to allow me to bleach my hair blonde. I always envied and admired blonde-haired people, they always seemed so much more beautiful. My parents agreed to let me do it, and father took me to a hair salon on Mulholland Drive in Woodland Hills. Choosing that hair salon was a bad decision, for they only bleached the top of my head blonde. When I indignantly questioned why they didn’t make all of my hair blonde, they said that I was too young for a full bleaching. I was furious. I thought I looked so silly with blonde hair at the top of my head and black hair at the sides and back. I dreaded going to school the next day with this weird new hair. When I arrived at school the next day, I was intensely nervous. Before class started, I stood in a corner franticly trying to figure out how I would go about revealing this to everyone. Trevor was the first one to notice it, and he came up to me and patted my head, saying that it was very “cool”. Well, that was exactly what I wanted. My new hair turned out to be quite a spectacle, and for a few days I got a hint of the attention and admiration I so craved. My interest in Pokemon faded away at this time. In third grade, Pokemon was considered “cool” and everyone was playing it. Towards the end of fourth grade, I found out that everyone was growing out of Pokemon, and the only ones who played it were the geeky kids. I heard some kids joking about how lame Pokemon players were, and I decided it was time to quit. I talked to James about this. He was still interested in Pokemon, so I gave him my Charizard card as a gift, and as an act of my resignation from the game. Pokemon gave me some really happy and memorable experiences, but it was time to move on. I then started to notice that all of the cool kids were interested in skateboarding. I had never even ridden on a skateboard before, but if I wanted to be cool, I had to become a skateboarder. I expressed this to my parents, and my father was glad that I was showing an interest in an active sport. He took me to the store Val Surf on Ventura Boulevard to buy me a new skateboard, and I was fascinated by all of the different choices. I settled for a red Val Surf branded Skateboard, and they took it down from the wall and built it for me. I was thrilled to have this new skateboard and the possible chance it gave me to be a cool kid. It was time to start practicing. I found it very hard to even ride on it in the beginning, and I spent many hours outside trying to get the hang of it. And that was that, I was now a skateboarder, though not yet good enough to reveal myself as one to the kids at school. This was the start of an obsession to copy everything the supposed “cool kids” were doing. Part 3 The Last Period of Contentment Age 9-13 Fourth grade ended, and once the summer started, I took a vow to mold myself into the coolest kid I could possibly be by the time Fifth grade began. I anticipated the approval the other cool kids would have of me once I reveal myself as being similar to them, and I looked forward to it. After about a year and a half of living in the house on Hatteras St. in upper West Hills, my father decided to move into an even better house. This time, all of us spent a day looking at open houses together as a family. We went with a real estate agent and examined some beautiful homes around Woodland Hills. My favorite one was a 3-story house on Llano Drive, in the Woodland Hills Heights, the most prestigious area of Woodland Hills that bordered Calabasas. It didn’t have a pool, but it had a sloping backyard almost three-times as large as our current one. The house had six bedrooms, and I took an intense liking to one particular bedroom that had its own bathroom and a personal balcony. My father showed extreme enthusiasm about possibly buying this house, and I became obsessed with getting that particular bedroom as my own room. When I brought it up with father and Soumaya, they said that the room would most likely be Georgia’s because it was closer to the master bedroom. They said that I would get a bedroom downstairs, one without my own bathroom or balcony. I was furious, and I threw a huge crying tantrum. Soon enough, father went ahead with the decision to buy this house. I made a big deal about the possibility of not getting that lovely bedroom I wanted, and I kept sulking to father and Soumaya about it. When they finally moved and the first week of father’s at this new house started, I was very anxious. But then, as we entered, father and Soumaya surprised me and revealed that they decided to give me the room I wanted. I was so happy! I danced and leaped with joy all over the house, and then I went to my new balcony and looked out at the beautiful view of Woodland Hills for an hour. After the move to this new house, father would never move again, and he still lives there to this very day. I would have many important experiences there for the next decade, both good and terrible. I needed a skateboard for mother’s house too, and so my mother took me to Val Surf and bought me a gray Val Surf skateboard. I would use this skateboard much more than the red skateboard I had at father’s house, since I had all of my playdates during mother’s week, and mother would make more of an effort to indulge in my new interest, eventually taking me to skateparks every weekend. I became very excited about my new hobby, and I shared it with James Ellis and Philip Bloeser, my two main friends. I wanted to get them interested in skateboarding as well. It was tricky to get James into it, but he soon got his own skateboard, and we would start skateboarding together around his neighborhood. As I now considered myself a skateboarder, I wanted to dress in the clothes that all the cool skateboarders were wearing. My mother took me to Val Surf once again, this time to shop for new shirts. I picked out a few that had the logos of skateboard companies on them. Later that day I put on one of my new shirts, and I was thrilled to start going around in it. I felt cool. At father’s house, I was introduced to a new nanny who would be living with us. Rosa and Amparro left back to their home countries a few months before we moved house. This new nanny was an African American woman named Tracy. She had a very fun personality, and I always had a pleasant time when she looked after us. She was able to drive, unlike my previous nannies, and so she would be the one who would always pick me up from school during father’s week from that point on. Uncle Dan had a quarrel with my father, and he was forced to move out. I would never see him again after that. Tracy would, in a way, replace Uncle Dan as the lodger who would live at father’s house. Early in the summer, father forced me to attend summer camp at an elementary school nearby our new house. This school was Bay Laurel Elementary School in Calabasas. I hated the prospect, and I vehemently protested it. The last thing I wanted to do was spend my coveted summer at a school where I didn’t know anyone. I was starting to like going to father’s house a lot more after moving to our lovely new house with my exquisite new room, but this decision of father’s made me dislike my weeks there again. At mother’s house, I had it my way more often, and that’s how I wanted to live. I hated having to go to camp during the summer, and I was miserable at the start, but a couple weeks into it I made friends with two brothers named Thomas and Tyler. On mother’s week, I spent more and more time practicing skateboarding, and I had lots of playdates with James where we would skateboard together. We also had a lot of fun playing Nintendo 64 games, such as Donkey Kong 64, Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, James Bond Goldeneye, and many more. He also got me interested in collecting Beanie Babies. At first I thought such a thing was very lame and girly, but we used them to fuel our imagination and have mock battles and wars with each other. It was our secret hobby that we told no one about. I was relieved when summer camp ended, and once it was over my 10th birthday arrived. I had been on this world for a decade, and what a decade it was… full of discovery, fun, and happy adventures. I can’t say the same for the following decade. I didn’t have a party for my 10th birthday, and I believe I celebrated it during mother’s week. We went out with James and his family to a restaurant in the Palisades. 10 Years Old I was eager to re-bleach my hair to a fully blonde color, after the disastrous failure of my previous attempt. This time, Soumaya took me to the right salon, and they gave me a short haircut and bleached all of my hair blonde. When I looked at myself in the mirrior, I felt an intense level of satisfaction. I went to James’s house soon after I acquired my new hair color, and the look of surprise on his face when he first saw me gave me a good laugh. A couple of weeks later, my hair started to grow and my black hair would show at the roots, but the blend turned out to suit me well, and this would become my hairstyle for the next year. Mother took me and my sister on a short vacation towards the end of the summer. We drove up the 101 Freeway to Ventura, where we stayed at the Holiday Inn (which has now been replaced by the Crowne Plaza). I found the hotel to be comfortable and luxurious. It was located right on the Ventura Promenade, a beautiful walkway along the beach that led to a long pier. At this stage, I was very enthusiastic about my new interest in skateboarding, and I took my skateboard with me. I enjoyed practicing on my new skateboard all along the Ventura Promenade. During this trip, mother took me to my first skatepark, which was called SkateStreet. It was humungous, and I was awed by all the towering ramps. I attended a beginner’s class, and the instructor taught me the basics of riding on these ramps. I was absolutely terrified at first, but by the end of the class, I was able to go up and down the smallest of them, and I had a blast. When we got back to the hotel, we had a nice room-service dinner, and then the three of us watched the movie Finding Nemo on the hotel television. It was a lovely little trip. Before Fifth grade started, I went with my father and Soumaya to a dinner party at their friend’s house. I forgot who these friends were, but it was a nice house in Beverly Hills. There were lots of guests, and I did what I usually did at such dinner parties… I sat around eating snacks and talked with my sister, sometimes going to father and to ask for a sip of wine. During this party, I found myself having a conversation with father, Soumaya, and one of the party guests, a boisterous middle-aged man who I can’t recall the name of. Father and Soumaya were talking about how I just turned ten years old, and we discussed life and what the future had in store for me. This man we were talking to… he patted me on the back and told me that I have a great life ahead of me. With a grin on his face, he told me that “in the next ten years, you’ll have a great time… a great time”. I had no idea what he meant by that. I wasn’t even thinking about my future at that point; I was living in the moment. Now I know what he meant. Childhood is fun, but when a boy reaches puberty a whole new world opens up to him… a whole new world with new pleasures, such as sex and love. Other boys will experience this, but not me, it pains me to say. That is the basis of my tragic life. I will not have a great time in the next ten years. The pleasures of sex and love will be denied to me. Other boys will experience it, but not me. Instead, I will only experience misery, rejection, loneliness, and pain. At that moment in time, I didn’t think much about this man’s comment. I don’t even remember who he was. But after those ten years have passed and I’ve experienced what I’ve experienced, I can’t help but think about that moment. If only I knew what was in store for me, right then and there. It was time to begin Fifth Grade. It started out excellently. My teacher was named Mrs. Damart, and she would always be very kind to me. For the first week of Fifth Grade, I was at mother’s house. I considered myself to be very “cool” by now. I had gotten better at skateboarding, I had blonde hair, and I dressed like a skateboarder. I felt great anticipation for what the cool kids would think of me once they saw my transformation. To my disappointment, no one really cared. They were all in their own worlds. I don’t remember any kids showing recognition of my new “coolness”. Eventually, I was regarded differently than I was in Fourth grade, which I became content with. The cool kids talked to me more, and I started hanging out with them during recess and lunch. When father’s week came, I felt frustrated because I didn’t have enough cool clothes there, and it took a while for me to get father to find the time to buy some for me. Mother always got me what I wanted, right when I wanted it. At mother’s house, all of my needs were met with excellent precision, whereas at father’s house, there would always be a time delay because father and Soumaya had less time for me, and paid less attention to me. Shortly after my Fifth grade year began, my mother decided to move out of the Red House to a small house in Woodland Hills. This new house was located on Topanga Canyon Boulevard, near Dumetz street. Father’s house was just up the hill from there, so it was practically walking distance to father’s house. I would miss the Red House, despite its smallness and the fact that I had to share a room with my sister. I had some very good times there. This new house was more convenient. It was still a two bedroom house, but one room was big enough to be split in two, and so by having a wall built in the middle, my sister and I each got our own room. As I got better and better at skateboarding, my mother made an effort to take me to a skatepark every week. By now, skateboarding wasn’t just a sport I was doing to copy the cool kids. I was truly interested in the sport. I even had hopes and dreams of becoming a professional skateboarder. That became my life goal. I loved skateboarding so much. I pictured myself doing amazing tricks in front of a cheering crowd, just like I saw Tony Hawk do in some videos. I pictured the admiration on their faces, and it was awesome. The skatepark my mother took me to was Northridge Skatepark, and she would take me there every Friday. Northridge Skatepark was an average-sized outdoor skatepark with fine wooden ramps. First, we would have dinner at the Northridge Mall, and then I would sign up for the 7pm to 10pm session at the skatepark. I usually went alone, but after a few weeks of going I made a few acquaintances there, and people knew me. This became a Friday tradition during mother’s week. On the following Saturday, James usually came over for a sleepover. We would play Nintendo 64 games like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Donkey Kong late into the night, and then on Sunday morning mother would take us both to Skatelab, an indoor skatepark in Simi Valley. James had become really interested in skateboarding too, or so I believed. I was always better at it than him though, and I liked it that way. This was the way every weekend went during mother’s week, and I had the time of my life. I was so interested in skateboarding that I took my skateboard trick-or-treating for Halloween. My costume, of course, was myself as a skateboarder. We went to the Lemelson’s for a nice dinner and then set out to collect our candy. It was quite tricky to hold a bag full of candy while skateboarding, but I had fun. I remember some teenagers seeing me on my skateboard and saying “why didn’t I think of that”. Hah, that was gratifying. For Christmas, my mother bought me the new Playstation 2. I had been wanting it for a long time, and when I unwrapped the present and saw the box, I felt so elated. Beforehand, the only video game console I played was the Nintendo 64 (and the Gameboy, if that counts). The Playstation 2 was much more advanced in graphics, and it amazed me. When mother announced that I would have to share it with my sister Georgia and that I can’t keep it in my room, my excitement turned to indignation, and I threw quite a tantrum. After crying for a bit, I calmed down and settled to sharing it with Georgia. She wouldn’t be using it much anyways, I told myself. Even after getting a Playstation 2, I still played my Nintendo 64 a lot because I loved the games I had for it, and I had an emotional attachment to it. The Nintendo 64 was the first video game console I played, and it would always have a special place in my heart. One day during winter break at father’s house, father and Soumaya went out for a few hours and left me and my sister with Tracy. When they came back, they had a little puppy with them, and announced that it was our new pet. It was mainly a present for Georgia. Georgia had been desperately asking father for a pet puppy for the last year, but I didn’t think he would actually go through with it. I was so shocked that we now had a dog. I was always afraid of dogs when I was little, and I never imagined having one as a pet. The only pets I’ve had previously were my turtle and iguana, who both died within a year of acquiring them. Georgia was given the choice on what to name the puppy, and she named it Lucky. I thought this was a very lame and stupid name. When I returned to school after the winter break, I noticed that all the cool kids had another interest: Hacky sacking. It was a simple sport consisting of kicking a bean-sack into the air as many times as you can without it landing on the floor. They all had hacky sacks, and they would spend recess and lunch kicking them with each other, since skateboarding wasn’t allowed on school grounds. I didn’t have a hacky sack, and I decided that I needed to do something about that. Mother took me to the store Pac Sun where I got a hacky sack with an orange and green design. When we got home from the mall, I started practicing. I remember struggling with it first, but I spent the next few afternoons concentrating on getting good at it. I spent many hours well into the night practicing in my backyard. Once I was able to kick the hacky sack properly, I made a big deal of the fact that I was now interested in it. I would go up to the group of cool kids and show off my skills, and I played with it every single minute I spent outside during school time. The Upper playground was rebuilt over the break, and there was a brand new playground to play on. I always loved brand new things, and the new playground was quite engaging. On the very first day that we were allowed to use it, I played tag with Philip Bloeser, Addison Altendorf, Bryce Jacobs, and a few others. I never really became good friends with the so-called “cool kids”. I would see them more as competitors than friends. During recess and lunch, I mainly played with Philip and his little clique which consisted of Addison Altendorf, Kevin, and T.J Tassone. I made a few Fourth Grade friends through hacky sacking, though I forget their names. I mainly played with them during recess and lunch. One day, after I stayed an hour after school at the Upper, I was hacking sacking with them and I kicked my hacky sack up onto a roof. It wasn’t first hacky sack, thank goodness, but I was quite fond of it and I was sad to lose it. I wonder if it’s still up there… No, it would have been cleared away by now. I still refused to have any playdates when I was at my father’s house due to the incident with Soumaya in Fourth Grade. Because of this, my father and Soumaya became concerned that I didn’t have any friends. Soumaya forced me to befriend some of the neighbor’s kids who lived just down the road. They would often skateboard outside of their houses. I was aghast… the prospect of walking up to a bunch of kids who I didn’t know and asking to play with them was terrifying to me. They were “cool” skateboarders, and that made it even more intimidating. Of course, I wanted to be friends with them and join in their fun, but I was too scared that they would think I’m weird. I have always been shy by nature. Soumaya didn’t understand this, and she gave me no choice in the matter. She sent me out of the house and wouldn’t let me back in until I introduced myself to them. I tried pretending that I was playing with them, but instead I would hide in a quiet street corner. To my surprise, Soumaya somehow knew I was doing this, and she came to confront me. She then got Tracy to take me down to where the kids were playing and push me into it. Tracy went up to the kids and asked if I could play with them. I felt embarrassed and timid, but they welcomed me. I always had the subconscious preconception that the coolest kids were mean and aggressive by nature, which is quite true, and I was shocked that these kids were being nice to me and letting me play with them. After a fun afternoon skateboarding around the streets of Woodland Hills, I regretted not befriending them sooner. They went to Woodland Hills Elementary School, the school my sister would soon go to. A couple of weeks later, Soumaya forced me to befriend yet another group of Woodland Hills kids. This second group lived nearer to my house, and they weren’t skateboarders, however they liked riding bikes and scooters. One of them was a black boy named Lucky Radley, who I thought was very nice at the time. I found it strange that he had the same name as my dog. He was a fourth grader, and he would later go to the same middle school as me, where he would become an object of my extreme jealousy and hatred. Looking back, I can’t believe I actually played with him as a friend in my father’s neighborhood. In the spring, uncle Jonny and the cousins came to stay at father’s house. Cousin George bunked with me in my room, and the two of us became instant friends. I hadn’t seen him since my last trip to England, and back then we were little kids. I enjoyed having a friend to play with on a daily basis without having to arrange a playdate, and the week that they stayed with us was great fun. I once took him along to play on scooters and skateboards with the neighbor kids, and we also went to the beach a lot. Indeed, it was a great week, and I was sad to see them go. I looked forward to seeing him again when we were to go on our vacation to France and England in the coming summer. After Jonny and the cousins left, Soumaya’s mother Khadija came to stay for a few months, and I was made to share my room with her, because father had converted two of the guest rooms into his office, and Tracy was staying in the downstairs room. I had an extra bed in my room, so I suppose it made sense to them. I was a bit annoyed with this at the start, but I bonded well with Khadija, so I soon became ok with it. She was like a third grandmother to me. My mother attained tickets to the red carpet premiere Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones. We received four tickets. Georgia was old enough to go, and I persuaded mother to let me give the fourth ticket to James. I was awestruck by the time the movie ended. It found it to be absolutely phenomenal. James and I talked about it for hours afterward. My life at school was starting to become mediocre again, and I became frustrated with my struggle to be cool. I didn’t have a regular group of friends who I always played with. I was like a nomad, moving from group to group and trying to fit in with each one, but never fully integrating. I feared that the cool kids didn’t regard me as one of them, and even Philip’s clique never considered me one of their core friends. Despite all of my attempts to be cool, I didn’t feel as if the other kids respected me as such. I was still quite the outcast, as I always will be. My social life changed somewhat when Mrs. Damart announced that we would have new seating arrangements in class, and the process of deciding on who sits where was up to us. Our class consisted of tables that seated about five to six people, and when our name was called randomly, we could choose anywhere to sit, meaning that everyone had a chance to sit with their group of friends. I didn’t have a core group of friends, so I was thrown into a state of panic. Originally, I was sitting at the table where Philip’s clique sat, but all of their names were called before me, and I was booted from their table. At this point, I just chose to sit anywhere, and I ended up sitting next to John Jo Glen. Matt Bordier and Danny Dayani also sat at our table. These were kids who I regarded as cool, so I was content with sitting with them. I never really interacted with John Jo Glen that much in the past. He was one of the biggest jerks of the school, next to Trevor and Keaton. We quarreled a bit at the start, but soon enough we started socializing, and I talked with him about some new games I got for my Playstation 2. We became friends when John Jo suddenly asked me if he can come over to my house. I felt happy that he asked me this… it would be the first playdate I would have without my mother arranging it for me. This would spark a fun new friendship that would last well after Fifth Grade. The random seating arrangement next to John Jo was the best thing to happen to me in Elementary School. Despite my struggles to be regarded as “cool” and my obsession with attaining such recognition, Fifth grade was my favorite school year in Elementary School. I played with more people than I ever did in previous grades, I was less shy, I wasn’t a dork, and I had an awesome time learning how to skateboard and hacky sack. It was memorable year filled with joyful experiences. I didn’t want the school year to end. Once Fifth grade was over, I will have to go to Middle School, and the prospect filled me with anxiety. My little innocent mind always looked at Middle School as something far in the future, when I grow up. I didn’t want to grow up. I was enjoying my life as a kid right at that moment. I didn’t think about the future. Kids in my class told many rumors of Middle School life that filled me with fear and sent a shiver through my spine. Even through watching movies and T.V. shows I got a glimpse of what was in store for a Middle Schooler. There was talk of girls, and how it would soon be “cool” to be popular with the girls. Girls were like completely foreign creatures to me. I never interacted with them… I wasn’t expected to. In Elementary School, boys played with boys and girls played with girls. That was what I was used to. That was my world. I heard stories of how boys are expected to start kissing girls in Middle School! Such things overwhelmed me. I tried to dismiss it as much as I could and enjoy my life in the present moment. My school arranged a camping trip for the entire Fifth Grade class before graduation day. At first I didn’t want to go because I would be away from my parents for five days, something I was never used to. I was afraid I would get too homesick. I never spent more than one night away from my parents. On the rare occasion that they had to go out of town for a few days and left me with a nanny, I would cry at night. My teacher Mrs. Damart came up to me one morning before class started and persuaded me to go, saying that the graduation trip was something I wouldn’t want to miss. It would be a once in a lifetime experience, and after some hesitation I agreed to go along. I forgot exactly where this camping trip took place. It was located at a special camping retreat somewhere in the forest to the north of Los Angeles. It was very secluded… a small village of cabins and tents surrounded by wilderness and hiking trails. For the trip there, I decided to go with my friends Bryce and Charlie in a car instead of taking the school bus with everyone else. This was much more comfortable, and I was glad to have snagged a spot in the car with them. Everyone was assigned to groups of five to share a cabin or a tent. I was originally placed in the group with Charlie, Bryce, and a few others… but that group was given a tent to sleep in. I was appalled by how drab and uncomfortable the tents looked. I wanted a cabin. So I went to my teacher and asked to be transferred to a group that was sleeping in a cabin. She placed me in a group of some cool skateboarder kids, including Michael, Sam, Trevor, Matt, and Stephen. I felt a sense of pride to be part of this group. During the daytime on this trip, the whole Fifth Grade class participated in games, outdoor activities, nature hikes, and barbeques. It was great fun. Nighttime in the cabin was like having a sleepover with five people, and it was a new experience that excited me. Before bedtime, Michael Ray took out a magazine that had pictures of beautiful model women, and all of the boys gathered around and looked at them. So… even at the early age of ten, boys were starting to be attracted to the female body. I didn’t understand this… I hadn’t yet reached that stage. I pretended to be interested just so that I wouldn’t appear uncool. All of those boys probably lost their virginity by sixteen. Damn them. The trip ended up being so fun that I didn’t cry at all about being away from my parents for so long. And finally, it was time to graduate from Elementary School. Before the ceremony, our whole class watched a video full of footage of school life throughout the year. I saw a few glimpses of myself caught in the footage, and I felt gratified. My life at Topanga Elementary School was a blast, full of memorable experiences and wonderful times. I dressed in a nice shirt with a tie for the ceremony. All of the Fifth Graders lined up and walked down an isle through the center of the Auditorium, with the audience of parents and siblings on either side. When I saw my parents, they looked so proud of me. Each student had to walk up to their teacher on the stage and receive a graduation award. We weren’t required to give a speech, to my relief. I would be too nervous to talk in front of an audience. The graduation theme song was “Time of Your Life” by the band Green Day, one of my favorite bands. Whenever I would hear this song again, I would think about that glorious day, and the memories would make me feel an extreme sense of nostalgia. In the afternoon, there was a graduation party at the Top of Topanga community recreation center, a lovely place that provided a view of the whole Valley. My mother took me to have dinner at the sushi restaurant Kabuki afterwards. It was just me and her. As we sat down at the restaurant after all the excitement, I took a moment to fully ponder over the fact that Elementary School was all over. It was done. I felt so accomplished and proud… I was happy, things were good. But along with that happiness was a feeling of sadness that I will be leaving all of those experiences behind. A whole chapter of my life had just passed, and a new one was beginning. That day was such an extraordinary day. A day to remember, a memory to cherish. For the first few weeks of summer, mother arranged playdates with various friends and acquaintances I made from Topanga Elementary, including Trevor Bourget, Matt Bordier, Charlie Converse, John Jo Glen, and Philip Bloeser. It was interesting to have Trevor and Matt over. I never thought I would have playdates with them. Matt was one of the coolest kids in the school; he was a skateboarder and a baseball player who seemed to garner respect from everyone. I envied him during Elementary School even when we were friends, and I would deeply envy and hate him later on in life, when I find out how much success he would have with girls. Again, I repeat, that as children we all play together as equals in a fair environment. Only after the advent of puberty does the true brutality of human nature show its face. Life will become a bitter and unfair struggle for self-worth, all because girls will choose some boys over others. The boys who girls find attractive will live pleasure-filled lives while they dominate the boys who girls deem unworthy. Matt Bordier will go on to live a life of pleasure. Girls will throw themselves at him. And I will go on to be rejected and humiliated by girls. At that moment in time, we were just playing together as children, oblivious to the fact that my future will be dark and his will be bright. Life is such a cruel joke. My mother continued to take me to Northridge Skatepark every Friday, and I also attended a skateboard camp at Pedlow Skatepark for a couple of weeks. At this camp I bumped into one of the kids I played with around father’s house. I had been trying very hard to get better at skateboarding, but when I saw that there were boys a lot younger than me who could do more tricks, I realized that I sucked. I was never good at sports or any physical activity, and when I discovered skateboarding, I thought that finally here was a sport that I could excel in and even became a professional at. It crushed me a little inside to see that I was a failure at skateboarding after more than a year of practicing it. I could never master the kickflip or heelflip. All I could do was the ollie jump and ride down a few ramps. I saw eight-year-old boys at the skatepark who could do a kickflip with ease, and it made me so angry. Why did I fail at everything I tried? I asked myself. My dreams of becoming a professional skateboarder were over. I felt so defeated. Because of this, my interest in skateboarding slowly faded away during this summer. James had recently told me that he was no longer interested in the sport, so I no longer had him to skateboard with anyway. I just decided to forget about it for the moment. James’s family moved to a new house in Malibu. The house was owned by the Lemelson’s, and they were staying in it temporarily. Mother took us there a few times where I adventured with James in the wilderness area that surrounded the house. We would often go to a small plaza in the center of Malibu. There was a playground there, with a few shops and restaurants surrounding it. It was time for my 11th birthday. I was at mother’s house and just decided to have a small playdate for my birthday. I invited James over, along with another kid who I had befriended at the Woodland Hills recreation center. My mother made a small cake, I blew out the candles, and that was it. I was eleven years old. 11 Years Old The trip to France and England began shortly after my birthday. We had been talking about it for a while at father’s house, and I was really excited to go. We traveled on Virgin Atlantic Upper Class. I was extremely enthusiastic about this, as I always loved luxury and opulence. We stopped by in England for a couple of days to say hello to grandma Jinx. The cousins weren’t there, they were already in France, so it was a bit boring. When we arrived in France, the feeling of wonder and curiosity swept over me as it always did when I visited a foreign country. The last time I was in France, I was only a few weeks old. This was the first time I was able to truly experience the country. France was a whole different world, and it was a world that I liked. French culture is so exquisite and refined compared to American culture. After booking a couple of rooms at a small Inn near the town of Toulouse, we met up with Jonny and the cousin’s at Aunt Jenny’s house. Aunt Jenny is my father’s sister, and the last time I saw her was when I lived in England, before the move to America. She had a few kittens in her house that I loved to play with. George and I immediately resumed our friendship that started in the spring. There was a vast forested area surrounding the house. George told me there were lots of wild boars in the forest, so we went “wild boar hunting”. It was just a game, and we never ended up seeing any boars at all, but the suspense of possibly finding one was what made it fun. We stayed in Toulouse for about a week, and then we said goodbye to the relatives and set off to tour the country. We toured many cultural towns and stayed in castle-style hotels. This should have been a great experience for me, but my conflicts with Soumaya soured it. There were a few incidents in which she punished me by making me stay in my hotel room while she, father and Georgia all went out to dinner at a restaurant. I hated her for this. On the way back, we stopped at grandma Jinx’s house in England for a week. The cousins were there this time, and it was a lot of fun. We all slept in one room, so it was like having one big sleepover. One day we went on a trip to a museum, where I had an argument with Soumaya. She shouted at me in front of George and threatened to punish me. This was so embarrassing that I fell into a miserable mood for the rest of the day. I always loved traveling, but I learned that traveling with Soumaya just ruins the whole experience. And this wouldn’t be the last time I would be forced to travel with Soumaya either, to my utmost dismay. The trip lasted three weeks in length, the perfect length of time for a vacation, in my opinion. I quite enjoyed it, if I don’t count the times Soumaya ruined it. It felt nice to be back home after a long, cultural vacation. At father’s house, my nanny Tracy got into an argument with father, and she was forced to leave. I was sad to see her go. She was always pleasant and fun to be around. Once Tracy left, Georgia and I would no longer have any nannies. We were getting too old for it. I wasn’t a little child anymore… having nannies became a thing of the past. From now on, if father and Soumaya had to go out to a dinner party, they would just hire a baby-sitter to look after us, and soon I would be old enough to stay by myself in the house. I got a haircut, and this time I decided not to bleach my hair blonde. The black hair always grew out anyway, so the full-blonde look only lasted for a couple of weeks. Having blonde hair seemed to have lost its spark, so I just didn’t bother with it anymore. The summer was pleasant and relaxing, but it quickly came to an end. The time for Middle School had come. My fear of this day haunted the back of my mind all summer. I was enrolled at Pinecrest Middle School for Sixth Grade. I had mixed feelings about going to this school because I didn’t like my experience there during kindergarten. Father said it’s the best option for me, because it was a small private school. I didn’t want to go to a large school like Hale Middle School… that would have been too overwhelming for me. On the first day, I was shaking with anxiety and fear. I didn’t know what to expect. Transitioning to Middle School was a big deal for me, even more so than starting elementary school. I was much older and I cared more about what people thought of me. I was no longer an innocent little child who didn’t have to worry. I had to worry about a lot of things, and oh, did I worry! It was a whole new school full of people I didn’t know. They all previously went to elementary school together, so most of them already knew each other. That made me even more nervous. The only person I knew who was going to Pinecrest was a geeky kid named Nate Grossman, who I didn’t really interact with that much in Topanga. I also felt an intense fear of what Middle School life would be like. I didn’t know how to act around girls, I didn’t know what was cool anymore, I had no friends there. I simply didn’t know what to do. I felt like I was walking into a snowstorm without a coat. My parents led me into the school to say goodbye, and then it was time for me to start my first class. I had to take multiple classes with different teachers now. This was also a new concept for me and it made me extremely uncomfortable. Since this was a private school, I had to wear a uniform, something I hadn’t done since going to Dorsett House in England. I thought of this as a good thing though… I didn’t have to worry about what I would have to wear on the first day. For the first few days, I withdrew into a defensive shell and didn’t really talk to anyone. I did observe, however. I observed how everyone acted, who the “cool kids” were, what they were like… and it was all so intimidating. The social challenges that I faced in Fifth Grade were intensified tenfold. I noticed that there were two groups of cool, popular kids. There were the skateboarder kids, such as Vinny Maggio, Ashton Moio, Darrel, Wes, and Alex Dib. And then there were the boys who were popular with girls, including Vincent, Robert Morgan, and Oren Aks. They all seemed so confident and aggressive. I felt so intimidated by them, and I hated them for it. I hated them so much, but I had to increase my standing with them. I wanted to be friends with them. I also observed the girls. I was still very short for my age, and most of the girls were taller than me. I hadn’t reached puberty yet, but I was starting to admire female prettiness. There was one group of pretty, popular girls, and they all seemed to like hanging out with that boy Robert Morgan. I didn’t yet desire girls sexually, but I still felt envy towards Robert for being able to attract the attention of all the popular girls. What was so special about Robert Morgan? I constantly asked myself. I thought all of the cool kids were obnoxious jerks, but I tried as best as I could to hide my disgust and appear “cool” to them. They were obnoxious jerks, and yet somehow it was these boys who all of the girls flocked to. This showed me that the world was a brutal place, and human beings were nothing more than savage animals. Everything my father taught me was proven wrong. He raised me to be a polite, kind gentleman. In a decent world, that would be ideal. But the polite, kind gentleman doesn’t win in the real world. The girls don’t flock to the gentlemen. They flock to the alpha male. They flock to the boys who appear to have the most power and status. And it was a ruthless struggle to reach such a height. It was too much for me to handle. I was still a little boy with a fragile mind. Thinking about such things would only crush my innocence, and it eventually will. But not at this point. I subconsciously wanted to enjoy my childhood as much as I could, so I tried not to think about this new revelation and enjoy life in the moment. I put it all aside, to be pondered over later. My whole world had changed. The “cool” thing to do now was to be popular with girls. I didn’t know how to go about doing that. Skateboarding, I was able to do… dressing well, that was simple… But attracting attention from girls? How in the blazes was I going to do that? I didn’t even understand what was so special about it either, but everyone seemed to place so much importance on it. This made me even more shy, and I became known as the “shy new kid.” Thankfully, some kids started reaching out to me, and I had a few chances to integrate within a couple of weeks. The first boy to talk to me was Brice Miller. He asked me if I had any friends at the school, because he always saw me alone. I admitted that I had no friends, and he offered to be my first friend. I was very grateful for this. Once again, I used skateboarding as a way to increase my standing, telling the skateboarder kids that I knew how to skateboard and that I could do some tricks. This got them to treat me more cordially. I even talked to Robert Morgan a few times, who I hated and yet subconsciously revered for being so popular. Whenever a so-called popular kid would say a word to me or give me a high five, I felt immense satisfaction. Inevitably, I started to become known to the girls of my school; and surprisingly, they treated me quite well. It was a huge relief. Middle School would be the last time in my life where I wouldn’t be completely invisible to girls. All of the pretty girls had a peculiar habit of hugging boys they knew as a form of greeting, and some of them hugged me. I didn’t understand why, but it felt like the best feeling ever. I was one hundred-times more satisfied from getting a hug from a pretty girl than getting a high five from a popular boy. It was a new experience that enraptured every fiber of my being. The 7th and 8th grade girls were especially kind to me. I guess they thought I was “cute” in a boyish sort of way. This made my initial experience of Middle School much better. I decided to attend the school dance in early October. A school dance was completely foreign to me. Elementary Schools didn’t have them, of course, and I only knew about them from watching typical American shows on television. I thought it was something I had to do in order to be cool. I was very nervous, naturally, but I pushed myself to go ahead with it. When I got there, Robert Morgan saw me and asked me if I wanted to hang out with his group. I was grateful for this, and I ended up having a nice time. I was shocked that some 7th and 8th grade girls offered to dance with me. They came up to me in a group and taught me how to “slow dance”. I had to place my hands on their hips, while they placed their hands on my shoulders, and we would move slowly with the music. They were all taller than me, and I was terrified, but it felt so… good. That would be the only time in my life where I would have a satisfying experience with girls. The only time. Halloween of this year marked the last time I would ever go trick-or-treating. After this year I would be too old for it. Mother took us to the Lemelson’s, and I decided to not dress up in any costume. I went as myself, sporting my black Pinecrest sweater. As it was my last time trick-or-treating, it would be the last time I would have any sort of fun on Halloween. And I did have a lot of fun. It was nice to go out collecting candy with James and Noah, like we had been doing for several years past. My father cut off a portion of the child support he had been paying my mother, which forced my mother to move house. We moved to a small blue house on Glade Avenue in Canoga Park. I didn’t like Canoga Park at all. It was a very ugly and low-class area to the north or Woodland Hills, and I felt it demeaning that we would have to live there during mother’s week. The house did have some upsides. It had four bedrooms and a bigger living room than mother’s old house. My new room was a lot larger than my old one. And of course, my mother always had her own ways of making everything better. I would still enjoy my time at mother’s small house more than my time at father’s big Woodland Hills house. Along with this move, there came a new change in our rotation schedule. My parents decided that we would stay at our mother’s house more, instead of switching one week-one week. Mother would have us for all of the weekdays, and we would go to father’s on the weekends when he was in town. Around the same time that my mother moved, James’s family moved as well, to another Lemelsonowned house in the Palisades. They would only remain in this house for a very brief period, because a tragic event would soon occur in James’s family. One day at school, I was sitting in my class when I was suddenly called to the office. My mother was there, waiting to pick me up. I got into her car, and the three of us drove out of my school and parked on the side of Shoup Avenue. She told us the dire news. James’s mother, Kim Ellis, had just passed away from breast cancer. I cried for a bit. Kim was a very kind-hearted person, and the mother of my best friend. She had been suffering from breast cancer for several years, but I never thought she would die from it. I immediately thought of how James must be feeling. He just lost his own mother! It made me think of how horrible I would feel if the same thing happened to my own mother, just the thought alone filled me with pain. There was to be a get-together of family friends at James’s house that night, in honor of Kim. On the way, I thought about how I would approach James on the subject. The amount of grief he must be feeling… I couldn’t even imagine it. The last similar experience was the death of my grandfather, and I was only four years old then. When we arrived, I looked for James, and found him sitting in his room. I gently offered my deepest condolences for his loss. He remained very strong, obviously hiding his emotions. He looked very sad, in an extremely stoic sort of way. He told me he fully accepted what had happened, that his mother was dead and that was the end of it. That was all we spoke on the matter. We tried not to think about it for the rest of the night, and later on I played tag in his backyard with him and some of his friends. I remained very shy during my Sixth Grade year, and I would always be labeled as a quiet kid. I wasn’t able to establish any friends that I could have playdates with, so the only playdates I had was with old friends from Topanga Elementary. This filled in the social void, and I was content with it. I tried my best to improve my social situation during school time. A few girls continued to pay attention to me, saying hi as I walked by them and occasionally giving me hugs, but I felt bitter at the fact that I wasn’t able to truly hang out with them like the popular boys were doing. In order to not be seen as a complete loner at school, I ended up making friends with a kid named Connor Hanrahan. Connor was not a popular kid, because girls didn’t like him. Despite this, he was one of the most pompous assholes of the school, even more so than any of the most popular boys. Connor was a true bully. I started hanging out with him during recess and lunch, and we made a few jokes with each other and had a few good laughs, but he would always push me around and act tough. I was so timid back then that I didn’t care. I just wanted someone to hang out with. When I stayed back after school one day, my mother saw me with Connor when she came to pick me up. She has been concerned about me not making any new friends at Pinecrest, and I suppose she was relieved to see me with a “friend”. She invited Connor to come over to my house, which he accepted. I was a bit hesitant to invite anyone from Pinecrest to my mother’s house, because it was located in Canoga Park, a bad area, and most of the kids at Pinecrest were upper-middle class who would look down on me for living there. But I couldn’t back out of this once my mother invited Connor. He came over and all went well, we played a few video games for a couple of hours. But after that playdate, he would always rip on me for living in a “poor” house. He would also tell other kids at Pinecrest about it. This infuriated me to no end, and I would keep proclaiming that my father lives in a prestigious threestory house in the Woodland Hills Heights. I became vehemently obsessed with proving to Connor and everyone else that I wasn’t poor. I went so far as to bring pictures of my father’s house to school. I even considered inviting some people over to father’s house, but I remembered my vow of never doing that due to the possibility that another incident would happen with Soumaya, like the one that occurred years ago. It was at eleven years old when I first started using the internet on a regular basis. The internet was still considered a new phenomenon at the time. Before eleven, I roughly knew how to browse websites and use email, but once I fully immersed myself in it, it really fascinated me. The popular social networking tool at that period was AOL instant messenger, or “AIM”. I made my first AIM account on my mother’s computer, and she would let have one hour a day to explore it. I joined a few chat rooms. The prospect of talking to strangers from a computer was new and astounding to me. Towards the end of sixth grade, I still hadn’t made a group of friends who I could see outside of school. The only social interactions I had outside of school were playdates with old friends from Topanga every now and again. Joining chatrooms through AOL temporarily filled in the social void for a few weeks. This will definitely not be the first time I would try to fill in that void with the internet. Once I established myself in the chat rooms, I made a few friends who I instant messaged frequently. Most of them were in middle school and some were in high school. I also talked to a few people I knew from Pinecrest over AIM. One friend who I met through a chat room suddenly emailed me pictures of beautiful naked girls, telling me to “check this out”. When I looked at the pictures, I was shocked beyond words. I had never seen what beautiful girls looked like naked, and the sight filled me with strong and overwhelming emotions. I didn’t know what was happening to me. Was it the first inkling of sexual desire in my body? I was traumatized. My childhood was fading away. Ominous fear swept over me, and I stopped talking to that person. As the Sixth Grade year came to a close, I felt dissatisfied and insignificant. Indeed, a whole new world had opened up before me, and I had no idea how to prevail in it. I still wanted to live as a child. I never established any proper friends at Pinecrest, and the only playdate I had was the one with Connor that my mother arranged, and that turned out to be a disaster for me. My mother and father both showed concern that I wasn’t making any friends, but because I still saw some friends from Topanga, they didn’t make a big deal out of it. I consider Sixth Grade to be the better year out of the three years I would spend in Middle School. Girls actually paid attention to me. They knew who I was and I didn’t feel like I was completely invisible. I was extremely shy with girls and could barely have a conversation with them, but I still interacted with girls more during this year than I would for any following year. The cool kids treated me nicely, despite my reputation as the “quiet kid”. I always felt like a loser compared to them, and I hated them for it, though I still wanted their approval. I wanted to be one of them… I wanted to be their friend. The closest I came to truly being one of them was when Vinny and Robert both invited me to their birthday parties, which were only a couple of weeks apart at the very end of the school year. Both parties were at Skatelab skatepark. I hadn’t been to Skatelab for about a year, and when I walked in, all of the memories of going there with James filled my mind. I hadn’t even skateboarded for a while, but after a few minutes on the ramps my ability came back like magic. They were all quite impressed. I bet they thought I would end up sucking at it. I was happy to prove them wrong. Indeed, Sixth Grade was the peak of my life at Pinecrest. It would only go downhill from there. My mother bought me a brand new video game console, the Xbox. I heard a lot of kids talking about how great the Xbox was at school, so I was really eager to have one. I liked the Xbox much more than the Playstation 2. The graphics were better and the games were more to my taste. With the Xbox, I got the game Halo. At first, I found Halo to be very difficult and I gave up on it a few times. I had no idea that Halo would soon become one of my favorite video game series that I ever played. I was extremely happy and relieved when summer came. Middle School was much more stressful than Elementary School, both socially and academically. Summer would provide a well-needed break from all of it. I started seeing some old friends from Topanga more frequently. Among these were John Jo Glen and Charlie Converse. Charlie wasn’t really one of my main friends at Topanga Elementary. I had a few playdates with him here and there, but not that many. It was only until after Fifth Grade graduation that our real friendship began. He always had a charming and humble personality, and he was well-liked by everyone at Topanga. He came over to my mother’s house a few times after I got my Xbox, where he tried to help me get past the hardest level on Halo. John Jo and Charlie were very close friends with each other, and eventually I would start to see them at the same time. John Jo invited me to his father’s apartment in Hollywood for a sleepover. I found his apartment to be very dingy, but I had so much fun that I didn’t even care. He lived just across the street from the huge Scientology building. We got together with a group of his friends and snuck into the building’s courtyard at night to play hide-and-seek tag. This was the first time I had been out having fun with a group of kids my age without any adult supervision. It was very amusing. When we went back to his apartment, we played Conker’s Bad Fur Day on the Nintendo 64. The Nintendo 64 was a very old console at this point in time, especially after I now had an Xbox and a PS2, but I was entertained by Conker’s Bad Fur Day so much that I asked my mother to buy it for me the next day. James Ellis moved yet again to another house in the Palisades. After the death of his mother, James’s father Arte quickly made the decision to move again. Arte rented a small house on Temecula Street, near the renowned Palisades Bluffs. There they would remain for a very long time, and all of the most significant experiences I would have with James in the future would take place there. At this time, though, I wasn’t seeing James that much. We slowly drifted apart after we lost our common interest in skateboarding. We still considered each other friends, and we would still see each other occasionally, almost as a courtesy. But our friendship would be at a standstill during our middle school years. I was enjoying a lovely summer, but suddenly my mother said that I had to go to summer camp at Pinecrest. This was a decision she made with my father, because they thought it would be healthy for me. I didn’t like this one bit. It was a last minute decision. One moment I was relaxing and enjoying my summer break, the next my mother is waking me up early to take me to my first day of camp at Pinecrest. Gratefully, summer camp would only last for four weeks. Summer camp at Pinecrest was located at the Elementary School section, and I recognized my old kindergarten class. It was a mix of middle school and elementary school kids, and I made a few friends with some kids who were younger than me. At this camp, an incident happened that would scar me for life. The first time that I was treated badly by a girl occurred at this camp. I was innocently playing with the friends I made, and they were tickling me, something people always did because I was very ticklish. I accidently bumped into a pretty girl the same age as me, and she got very angry. She cursed at me and pushed me, embarrassing me in front of my friends. I didn’t know who this girl was… She was only at Pinecrest for summer camp… But she was very pretty, and she was taller than me. I immediately froze up and went into a state of shock. One of my friends asked me if I was ok, and I didn’t answer. I remained very quiet for the rest of the day. I couldn’t believe what had happened. Cruel treatment from women is ten times worse than from men. It made me feel like an insignificant, unworthy little mouse. I felt so small and vulnerable. I couldn’t believe that this girl was so horrible to me, and I thought that it was because she viewed me as a loser. That was the first experience of female cruelty I endured, and it traumatized me to no end. It made me even more nervous around girls, and I would be extremely weary and cautious of them from that point on. Before summer camp ended, I saw that same girl hanging out with Oren Aks a few times. Oren Aks was one of the popular kids in my grade. I hated Oren so much when I saw him with her. It made me feel so inferior… that this girl was mean to me and yet she liked Oren. Thankfully, Oren wouldn’t be returning to Pinecrest for Seventh Grade, and I would never see him again. I wonder what became of him… I bet he lived a good life. I felt relieved when summer camp ended. That experience with the mean girl ruined it for me. Hell, it ruined a part of my life. Whenever I think about summer camp I would think about that girl, and my emotions would flare up. My 12th birthday followed. I decided not to do anything for it. Mother took me and my sister out to a Japanese restaurant to celebrate it. Twelve seemed like a big number to me back then. One more year and I would be a teenager. It was hard to believe. 12 Years Old For the rest of the summer, I resumed my routine of relaxing and having playdates. I tried to forget about what happened at summer camp as much as I could. John Jo came over to my house, where he slept over for the first time. We played a few video games, and then he told me that he wanted to take me to a place called Planet Cyber, a cyber café that had all of the best online PC games. I knew nothing of the sort, but it was just down the street from my mother’s house. I walked there with him, eager to experience something new. This was my first experience with online gaming. Playing video games with people over the internet invoked a whole new level of fascination in me. Talking to people over AIM was fun and new, but this… this was tremendous. I always loved playing multiplayer mode on video games when I had friends over. With online gaming, I could do it whenever I want. I was a novice to these new games on the PC, but I got the hang of it after playing with John Jo for a few hours. The games we played were Day of Defeat and Counter Strike. Mother took me and Georgia on two little vacation trips in the same week. For the first trip we went to Long Beach, where we stayed at the Hyatt hotel. It reminded me of our little trip to Ventura two years previously. We visited the Harbor and the aquarium. The three of us really bonded on this trip. We went home for a couple of days before going on the second trip. For the second trip, we went to Legoland and stayed at the resort there. The resort was exceedingly beautiful, with a huge swimming pool and spa. We met up with a family of one of Georgia’s friends and explored the entirety of Legoland. When we got home from our marvelous trip, I had another sleepover with John Jo. He loved the fact that I lived near Planet Cyber, so he would soon be calling every week, asking to come over. I saw Charlie a few days later. Charlie was also familiar with Planet Cyber, and when the two of us went there, he introduced me to an RPG game called Diablo 2. I didn’t know what to make of this game, it was like an adventure game similar to Banjo Kazooie and Donkey Kong, but much more mature, with the ability to interact with other players online. It was only a matter of time before I started inviting John Jo and Charlie to sleep over at the same time. When the three of us went to Planet Cyber as a group, I had an absolute blast. It was one of the best experiences of my life. At father’s house, father would frequently invite his new friend Alexander Bubenheim over. Alex Bubenheim was a boisterous German man who worked as a composer and lived in the Top of Topanga community. Alex had a son named Lukas, who was a couple of years younger than Georgia. Lukas was a very girly and immature little boy, but I found him to be very amusing. They would come over almost every weekend that I was at father’s, and become a big part of my life there. Seventh Grade began. My coveted summer break was all over. On the first day, I noticed some people I met during summer camp start school there as Sixth Graders. One of them was Patrick Dib, the younger brother of Alex Dib. I would always view Patrick Dib as an obnoxious, rude lout. He was very ugly too, and it annoyed me that he carried himself around as if he wasn’t a freckled, chubby-faced imbecile. I said hello to everyone I knew from last year, including Robert Morgan and his clique of popular kids. There were also a flock of new kids who transferred from the Pinecrest in Van Nuys. I was soon to meet them. Among these were Alfred Graham, Anthony Glukov, Jonny Noone, Derek Olsen, Garrett, Rafael, and Edward. They already knew each other and always hung out together at the start of the year, but I soon noticed that each of them soon integrated into the already pre-established cliques of Pinecrest. I was jealous that Jonny Noone, an obnoxious Mexican kid, immediately became popular with the skateboarders because of his cocky attitude. Alfred Graham, a half-black boy whom I would have a semi-friendship with throughout the years was intensely disliked by everyone, mainly because he was ugly and had a habit of intentionally annoying people. He would eventually become friends with the skateboarders, however, due to his interest in the sport. My reputation as the “shy kid” continued, and I still didn’t make any friends who became close enough to see outside of school. I did socialize with various groups during school hours, so I wasn’t a complete outcast during Seventh Grade. James Ellis started middle school at Paul Revere Middle School as a Sixth Grader. Though he is the same age as I am, he was held back a year in elementary school. Coincidentally, he went to the same school as John Jo, Charlie, and a few other friends from Topanga. After this point, I would stop seeing James Ellis for a while. Our friendship became temporarily stale and would remain so for another year. The only time we saw each other during this period was when we had family get-togethers. James’s sister, Sage, often came over to play with Georgia, while James didn’t bother to come at all. John Jo and Charlie started to come over every Friday. This would soon become a tradition. Fridays were always my favorite time of the week, and this tradition made me always look forward to Fridays with intense eagerness. They would be dropped off by their parents shortly after school time, and then we would all walk to Planet Cyber and play games for hours. After a few of these Friday sleepovers, Charlie introduced me to his friend Elijah. Elijah was temporarily staying at Charlie’s house, and the two of them were like brothers. I immediately took a great liking to Elijah, and we became instant friends. He helped me beat some of the hardest levels of Halo. Elijah would then come over with Charlie and John Jo, and the four of us became a close group of friends. This was the only true social group I would ever have, and I had a great time with them. We sometimes hung out at Planet Cyber until 3:00 in the morning, the latest I had ever been out without parent supervision. We would switch between playing Halo at my house, playing games at Planet Cyber, or skateboarding around the neighborhood. I briefly got back into skateboarding for the sake of enjoying it with these friends. On the following Saturday morning, we would wake up by 9:00, have breakfast at Krispy Kreme and spend a few more hours at Planet Cyber before my friends were picked up by their parents. I would then go to father’s house for the weekend, if father was in town. My sister Georgia’s birthday was in November, and on that day my father hired a limo to pick up Georgia and her friends from mother’s house. Charlie and Elijah came over, though John Jo was absent that day. When the limo returned, we all celebrated Georgia’s birthday at the house together. I introduced father to my friends. It was a very happy experience. When the winter break finally arrived, my grandma Ah Mah came over from England to visit, and she stayed in the fourth bedroom at mother’s house. Ah Mah is just like my mother, she always knew what I liked and went out of her way to get it for me, just to put a smile on my face. She brought with her some of my favorite English chocolates, along with her famous peanut cookies that I loved so much. Mother had a party at her house, and a lot of family friends came over, including Maddy and her mom, James and his family, Philip and Jeffrey and their family, and a lot of mother’s old friends whom I hadn’t seen for a long time. Ah Mah, who is a professional cook, made some of her special dishes, and we set up a bouncy castle in our backyard. I invited John Jo, Charlie, and Elijah over, and we walked to Planet Cyber for a little bit, then walked back home and had some fun on the Bouncy Castle. James never really liked my group of friends… he told me he thought they were jerks. I suppose he was right about John Jo, but Charlie and Elijah were always nice people. Oh well, I never really liked James’s friends either, so that made us even, I guess. I had a great time during this party. James and Maddy were the last ones to leave. Me and my sister played with them for a while on the bouncy castle. It made for an interesting and peculiar experience, playing with both James and Maddy at the same time, my two oldest friends. It had been a long time since I had seen Maddy, and it would be the last time that we would ever play together as friends. Before the night was over, we all took a picture together outside my mother’s front door. James made a funny face for it, while I stood behind him awkwardly waving my hand. To this very day, my mother still has that picture in one of her photo albums. One time when John Jo, Charlie, and Elijah came over for our traditional Friday night sleepover, we met up with Armando and his younger brother Gus. I hadn’t seen them since Topanga Elementary school. We had a good time skateboarding with them at the church parking lot near mother’s house, and all over that area. Afterwards, we had some video game competitions at Planet Cyber. My mother took me to watch Lord of the Rings: Return of the King in the movie theatres. I already saw the first two movies, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the series until I saw this third one in the movie theatres. Watching that movie in the theatres was such an epic experience, and I will always remember it. Though it wasn’t as exciting as going to the red carpet premieres of the Star Wars prequels, it came quite close. After the movie, mother and I ate dinner at TGI Friday’s. When we got home, as I was getting ready for bed, I heard a knock on my door. It was Elijah asking if I wanted to go with him to Planet Cyber, which I did for a few hours. That day marked the last time I would ever go to the movie theatres with just my mother, except for premieres. Growing up, I always loved it when my parents took me to the movies. The large screen and loud surround-sound immersed me into the movie, and I liked that dizzy feeling I would feel when I walked out of a movie theatre and entered back into the real world. It was always a remarkable experience. Soon enough, the movie theatres would turn from a place of joy to a place of dread. Once puberty arrives, I would start getting jealous of all the young couples or groups of boys and girls who go to the movies together. That day that I saw the final Lord of the Rings movie was the last time I enjoyed the movie theatres in peace, without fear of humiliation. Aside from Fridays, I always met my group of friends at Planet Cyber on Wednesdays, because they were charging only one dollar per hour on Wednesdays. Usually my mother wouldn’t let me play video games for such a long time on a weekday, but she made an exception for Wednesdays. On one such Wednesday, Charlie introduced me to the game Warcraft 3. It was like no game I had ever played before. It enabled the player to build an army and battle against other players online. After the first round of Warcraft III, going up against John Jo and Charlie, I was captivated. The game was so much fun. I couldn’t help but think about it every second for the next two days. When the following Friday arrived, we played it for most of the day and well into the night. My initially happy interest in the game Warcraft 3 had an ominous tone to it. This was the beginning of a long relationship with the Warcraft franchise. In less than a year from that point, they would release their ultimate game, World of Warcraft, a game that I would find sanctuary in for most of my teenage years. Seventh Grade flew by very fast. My school life was a continuation of Sixth Grade. I mingled with acquaintances here and there and behaved nicely with everyone. The difference is that I was having so much fun outside of school with my friends at Planet Cyber that I didn’t really care about getting popular at school or getting attention from girls. I was enjoying my very last year of childhood. My twelfth year was one of the best years of my life, and the last year that I was happy. I’m glad that I can at least say I made the best of it. I gave no thought at all to my future, or the fact that puberty was just around the corner. I barely even knew much about what puberty was. With puberty, my whole world would change, and my entire life would collapse into utter despair. I wonder how I would have handled things if I knew… If was prepared… This summer was long awaited. I was having the time of my life, and once school was out I couldn’t wait to spend the summer relaxing and doing fun things. I was relieved that neither of my parents made me attend summer camp. I suppose I had gotten too old for it. This summer was mine to enjoy however I wanted. It was like a coveted treasure that I could only hold for a few moments, but those moments would last forever in memory. It was my last summer before puberty. My last summer of innocence. My last summer of true happiness and satisfaction with life. I continued my traditional Friday sleepovers with Charlie, John Jo, and Elijah. Because there was no more school, they would sometimes come over on other days as well. I managed to beat the entire game of Halo on legendary mode with Elijah’s help, an impressive feat. Philip and Jeffrey came over quite a lot as well. Philip was always the mature and insightful brother, while Jeffrey was the wild and funny one. Seeing the two of them together always made for an interesting and excitable mix. Their mother, Kathy, brought them over on weekdays quite often. We drank a lot of soda, ate a lot of candy, and played with scooters and skateboards around my mother’s neighborhood. I took them to Planet Cyber one time and showed them some of the games there. On the weekends I spent at father’s, we usually did something with the Bubenheims. They lived in the Top of Topanga community, where we often spent afternoons. I played with Georgia and Lukas in the swimming pool there, and being one who admires great views, I spent a lot of time looking out at the Valley. Going to that place would always remind me of my Fifth Grade graduation party, a good memory. Soumaya told us extraordinary news. On one sunny afternoon at father’s, me and my sister were asked to come to the dining room for a special announcement. It wasn’t announced by words, but by Soumaya indicating us to feel her stomach. She was pregnant! She and my father were having their first baby together. I was going to have a baby brother. I felt elated. I remember when I was a bit younger I always asked my father and Soumaya if they were going to have a baby, and they said they would like to. I still felt surprised when it was actually confirmed. It was that warm feeling that would envelop me when a good change happened in my life. I had no idea what it would be like, but I welcomed it. My step-grandmother Khadija came to stay with us for a second time, mainly to help Soumaya prepare for the birth. In the middle of the summer, mother took me and my sister on a vacation to Malaysia. This was the first time we would go on an overseas vacation with just mother, and I was pleased at the thought of it. We took off on my 13th Birthday. I spent my birthday on the airplane, a much more exciting birthday than the previous few. We traveled on Singapore Airlines, and though we weren’t traveling first class on this trip, I found it to be just as comfortable. The staff of Singapore Airlines knew it was my birthday, and they brought me a cake with a candle during the middle of the flight. It was a very nice gesture. We had to spend eight hours at the Singapore Airport. I thought this airport was such a pleasant place that I really enjoyed just spending time there. It was all part of the vacation experience. The airport was huge, and much more entertaining than LAX or any airport in Europe that I’ve been to. The three of us walked around and explored, went shopping, visited all the common areas, and had a nice meal at one of the restaurants. There were a lot of foreign candies and sodas that I was curious to try. Traveling with just my mother and sister was a lot less stressful than traveling with father and Soumaya. It was wonderful. When we arrived in Malaysia, we met up with my grandma Ah Mah, my mother’s sister Min and her husband Jack, and cousin Emma. They were also visiting Malaysia from England. We all stayed at a tall hotel building near the beach. After we unpacked everything at the hotel, some of my mother’s relatives who lived in Malaysia came to see us. We had a birthday celebration for me at the hotel that night. Before I went to sleep, I pondered over the fact that I was now a teenager. I had a lovely time on this vacation. Our hotel suite was on one of the highest floors of the building, and it had an exquisite deck that provided a view of the ocean. During the trip, we toured around the island of Penang, visited Georgetown, went to a fun waterpark, and had very delicious meals at many exotic restaurants. Just relaxing and watching movies at the hotel was a joy in itself. The vacation was so nice that I didn’t even miss my life at home. The three weeks flew by very fast, and I cried a little when it was over. It was a good sadness. I celebrated my birthday again at father’s house on the night we returned to America. I was allowed to have my very first glass of beer for this celebration. I always thought of alcoholic drinks, such as beer and wine, as mysterious drinks that were forbidden to children like myself. Father would let me have only a small sip of wine from time to time. Having my first glass of beer felt like a big honor. For my present, I got my first cell phone. During this era, cell phones were like a rite of passage for kids my age. I always envied the kids who had a cell phone. John Jo had a silver Sprint phone with green lighting that I always coveted. To finally have a cell phone of my own made me feel so proud. My phone was a silver T-Mobile phone with blue lighting. I loved the satisfaction I felt when I opened it up and saw the pretty lights. 13 Years Old I enjoyed the rest of the summer as best as I could. On the first Planet Cyber session after being back from vacation, I met up with John Jo. They had the new Warcraft 3 expansion available to play, and the two of us tried it out. I had a sleepover with Charlie and Elijah, and they introduced me to their friend Julian Ritz-Barr. Julian went to Topanga Elementary with us, though he was two grades lower, so I never knew him beforehand. I thought he was very cool, but a bit stupid. We competed with each other at Planet Cyber. I continued to see him with Charlie and Elijah a few more times after that. Coincidentally, Julian’s parents were friends with Rob Lemelson, and I didn’t know this at the time. A few years down the line, I would cross paths with Julian again at one of the Lemelson’s parties, where I would spitefully envy him for being so confident with everyone. When the summer ended, I cried a little. It was such a great summer. I went on a vacation, I saw lots of friends, played lots of games, and enjoyed life to its fullest. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that this was the last good summer in my life, but I still cried… as I always do after a joyful experience comes to an end. Eighth Grade began on a very mellow note. For the first couple of months, I continued on with the life I’ve been living, and things seemed ok. The main people I hung out with at school were Alfred Graham, Gavin Dowd, and Brice Miller. Alfred was just getting good at skateboarding, and he was starting to become popular with the skateboarders. He once brought his skateboard to school and landed a kickflip, the move I was never able to master in the past. I was secretly jealous, even though I insisted to everyone that I was no longer interested in skateboarding. I started to take more notice of the kids in lower grades, specifically the Seventh Graders. There was one who came in from Topanga Elementary, the older brother of one of Georgia’s friends. His name was Neil Davis. I observed the popular kids of Seventh Grade... In a way they visually mimicked the popular kids of my own grade. They were all the same, though the Seventh Graders seemed a lot meaner. I noticed that Neil Davis was starting to be friends with them, even with the pretty girls. I would gradually develop a great envy towards him. Another one was Lucky Radley, the black kid I played with in father’s neighborhood. He transferred to Pinecrest during that very year, and he immediately became popular with the pretty girls of his grade. I hated him for it. Things were getting more intense every year we grew older, and I didn’t want to grow up. I wanted to live the life I was comfortable with. I wanted to live in a world of fairness, and I tried not to accept that it would soon come to an end. The games I enjoyed playing at Planet Cyber were too powerful to run on my mother’s computer, so Planet Cyber was the only place I could play them. That was until I asked my father to buy me Warcraft 3 to install on his powerful laptop. I got the Frozen Throne expansion to go with it, and once it was installed I was able to play it on his laptop whenever he allowed me to. I thought it was really cool to actually play an online game from my own home. Father’s house became a lot more fun after this, though I hated it when Soumaya set limits on my playtime. When father invited the Bubenheims over, Alex sometimes brought his friends Gary and Antje Twinn. They had a son named Vincent, who was the same age as my sister and a good friend of Lukas. Vincent was a kind-hearted and sweet little boy who was a bit overweight. I showed him Warcraft 3 on my father’s computer. He was very interested in the game, and he would watch me for hours. He really looked up to me. We got along well. One day, I was looking up things on the internet about Warcraft 3. That is when I found out about a new, revolutionary Warcraft game coming out, called World of Warcraft. I didn’t think much of it at the time, ignorant of the effect it would have on me in my later life. Gradually, my friendship with John Jo, Charlie, and Elijah started to wane. They no longer came over as a group anymore. Our usual Friday sleepovers stopped happening, as they got more busy with other things. John Jo and Charlie slowly started to get bored of Planet Cyber, which caused them to lose their interest in coming over every week. I continued to see them individually; sometimes I would see Charlie and Elijah together, sometimes just Elijah, and sometimes just John Jo. Due to them coming over less often, I began to walk to Planet Cyber alone. I never did this before, because my friends came over so much and we would go together. I would usually play Diablo 2 or Warcraft 3 there. For a time, I did this as a routine without getting bored. Sometimes I would meet John Jo there and we would have intense Warcraft 3 competitions with each other. After a few more weeks into autumn, I began to get a bit depressed over the fact that the good times I had with my main group of friends was fading away. I started to walk to Planet Cyber alone just to reminisce such times. Sometimes I would stay there for hours into the night. I never thought I would get bored of the highly entertaining games there, but after playing them so much on my own, I was surprised that I was getting a bit bored. Good times always come to an end, and I always had a hard time accepting this fact. One time while I was alone at Planet Cyber, I saw an older teenager watching pornography. I saw in detail a video of a man having sex with a hot girl. The video showed him stick his penis inside a girl’s vagina. I didn’t know anything about sex at the time. I barely even knew what sex was. I was slowly starting to develop sexual feelings for hot girls, but I didn’t know what to do with them. To see this video really traumatized me. I had no idea what I was seeing… I couldn’t imagine human beings doing such things with each other. The sight was shocking, traumatizing, and arousing. All of these feelings mixed together took a great toll on me. I walked home and cried by myself for a bit. I felt too guilty about what I saw to talk to my parents about it. I was quite shaken for a few days. This was among the very first glimpses I had of sex. Finding out about sex is one of the things that truly destroyed my entire life. Sex… the very word fills me with hate. Once I hit puberty, I would always want it, like any other boy. I would always hunger for it, I would always covet it, I would always fantasize about it. But I would never get it. Not getting any sex is what will shape the very foundation of my miserable youth. This was a very dark day. Soon enough, I would inevitably find out about what sex was, whether I saw that foul video or not. Boys at my school started talking about it. Connor Hanrahan and his friend Jordan Carlton one day told me exactly what happens when a man and a woman have sex. Finding out about sex was just the beginning of my horrific downfall. My father and mother arranged to change our routine back to one-week, one-week. Father wanted to spend more time with us, and it was agreed that this would be the way. I was angry about this, because I felt satisfied with the way things were. If it went back to one-week, one-week, I would have to spend time at father’s even if father wasn’t there, and I hated that. I didn’t see how it enabled father to spend more time with us, because he was always going away for work anyway. But alas, I had no choice in the matter, and the arrangement was set. This is how it would remain from that point on... My living arrangement wouldn’t change again until I turn 18 and Soumaya kicks me out. When Christmas came, I told father that I would like a new computer game. Father took me out shopping for my new present. We first went to Comp USA on Victory Boulevard, but they didn’t have a large selection of games. I was on the verge of just choosing to buy Diablo 2, a game I had already spent hours on at Planet Cyber. But then, I decided that since Best Buy was just across the street, we should go and have a look at the games there. At Best Buy, I saw the game World of Warcraft. It had just come out a few weeks ago. I picked up the box and looked at it for a few minutes. The game looked amazing and alluring, so I decided to choose World of Warcraft as my Christmas present. I spent more time looking it over and reading about it on the way home. The only computer I could play World of Warcraft on was father’s laptop, but father was always using his laptop for work. I had to wait a long time to get a chance to play it. After reading the game manual, I got extremely excited to play it. It was a whole new type of game for me, an MMORPG that would enable me to make my own character in a huge online fantasy world, and it was a world I was already familiar with through playing Warcraft 3. This game was a hundred times bigger than any game I’ve played in the past. The more I read about the game, the more anticipated I became. After almost a month went by after getting World of Warcraft, I was finally able to play it. I made a WoW account with my father, and then I created my first character, a night elf druid. It really blew my mind. My first experience with WoW was like stepping into another world of excitement and adventure. It was a video game world, but they made it so realistic that it was like living another life, a more exciting life. My life was getting more and more depressing at that point, and WoW would fill in the void. It felt refreshing and relieving. I was only able to play it for a few hours for my first session. It was all I would think about when I wasn’t able to play it. Mother didn’t have a good enough computer to run World of Warcraft, so I felt a bit frustrated because of that. I thought of how awesome it would be if Planet Cyber had the game, but I doubted that it did. One afternoon, I walked to Planet Cyber with my WoW disks and asked them if they can install my disks onto one of their computers. The owner told me the game was already being installed, and I was thrilled to hear those words. It wasn’t ready yet, however, and I had to wait. I kept going back to Planet Cyber every day to wait for it, and played other games there while they were still processing it. It was a fun wait, and I knew I will eventually be able to play it. Finally, after spending three days at Planet Cyber waiting, it was ready. I loaded the game and logged onto my account. I was completely ecstatic. I spent all of my free time in the next few days playing it. The owner of Planet Cyber came to know me because of this series of events, and he named me his best customer. I invited Charlie over, and he came with Stephen, an old friend from Topanga Elementary whom I hadn’t seen for a while. I found out that they both had their own WoW accounts, and we went to Planet Cyber to play it together. I made a new character on their server just to play with them, though I would eventually discard this character. I saw Charlie only a few more times after that. Elijah was busy with some life problems and stopped coming over. John Jo simply vanished from my life at this point, for no particular reason. I can’t recall the exact last time I saw him, but it was around this period. My mother decided to move to an apartment in Woodland Hills. I reacted indignantly. An apartment! I had never lived in an apartment before, and I always thought of apartments as being poor and lowclass. I would be embarrassed to admit it to anyone. The apartment building was called the Renaissance Apartments, near the Warner Center area of Woodland Hills. We moved into a two bedroom apartment. Mother knew I was too old to share a room with my sister, so she gave me the second bedroom, and she and my sister shared the master bedroom. Leaving the blue house on Glade Avenue was hard. I had so many good times with my friends there. And to move out of it at the very time that I stopped seeing those friends… it was quite emotional. I cried on our last day there. My mother’s new apartment was not walking distance from Planet Cyber, and I was a bit embarrassed to show that I lived in an apartment, so I stopped seeing any friends. Elijah was the last person in the group who I saw. I was at Planet Cyber and he tapped me on the shoulder. It was a random meeting. The two of us talked for a bit about the new Halo 2 game, and I showed him my WoW character. That was the last time I saw him. Eventually, I lost all contact with Charlie, John Jo, and Elijah. The friends I had such a good times with for the last two years were no longer my friends. They were lost to me. I also stopped seeing Philip and Jeffrey… they simply just forgot about me, I assumed. The only friend who remained to me was James Ellis. The upside of moving to the apartment was that my mother acquired high speed internet. I was able to play World of Warcraft on her computer, along with Halo 2 on Xbox Live. This was the point when my social life ended completely. I would never have a satisfying social life ever again. It was the beginning of a very lonely period of my life, in which my only social interactions would be online through video games, with the sole exception being my friendship with James. The ability to play video games with people online temporarily filled in the social void. I got caught up in it, and I was too young and naïve to realize the severity of how far I had fallen. I was too scared to accept it. This loss of a social life, coupled with the advent of puberty, caused me to die a little inside. It was too much for me to handle, and I stopped caring about my life and my future. I even stopped caring about what people thought of me. I hid myself away in the online World of Warcraft, a place where I felt comfortable and secure. Part 4 Stuck in the Void Age 13-17 James Ellis also acquired Xbox Live with Halo 2. I started to play it with him online, and our friendship reignited after being stale for the previous year. We would meet up online after school, or on Saturday mornings. The two of us battled on Halo 2 over the internet, just like we did with our Nintendo 64 games when we were children. James would be my only friend throughout the next depressing and lonely period of my life. My friendship with James helped me cope with the loneliness. The very few fun times we would have were like a light in the darkness for me. Now that I was able to play World of Warcraft at my mother’s house with no limitations, aside from school and homework, I became very addicted to the game and my character in it. It was all I cared about. I was so immersed in the game that I no longer cared about what people thought of me. I only saw school as something that took time away from WoW. I became very bored at school, mainly due to the fact that I was still the invisible quiet kid. To alleviate this boredom, I started to act weird and annoying to people just to gain attention. I became known as the “weird kid” at Pinecrest, and people started to make fun of me, but I didn’t care. I had my online games to distract me from the harsh realities of life that I was too scared to face. The only time I did care was when a group of popular Seventh Grade girls started teasing me, which hurt a lot. One of these girls was Monette Moio, a pretty blonde girl who was Ashton’s younger sister. She must have thought I was an ultimate loser. I hated her so much, and I will never forget her. I started to hate all girls because of this. I saw them as mean, cruel, and heartless creatures that took pleasure from my suffering. At father’s house, I was forced to change my bedroom to the downstairs room that Tracy once occupied. My old bedroom was to be given to my baby brother… Soumaya was due to give birth to him very soon. I was quite annoyed at this. That room was the room that made me so enthusiastic about moving to that house. Father and Soumaya thought moving me was the best solution. The new baby would get a room close to them, and I would have the much bigger downstairs room. When I moved to the downstairs room, I slowly agreed that it was the sensible thing to do. My new room was twice the size of my old one, I still had my own bathroom, and I also had the hallway that led to it. Technically, I had the whole bottom floor of the three story house to myself. The only bad thing about this was that I would get scared to walk down those stairs at night when it’s dark… the light switch was at the bottom of the stairs. I’ve always been afraid of the dark. Soumaya gave birth to a newborn baby boy, and they named him Jazz. It happened during father’s week. While father and Soumaya were at the hospital, Alex Bubenheim picked us up from school and we stayed at his house in the afternoons. This occurred for three days, and finally, on the day of the birth, father showed up to announce the birth of Jazz. We had a little celebration, and the song “Jessie’s Girl” played from Alex’s sound system. Whenever I heard that song in the future, I would always think of that day. It was an exciting day. I actually had a brother… It was hard to believe. Technically he is my halfbrother, but I would always term him as my brother. I wasn’t as impacted by his birth as I expected myself to be, possibly because I was so caught up in my own personal and emotional changes that I was going through at that stage. Spring break came up, the first break from school since I started playing WoW. I considered myself extremely fortunate that I was at my mother’s house for that week. I disliked being at father’s house, because I had so many limits on the amount of time I could play my game. On the onset of spring break, I planned to spend the whole time on WoW, leveling up my character and forgetting about my horrible school life. I invited James to come over to my mother’s apartment for the first time. We played a round of Halo 2, and then I decided to show him World of Warcraft. He knew nothing about it. I was very eager to get him into it. WoW was his kind of game, after all. He seemed very interested. We went to father’s house for Easter Sunday. He took us to a party held by some new friends of his, the Thompsons. Alongside the Bubenheims, the Thompsons became frequent guests at my father’s dinner parties. They consisted of John Thompson, a successful film producer, and his wife Tatiana. They had three children: Isabella, the oldest daughter, was two years younger than me, and the twins Josh and Alessandra were the same age as my sister. On the first day me and my sister met them, and I believe it was on that Easter Sunday, we played with them splendidly in their backyard. But soon, after they came over a few more times, I began to have uneasy feelings of nervousness and fear around the two girls, mainly because I thought all girls hated me. The way I was treated by girls at my school played a big part in my resentment towards all of them during this time. This resentment would only grow larger the more I am treated unfairly by the female gender. Mother took us to the premiere of Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith. As a huge Star Wars fan, this was a big day for me. Episode 3 would complete the whole Star Wars saga. It was the most anticipated movie. To be able to see it before everyone else made me feel special. I really liked the character Anakin Skywalker, and I was amazed to see his epic transformation into Darth Vader on the high quality big screen. Finally having something to brag about, I told everyone at school the next day that I went to the premiere because my mother is friends with George Lucas. The problem was that most Eighth Graders thought of Star Wars as being a “nerdy” interest, and they didn’t really care. I was left frustrated and disappointed by their reaction. As middle school approached its ultimate end, I was having a miserable time there. I was extremely unpopular, widely disliked, and viewed as the weirdest kid in the school. I had to act weird in order to gain attention. I was tired of being the invisible shy kid. Infamy is better than total obscurity. The teasing I received was bittersweet. It felt horrible to be teased and bullied… it caused me a lot of pain and anger… but at the same time I got a kick out of getting so much attention. It felt good to be confident enough to pick fights with the popular skateboarder kids. It was either that, or continue to be ignored by everyone like I was in Sixth and Seventh Grade. I never knew how to gain positive attention, only negative. My experience during Middle School really darkened my view of the world, and it would only get darker from then on, as I suffered more and more. The way I was treated by girls at this time, especially by that evil bitch Monette Moio, sparked an intense fear of girls. The funny part of this is that I had a secret crush on Monette. She was the first girl I ever had a crush on, and I never admitted it to anyone. To be teased and ridiculed by the girl I had a crush on wounded me deeply. The world that I grew up thinking was bright and blissful was all over. I was living in a depraved world, and I didn’t want to accept it. I didn’t want to give any thought to it. That is why I immersed myself entirely into my online games like World of Warcraft. I felt safe there. I was so obsessed with playing WoW that I never gave much serious thought to the fact that I would have to go to High School soon. As the end of middle school neared, the prospect started to loom over me more and more. At one moment I pictured what my life in high school would be like, based on how things have been for me in middle school. It was not a bright picture. I didn’t want to have to deal with the cruelty of girls in high school, and I imagined that it would be much worse than anything I’ve ever experienced. I begged my parents to send me to Crespi Carmelite High School, a catholic all-boys school. Father took me there for a tour, and it didn’t look so bad. It was a very prestigious private school. At least I wouldn’t have to deal with any fear of girls there. We submitted an application. A few weeks later I received the news that I had been accepted to Crespi. Eighth Grade Graduation was a nightmare. Everyone was required to go up on stage and speak to the whole audience. We had to say our name, and tell everyone what school we were planning on going to. The audience consisted of all of the student’s families, as well as any siblings or friends who wished to attend. Both of my parents came, as well as Soumaya, Khadija, my sister, and even my baby brother Jazz. It took place in the evening. As I lined up, I could feel myself shaking. I was scared even to speak in front of a classroom. To speak in a microphone to hundreds of people was too much. I didn’t understand how everyone else seemed to be fine with it. I envied their bravery. When my name was called, I didn’t want to go, but it was required of me, and I pushed myself to do it. I walked up to the microphone and nervously said “My name is Elliot, and I plan on going to Crespi High School”. I heard my own voice in the speakers and saw everyone staring at me. It made me cringe. I quickly walked away for the next person to go up. It was over. Eighth Grade was over. Middle School was over. I said a few farewells to the people I knew. Alfred Graham and Brice Miller told me they were going to Crespi as well. At least I will know two people at Crespi on the first day, I thought. The thought of going to High School sent a shiver through me. I put it in the back of my mind to deal with later. After the ceremony, I said goodbye to the principal, and she congratulated me on completing middle school. On the way home, my family seemed very proud of me. I didn’t feel proud. I didn’t feel like I accomplished anything. Middle School, though it started out ok in the first two years, ended up being a disaster. For the summer break, I planned on spending the whole time playing WoW and forgetting about everything else. I reached the highest level on my WoW character: level 60. I actually considered this to be a huge and important accomplishment. I joined a guild with my character, and I made a few online friends though it. I couldn’t wait to play my character further, exploring everything the game had to offer and collecting more armor pieces and trinkets. In just a week into my summer break, my mother told me that father and Soumaya were going to Morocco, and I would be forced to go with them. This news upset me tremendously. I then asked how long this trip would be, and I was told it would be eight weeks. EIGHT WEEKS?! I could not believe what I was hearing. I threw a big tantrum. For one thing, I was never enthusiastic about Morocco. The country is very backwards, and that made me very uncomfortable. They didn’t even have the latest video games. And to be forced to go there for eight weeks? That would take up the entire summer and the first two weeks of high school. It was even longer than the last time we went, and I thought that was too long. I wouldn’t be able to play WoW at all for two whole months. The prospect devastated me. I begged my mother to not let me go, but father and Soumaya insisted on bringing me and Georgia, and my mother was probably looking forward to having two months without children to look after. The decision was made, the plans were set. They already had a plane ticket ready for me. I was going to Morocco. I bet they all knew I would protest against going, which is why they told me last minute. The last day of mother’s week was the day before we would depart. Mother took me and my sister to a barbeque at the house of her friends Alan and Rebecca. I was very sad for the whole day. I didn’t do anything at the barbeque except swing on their swing in misery. When we got home I played WoW for the very last time. I took advantage of the few hours I had left on it. My mother allowed me to stay up until midnight playing. I acquired a very nice piece of armor for my character. I didn’t want to leave it. When we arrived at father’s house the next day, I heard even more upsetting news. Father had to work for the first few weeks of summer, so he would joining us in the middle of the trip. It was only Soumaya taking us to Morocco! I always hated traveling with Soumaya. She made everything so difficult. Baby Jazz will be coming along with us, of course, and the stress of looking after a whelping baby while traveling will put Soumaya in a bad mood. I was not happy at all. As I expected, the journey there was a disaster. Baby Jazz cried a lot during the trip, and Soumaya wasn’t at her best of moods. We didn’t take First Class, and we had to make three stops; once in Michigan, again in Paris, and yet again in Casablanca, before taking a small plane to Tangier. It was a miserable journey, the complete opposite of the great time I had a year ago on the trip to Malaysia. We took a taxi to Khadija’s house right after we arrived. Khadija went home to Morocco on a different plane a few days before us, and she was already settled in. After unpacking at Khadija’s house, we walked to Soumaya’s father’s huge house where I met Ayman again. I remembered playing with Ayman on my last trip to Morocco… He grew up a lot since then. To my dismay, he was taller and stronger than me, despite being two years younger. I was always short and physically weak… that’s how it’s been all my life. We instantly became friends again after catching up a little, and I played hide-andseek tag with him and his two younger brothers. I disliked having to be in Morocco for the whole summer, but I tried to make the best of it. Ayman made the time I spent there more fun. We often went out by ourselves to explore the city of Tangier. Ayman knew where everything was, and Soumaya trusted him to show me around. Georgia sometimes came with us. We had a few good times together, and we got along well. The Thompsons joined us in Morocco a couple of weeks after we arrived. Georgia was happy that Alessandra, Josh, and Isabella were there to play with her. I was not happy about it. I was so scared of girls at that time that I kept my distance from Alessandra and Isabella. I didn’t want to admit to Ayman that I was scared of girls though, that would have been embarrassing, so I just told him that I thought they were too immature. He didn’t understand this, because I myself was very immature at the time. For my 14th birthday, Soumaya organized a small party at her father’s house. Most of the guests were her Moroccan friends, and some of them didn’t even know that the party was for my birthday. I was a bit annoyed by this. They had a cake arranged for me, and when it was brought out everyone gathered to wish me a happy birthday. That would be the last time I spent my birthday with more people than just my family. I was amazed that I was actually fourteen. Fourteen sounded like such a big number. I didn’t feel fourteen. I still felt like a kid, and in all appearances, I was. Father couldn’t even make it for my birthday. I was a bit upset about this. He came a few days after it. Once he arrived, we toured around Tangier and a few other areas as a family. Khadija and Ayman sometimes came along with us. Soumaya’s father owned a house on the beach, and we usually went there for beach trips. I caught a virus while swimming in the ocean once, which caused me to get extremely ill. I spent a whole week of the vacation in bed, aching and vomiting. I was never that ill before in my life. Whenever I would think about Morocco in the future, I thought about that horrid experience. At one time towards the end of the trip, when I had a sleepover with Ayman at Soumaya’s father’s house, he showed me some European porn videos in the middle of the night. I could observe the act of sex in much more detail than that one glimpse I had at Planet Cyber. I didn’t want to look, but my curiosity got the better of me. To see a video of human beings doing such weird and unspeakable things with each other revolted me. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. And yet, I noticed I was feeling aroused. I felt desire to do those things, to have sex with the naked women I saw in the video. It was a funny feeling that overwhelmed my whole body. I could feel my penis getting hard. This is when I noticed that I was finally going through puberty. Heavens save me. The trip was way too long, and towards the end I felt depressed and homesick. All I wanted was to go back home and play WoW, and yet I had to accept that once I did get home, I had to start high school right away. I supposed that being able to play WoW again would make up for that, though. And it would sure beat staying in Morocco for any longer. I was growing tired of it. 14 Years Old I felt a wave of relief when we arrived back in the United States. We had to travel separately from father again because he had a different flight schedule, but it wasn’t that bad on the way back because I was looking forward to playing WoW again. I only had one free day before I had to start school. When I got back to mother’s house, I gave her a big hug… That was the longest time I had been away from mother. After that, I immediately asked if I can go on her computer and play my game. I logged onto my character, which was just the way I left it two months ago. I said hi to all of my online friends and tried to catch up on everything. The dreaded day arrived all too soon. I had to start High School. School had already begun while I was still in Morocco, so I would be the “new kid” again. That made it so much worse. My father drove me there on the first day. When we got there, I was intimidated by all the huge high school boys, and I cried in the car for a few minutes, telling my father that I was too scared to get out. I had to go, and eventually I did. We walked to the main office where I ran into Brice Miller. We greeted each other before I was led up to join my first class of the day. Alfred Graham was in that class, and he helped me settle in. During lunchtime, Alfred showed me around the whole school. I started to feel a lot more comfortable. He introduced me to some of the other freshmen. In the courtyard, I met Pascal and his clique of friends. I immediately took a disliking to them. Pascal was cocky and popular, so I felt intimidated. He was like the Crespi equivalent of Robert Morgan. As I met a few more people, I ran into Keaton Webber! I didn’t expect to find any more people I knew at Crespi. It really took me by surprise. I hadn’t seen Keaton since he left Topanga Elementary at the end of Fourth Grade. Keaton was still the arrogant jerk he always was at Topanga, and he had his own clique of skateboarder friends, such as Andy Moussa and Aaron Amman. As I expected, I failed to make any new friends. I was so overwhelmed by the brutality of the world that I just didn’t care anymore. On the very first week, I had my first experience of true bullying, not just the teasing I had at Pinecrest. Some horrible Twelfth Graders saw me as a target because I looked like a ten year old and I was physically weak. They threw food at me during lunchtime and after school. It enraged me, but I was too scared to do anything about it. What kind of horrible, depraved people would poke fun at a boy younger than them who has just entered high school? I thought to myself. After the first few weeks of high school, I concluded that my time at Crespi would not be pleasant at all. I withdrew further into the World of Warcraft, neglecting my homework and spending all of my free time playing it. As a late birthday present, father bought me a new laptop that was able to run WoW. It wasn’t a very powerful laptop, but it performed adequately. This enabled me to have more time playing my game. During father’s week, Soumaya was always on my back about how much time I spent on WoW, but since my room was on the bottom floor, secluded from the rest of the house, I was able to sneak as much time on it as I could. While I was playing WoW after dinner at mother’s house once, I heard my sister watching the new show Avatar: The Last Airbender on the television. I decided to check it out. I soon found myself really enjoying it. It was a magnificent story set in a fantasy world where people can control the power of the elements. Once I watched the first episode, I was hooked on the story. Prince Zuko was my favorite character; he was a banished prince who was trying to regain his rightful place in the world. I always related to him. Avatar: The Last Airbender became my favorite T.V. show. My mother informed me that she was just on the phone to Arte Ellis, and he told her that James now played World of Warcraft. I was very pleased to hear this. I could now share my greatest interest in the world with my good friend… my only friend. I then went over to James’s house for a sleepover, which I hadn’t done for a while. He showed me his WoW character, who was only level 20. We weren’t on the same server, so we couldn’t play it together. The only way would be for one of us to start over, and we were too immersed in our characters to do that. I was fine with that. James was really fascinated by my level 60 character, and most of the time he would just watch me play, anyway. We also played a lot of Halo 2 together. Having these common interests with James reminded me of the good old days when we were children; when we were both interested in skateboarding, and before that, Pokemon. This nostalgic experience provided a small respite from my sufferings at school. My life at Crespi got even worse. Alfred and Brice apparently told everyone how weird I was at Pinecrest, and people in my own grade started to tease me. They found out that I didn’t like being called a skateboarder, and it was true. Because I failed to become good at skateboarding, I developed a hatred for the sport, and whenever someone called me a skateboarder, it reminded me of my failure and I got very angry. The whole school started calling me it just to anger me, along with other insulting names. They teased me because I was scared of girls, calling me names like “faggot”. People also liked to steal my belongings and run away in an attempt to get me to chase after them. And I did chase after them in a furious rage, but I was so little and weak that they thought it was comical. I hated everyone at that school so much. It got to a point where I had to wait in a quiet corner for the hallways to clear before I could walk to class. I also took long routes around the school to avoid bullies. My parents began to consider not letting me continue there after Ninth Grade. When winter break came, I felt like I had just landed on a peaceful island after swimming through a horrific storm. It was such a fine relief. The break was to last for three weeks, and I was sorely disappointed that two of them would be at father’s house, while only one was at mother’s. I hated being at father’s house because Soumaya became more and more suspicious of how much time I spent playing WoW, and she would place limits on my playtime whenever she caught me playing it. I wasn’t able to do my five-hour-long events to collect rare armor pieces for my character while I was at father’s house. It was during this winter break that I experienced my first masturbation and ejaculation. It was one of the most peculiar and memorable experiences of my life. At this point I was officially going through the stages of puberty, and I had lots of sexual urges. I often fantasized about hot naked girls while rubbing my penis against my mattress at night. One time, while doing this, I felt an intense stirring numbness all around my fully erect penis, and it extended all over my body. It felt magical and ecstatic, and I kept rubbing my penis on the mattress. That was when the orgasm happened. I couldn’t believe how much pleasure I felt from that. I looked down at my penis to see that my semen had poured out all over it, like a volcanic eruption of white, sticky fluid. What was happening to me? I thought to myself with nervous excitement. It was like nothing I had ever seen or experienced before, something completely out of my world. I felt really guilty afterwards, so I refrained from telling anyone about it. I started to masturbate on a regular basis. At first I only did it by rubbing my penis on my bed, but it eventually escalated to looking at pictures of girls online while rubbing my penis against my pants, fantasizing about doing sexual things with them. I didn’t know how to access any porn sites, so I would just browse regular websites until I found a picture of a hot girl to masturbate to. I developed a very high sex drive, and it would always remain like this. This was the start of hell for me. Going through puberty utterly doomed my existence. It condemned me to live a life of suffering and unfulfilled desires. Even at that young age, I felt depressed because I wanted sex, yet I felt unworthy of it. I didn’t think I was ever going to experience sex in reality, and I was right. I never did. I was finally interested in girls, but there was no way I could ever get them. And so my starvation began. The boys in my grade talked about sex a lot. Some of them even told me that they had sex with their girlfriends. This was the most devastating and traumatizing thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Boys having sex at my age of Fourteen? I couldn’t fathom it. How is it that they were able to have such intimate and pleasurable experiences with girls while I could only fantasize about it? I frequently started asking myself. This was an all-boys school… How in the hell were those boys even able to meet girls to have sex with? I wondered. I hoped they were lying. I hoped against all hope. Hearing that really shook me to the core. Words cannot describe how much hatred and envy I felt for those boys. That hatred would only fester the more I suffer from my sexual starvation. I was too scared to tell anyone about it, and I hid it well… for a time. These recent events cause me to withdraw even further away from the world. I drowned all of my misery in my online games. World of Warcraft was the only thing I had left to live for. My grades at Crespi dropped dramatically. I just didn’t care anymore. I hated that school. I didn’t think about my future. The only thing I gave any serious thought to was my WoW character. I had become very powerful in the game, and I was in one of the best guilds. With this guild, I participated in lots of five-hour raid events to collect better gear and armor for my character. Mother moved to a new house with a swimming pool that she was able to lease for a fair price. She picked me and my sister up from father’s house and took us there as a surprise. It was located near the old blue house, though in a nicer area. This was on a day that I had an event on WoW in the afternoon, and I was very concerned about whether or not I would make it in time, so when we got to the new house I didn’t even look around and immediately hooked up my laptop to play WoW. I was that obsessed. After being bullied so much in Eighth and Ninth Grade, I became more shy and timid than I ever was in my life. I felt very small, weak, and above all, worthless. I cried by myself at school every day. The very last day of Ninth Grade was the worst. I was having P.E. at the gym, and one of my obnoxious classmates named Jesse was bragging about having sex with his girlfriend. I defiantly told him that I didn’t believe him, so he played a voice recording of what sounded like him and his girlfriend having sex. I could hear a girl saying his name over and over again while she panted franticly. He grinned at me smugly. I felt so inferior to him, and I hated him. It was at that moment that I was called to the office. When I got there, my mother was waiting for me to take me home. I cried heavily as I told her about what happened earlier. That was the last day I ever set foot in Crespi Carmelite High School. Crespi was finished. I thought I could finally relax. Little did I know that the worst was yet to come. My parents shocked me with very horrible news. They were planning on sending me to Taft High School. Taft had five times as many students as Crespi, it was a public school, it had girls in it, and it had a bad reputation. I had never been so scared in my entire life. How could they do this to me, after knowing what I went through at Crespi? Taft High School would eat me alive and spit me out. I felt so betrayed by my parents. On top of that, they told me I had to go to summer school at Taft very soon. I failed a few classes at Crespi and I had to make up for them. The summer was supposed to be a time of peace and relaxation. This was turning out to be the worst summer of my life. I went with my parents to the Taft Orientation event, and it was a horrific experience. I felt so dismayed at how large the school was, and how intimidating all of the tall students were. I even begged my parents to send me back to Crespi, because I knew Taft would be much worse. I had a foul time at summer school. I remember how I used to hate it when my parents made me go to summer camp. Summer camp was like heaven compared to summer school at Taft. I got lost on the first day. I was so terrified that I hid in the hallways during break time. I spent my time at summer school gruelingly waiting to go home so I could feel safe playing WoW. My 15th Birthday was in the midst of this summer school term. I was so miserable during this period that I didn’t even give much thought to it. It was so uneventful that I barely remember anything about it. I believe I just had dinner with my mother and played WoW afterwards. 15 Years Old Toxic is the word that describes my first day of Tenth Grade at Taft High School. It was a toxic nightmare. Every single second of it was agony. I continued to beg my parents to not make me go, but it was to no avail. My father drove me there, and I didn’t want to get out of his car. He almost had to drag me out. I somehow found the will to put one foot in front of the other and walk towards that awful, ugly front building. The first week of Taft was living hell. I was bullied several times, even though I didn’t know anyone there. After being so used to wearing a polo shirt with khaki pants as a school uniform at private schools, I continued to dress like that even after leaving Crespi. I didn’t give any thought to how nerdy I looked. I was too withdrawn, like a turtle tucked into his shell. I was still in the process of going through puberty at the time, so I still looked and sounded like a ten-year-old. Such a persona attracted zero attention from girls, of course, but it did attract bullies like moths to a flame. I was completely and utterly alone. No one knew me or extended a hand to help me. I was an innocent, scared little boy trapped in a jungle full of malicious predators, and I was shown no mercy. Some boys randomly pushed me against the lockers as they walked past me in the hall. One boy who was tall and had blonde hair called me a “loser”, right in front of his girlfriends. Yes, he had girls with him. Pretty girls. And they didn’t seem to mind that he was such an evil bastard. In fact, I bet they liked him for it. This is how girls are, and I was starting to realize it. This was what truly opened my eyes to how brutal the world is. The most meanest and depraved of men come out on top, and women flock to these men. Their evil acts are rewarded by women; while the good, decent men are laughed at. It is sick, twisted, and wrong in every way. I hated the girls even more than the bullies because of this. The sheer cruelty of the world around me was so intense that I will never recover from the mental scars. Any experience I ever had before never traumatized me as much as this. I couldn’t do it anymore. On the morning before the second week of Taft started, I broke down and cried in front of my mother, begging her not to make me go to that horrible place. I was so scared that I felt physically sick. I continued crying in the car on the way there, and my mother gave in. Instead of taking me to school, we went to the café at Gelson’s in Calabasas where we had a big talk. I tried to explain how much I was suffering there. She just could not take me to school after that. When we were finished with Gelsons’s, she drove me to my father’s house and told him about what happened. They agreed to take me out of Taft. I didn’t go to school for a month while my parents decided what to do with me. I took advantage of the time to rest and recover at home, playing my online games. The pain and suffering I had to endure at Taft was all over, but the scars would remain. I tried to forget about it as much as I could. I took a deep breath and relaxed. After a month of recovery, my parents took me to look at two continuation high schools, which operate like home-schooling because you only spend three hours a day there and do the rest of the work at home. One of them was right next to El Camino High School, the other one was in Van Nuys. My parents preferred the one in Van Nuys because they felt it was more structured and organized. It was called Independence High School, and they decided to send me there. Independence was a very small school with only three buildings and 100 students. The teachers were all very nice and understanding, and it had a relaxed and calm environment. I figured this was the best option for me. A week later, I started going to Independence High School. I didn’t like any of the students there, as they were all slobs with the exception of two or three boys. This wasn’t a major concern, because I didn’t care about having a social life at the point. All I wanted to do was hide away from the cruel world by playing my online games, and Independence High School gave me the perfect opportunity to do just that. I only had to be at school for three or four hours per day, and all of the work was very easy with teachers available to help me with anything. After those short school hours, I had all the time in the world to do whatever I wanted, and I spent it playing World of Warcraft. One drawback was that I had to take the bus to school because my parents couldn’t pick me up at such an early time of the day. Though it was embarrassing, I didn’t care about appearances anymore, so I didn’t make a big deal out of it. This was the perfect set up for a World of Warcraft addict. After school, every day, I fully indulged myself in my addiction to WoW. My only social interaction was with my online friends and with James, who would occasionally come over to my house to play WoW with me. My father’s career as a commercial director hadn’t been as successful as it was a couple years before. He foolishly decided to invest all of his money in his first feature film, a documentary named “Oh My God”. In the film, he would interview various people about their opinions on religion and God. To make it, he took off to travel all over the world for a few months. Despite this, the one week-one week arrangement remained, and during father’s week I had to stay at father’s house with only Soumaya. This frustrated me tremendously, because Soumaya has always been a pain to live with, and she would obstruct my time on WoW. I was hopeful about father’s movie, however. He kept talking about how he will become very rich from it, and I fostered a hope that he would become rich. How naïve I was… the movie would only bankrupt him in the future. On top of this, I had to deal with another change at father’s house that angered me to no end. I had to give up my lovely, huge, and luxurious downstairs room. It was all because baby Jazz got a new nanny. Once again, Jazz’s existence caused me to lose my room at father’s house. This time, father made my room into his new office. He split his old office into two bedrooms, in which I got one of them and the nanny got the other. My new room was much smaller, and it didn’t have its own bathroom. My downstairs room was the best part of being at father’s house, and it was all gone. I started to really hate going there. Father came back shortly for the winter break, before taking off again. A new expansion for World of Warcraft, called the Burning Crusade, came out in the beginning of January. I was extremely excited for this expansion. It added many new features to the game, new areas to explore, and raised the level cap to 70. It was like a whole new WoW game. I asked my father to buy it for me as a Christmas present. I can still remember the intense anticipation I felt as I installed it onto my laptop. I decided to transfer my WoW character to the same server as James, so that we could play together online and level up our characters in the new expansion. Through doing this, I met two of James’s friends from his school, who also played on his server. They were two brothers named Steve and Mark. Steve is our age, and Mark is a couple years older. Me, James, Steve, and Mark would then always play together online as a group. I found them quite fun to play the game with, and it was nice to have some friends to play WoW with on a regular basis. Eventually, Steve and Mark decided to make new characters on a PvP server, which had play settings that were more to my liking. I chose to make a new character with them. I made a blood elf character that I leveled up very fast, and this became my main character in the game. James stayed on his old server for a while, but within a few weeks we persuaded him to join us on the new one. I had heated conflicts with Soumaya during every week that I was at father’s house. All I wanted to do was play WoW, and Soumaya strictly limited my playtime. Because my new room was just across from hers, she knew what I was doing at every single second. She was breathing down my neck the whole time. She kept making me do chores around the house. I despised doing work around the house, especially since we had a nanny who was supposed to do it. If I made a scene about doing the work, she took away my laptop for a day or two. This was the most horrible thing she could do to me, to take away my only source of joy left in the world. She sometimes did it even when father was at home, and father didn’t lift a finger to stop her. My first year at Independence high school came to an end very quickly. Nothing eventful really happened there, and I barely interacted with anyone. I would just go there for my required time, do my work, and go home. I was too absorbed in my game to care about anything else. At father’s house, in the beginning of the summer, I was introduced to someone who I would hate for a very long time: Leo Bubenheim. Alex Bubenheim married a German woman named Karina who had just moved to the U.S. with her two kids: Leo and Pollina, who became Alex’s step-children. They would then always come over as a family. Leo was 12 years old, and Pollina was a year younger than me. My fear of girls made me keep my distance from Pollina. She was a total bitch anyway, and her attitude would only get worse. She is a true representative of everything I hate about women. When I first met Leo, I didn’t think much of him. He was only twelve years old. I just thought of him as Lukas’s new older brother. I had no inkling of how much I will envy and hate him later on. Soon enough, my jealousy of Leo began to manifest. He had just moved to the U.S. from Germany, and yet he was already able to make lots of friends and had a great social life. He was tall, good looking, blonde-haired, and a skateboarder; the type of person I’ve always envied and wanted to be. Me, my father, and the Bubenheims all went on a camping trip to Big Bear. It was just the boys. We drove deep into the wilderness in my father’s big, formidable Lexus SUV. After setting up our tents, we built a nice fire to gather around and tell stories. It was quite fun, and it made for a small respite from my lonely life, though I had to suffer the presence of Leo and deal with my jealousy of him. One time during the trip, my father made me take Leo and Lukas out exploring. The three of us covered a lot of ground, and I tried to act tough in front of them by slashing my knife at any plant that got in our way. The 4th of July of this year was the day I saved my little brother’s life from drowning. I went with my family to Antje and Gary Twinn’s house, as they always had a 4th of July party. The Bubenheims were there, including Leo and Pollina. So was Vincent Twinn, who had grown up quite fast. The last time I saw him, he was the little kid who looked up to me when I showed him all of my computer games. Now he was just becoming a teenager, with an interest in skateboarding. The party was a pool party, and my brother Jazz had full exposure to the swimming pool. He had already learned how to walk, but he couldn’t swim. At one instance as I was eating lunch, I saw Jazz quickly run off from the adults, completely unattended. I then watched as he curiously examined the water, and then descended into steps of the shallow end of the pool. Before long, he lost his footing on the steps and his whole body sank into the water. Nobody noticed. He was going to drown, I thought with panic. I ran as fast as I could, plunging into the water with my clothes still on, and pulled him out. I asked him how he was doing, and he coughed up some water and told me he felt fine. The only person who saw this happen was a little girl who was swimming in the shallow end. I saved his life, and my brother remembers it to this very day. Every single second of my brother’s life, everything that happens to him in the future, will exist because I pulled him out of the water that day. I celebrated my 16th Birthday at mother’s house. She bought me an Xbox 360, which had just been released. I didn’t play it yet though, because the only game I wanted for it was Halo 3, which was set to come out in November. I was really looking forward to that game. It was supposed to be the best Halo game of all time. After I blew out my candles, I remember going outside and sitting by my mother’s pool to contemplate my life. Sixteen… what an age to be. I still felt like I was twelve. Most teenagers will start driving at this age… I couldn’t even fathom myself driving. The thought of it scared me. James came for a sleepover shortly after my birthday, and he helped me set up my Xbox 360. We played a round of Halo 2 to test it out. He didn’t bring his computer, because he had a desktop that was hard to transport, so I suggested that we go to Planet Cyber to play WoW together. Our parents dropped us off there and we had a good WoW session. It was nice to see that place again, to reminisce of happier times. I proposed, for nostalgia’s sake, that we walk home for the way back. My mother’s new house was three times the distance from Planet Cyber as her old blue house, but I really wanted to do it. On the way, we passed by that little blue house, and all of the memories came back. The two of us talked a lot, and shared some laughs. It was a very memorable night. 16 Years Old As summer’s end drew closer, I became more and more depressed. My life had gotten so lonely, and playing WoW barely made up for it. My mother noticed this and proposed that I get together with Philip again. She called Philip’s mother Kathy to arrange a meetup. And so Philip came over twice during that summer. I quite liked seeing him again… it was two years since the last time we spoke. Though he had no interest in my video games, he enjoyed playing in my mother’s swimming pool. I had one playdate with Jeffrey as well. Philip and his family went on a vacation to Catalina, and Jeffrey wanted to stay at home. I went to his house for a sleepover with just him there. Jeffrey had changed a lot. He was now Fourteen, and he told me he had a girlfriend. I was shocked, amazed, and envious. I wondered how an immature brat like Jeffrey could have a girlfriend at such a young age. I had the dreaded suspicion that he had already had sex with her, and I tried not to think about it. I was deeply jealous, but for the sake of our past friendship and the good times we had together in the past, I hid that envy well enough. Eleventh Grade at Independence began. I still took the bus to school, as I had no desire to learn how to drive at that age. I was way too afraid of even trying it out. Driving is something that adults are supposed to do, and I still felt like a child. I continued on with my lonely routine of doing my schoolwork in the morning and playing WoW with James, Steve, and Mark for the rest of the time. I gave no thought to my future at all. I just lived in the moment, in my comfort zone. My sex drive was at its peak at this age. Whenever I got back from school, I had to masturbate. The urge was too strong. During my masturbation sessions I often built elaborate fantasies in my mind that I had a hot, blonde-haired girlfriend to have passionate sex with; almost like having an imaginary girlfriend. I told no one about this. In fact, I didn’t talk to my parents at all about my sexual development. I felt too guilty and embarrassed about it. Whenever they probed me, I lied to them, telling them that I had no sex drive. My mother once caught me looking at pictures of girls online, and I franticly had to convince her that I stumbled on those pictures by accident. I also noticed that my voice was getting deeper. I was starting to sound like an actual teenager. The last stages of puberty were over. Halo 3 came out in November. I got my mother to buy it for me on the very day it was released. I had a lot of fun playing it while drinking the special mountain dew flavor that was released with the game; Mountain Dew Game Fuel, it was called. The game definitely lived up to its expectations, and to my surprise I found myself playing it more than WoW for the first couple of weeks. Father suffered through a deep financial setback because of his movie. Could things get any worse for me? As a result, my father abruptly cut off all of the child-support payments he was paying my mother. My mother was forced to find a better-paying job to make up for it, and she had to move out of her house to a condominium close by. Thankfully, Rob Lemelson offered her a job in his production company, Elemental Productions. This new job enabled my mother to make enough money to live comfortably. We hadn’t seen the Lemelsons much since the last time we went trick-or-treating with them years ago. It was good to reconnect with them. I missed mother living in an actual house, but at least the new place was a condominium, with more luxuries than the apartment we once lived in. The condominium had three bedrooms, and my room had its own bathroom. The bad part about this condominium was its location in Canoga Park, a lower-class area. I hated telling people that my mother lived in Canoga Park. It was highly embarrassing for me. But alas, in that lonely and depressing stage of my life, there was no one really to tell, and I barely cared about what people thought of me anyway. I was a complete dork, stuck in my own little world. An exchange student from France moved into my father’s house. His name was Max Bonon, a cultured, outgoing nineteen-year-old French guy. His parents are very wealthy hotel owners, and he would be staying with us for a few months while he studies English at Pierce College. At first, I wasn’t so sure about having this young person lurking about, but we soon developed a good friendship. He always invited me to play cards with him after dinner, and though Soumaya didn’t let me drink alcohol, he would always sneak me a beer. It was really nice to have that regular social interaction. I became really fond of Max. In just two weeks after Max arrived, we got the news that Soumaya’s father died in Morocco. Soumaya immediately left for Morroco, and she took baby Jazz with her. Though I was really sad about the death of Soumaya’s father, as he was a very kind and generous man, I was glad to see Soumaya gone. Father’s whole household changed for the better. I started to love going to father’s house, especially with Max there. He was like an older brother to me. My mother became really close friends with the Lemelsons due to her new job. Every year, they have an extravagant Christmas party at their newly built mansion in the Palisades, and we would now be invited to it. James also went to the party, and I had a pleasant time hanging out with him and Noah. During one week at father’s after the New Year, father had to leave for his work. For that week it was just me, my sister, and Max in the house. The three of us had a lot of fun together. Max took us to Universal Studios. Father allowed him to drive the big Lexus, for which I was a bit jealous. The last time I was at the Universal Studios amusement park was when I just moved to America. Mother took us to the Universal city walk a couple of times, but never the amusement park. I went on all of the rides, including the infamous Jurassic Park ride that I was rejected from going on when I was a child. When father came back, we talked to him about our time at Universal Studios. He suggested that we all go to Six Flags. The four of us set out for it the next day. Six Flags was the biggest amusement park I’ve ever been to. I was awed by all the gigantic roller coaster rides. Max, my father, and even my little sister were all eager to tackle the largest roller coasters. I was the only one who was scared out of my mind. Max talked me into it, so I nervously gave all of the rides a try, and ended up having some fun. To my chagrin, my father decided to take up motorcycle riding. He pulled up to the house one day in a roaring Harley Davidson, and I was completely baffled. I suppose it was due to some mid-life crisis he was going through. A motorcycle… Really? Alex Bubenheim got him into it. He and Alex would then ride their motorcycles all the time. He kept insisting that he take me on the motorcycle whenever we went out, instead of going in the car. This would be too embarrassing for me, and I adamantly refused to ever go on the motorcycle. I went with mother to the red carpet premiere of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This was my fourth premiere. Going to premieres were always an uplifting experience for me. The movie was quite a disappointment, however, and I much preferred the classic Indiana Jones films. The next day, I told some of my teachers that I went to this premiere, and they were very shocked. I bet I was the first kid at that school who has done such prestigious things. Soumaya and Jazz returned from Morocco. I was happy to see my baby brother again, but not so happy to see Soumaya. Things were a lot better at father’s house when she was gone. Soon after she came back, we started getting into various arguments again, which embarrassed me in front of Max. In the Spring, something horrible happened that will haunt me forever. We met up with the Bubenheims at the Sagebrush Cantina in Calabasas, and a friend of Pollina’s was there with them, named Nicole, a girl around my age. She sat next to Leo the whole time, and by the end of the dinner, the two of them were making out. Twelve-year-old Leo was making out with a girl who was almost my age. Not only does Leo have a better social life, but now he was making out with girls, AT AGE TWELVE! They made out for a long time, and I could see them tongue kiss. They knew I was watching with envy, and they still did it. I bet that lucky bastard took great satisfaction from my envy. There I was, watching a boy four years younger than me experience everything I’ve longed for… to kiss a girl… to be worthy of a girl’s attraction. On that day, I developed a vicious hatred for Leo that will never go away. A few days later, Max went home to France, never to come back again. I was deeply saddened by this. For the brief period that Max was staying at father’s house, I enjoyed life a lot more. He was a big part of my life there. He drove me to places when father and Soumaya were busy, we played card games and had pleasant conversations after dinner, and we always took walks to the top of the hill overlooking father’s neighborhood, which I called the Overlook. Most importantly, he made me feel less lonely. I was very saddened by his departure. Another horrible experience concerning the Bubenheims occurred. We were having dinner at their house, like we usually did. At the end of the dinner, a few of Pollina’s friends came over. They were all popular, good looking girls and boys. They were the kind of people who I’ve always had the desire to be a part of, but was never able to fit in with. Popular kids… cool kids. When I heard them talking about their awesome lives and their parties, I had a breakdown right then and there. I realized how much I’ve been missing out in my life, and I cried in front of everyone. I felt like I would never have a life as good as theirs. I told everyone that I wanted to commit suicide. Father, Soumaya, Alex, and Karina talked to me for three hours to cheer me up. Eleventh Grade at Independence ended. Like the previous year, my time at the school went by like a blur. I didn’t talk to anyone. I barely considered it a part of my life. I just did the work that I was required to do while I waited for the bus to take me home. Once summer started, I sank into a major depression. My feelings of inferiority were intensified by the recent events with the Bubenheims. The Bubenheims were family friends… but now they represented the very thing that destroyed my whole life and took away my happiness. It was at this time that I was just beginning to realize, with a lot of clarity, how truly unfair my life is. I compared myself to other teenagers and became very angry that they were able to experience all of the things I’ve desired, while I was left out of it. I never had the experience of going to a party with other teenagers, I never had my first kiss, I never held hands with a girl, I never lost my virginity. In the past, I felt so inferior and weak from all of the bullying that I just accepted my lonely life and dealt with it by playing WoW, but at this point I started to question why I was condemned to suffer such misery. There was nothing I could really do about my unfair life situation. I felt completely powerless. The only way I could deal with it was to continue to drown all of my troubles with my online games. I played WoW really hard, leveling two new characters to 70. At mother’s house, I sometimes played it for fourteen hours a day. James, Steve, and Mark would always joke that there was never a time that they saw me offline. I was known as the guy who was “always on WoW”. My laptop was getting slower and slower. It wasn’t a very powerful laptop, but it was the only computer I had to play WoW on. This was really frustrating me, because eventually it became so slow that it ruined my gaming experience. I kept pestering my mother and father to get me a faster laptop that was more efficient for gaming. For my 17th Birthday, my parents agreed to split the funds for a new laptop. My mother took me to Best Buy to choose it out, and I found the perfect one. It was a larger, highly efficient dark-colored laptop designed for gaming. After we bought it, we had dinner at the Japanese restaurant Kabuki on Ventura Boulevard, the same restaurant my mother took me to after my 5th Grade graduation. 17 Years Old Father told me that Max invited me to visit him in France for three weeks. I would have to travel there alone, and Max would pick me up at the airport near his hometown of Montpellier. At first I was very anxious about it, and I was about to say no. Father talked me into it, saying that I was lucky to have an opportunity like this. I really missed Max, and I wanted to see him again, so I quickly made the decision to go. I left around the beginning of August. This was my first time traveling alone, and I didn’t know what to expect. Father signed me up to have supervised travel assistance to help me along the way, otherwise I would get lost in the airport. On the way there, I made a stop in Frankfurt, Germany to transfer planes. Germany became another country I can add to the list of places I’ve been. When I arrived at the airport in France, I waited for a few hours and finally Max showed up. I was really happy to see him. I couldn’t believe I was actually in France again. Max and I stayed at his grandmother’s house in Montpellier. Montpellier was an exquisite city, with a romantic and cultured vibe to it. It was such a pity that I was too caught up in my own world to truly appreciate it at the time. Max introduced me to his life in France. I met with some of his friends and we went to bars together. In France, the legal drinking age is 16, so I was able to drink alcohol at a bar. It was astounding! For those three weeks, I had the faintest taste of what life was like for normal young people. The experience of hanging out with a group of young people, boys and girls, and enjoying life was something I never did before. It really turned my whole world around, for that short amount of time. So this is what everyone else gets to experience, I thought to myself with jealousy. I felt a sense of happiness and bliss that I hadn’t felt since childhood, when life was good. During the trip, we visited the town of Arles where we stayed in the hotel that Max’s family owns. Max told me about all of the sexual experiences he had. I never knew he had such an active sex life. The more he talked to me about it, the more envious I became. I questioned to myself why he got to experience such an amazing life, while I had to suffer so much loneliness and humiliation. I was introduced to some of the girls he had sex with in the past, and they were all pretty. On top of that, his family was extremely wealthy and they owned a sprawling mansion in the countryside. Where’s the justice? I thought. Why couldn’t I have been born into that life? I envied Max so much. His life must have been heaven on earth. Despite my envy of Max, I couldn’t hate him, at least at that time. He was the only popular young person who ever reached out to me. He invited me to visit his home, and he treated me like a friend. For that, I will always have a grudging respect for Max Bonon. After three weeks in France doing exciting social things, I returned to my lonely life in the U.S., where I became even more depressed than I was in the beginning of summer, especially after getting a taste of what life was truly like for normal people. I knew I could never live such a pleasurable life, and the knowledge haunted me. I was back to my routine of World of Warcraft. At least the new expansion was coming out soon, and I tried to look forward to that. When Twelfth Grade began, I made a vow to finish high school before the month of March. The high school system at Independence allows students to work at their own pace, so the more extra work I did, the sooner I could graduate. I was always depressed and bored for the few hours a day I had to spend there, and I disliked all of the degenerate, low-class students there. They repulsed me. I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could, and it became my goal for the year. At the end of school time every day I asked my teachers to give me extra homework assignments, and I stopped myself from playing WoW until I completed them. The second expansion for World of Warcraft finally released, called Wrath of the Lich King. When I got home from school, I wanted the game so badly. Mother wasn’t home from work yet, so she couldn’t drive me. I decided to walk all the way to Best Buy to pick up the game. It was a long walk that took almost an hour. On the way home I was very hungry and stopped at Panda Express to eat lunch. Planet Cyber was right next to that Panda Express, so I walked in there for a few seconds to reminisce about better times before hurrying home to install the game. Once it was installed, James and I played it together all afternoon. I found out that one of my teachers at Independence, Mr. Perales, also played WoW. From then on, the two of us would talk about the game every day. It was nice to have someone at school to talk to, and I enjoyed telling him about my daily progression with my character. This made my time at school a lot less mundane and boring. James, Steve, and Mark were the closest thing I had to a group of friends. I played with them online almost every day. We had so many adventures in WoW as a group, and yet… I felt like the outcast of the group. Steve and Mark only considered me an online friend, never a real friend. I found out that the three of them had WoW meet-ups at one of their houses a lot, and they never invited me. Sometimes, when I would be playing with them online, I would find out that they were all together in real life, and I was the only one left out. Whenever they did this, I acted bitter towards them through the game, but they didn’t even care. Even in the World of Warcraft, I was an outcast, alone and unwanted. The more lonely I felt, the more angry I became. The anger slowly built up inside me throughout all of the dark years. Even after the release of the new WoW expansion, I noticed that the game’s ability to alleviate my sense of loneliness was starting to fade. I began to feel lonely even while playing it, and I often broke down into tears in the middle of my WoW sessions. I began to ask myself what the point was in playing this game anymore. I spent less and less time playing it. One day I found some posts on the internet about teenagers having sex, and I was once again reminded of the life I had been denied. I felt that no girl would ever want to have sex with me… And I developed extreme feelings of envy, hatred, and anger towards anyone who has a sex life. I saw them as the enemy. I felt condemned to live a life of lonely celibacy while other boys were allowed to experience the pleasures of sex, all because girls didn’t want me. I felt inferior and undesirable. This time, however, I couldn’t just stand by and accept such an injustice anymore. I refused to continue hiding away from the world and forgetting about all the insults it dealt to me. I began to have fantasies of becoming very powerful and stopping everyone from having sex. I wanted to take their sex away from them, just like they took it away from me. I saw sex as an evil and barbaric act, all because I was unable to have it. This was the major turning point. My anger made me stronger inside. This was when I formed my ideas that sex should be outlawed. It is the only way to make the world a fair and just place. If I can’t have it, I will destroy it. That’s the conclusion I came to, right then and there. I spent more time studying the world, seeing the world for the horrible, unfair place it is. I then had the revelation that just because I was condemned to suffer a life of loneliness and rejection, doesn’t mean I am insignificant. I have an exceptionally high level of intelligence. I see the world differently than anyone else. Because of all of the injustices I went through and the worldview I developed because of them, I must be destined for greatness. I must be destined to change the world, to shape it into an image that suits me! At the beginning of the winter break, I decided to quit playing World of Warcraft entirely. On my last day on the game, I had a long, emotional conversation with James where I opened up about all of my troubles. I told him about all my newfound views of the world, and my belief that sex must be abolished. He seemed to be supportive of my stance, and I was glad that he understood me. It was a very memorable day. My father’s movie was released, but it did not do well at all. He was only able to get it released in a few select theatres, and no one was interested in seeing it. He stupidly invested all of his money into the movie, and he got absolutely nothing out of it. This caused him to fall into a financial crisis that he will be stuck in for a long time. I was annoyed that he kept having to make it clear to us that he was now in a “financial crisis”. He talked about it all the time, and it was embarrassing. What a bitter coincidence, that right at the point when my life fell even deeper into agony, my father is cursed with this financial crisis. Right at the time when I needed my father’s support the most, he lost all of his assets. It was as if some malevolent being cursed me with bad luck. I truly had no advantage at all. The universe was not kind to me. I formed an ideology in my head of how the world should work. I was fueled both by my desire to destroy all of the injustices of the world, and to exact revenge on everyone I envy and hate. I decided that my destiny in life is to rise to power so I can impose my ideology on the world and set everything right. I was only seventeen, I have plenty of time. I thought to myself. I spent all of my time studying in my room, reading books about history, politics, and sociology, trying to learn as much as I can. I became a new person, furiously driven by a goal. My torment would continue, but I had something to live for. I felt empowered. I went over to James’s house to have a sleepover. Usually when I went there we spent the whole time playing WoW, with the exception of walking to town for lunch. Because I quit WoW, this was the first time we had to find other things to do. We spent most of the time going on walks around the Palisades town center, or along the Palisades Bluffs, talking about our views of the world and our hopes and dreams. I told him more about my hatred of people who have sex. James quickly deduced the reason for why I was so fervent about abolishing sex… that in truth I really want to have sex but I feel like I can never have it, so I wish to take it away from everyone else. He read me very well. I had to admit that he was right. That is the exact reason for it. I fulfilled my vow of finishing high school by March. In fact, I finished a bit earlier than I expected – in mid-February. I completed so many homework assignments towards the end, especially since I no longer played WoW. I was glad to be done with it. School was finally over. Not having to go to school anymore gave me a lot of free time to think and brood. As time progressed, I realized how hopeless everything in my life was. The chances that I will ever rise to power and right the wrongs of the world were extremely slim. I had absolutely no idea or plan of how to acquire any sort of power. It was naïve of me to think that I could one day become a dictator. The only thing I could do was fantasize about it. My whole world twisted even deeper into darkness and despair as my depressing life continued on. My hatred for people who have sex festered inside me like a plague. I frequently went on walks around town to brood over how hopeless and unfair everything was. It was better than being stuck in my room all the time. When I saw young couples walking around at the mall, my anger and hatred intensified greatly. It was the worst torture ever to see them making out and being intimate. My life, if you can call it a life, was living hell. My parents quickly took note of how radical I was becoming, and they made a hasty plan to change my life. Of course, that is what they claimed. I think they were just trying to find a way to get rid of me because I was too hard to deal with. Soumaya was going back to Morocco, and they decided to send me with her. It was the most ridiculous plan I’ve ever heard. They announced this to me at a café near my mother’s house. I was expecting something extreme, something drastic, but this? It completely caught me off guard. Morocco? They think I’ll be happy there? I furiously thought with disbelief. I was devastated, and for a moment I couldn’t even speak. The last thing I wanted was to hide away in a backwater country with nothing to do, while all of my peers enjoy life in the U.S. I didn’t want to run away from my troubles in the U.S., I wanted to confront them. I just didn’t know how. Going to Morocco was the absolute worst solution for me, and they intended for me to stay there for a long time. After hearing this news, I felt a sense of urgency that I had never felt before. They already had a plane ticket ready for me, and I was scheduled to leave in five days. My immediate goal was to stop my parents from sending me to Morocco. Throwing a tantrum with my mother didn’t work. She was set on this. I spent the remaining five days at father’s house. While there, I chose not to protest at all, because I knew it wouldn’t work. They will force me onto that plane one way or another. I decided to keep quiet and devise a plan of escape. I bided my time, and didn’t talk much to father or Soumaya during those last few days. The plan I came up with was to run away on the morning before the flight, walk all the way to my mother’s condo, and hide in a secret spot on the roof. It would be a place where they least expected me to be. I kept quiet in the last couple of days to throw off their suspicion, but that backfired and made them even more suspicious. I suppose they expected me to protest about going, and my silence made them think I was up to something. When the time came, I decided to get up at 4:00 a.m. to prepare. To my dismay, I noticed that my father set an alarm on the front door. I was planning to run away at 6:00 a.m., when the garbage truck arrived, because the noise from the truck would mask any noise I make while leaving. The alarm, however, would definitely alert father and Soumaya. I got too nervous and abandoned that idea. Instead, I waited until everyone woke up and had breakfast. My plan was ruined by the alarm, and I had to come up with a new plan fast! I had little time left. I innocently told father I wanted to go on a small walk before the departure, and as soon as I exited the front door, I bolted at full speed. It was hasty, but I had to do something. I didn’t think father would catch on to my deception so quickly… After only clearing one block, I looked behind my shoulder and saw father chasing after me. All of my hope collapsed then and there, and I lost all of the fight in me. I stopped running and put my head down in defeat. Soumaya came in the car minutes later, and they both took me home. The plan failed. I was going to Morocco. The journey to Morocco was the most horrendous travel experience I’ve ever had. It was just me, Soumaya, and four-year-old Jazz. Jazz kept screaming and vomiting on the plane, Soumaya was in a sour mood, and I was completely miserable. I thought my whole life was all over. I had nothing to look forward to in the future. I wanted to die. Once I got there I felt like all of the life in me had drained out. I was so defeated. I couldn’t help but cry all the time, even in front of Soumaya’s relatives. Khadija didn’t understand why I was so upset, and she got offended that I was crying on the first day at her house. It was a complete disaster. I kept dreaming of home. I thought of the prospect of being able to return home, and a small hope sparked in me. I kept emailing my mother frequently, telling her how much I hated being there and how much I cried all the time. I told her that if she would give me one more chance and enable me to come home, I will try harder to lead a better life and become a person she could be proud of. After a week of doing this, mother gave in and flew to Morocco to take me home. I won. I was going home. When I returned to the U.S., I felt so relieved that I forgot about my troubles for a few days and relaxed. It was good to be back home. This is where my fight is, right here in the U.S., and nowhere else. The sense of elation I felt soon wore off. My lonely life as a social outcast resumed. I continued going on my usual long walks every day, feeling angry and hateful towards the world. During mother’s week, I would walk to the mall and sit on the balcony overlooking the food court next to the AMC theatres. There I would see all of the young couples lining up to see a movie, and I boiled with hatred. During father’s week, I walked to the Calabasas Commons nearby, and sometimes I rode my bicycle. I also walked up the hill near my father’s house to the Overlook. I spent a lot of time up there, contemplating about my life and fantasizing about becoming powerful enough to punish everyone I hate. On one dreadful day, when I was riding my bicycle near Calabasas, a group of popular teenagers in an SUV drove by and made fun of me. I suppose my appearance didn’t help with that. I looked exactly like the outcast I was. I was still wearing plain polo shirts and khaki pants at the time, covered with a blue zip up hoodie and a black baseball cap. It was a torturous experience, and the pain I felt from it never went away. All I wanted was to fit in with those popular kids who lived such pleasurable lives, but instead I was ridiculed and reviled by them. They made me feel so inferior and undesirable. I will never forget that experience. It was burned into my memory. My misery became harder and harder to bear, and none of my parents understood my plight. My father thought that all was well with me. How could he be so blind? He was so caught up in his failing work that he didn’t care about how my life was turning out. I cursed him for it. My father never made any effort to prepare me for facing such a cruel world. He never taught me how to attract girls. He never warned me that if I didn’t attract girls at an early age, my life would fall into a miserable pit of despair! Again… How could he be so blind? I asked myself constantly. It all came to a climax on one of the days that I walked to the Calabasas Commons. I treaded through the area with my head down, all alone, in a state of complete despair about my life. I looked around me and saw lots of young couples holding hands and groups of good looking teenage boys and girls walking together and having fun on their Saturday night out. I saw all of those teenagers enjoying their pleasurable lives together, while I was all alone. They were enjoying everything I couldn’t have. I was filled with intense anguish, and I quickly ran all the way back to father’s house with tears pouring down my cheeks. Once I got home I had a breakdown and cried for hours and hours into the night. Part 5 Hope and Hopelessness Age 17-19 When I woke up the next morning, I felt a bit calmer. Calmer enough to think clearly about what just happened. I couldn’t bear to have my life continue this way, so I tried to evaluate why I have had to suffer so much. I spent the whole day in calm meditation, deeply reviewing my life to see how I fell to this dark place. I concluded that I cannot just give up on having the life I want if I never try to get it. I realized that I was still only seventeen, and that there are many possibilities for me in the future. I wanted to give myself a new chance at life, despite all the odds that were against me. I wanted something to live for, something to look forward to in the future. This calm session of contemplation made me feel a lot better. I told my parents and my sister that I was willing to make a renewed effort to change. They seemed very happy with me. For once, in their eyes, I wasn’t being negative about life. I examined myself in the mirror and decided that if I want to make a fresh start, the first thing to do would be to change my appearance. I got a haircut, and then my mother and sister took me shopping at the Fallbrook mall for some new clothes. I knew nothing about fashion at the time, so I just chose a few new jeans. I hadn’t worn jeans since I was ten years old. For the first time in many years, I started to care about how I looked again. I spent a few more days calming myself down. I then started to feel something that has been lost to me for a long time: Hope. Without hope, I just couldn’t go on any longer. I needed to feel hope. Hope for the future, hope for a better life. Upon feeling this, I realized that perhaps it is possible for me to have the things I desire; to have a great social life again, to have a girlfriend, to have sex, to have all of the pleasures I’ve desperately craved for so long. It was refreshing. On the 4th of July, we went to a big party at the Lemelson’s. There, I had a heavy discussion with James about my revelation and goals. He seemed very glad that I had a newfound zest for life. He admitted that he was getting very worried about me, from the way I was going. James was in a similar situation as I was. He was a virgin like me, never having much interaction with girls in his life. The two of us talked for hours about our troubles and our hopes of overcoming them. It was nice to have such a good friend like James on my side, who could understand and relate to me. I made a new Facebook profile (which I still use to this day) in an effort to improve my social life. Having been so lost in my own world for the last four years, I didn’t know much about these new social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. The last time I was interested in such things was when I made an AIM account, but no one used that anymore. Once I fired up my profile, was able to reconnect with a few friends from Topanga Elementary. I talked to Philip over Facebook, and the two of us made plans to meet up later in the summer after not seeing each other for two years. I also attempted to reconnect with my old friends Charlie and John Jo, remembering all of the great experiences I had with them. I managed to speak with them on the phone a couple of times, but they didn’t seem keen on meeting up, and I subsequently abandoned the effort. I had a quiet 18th Birthday at a restaurant with my family. Soumaya was still in Morocco, so mother and father agreed to meet for it. It was one of the few times that I had dinner with both my mother and my father since their divorce. I received some birthday cards from relatives, wishing me a great year ahead. I took a vow that day to make this new year of my life a happy one, to turn my life around and fulfill all of my desires. And so began a period of great yearning. A great chase, so to speak. I will chase after a hope that I built for myself, only to have that hope shattered at every turn. 18 Years Old I was 18, a high school graduate, and summer was nearing its end. I had to think about continuing my education. I was eager to be as productive with my time as I could be. College represented a hope for me. I would be starting a new kind of school where there are lots of people and opportunities. I might possibly make friends, have interactions with girls, maybe even get a girlfriend! The thought filled me with enthusiasm. And so I enrolled at Pierce College, the first of a few colleges I would jump to in my many desperate attempts to find a desirable life. Pierce College is a large community college in Woodland Hills, not far from both my mother’s and father’s houses. When I looked through the list of classes, I saw that most of them were already full. The only class I was able to get was a computer class, and I settled with that. I could always spend time at the college even while not in class, I concluded. Having only one class would help me ease into college at a milder pace. I hadn’t been in a normal school system for three years. I feared I might get nervous. But then, after thinking about everything I had been through in the last few months, I knew I had the strength and courage to tackle it. My mother made the decision to move to a new apartment near Calabasas. She took me and my sister there to show it to us beforehand. The room that I would get would be smaller, and it wouldn’t have its own bathroom, but the apartment was located in a much better area. It was walking distance from my father’s house, the Mulholland shopping center, and the Calabasas Commons. I ended up persuading my mother to move there, as it would be much more convenient. On the first day at the new place, I took a long stroll around the nearby areas. Of course, those areas weren’t unfamiliar to me, as I had walked around there many times during father’s week. But this was the first time I went on a long walk since my breakdown, and it made me feel more confident. I met up with Philip Bloeser after not seeing him for two years. The last time I saw him was during the summer I turned 16. My mother dropped me off at this house, and I wasn’t surprised to find that he was still the exact same person; mature, reserved, a little awkward, and prone to random bouts of hyper energy. Jeffrey was also there, and he was still as wild and boisterous as ever, though he had changed a lot in appearance, no longer being the little kid I was so used to seeing him as. Philip already had his driver’s license, so the two of us went out in his car to meet Addison Altendorf, who had just moved back to the U.S. and was living with his mother in an apartment in Malibu. Philip and Addison have always been very close friends with each other, and the two of them go everywhere together. I hadn’t seen Addison since Topanga Elementary. At first glance, I didn’t know what to make of him. It was like meeting a whole new person. He had changed tremendously. With his mustache and hairstyle, he looked older than he was, cultivating a refined and sophisticated personality and wearing an elegant blazer coat. As I spent time with Addison that day, I started to enjoy talking to him about politics and the world. He was very intelligent and more informed than other people our age. I bought my first Lottery ticket when I went out shopping with my mother one day. We stopped at Ralph’s where I noticed the Lottery machine. I didn’t know anything about the Lottery, so I asked my mother about it. She told me how it works and taught me how to buy a ticket. Each ticket provides a very small chance of winning millions of dollars, and the jackpot could rise to the hundreds of millions. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know such a thing existed! After buying my ticket, I felt thrilled with the prospect of having a chance to become a multi-millionaire. That ticket, of course, didn’t win. And neither would any of the tickets I buy after it, but they would give me hope. I never thought nor cared about money before I turned 18, because I was still living like a child, with my parents handling the money and giving me the things I needed. However, the more older I grew, the more I realized how important money was, and the more obsessed I would become about getting rich. This obsession, which was barely taking root at the time, sparked a long relationship the Lottery that would only end in disappointment and despair. At father’s house, we watched the movie Alpha Dog after dinner one night. This movie depicts a lot of teenagers and young people partying and having sex with beautiful girls, living the life that I’ve desired for so long. The main character is a fifteen year old kid who has sex with two hot girls in a swimming pool. I was so envious that I delighted in his death at the end. I remember thinking that I would rather live his life than mine, even though he died. He had sex and I didn’t. The movie deeply affected me emotionally, and I would think about it for some time afterwards. I started my new semester at Pierce College. I still hadn’t obtained my driver’s license yet, so I was forced to take the public bus to school. This was an extremely unpleasant experience, but I was willing to bear with it just so I could go to college and improve my life. On my first day, I couldn’t help but feel nervous. The place reminded me of Taft, though the people seemed nicer and the environment was less intimidating. When I settled down into my class, I felt that things will turn out ok. Soumaya returned from Morocco, and she was very angry with me due to the way I acted while I was there. She effectively kicked me out of father’s house, and because I was eighteen, she was allowed to. Father didn’t do anything to stop her, being the weak man that he is. This is how it has always been. Father has always given Soumaya free reign to impose her rules on the household. He gave her all the power. This act officially ended the one week-one week arrangement, and mother’s house became my permanent living place. Not only did she kick me out of father’s house, but she forbade me to go there even for a short visit. And still, father didn’t do anything about it. Father kept saying that the house is her house as much as his, and that she has the right to kick me out. No! I am the eldest son! The house should be MY house before hers! This caused any respect I still had for my father to fade away completely. It was such a betrayal, to put his second wife before his eldest son. What kind of father would do that? The bitch must be really good to him in bed, I figured. What a weak man. Every day, I tried to make some effort to go out looking for ways to improve my life. I felt that staying in my room was a waste of time. I knew what I wanted, but I had no idea how to get it. I frequently went on walks around my mother’s neighborhood in the desperate hope that someone would befriend me or a girl would talk to me. Nothing of the sort ever happened. Sometimes I walked all the way up to the Overlook, as my mother’s apartment was just around the other side of it; And sometimes I walked to the Calabasas Commons, where I would hang out at Barnes & Noble, reading books, always with the hope that some young people would reach out and befriend me, but no one ever did. I kept hoping and hoping and hoping. Hope is what kept me alive. I continued seeing Philip and Addison, my only other social interaction besides James. I talked to Addison about my old political views, debating with him about what an ideal world would look like. I found out that he had some fascist views of his own, and it was nice to have a discussion with someone about things that would make most normal people run a mile. I frequently messaged Addison on Facebook, hoping to start up conversations when I felt lonely. He told me he was just starting his Twelfth Grade year at Malibu High School, and his goal was to fit in with the popular kids. Fitting in with popular kids at Malibu High School? I didn’t expect Addison to be successful in such a venture. Addison invited me to his birthday party. It was a small get-together on the beach in Point Dume, Malibu. I had a very hard time socializing with people, so I ended up drinking too much alcohol. Before Philip drove me home, I vomited outside Addison’s apartment, in front of his mother and everyone else. It was highly embarrassing and I put a lot of effort to block it from my mind afterwards. James came to my mother’s new apartment for a sleepover. We walked to the Calabasas Commons together. It was nice to show him all of my favorite spots there, like the window at Barnes & Noble that overlooks the whole area, and turtle ponds next to King’s restaurant. It was a great place to talk and contemplate. We had some deep conversations about our fantasies and our hopes for the future. When I was a child, Halloween used to be a fun and exciting experience, but ever since the last time I went trick-or-treating Halloween has been a time when I spent the whole night in my room while other teenagers were out having fun partying. On this Halloween, I was desperate to do something social. I just couldn’t sit in my room on such a night. I found out from stalking random people on Facebook that there was going to be a huge house party in West Hills. I decided to take a big leap forward and attend this house party, even though I wouldn’t know anybody there. I had nothing to lose, and it would give me more of a chance of meeting girls than if I stayed in my room all night. Because I couldn’t drive, I had to walk all the way there, and it took 45 minutes. When I got there, I was overcome by anxiety, but I couldn’t back out at that point. I paid the entry fee of $5 and walked right in. To my dismay, the party was smaller than I expected. All of the kids were smoking marijuana, and they all seemed to know each other. It would only be a matter of time before they detected that I was an outcast. I stood around awkwardly for a few minutes before giving up and walking home. On the way home, just as I was about to reach my mother’s house, a group of four young thugs drove by me in a pick-up truck and proceeded to throw eggs at me, laughing while they did it. They seemed intoxicated, and they missed me. I picked up one of the shells and threw it right back into their car. I was no longer a weak little kid who would take a hit without fighting back. I was stronger now. They got out of their car and tried to attack me, and they would have beaten me bloody if I didn’t pull out my trusty pocket knife, which I usually carried when I walked alone by myself. Thankfully, the thugs backed away and drove off. Perhaps it was the knife, or the look of extreme hatred in my eyes. I quickly ran home, terrified. It was an unsuccessful and misfortunate night. For a few days after Halloween, I kept thinking about that incident with the horrible thugs who almost attacked me. They must have seen me as a weakling who they could bully for their amusement. I didn’t want the world to view me as weak. This led to my new commitment to start exercising and lifting weights. I began working out at the gym in my mother’s apartment complex every other day. I hoped it would increase my confidence and make me appear a bit stronger. Maybe if I built muscles, girls will be attracted to me, I hopefully proclaimed to myself. I had never worked out or lifted weights in my life, so my body has always been very frail and delicate. This was a new experience, and it made me feel more productive. Soumaya’s grudge against me lessened after a couple of months, and she allowed me to go to father’s house for dinner occasionally. I was very angry with father, but I hid my anger. I still needed him. Father began teaching me how to drive once I received my driver’s permit, which was quite hard to get. I had to take a written test with many questions, and I failed it on my first try. On the second attempt, I managed to pass. My first experience driving was very scary. I’ve played a few racing video games in my life, but driving a car for real was much more intimidating. At first, I could barely even drive around my father’s quiet neighborhood. I was overcome by the fear that I will never be able to drive. I soon got more used to it during the next few sessions. Soon enough, I was able to drive a short distance up Topanga Canyon with ease. I still didn’t feel prepared to take my official driver’s test, though. Despite my attempts to improve my life, I was still feeling frustrated and angry. I was getting nothing out of my efforts. I still hadn’t made any friends at Pierce College, and I didn’t interact with any girls. My days at Pierce College grew more and more mundane and depressing. I went to my class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, taking the bus to the AMC and walking the rest of the way. In the classroom, I had a hard time socializing with anyone. Making friends seemed impossible. My mother was casually dating a very wealthy man named Jack at the time, though I wouldn’t find out they were dating until much later. When she first mentioned him, I thought he was just a friend. Jack gave mother the keys to his Malibu beach house, and we went to stay there for a few nights, though Jack wasn’t there. The house was a beautiful, white-colored mansion located right on a private beach. The backyard had a swimming pool and a hot tub, with a gate leading right onto the shoreline. Mother had a small get-together at the beach house, and she invited James and his family, along with some other friends. James didn’t show up, but his father Arte did. To my surprise, Maddy Humpreys and her mother came over. Seeing Maddy for the first time in six years was a very peculiar experience. The last time we saw each other, we were just kids. Now, she was a fully-grown teenage girl, and from looking through her Facebook pictures, I knew she was popular. She was a typical pretty girl who had lots of pretty friends. She was one of them, one of the popular kids. My first friend in America, someone I played with innocently as a child, had grown up to represent the type of people who have caused me so much pain in my life. I was very nervous talking to her, as I had no experience with talking to young girls, but I had to make the effort. She seemed weirded-out by my awkwardness. It was cringe-worthy. While staying at the beach house, I invited Philip and Addison over to hang out, as they were always in Malibu together. They came to pick me up, and while I was in the car with them, Addison kept talking about how successful he has been at mingling with the popular kids at Malibu High School. He kept talking about all of the parties he’s been to, and all of the pretty girls he has met. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Addison actually did it. He succeeded in becoming popular at his school. In such a short time, he was able to accomplish what I’ve been trying to do my whole life. I was extremely jealous. And that was not the worst of it. As I spent more time with them that night, I noticed that Addison’s new status amongst the popular Malibu crowd had changed his attitude. It made him very cocky and arrogant. He treated ME like a loser the whole time. Later that night, he ditched me and Philip to go to a party with some girls that he knew from Malibu. I was seething with rage. We then went to the Santa Monica pier with Philip’s friend Lenny, and I saw young couples everywhere. I used to love going to the Santa Monica pier as a child, but now it was a place of vileness. After putting up with Addison’s insulting behavior, this was too much. I became so upset that I tried my first cigarette. I would end up smoking a few times after that, though I would quit within a few weeks due to it having no effect on me. When Philip dropped me back to the beach house, I walked to the beach in the middle of the night and yelled out my anguish to the roiling ocean. After that last experience with Philip and Addison, my attitude changed. My newfound optimism about life subsided, and I began feeling intense anger and hatred towards the world again. The way Addison treated me made me realize what the world thinks of me. If I was one of those popular kids, Addison would have treated me with deference and respect, but I wasn’t. I was a complete loser in his eyes, and everyone else’s. No effort I made in the last few months changed the way the world saw me. The world still viewed me as a weak and undesirable loser, even though I changed my wardrobe and started working out. What was the point anymore? I asked myself. I couldn’t help but feel anger and hatred. Life was too unfair to me. I continued going on walks around mother’s house in the desperate hope that I might possibly cross paths with some pretty girl who would be attracted to me. I would have been satisfied with that. Sometimes I spent two or three hours wandering around the neighborhood. It was all I could do. I never met any girl. Each walk left me bitterly disappointed, and eventually I stopped doing it altogether. My time at Pierce College became more miserable each day I went there. I despised having to take the bus. It was embarrassing and stressful, and it sucked all of the pride out of me. And for what? To go to one class where I didn’t talk to anyone? There was no point in it anymore. I couldn’t stand the feeling of loneliness I had there. No one wanted to be my friend. It just wasn’t worth the trouble. I decided to drop my class. My mother got very angry that I dropped my class at Pierce, even though I thoroughly explained to her the reasons. This was when she started pressuring me to get a job. Getting a job is something I never thought about before in my life, and I soon realized that the older I became, the more it was expected of me if I didn’t go to college. To placate my mother, I started searching for jobs online every day, but I wasn’t able to find one that was suitable for me. I felt hatred and dissatisfaction with the world and society, but I didn’t want to hide away from it anymore. I needed to be as productive with my time as possible, and I had a lot of free time at this point. The best way to make use of this time, I concluded, was to spend it self-educating myself. Knowledge is power. I began a daily routine of walking to Barnes & Noble in Calabasas every day, where I would spend hours reading books that ranged from biographies of powerful leaders, histories of significant periods, self-help books, philosophy and psychology texts, and historical fiction novels. I sometimes even spent entire days there, from the time it opened to the time it closed. In the afternoons, to my extreme rage, I sometimes saw young couples strolling through the store. Sometimes they would even sit on the reading chairs, kissing and fondling each other. Whenever I saw this, I got so overcome by envy and heartbreak that I went to the bathroom to cry. The occasional couples didn’t stop me from going there, however, because it was the most beneficial thing for me to do at that moment. I still met up with Philip and Addison occasionally, even though I hated Addison. They provided me with a sense of a social life, and a way for me to vent about my troubles. Addison treated me like a lowlife every time I hung out with them, and he kept bragging about the girls he met at parties in Malibu. I indignantly accused him of lying, as that was what I wanted to believe. He was only amused by my envy. I then found that Addison deleted me from his Facebook friends list out of the blue. This was the last slight I would bear from him, and I subsequently sent him a hateful Facebook message in response. I then viewed Addison as a bitter enemy of mine. He truly was a disgusting and treacherous little bastard. Addison was once in the same position as I, but right when he succeeded in integrating with the popular kids, he betrayed me and treated me the same way the popular kids treated me, as if I’m lowlife scum. The world truly is a brutal place, where a man must fight a bitter struggle against all other men to reach the top. Humans are nothing but vicious beasts in a jungle. I delved more into learning as much as I could from books at Barnes & Noble. I expanded on the political and philosophical ideals I concocted when I was seventeen, and I soon became even more radical about them than I ever was before. It was all fueled by my wish to punish everyone who is sexually active, because I concluded that it wasn’t fair that other people were able to experience sex while I have been denied it all my life. I started to have the desire to create a world where no one is allowed to have sex or relationships. I again saw that as the perfect, fair world. Reproduction can be accomplished without sex, through artificial insemination. Sex is evil, as it gives too much pleasure to those who don’t deserve it. I shaped all of these ideals through learning and self-educating myself for hours every day. My personality became even more rigid, and I started to dress in very conservative attire. I went with my mother to the yearly Christmas party at the Lemelson’s. I spent most of the time with James, discussing with him further about my ideals. We also played a lot of video games with Noah and his friends. Noah was really interested in Nintendo games, and he had a lot of them. Playing games with them reminded me of a time, long ago in my past, when I played Nintendo 64 as a child, blissfully living life in a world that I thought was good. I longed to be a child again, to be in a bright place away from the cruel darkness of reality. I will always treasure those memories. I had to go Christmas shopping, and I decided to do it at the Calabasas Commons. I was always going there anyway. While walking around, I ran into Maddy, who was there with her boyfriend. For some strange reason, I have never had any sexual attraction towards Maddy, despite the fact that she’s a blonde girl and I’m obsessed with blondes. Perhaps it was because she used to be my friend when we were children, I don’t know. Because I wasn’t attracted to her, I didn’t find myself feeling as much jealousy as one might think I would in such a situation. It was still very awkward. I just said hello to her quickly and walked away. On New Year’s Eve of 2010, the day that marked the end of the decade, I caught a terrible illness and had to stay in bed for the whole afternoon as well as the next day. My mother was going to go to one of her friend’s houses, but she felt sorry for me and stayed at home. I spent the whole time lying in my bed, brooding about my life. I don’t know what was worse, the physical pain I felt from the sickness, or the emotional pain and rage I had towards the world. I would say the latter. When the illness had passed on the following afternoon, I thought about how it caused me to waste my New Year’s holiday in my room, but then I mused that I would have done the same thing anyway, whether I was sick or not, because I had no friends to celebrate New Year’s with. I checked Addison’s Facebook profile with one of my stalking accounts, and I saw that he went to a huge New Year’s party at a mansion with his popular Malibu friends. He took lots of pictures of himself posing with various girls. I hated him so much when I saw that. The level of hatred I felt was unreal. He was doing everything I wanted to do! Why him and not me? I cursed at the world. What was seen can never be unseen, and I will never forget it, nor will I forgive it. My hope that I will one day have a beautiful girlfriend and live the life I desire slowly faded away. I was in the same dark and miserable place I had been a year previously; lonely, unwanted, miserable, and seething with rage at the world. I kept thinking about how some boys were easily able to get girlfriends straight after they went through puberty. I couldn’t fathom how they did it, and I hated and despised them for it. I kept thinking about Leo Bubenheim, and how he kissed that girl Nicole at the Sagebrush Cantina when he was only twelve. Twelve! He was able to have an intimate experience with a girl when he was only twelve; and there I was at eighteen, still a kissless virgin. My envy of Leo became an obsession. I kept asking my sister for information about him, but she refused to tell me anything. I frightfully wondered if he had lost his virginity already, and he most likely had. He was a popular kid, and girls desired him. Leo was happily living his heavenly life with the knowledge that he’s worth something to the world, while I had to wallow in my misery and loneliness. Life is not fair. One can either accept that fact, keeling over in defeat; or one can harness the strength to fight against it. My destiny was to fight against the unfairness of the world. My mother carried on pressuring me to get a job, and she would never leave me alone about it. She was a bit frustrated that I wasn’t getting one. The two of us had a lot of arguments, and living with my mother became an extreme hassle. After signing me up to a program in the regional center, my mother found a life coach to counsel me and help me find a job. This life coach’s name was Tony, a boisterous 40 year old man who came to meet me every other week. I was open to going along with this. I had plenty of free time, and I was so lonely that any social interaction was welcome. For our meetings, Tony usually took me out to lunch somewhere in the Valley, where he gave me advice on socializing and self-improvement. I continued searching for a job, but I still wasn’t able to find one. I refused all of the jobs that Tony suggested to me. The problem was that most of the jobs that were available to me at the time were jobs I considered to be beneath me. My mother wanted me to get a simple retail job, and the thought of myself doing that was mortifying. It would be completely against my character. I am an intellectual who is destined for greatness. I would never perform a low-class service job. My father told me that I could work for his friend Karl Champley for a few weeks, to help him build a staircase in his new house. I knew Karl quite well, for he used to come over to father’s for dinner occasionally. Karl was just finishing up building his new house in Woodland Hills, just a few minutes away from father’s house, and he offered to hire me to help with the staircase. I agreed to take this job. Sure, construction work was lowly and laborious, but this was different. This was more like assisting a friend, and it would be in a private environment. It was the perfect temporary job opportunity, and it would most definitely get my mother off my back. I still wasn’t able to drive, so I rode my bicycle there from mother’s house every morning. The trip on the bicycle took 30 minutes. It was grueling to ride a bicycle up that steep winding road every day, but it provided good exercise, which I was in need of. I worked with Karl every weekday for about three weeks. It turned out to be quite a pleasant experience. Karl was very friendly and I enjoyed working with him. When we finished the staircase, which was a spiral staircase that led up to his roof-deck, we took a moment to admire the work we did. On my last day working for Karl, I decided to stop by at father’s house to have a drink. I was quite parched from the bicycle ride. I entered the house without knocking because I believed I had the right to. As the eldest son, the house should be my house after my father. Soumaya was surprised to see me, and she got angry that I didn’t knock. To teach me a lesson, she ordered me to go back outside and knock. I refused, telling her that she has no right to order me around anymore. I then helped myself to a glass of water. Soumaya knocked the glass of water out of my hand and it shattered on the floor. Father clamored angrily up the stairs from his office demanding to know what was going on. The three of us had a heated argument, and of course father took Soumaya’s side. They both kicked me out of the house, telling me that I’m not to return. I felt betrayed and humiliated as I furiously made my way back to mother’s house. At that very moment, I hated both of them, and I wouldn’t see either of them for many months. For those months, my father was dead to me. My mother was all I had left in this bleak world. During that same week, I had a climactic meeting with Philip and Addison where my noxious feud with Addison Altendorf reached a boiling point. We went on an outing to the Griffith Park Observatory, as we usually did when we got together. This time, my arguments with Addison were very intense. I tried to insult him as much as I could, in a petty attempt to get revenge at him for all the insults and slights he dealt to me. We went back and forth at each other for the whole evening, to the chagrin of poor Philip who had to put up with it. By the end of the night, Addison said something to me that was so offensive it will haunt me forever, and it rang true: “No girl in this whole world will ever want to fuck you.” I already felt that no girl in the world wanted to fuck me. I was a kissless virgin after all. That was the sole reason why I was suffering. But to hear it come from someone else, someone like Addison, really caused it to sink into core of my mentality and emotions. That whole night made for a very vile and wicked experience. I decided not to see Philip and Addison for a long time. Because I was no longer seeing Philip and Addison, James was once again my only friend. I frequently talked to him over Skype. Sometimes I would go over to his house, where the two of us went on our traditional walks around the Palisades town center. James still played WoW, and he was trying to get me back into it. I was quite tempted. After everything I had been through in the last few months, I did feel the urge to delve back into that void. Facing the world was tough, and it took its toll on me, especially since I’ve seen no results. I was still in the same position I had always been: Lonely, unwanted, and miserable. I found out that my mother was actually dating Jack, the wealthy man who owned the Malibu beach house. I always thought he was only her friend. My mother never told me or my sister about any men that she dated. She always kept that strictly private. I hadn’t even met Jack yet. He was worth well over $500 million, and he owned other mansions in Bel Air and Beverly Hills. When I found out about this, I started to harbor the hope that my mother will get married to this man, and I will be part of a rich family. That will definitely be a way out of my miserable and insignificant life. Money would solve everything. I started to frequently ask my mother to seek marriage with this man, or any wealthy man for that matter. She always adamantly refused, and demanded that I stopped talking about it. She told me that she never wanted to get married again after her experience with my father. I told her that she should sacrifice her well-being for the sake of my happiness, but this only offended her further. At the beginning of summer, I finally received my driver’s license. I had to take the driving test twice before I passed it. The first time, I took it at the Winnetka DMV, and I made a few mistakes at the end which caused me to fail it. After taking some lessons that my mother arranged for me, I gave the driving test another try at the Thousand Oaks DMV. This area was much easier to navigate around, so I managed to closely pass the test. Once my official driver’s license came in the mail, my mother told me some good news. She received a new car from Jack, which meant she could give her older car to me. I now had a car of my own to drive. To be able to drive to any place I wanted to go provided me with a new sense of freedom that I never felt before. I felt more like an adult rather than a kid. I realized that I could start college again, now that I had the ability to drive there. I registered for a summer class at Moorpark College. I read about Moorpark College online and found that it was a much better option than Pierce College. My mother and I drove up there to take a look. The campus was smaller in scale, and more aesthetically pleasing. It was located in the town of Moorpark, in a gorgeous mountain area near Thousand Oaks. I also saw a lot more beautiful girls there than I ever saw at Pierce. Everywhere I looked I saw beautiful blonde girls walking around. This college was just right for me. In the days leading up to my first day at Moorpark, I felt a renewed sense of hope. A new college provided a new start, and this college looked perfect in every way. I had the hope that I could make it there; that I could make friends, meet some girls, and eventually find a pretty girl to be my girlfriend. I pictured her in my mind all the time; her cascading blonde hair, her beautiful face, her sensual body… Everything. I imagined us walking hand in hand through the college, looking at the magnificent view of the mountains in the distance as the sun sets behind them. That would be heaven. That was what I wanted in life. Every single hate-fueled ideal, world-view, and philosophy I created in the past was a result of not being able to do that. I was very optimistic on the first day. When I walked onto the campus I breathed in the fresh mountain air and admired my surroundings. I was in a new environment with lots of new possibilities. The class I took was a world history class, and it began on a good note. The class was well-structured and the teacher was entertaining. After the class ended, I walked around the college for an hour to explore and ponder over how I can set my life right. Once again, I dared to hope that there could be a good future for me. My renewed hope gave me solace for a few days, but it did not last. Moorpark soon became a place of loneliness and despair, just like any other place I’ve attempted to thrive in. The breaking point was when I saw good looking couples walking along the area where I dreamed of walking with a girlfriend. To watch another boy experience it, with a beautiful girl who should be mine, was a living hell. I constantly asked myself what I did wrong in life, to be unable to have a beautiful girlfriend. It was no better inside the classroom. There was this one obnoxious jock with a buzz-cut who was taking the class with his gorgeous girlfriend. They always sat next to each other, talking and touching each other with affection. Every day I had to see this, and my envy grew and grew. I constantly glared at them with raw hatred. What did I do wrong that he did right? I yelled out to the universe on the way home. Why does he deserve the love of a beautiful girl, and not me? Why do girls hate me so? Questions and questions. All I could do was question why I was suffering so much injustice in life. My mother one day told me that I should become a writer, because I had some talent in writing. That was strange to hear. For my whole life I was never talented at anything I tried. I was too physically weak to play sports with other boys when I was little; I never became professional at skateboarding no matter how much I practiced; and I was never that skilled at any video games I played… even World of Warcraft. Steve and Mark were able to play their characters more skillfully that I ever did, and they started the game much later than me. Deep down, I’ve always known that I had no talents, and I’ve always tried not to think about it. Indeed, it was strange to hear my mother say that I could become a talented writer, but it did give me an idea. I started to wonder if I actually could become a writer. I could write an epic fantasy story that will be made into a movie, and I will become rich from it. Being rich will definitely make me attractive enough to have a beautiful girlfriend. It was not impossible, and working towards it would give me something to live for. I mulled it over in my mind for a while. We went to Jack’s beach house in Malibu to spend a couple of nights again. My mother called me on the phone to tell me the plan while I was at college. It was a lonely and depressing day at school, and I was glad to be able to have some respite at the lovely beach house. I immediately drove there from Moorpark after my class was finished. Mother had a few of her friends over, and she bought a lot of delicious food. After stuffing myself with portions from every dish and drinking multiple glasses of wine, I went on a long and peaceful walk on the beach, wishing that I had a girlfriend to walk beside me. Before I went to bed, I thought a lot more about the possibility of becoming rich. If I was a millionaire and owned a house like the one I was spending that night in, I could have any girl I want. Being in that position would make up for all of the misery I’ve had to go through in the past… and making up for it is my most important goal in life. My one wish is to feel satisfied for the way my life is. I seriously started to consider working towards writing an epic story. I was always creating stories in my mind to fuel my fantasies. Usually those stories depicted someone like myself rising to power after a life of being treated unfairly by the world. I mentally examined all of the stories I had developed, and focused on the few that I thought would become bestsellers. If I could get one of them made into a movie, I would definitely be a millionaire. It was the only solution to my problems. I saw myself as a highly intelligent and magnificent person who is meant for great things. This could be one of them. I spent the next couple of weeks focusing on writing for myself instead of working on my schoolwork. The class didn’t give much homework to do anyway. I wrote summaries for three different stories, and I think I showed two of them to my mother. She seemed to think that they would make good movies, and that increased my confidence. I either wanted to write a novel first, or go straight to making it a screenplay. I spent every afternoon for two weeks working on this goal. My time at college was miserable. I often cried on the way home because I was envious of so many couples walking around. I poured all of my energy into coming up with a way to make this goal work. My faith that I could write an epic story that would make me rich soon collapsed. I read so many articles online of the chances that a screenplay would be made into a movie. I also saw that most writers of even the highest budget films didn’t make as much as I thought they did… Definitely not enough to live on for the rest of their life. I also thought, with a lot of despair, of the time that it would take to achieve such a goal. Most bestselling authors or screenwriters didn’t become millionaires until they were well into their forties or fifties. I didn’t want to wait until I was forty years old to lose my virginity! The thought of spending the next twenty years working hard every day for a chance to make a million or two filled me with revulsion. By the time I’d become a millionaire from doing that, I wouldn’t even be able to get hot young girls because I’d be too old. I decided that writing was not my path to salvation, and I abandoned the idea completely. Of course, I would become tantalized with the idea a few more times in the future, but that would be due to the desperate, false hope that I often create for myself. I couldn’t stand seeing that damnable couple in my class anymore. I never understood what that pretty girl saw in her brute of a boyfriend. That guy was able to experience his college life with his beautiful girlfriend by his side, while I was all alone. It made me feel so inferior. I had to watch them together, every single day. The torture was unbearable. When I got home from college one day, I dropped my class in a rage. I didn’t think about how my mother would react to me dropping the class. I knew she would be very disappointed, and I couldn’t afford to have her be disappointed in me. I was relying on her for everything. What she gave to me, she could easily take away. I panicked and resolved to get a job in order to placate her. After asking Tony, my social skills counsellor, if I could get a job through the regional center, he called me back and told me that there was a job available for me. I didn’t get much information about it, but I decided to sign up for it right there and then. After this was secure, I was comfortable enough to tell my mother that I dropped my class at Moorpark. I could have lied to her and told her that I never dropped the class, but at that time I was too scared to lie to her. I started a day of working at this new job. It was located in an office building that was connected to an Airport in Los Angeles. To my horror and humiliation, the job turned out to be a menial custodial job, and I had to clean offices and even the bathrooms. There was no way I would ever degrade myself to such a level. I felt like utter shit from even considering working at such a place. I only worked for a few hours while I thought about how to handle this foul situation… and on the next day I called to announce that I was quitting. That was the second and last “job” I would ever have. I only worked there for less than a day. After I quit, I fell into an even worse state of panic than I was in after I dropped my Moorpark class. I rapidly pestered myself with the ultimate question: What am I to do now? I called up Karl Champley to see if he had another job for me at his house, but he told me that his house was almost finished and there was literally no work for me to do there. I was doomed. I thought that if my mother found out that I quit, she would kick me out of her household. My mother was taking a vacation in Hawaii with my sister during this time. I had a few days by myself to relax and plot my next move. I concluded that going to college and enduring the sight of couples walking around was better than having to resort to working a low-class job somewhere, and I had to pick one of the two in order to placate my mother. College was also more beneficial because I could learn and educate myself through it. I called up my mother and cried to her on the phone, explaining to her why I quit the job that I signed up for, and asked her if she would give me another chance. I told her I will register for more classes at Moorpark and pour all of my energy into studying hard. I also told her that I will continue with working on my writing. To my relief, she was very understanding, and she told me she would continue to support me if I did this. The temporary pressure I had to face that summer was eased, but after thinking about it, I supposed it was insignificant compared to the overall pressure that’s been on my shoulders ever since I hit puberty: My struggle against a society that looks down upon me… against the female gender for denying me sex and love. Addison Altendorf’s hurtful words kept haunting me all throughout the summer. I saw my future and I saw only more bleak loneliness. I will never have sex. I will never have love. Girls deem me unworthy of it, I thought to myself over and over again. I cried every day when I imagined how much fun and pleasure other teenagers were having as I languished in despair. My 19th birthday passed by sullenly, and it caused me to feel even more defeated. Nineteen and still a virgin, I miserably proclaimed on that day. My father didn’t even deign to give me a phone call. Instead, he sent me a letter wishing me happy birthday and telling me that he wanted me to apologize to Soumaya, which of course I refused to do. The laptop I received on my 17th birthday had become infected with viruses, so my mother bought me a new, even better laptop on my 19th birthday. I chose one that can handle video games very well, because I had just made the decision to start playing World of Warcraft again. I just couldn’t handle the anguish in my life anymore, and I needed a break, no matter how unhealthy and time-consuming WoW would be for me. 19 Years Old Upon setting up my new laptop, I immediately installed all of my WoW disks. I logged onto my account and took a look at all of my characters that I hadn’t touched for a year and a half. Right when I logged onto my main character, I was contacted by James, and he invited me to join an online group with him, Steve, and Mark. They all gave me a warm welcome back. And there I was, stuck in the void of hopelessness once again; in the exact same position as I had been when I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen and seventeen. For all the efforts I made to improve my life during my eighteenth year, I had nothing to show for it. No friends, no girls, no life. I started going to James’s house a lot more, since I was now able to drive and the two of us could play WoW together again. Seeing James was always pleasant in its own way. He was my comrade in virginity, for he too didn’t get any attention from girls, and I’m sure he suffered from it, but not as much as I did. I was very perplexed as to why he didn’t feel any anger towards girls for denying him sex. He should be just as angry as I am. I supposed he didn’t have a very high sex drive, or he was just a generally weak person. To be angry about the injustices one faces is a sign of strength. It is a sign that one has the will to fight back against those injustices, rather than bowing down and accepting it as fate. Both my friends James and Philip seem to be the weak, accepting type; whereas I am the fighter. I will never stand to be insulted, and I will eventually have my revenge against all those who insult me, no matter how long it takes. For the rest of the summer, I took it easy and played WoW with James, Steve, and Mark; just like old times. I also started reading a new book series called A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R.R. Martin. This medieval fantasy series was spectacular. The first book of the series was A Game of Thrones, and once I read the first chapter I just couldn’t put it down. It was like nothing I had ever read before, with a huge array of complex characters, a few of whom I could relate to. I found out that it was going to be adapted into an HBO television series, and I became very excited for that. Delving into fantasy stories like WoW and Game of Thrones didn’t make me forget about all of my troubles in life, but they did give me a temporary and relieving sense of escape, which I need from time to time. Life would be impossible to handle without those temporary respites. Rob Lemelson suggested to my mother that I join the karate class he practices in. Rob was an expert black-belt, and James was also taking the same class with him. They met up every Tuesday and Friday night, and I agreed to go on Fridays. Every Friday, I began the routine of driving up to James’s house, and then the two of us would go in James’s car to the karate class in Santa Monica. James got his first car a few months after I got mine, though his car was a lot older and worn out. Rob thought that starting karate would be healthy for me, as it is meant to increase confidence and build character. I was eager to see if I could benefit from it. The class was pleasant. It gave me a good work out and a sense of invigoration. There were usually six or seven other students, and I was particularly annoyed with this one twelve year old kid who seemed to think he was better than me because he was a brown belt and I was a novice white belt. I bet he thought he could beat me in a fight because of it… Hah! No chance in that. It was annoying, but I was amused at the same time. After the karate class, Rob would take us out to a nice restaurant for dinner if he had time. If Rob was busy that night, James and I would go to our usual dinner place in the palisades, and then we would go back to his house to hang out for a while. My new semester at Moorpark College began. I only managed to sign up for one class, but I promised my mother that I would do at least three classes in the next semester. Both of my grandma’s offered to send me some money to help me out with living expenses, and I wisely saved every check I received from them. One of my priorities was to start building up my money savings in case my life became too drastic. The class I started was a political science class. I figured I would gain some useful knowledge by taking it, though I disliked the teacher because he had the tendency to randomly call on me to answer questions. I was still terrified of speaking in front of the class, even if it was for one sentence. My social anxiety has always made my life so difficult, and no one ever understood it. I hated how everyone else seemed to have no anxiety at all. I was like a cripple compared to them. Their lives must be so much easier. Thankfully, there were no couples in this class, but I still had to see them when I walked through the school. The only thing I could do was keep my head down and pretend they didn’t exist. I still cried on the drive home every day. Grandma Jinx came to visit the United States in October, where she stayed at father’s house. This presented a difficult situation. She of course wanted to see me, her eldest grandson, but I wasn’t on speaking terms with my father and Soumaya. I was very resentful of my father for the way he treated me during that last incident, and I will never forgive him for it. My father effectively abandoned me at one of my most crucial points in my life. Though in fact, he was never really present in my life to abandon me in the first place. When I think about it, he was always absent from my life. When my whole world took a downward spiral into darkness after I hit puberty, he never made any effort to save me. He just didn’t care. I would never let what happened to me happen to a son of mine, if I had a son… though from the way things have been going, I’ll never have a chance to have a son, because girls don’t want to have sex me. I would make such a better father than my own father. Grandma Jinx pushed the both of us to reconcile. She insisted that I meet her and father at father’s house, where the three of us would set out to have lunch somewhere. I showed up and gave my grandma a hug. Father didn’t say a word to me, nor I to him. We went to our local Japanese restaurant. Father sat in silence while Grandma Jinx asked me lots of questions about my life. Eventually we got around to the subject that was hanging in the air. If it weren’t for my grandma, the conversation would have gotten nowhere. Father and I went back and forth at each other with accusations. Grandma Jinx persuaded the two of us to drop our grudges and move on. For her sake, we acquiesced. I shook hands with father as we agreed to put the past behind us. I went on a walk with Grandma Jinx after we returned to father’s house. I took her up to my old contemplation spot, the hilltop that overlooks father’s neighborhood, which I always called the Overlook. That place is one of the most special places in my life. I have memories of it stretching back all the way to when I was a joyful ten-year-old. I remember going up there to skateboard all the way down; I rode my bicycle up there during my middle school years; I hiked up there with Max when he was staying at father’s house as an exchange student; I languished there in despair when I went on my lonely walks at the age of seventeen and eighteen; and now I was showing it to my grandma. When the two of us reached the top, every memory came back to me, and I felt a bittersweet sense of nostalgia. After the walk, I didn’t want to enter father’s house. Soumaya was in there, and I hadn’t seen her since that dreadful day when she made father throw me out. Once again, my grandma forced the issue, and I agreed to go in for a talk. We all sat down at the kitchen table and agreed that arguing would get us nowhere. Father and Soumaya were willing to start over, and I agreed to give our relationship another chance. Before my grandma departed back to England, she made us promise to keep up the positive relations, and made sure that they would invite me over for dinner frequently. I soon went to one of those dinners at father’s house. It was an awkward experience, to have dinner with the two of them after all of that tension. We didn’t raise any issues and talked about pleasant things. It was nice to see my brother Jazz again. I was shocked by how much he had grown in the past several months. He was no longer a baby, but a five-year-old boy who was turning six soon. I could actually have full conversations with him. He was a very social boy, and quite boisterous… and that started to worry me. He could well turn into one of the people I have despised and envied so much. I felt a hint of jealousy that my five-year-old brother was so well versed in social skills at such a young age. I always suffered from shyness and social anxiety, but Jazz didn’t seem to have that problem. I put that worry at the back of my mind. He was my brother, and he really looked up to me. He was one of the few people who treated me the way I want to be treated, with respect and adoration. I enjoyed spending time with the boy. As I got more used to having a car of my own to drive, I frequently went on what I called “night drives” around my mother’s neighborhood. They almost replaced the long walks I used to take in the afternoons. Staying in my room all the time only increased my depression. It was suffocating. To ease this suffocation, I frequently got in my car at night, turned on the radio, and went on a drive with no particular destination. The song “Two Is Better Than One” always played on the radio when I went on those night drives. It made me feel sad, though it was soothing at the same time. That song will always remind me of the loneliness I felt during those experiences. I soon learned the hard way to not go on night drives on Fridays and Saturdays. That was when teenagers were out and about. Even in the peaceful residential neighborhood that my mother lived in, I frequently saw bands of teenagers roaming the streets. They were high schoolers, younger than me; mostly skateboarder punks or football jocks who had pretty girls beside them. The sight of them enraged me to no end. It reminded me of the life I missed out on. They were probably on their way to some house party, where they will get drunk and have sex and do all sorts of fun pleasurable things that I’ve never had the chance to do. Damn them all! My Autumn semester at Moorpark College flashed by like a subtle lightning bolt. It was as if it didn’t even exist in my life. Moorpark College was supposed to be a place of hope for me, but it turned into a place of despair, just like everything else. I was invisible there. Nobody knew I existed or cared who I was. At least this time I finished a class. The day of my final exam was December 7th, which was also the day the new expansion to World of Warcraft was released, called Cataclysm. I completed my final exam with ease, and thus I completed my first college class, in which I received the grade of a B. Afterwards, I rushed to Best Buy to purchase the new game. With new WoW expansions, some of those old feelings that I felt when I first played the game came back to me, and I wanted that feeling again. It was comforting, and the sense comfort was something I needed to cushion myself with. I also knew that I would beat James, Steve, and Mark to the next high level cap. I supposed it would provide a small sense of competitive satisfaction. Getting a character to the highest level the fastest was the only part of the game that I was truly good at, but I suppose that was due to the massive amounts of free time I had at my disposal. Since my college class was over and it was winter break, I could literally play the game for every waking minute. And so I did. My last stint in the World of Warcraft was an intense one. I reached the new level cap in less than two days, and once I was there I repeatedly took pleasure in killing James’s, Steve’s, and Mark’s characters as they tried to level up, as a petty form of revenge for them leaving me out of their group meetings years ago, and because I was jealous that Steve and Mark were more skilled at the game than I was. Being a higher level for those few days gave me the advantage I needed to even the score. But I digress. After two weeks of playing World of Warcraft nonstop, I once again came to the abrupt decision to quit. The new expansion was a major disappointment. Blizzard Entertainment, the creators of the game, made changes that I believe ruined everything that was fun about it. I won’t get into the details, as most of the people reading this won’t understand complicated video game terms anyway. But that was only a small part of the reason why I quit. The main reason was the disturbing new player-base. The game got bigger with every new expansion that was released, and as it got bigger, it brought in a vast amount of new players. I noticed that more and more “normal” people who had active and pleasurable social lives were starting to play the game, as the new changes catered to such a crowd. WoW no longer became a sanctuary where I could hide from the evils of the world, because the evils of the world had now followed me there. I saw people bragging online about their sexual experiences with girls… and they used the term “virgin” as an insult to people who were more immersed in the game than them. The insult stung, because it was true. Us virgins did tend to get more immersed in such things, because our real lives were lacking. I couldn’t stand to play WoW knowing that my enemies, the people I hate and envy so much for having sexual lives, were now playing the same game as me. There was no point anymore. I realized what a terrible mistake I made to turn my back on the world again. The world is brutal, and I need to fight for my place in it. My life was at a crucial turning point, and I couldn’t waste any more precious time. At the Lemelson’s Christmas party, I told James that I was quitting WoW again, and he told me he suspected I would very soon. It was just a matter of time. Even through playing with me over the internet, he could detect my anger and rage towards the world seeping through the computer screen. I questioned him about why he himself could go on living without feeling any sort of anger or resentment about his circumstances, which were similar to mine. He was, after all, a nineteen year old virgin just like I was. He just casually told me that didn’t pay attention to it, and focused on his strengths. What strengths do I have to focus on? I wondered. The world views me as a weakling. Perhaps I needed to prove the world wrong. On Christmas Day, father held a huge Christmas party at his house. I was invited, since I was back on speaking terms with them. I got a few new shirts for Christmas, so I decided to wear one for the occasion. I hadn’t seen any of father’s friends for a while, and it was nice to reunite with them. The Bubenheim’s weren’t there; father had recently got into a fight with Alex, abruptly ending their friendship. I suppose it was for the best. If Leo was at that party, I would have probably gotten into a nasty fight with him. My hatred of Leo was so volatile that I wanted to confront him. I wanted to hurt him. I couldn’t let him get away with the insults he dealt towards me in the past. A few family friends complimented my appearance, and that made me feel a bit better about myself. It is so peculiar how a simple smile or a compliment can completely change how I feel about the world for a few moments. During the remaining days of 2010, I joined my mother and sister at Jack’s beach house in Malibu to spend a few nights. They arrived there a few hours before me, and by the time I reached the house they had already invited a few guests for an afternoon get-together. To my outrage, I saw that mother had invited Maddy and her boyfriend. I was looking forward to having another respite at the beautiful Malibu mansion where I can indulge myself in opulence and forget about my depressing loneliness. Having a young couple lurking around only reminded me of my insignificance. I was extremely upset with my mother for inviting them. She should have been more considerate. If only I had a girlfriend of my own to take to that place. That beach house is the perfect place to take a girlfriend to. It had a swimming pool and a Jacuzzi, it was located on a private beach where we could walk arm in arm, and it even had a private movie theatre. Such an opportunity wasted, all because no girl would give me a chance. Instead, I was all alone, and I had to see another couple watch movies together in that very theatre. Thankfully, that couple only stayed for a few hours. Mother invited a few more guests, and we ordered our dinner to be delivered from a local restaurant. By the time dinner arrived, I had already consumed three glasses of wine, and I had a fourth glass with the meal. Everything’s better with some wine in the belly, as a famous character from Game of Thrones would say. I was left out of most of the conversations, like I always was, so I just sat there quietly, sipping my wine as I had to bear listening to Maddy talk about how awesome her life was. I excused myself as soon as I finished eating, and boy did I stuff myself on that meal. I then walked outside onto the beach. The wine had long since gone to my head, making me feel a sense of dizzy invigoration. I started walking along the shore, taking in the magnificence of the gentle, moonlit ocean. It was so… romantic. I kept walking and walking with no destination in mind. The romance of it all filled me with despair and longing. I wanted a girlfriend to experience that moment with me, but no girl wanted to be my girlfriend. The only thing I could do was imagine how heavenly it would be to have a beautiful girl by my side. It is such a shameful tragedy. I ended up walking for two hours, and at the end of it I was crying to myself because I felt so sad. When I returned to the house, Maddy and her boyfriend had left, and so did most of the guests. The only guests who remained were my mother’s friends Alan and Rebecca, and their sons, as they were spending the nights there with us. I spent the rest of my time there relaxing and watching movies in the theatre. We watched the entire Jurassic Park trilogy, which brought back fond memories of my childhood. I went on a few more walks on the beach during the daytime. That beach was always quiet and peaceful, since the only people who visited it were those who lived in homes on the beach. I took full advantage of this. I’ve always found beaches to be truly beautiful, but I could never go to public beaches because they are full of young couples walking around in their revealing bathing suits, the sight of which fills me with envious rage. On the private beach, I could enjoy the serenity of the environment without having to worry about young couples making me jealous. There were no young couples, only a few families and old couples here and there. I did, however, pass by one young girl, and she was like a goddess who came down from heaven. She was walking alone, in her bathing suit, with her luscious blonde hair blowing in the wind. I couldn’t help but slyly admire her beauty as we passed by each other. I was scared. I was scared that she might view me as nothing but an inferior insect who’s presence ruins her atmosphere. Her beauty was intoxicating! And then, just as we passed each other, she actually looked at me. She looked at me and smiled. Most girls never even deigned to look at me, and this one actually looked at me and smiled. I had never felt so euphoric in my life. One smile. One smile was all it took to brighten my entire day. The power that beautiful women have is unbelievable. They can temporarily turn a desperate boy’s whole world around just by smiling. That smile put me in a good, healthy mood for the rest of that walk, but it soon faded away as I realized that I could never actually have a girl as beautiful as that. She probably only smiled out of politeness. She would never go for me. And what is the point to life if I can’t have a girl of such beauty? Some men get to have beautiful girlfriends like that, and some don’t. I am among those who are denied such a pleasure, and that is why I hate life. After spending three days at the Malibu beach house, I was sad to leave it. I had a feeling I would never see the place again, and it was true. That was the last time I ever went there. Mother ended her relationship with Jack sometime within the following months, though she would never tell me directly about it. I spent New Year’s Eve alone and miserable, just like the previous year. And the year before that, for that matter. It was the last day my WoW account was active, and I logged onto WoW just for that occasion. I angrily had arguments with random people online who I saw bragging about their girlfriends. I spewed out all of my hatred towards them, but they were only amused. It was a very aggravating experience, and it made me glad that I cancelled my WoW account. There was nowhere I could hide anymore. Time was ticking, and a New Year was just beginning. I concluded that I had to put more effort into making better use of my time. I made a vow on New Year’s Day that I wouldn’t masturbate until I did something to successfully get one step further in life. Having a high sex drive, I usually masturbated at least every other day. I always fantasized about sex… and the fact that I was unable to have sex made me even more obsessed with it. To stop masturbating for more than three days was a big deal. I lasted seven days. On the seventh day my sexual urges became too overwhelming. My whole body was enveloped in it. I thought about girls every single second, and not having a girl to have sex with was unbearable. I could not even function anymore, so I had to break my commitment. The masturbation session I had after that seven-day dry spell was astounding. I did my usual fantasizing about having sex with a beautiful, tall blonde-haired girl; but this time I intensified it a lot, and made up a whole story in my mind just to make the experience seem more real. If only it could be real. Some men get to live that fantasy, whereas I could only dream of it. Life is not fair. I finished the fourth book of the Song of Ice and Fire series. The television adaptation, Game of Thrones was coming out in just a few months, and I was really looking forward to that. I was also looking forward to the fifth book of the series, which had a release date of July 12th. After finishing all four books, I had become a huge fan of the series. It depicted a much more exciting world than the one I lived in, with a large array of complex characters, a few of whom I could really relate to. As I was reading up about the release date for the fifth book, I found an online countdown that showed each day, hour, minute, and second that remained until July 12th. Since July 12th was so close to my 20th birthday, I used this countdown as the official countdown of my last days as a teenager. I made it my internet homepage, and hoped that it would motivate me to do everything I can to change my life during this crucial period. Since I was back in father’s good graces, my mother agreed to meet with him and me to talk about my life situation. We had dinner at a Japanese restaurant, where we had a long talk about what I was doing in my life, and what my college plans were. My mother and father both agreed that in order to change my life, I needed to remove myself from my current environment and start anew. Living at my mother’s apartment was becoming unhealthy, and they thought that things would improve if I had my own place. It was at this moment that we began to form the Santa Barbara plan, in which I would go to college in Santa Barbara and live amongst the students there. The Santa Barbara plan was formed on that night, but its roots stretch all the way back to when I just turned eighteen. It was all because I watched that movie Alpha Dog. The movie had a profound effect on me, because it depicted lots of good looking young people enjoying pleasurable sex lives. I thought about it for many months afterward, and I constantly read about the story online. I found out that it took place in Santa Barbara, which prompted me to read about college life in Santa Barbara. I found out about Isla Vista, the small town adjacent to UCSB where all of the college students live and have parties. When I found out about all this, I had the desperate hope that if I moved to that town I would be able to live that life too. That was the life I wanted. A life of pleasure and sex. I talked to my mother about the prospect of going to college in Santa Barbara a few times during my eighteenth year. She thought it was a good idea; it would certainly free her of the burden of living with me, but we never seriously considered it. Until that day. My mother proposed the plan to father, and father became very enthusiastic about it. We laid down the groundwork right then and there. Father was still suffering from his financial crisis, but he agreed to pay for my tuition and contribute five hundred dollars a month towards my living expenses, while my mother would pay for my apartment rent and continue to provide me with the car. I was to do one more semester at Moorpark for the time being, and then transfer to Santa Barbara City College in the summer. This was a very astonishing turn of events. I didn’t expect this, and I had no idea how to react. I was completely dumbfounded. I thought it was just going to be a casual dinner meeting where we would simply talk about my life, and we ended up making plans to drastically change my life. At that period of my life, I was on the verge of giving up all hope that I would ever live the life I want, but this changed everything. I now had the opportunity to start fresh, in a beautiful new town, at a new college, with my own living place. Of course, I would have to share an apartment with other college students, but that was part of the experience. It would give me more social credibility than living with my mother, that’s for sure. Deep down, I always wanted an opportunity like this; and now I had one, just at the time when I was about to give up on everything completely. It was very overwhelming, and I needed a few days to meditate and take it all in. It was such an unbelievable turn of events that I dismissed it from my mind in the following two months. It was still five months before I would start college in Santa Barbara, so I decided not to worry about it for the time being. At the present, I had to worry about my new semester at Moorpark that was just beginning. I was registered to take three classes for the Spring semester at Moorpark. The first was an early morning history class, followed by sociology and then psychology. They were all just as disastrous as I expected them to be. I had to drop the sociology class right on the first day, because there was this extremely hot blonde girl who took the class with her brute of a boyfriend. I couldn’t stand looking at them sitting together. I left the class mid-session because I couldn’t take it anymore. Dropping my sociology class left me with a huge gap of time in between my history and psychology classes. During this time I usually went to a quiet, secluded spot that had a few tables overlooking the view of the mountains. I spent a lot of time here, writing in my diary and contemplating my place in the world. My two remaining classes were not much better. In my history class, I had a crush on a really pretty girl, only to find out that she had a boyfriend, and in my psychology class there was this group of popular kids who acted obnoxious the whole time. One of them was a very pretty blonde girl, and she actually enjoyed associating with the obnoxious boys in her clique. The injustice! I hated them all. Everyone treated me like I was invisible. No one reached out to me, no one knew I existed. I was a ghost. It was agony, but I couldn’t drop all of my classes… I already felt guilty about dropping one of them, and I was afraid that my parents would somehow find out. I skipped class a lot, only going in for important lectures and tests, and spent a lot of time at my usual secluded area at the college. As I spent a lot of time contemplating, I realized that my life was repeating itself in a vicious circle of torment and injustice. Each new semester of college yielded the same lonely celibate life, devoid of girls or any social interaction. It was as if there was a curse of misfortune placed upon me. I wondered what the point was in attempting to start a new life in Santa Barbara. Hadn’t I done the same at Moorpark? I thought, with a shiver of dread running up my spine, about how horrible it would be if the same thing ends up happening after I make the big move to Santa Barbara. I didn’t even want to imagine how much of an epic defeat that would be. I wisely shut away all thoughts about it, and focused with intense determination on how I can change my life right at the current moment. My father gave me a book called The Secret after I had dinner at his house in February. He said it will help me develop a positive attitude. The book explained the fundamentals of a concept known as the Law of Attraction. I had never heard or read anything quite like this before, and I was intrigued. The theory stated that one’s thoughts were connected to a universal force that can shape the future of reality. Being one who always loved fantasy and magic, and who always wished that such things were real, I was swept up in a temporary wave of enthusiasm over this book. The prospect that I could change my future just by visualizing in my mind the life I wanted filled me with a surge of hope that my life could turn out happy. The idea was ridiculous, of course, but the world is such a ridiculous place already that I figured I might as well give it a try. In addition, I was so desperate for something to live for that I wanted to believe in the Law of Attraction, even if it was proven to me that it wasn’t real. Once I finished reading it, I drove all the way to Point Dume in Malibu and climbed out to the cliffs at the very edge. It was a windy day, and I could see the ocean roiling below me. As night fell, I looked out to the stars and proclaimed to the universe everything I wanted in life. I proclaimed how I wanted to be a millionaire, so I could live a luxurious life and finally be able to attract the beautiful girls I covet so much. I wished to make up for the years of youth that I wasted in bleak loneliness, and by doing so I would get revenge on everyone who thought they were better than me, just by becoming better than them through the accumulation of wealth. I believed that the only way for me to attain this wealth at the time was to win the Lottery, and that is what I visualized doing. I then descended the clifftop on Point Dume and walked along the Malibu ocean, just like I did a couple of months previously at the beach house. I saw a couple walking along the shore ahead of me; the man looked to be in his late 20’s or early 30’s, and the girl he was walking with looked like a supermodel. I assumed he was very rich and owned a nice house in Malibu. The two of them were walking hand in hand, and I saw him subtly place his hand on her ass every now and then. He was living the life. He was in heaven. I was envious, but since the man was older than me, it also gave me a twinge of hope, especially after my proclamation to the universe at the clifftop. If I become a multi-millionaire, I would be able to walk on the beach with a beautiful girlfriend too, and my life would be complete. That was what I wanted. That was what I wished for in my future. As I’ve always believed, I am destined for great things. Becoming a multi-millionaire at a young age is what I am meant for. My faith was soon broken, as I bought a few Megamillions Lottery tickets and visualized myself being the winner. I usually visualized it by meditating on the rooftop of my mother’s apartment right at the time of the drawing. A part of me knew it was impossible to will the universe to make me the winner just by wishing for it on a rooftop, but I was so desperate that I wanted to believe I could. I wanted to believe I had the POWER to do it. After failing to win when the jackpot reset because someone else won, I lost all faith in that book, and I almost ripped it apart in frustration. I desperately pondered if there was some other way I could make millions of dollars at my age, but I came up with nothing. I realized that my miserable, lonely virgin life was going to continue, and my only hope was to give Santa Barbara a try. I was still attending Karate class with James and Rob Lemelson every week. Most of the time, Rob couldn’t make it because he was busy with something, so it was mostly just James and I going together. It was a pleasant Friday night tradition that had lasted for the last several months, and I enjoyed the chance it gave to hang out with James and have some form of social interaction. But lately, things were starting to get tense. I was constantly annoyed at how I wasn’t getting better at my karate moves in the class, and that one little kid still treated me with disrespect because I was still a white belt, and he was a brown belt. I was also frustrated at how James was so much physically stronger than I was, and how he was so much more skilled at karate than me. During sparring sessions, the deep anger inside me that had accumulated over a life of pain and injustice would sometimes come out, and I used my anger to give me an advantage when I sparred with James and the other students. The karate teachers didn’t like this, and I was criticized. I found the anger to be quite euphoric when I used it to fight, and I enjoyed it in a bittersweet way. After our karate session, when me and James went to a restaurant in the Palisades to have dinner, I sometimes got very angry when I saw a group of teenagers, or a teenage couple. I constantly talked to James with vehement rage about my envy and anger at such people. I told him about how I wished I could make them all suffer. We had a lot of conversations about what we would do if we had all the power in the world, and I told him about all of the torturous acts of revenge I would carry out against all those who have insulted me or lived a better life than me. I thought that James would relate to me, since he was also a virgin who had no girls in his life, but some of the things I said began to disturb him. One night, he told me, with a lot of distress, that enough was enough. He didn’t want to hear it anymore. That was also the night that I decided to quit the karate class. I didn’t speak to James until the two of us attended Rob Lemelson’s birthday party in late Spring. It was celebrated at a very upper class restaurant in Los Angeles, and the Lemelson family rented a private room with seven tables for the occasion. The food was absolutely delicious, and the wine was exquisite. Each bottle was from 1985, and probably worth over a thousand dollars each. I was seated next to James at the “young person’s table”, and at that table I ran into none other than Julian Ritz-Barr! I hadn’t seen him since we were hanging out together with Charlie, John Jo, and Elijah… That was seven years ago. The oaf didn’t even remember who I was. I found out that his father was good friends with Rob. When I mentioned him earlier in the story, I talked about how much I would envy him, and this was the night when that happened. There were a few girls at our table, daughters of Rob’s friends. One of them was pretty, I believe she was the daughter of Pietro Scalia, a renowned film editor; she had very sexy eyes, and she was tall… I always had a thing for tall girls, and this one was almost taller than me. I had to suffer watching Julian sweet-talk all of the girls. He acted so confidently, and the way the pretty girl looked at him with those sexy eyes of hers… that was a look that no girl ever gave to me. I could tell that she was attracted to him. I became more enraged with each second I had to suffer through this. The girls treated me like I was invisible, but they all paid attention to Julian. What made it even worse was that Julian was a year younger than me, and he acted like an obnoxious prick, but the girls liked it! The more enraged I became, the more wine I drank. James was probably worried about how angry I was getting, and he tried to strike up random conversations with me to distract me from Julian. It was very hard to help myself from getting up and dumping my wine all over Julian’s stupid head. Perhaps I would have… if the birthday cake wasn’t presented so early. Everyone stood up to sing happy birthday to Rob, and then the meal was over. Some of the guests left, and James and I switched to a different table. By the time the party was over, I had consumed eight glasses of that 1985 wine. I was underage, but no one seemed to notice me drinking. I was literally stumbling out of the restaurant. I saw James again a couple of weeks later, and that would be the last time I see him for quite a while. It was at another dinner party of Rob’s that he held at his house in the Palisades, though for no special occasion. This time, another person who was a target of my extreme jealousy was there; his name was Roy, an Indonesian boy who was the son of Rob’s housemaid. He was four years younger than me and James, and he took pleasure in bragging to us about his success with girls. He kept showing us pictures of his supposed texting conversations with girls. James didn’t seem to mind it, to my outraged surprise. I, on the other hand, could barely tolerate the insolent little worm. At the party, James and I frequently went outside to have conversations about our fantasies. I wisely refrained from getting too extreme in what I said, but we came up with some interesting scenarios. For instance, we talked about what we would do if we discovered that we had certain magical powers, and it would escalate to us coming up with our own stories of the glory we would attain in such a situation. I talked about how I would use my powers to rule the world and set everything right, and James had similar ideas as well. We seemed to be getting along quite well, but after that night James would refuse to contact me for a couple of months. The first episode of my favorite television series of all time, Game of Thrones, was released in April. I watched it with profound excitement. Being a fan of the books, this was a very anticipated event for me. Seeing all of the characters that I knew so well on the television screen was spectacular. The show exceeded all of my expectations. Each week I looked forward to the next episode, and each episode gave me a small hint of joy in my otherwise bleak life. Towards the end of my Spring semester at Moorpark, I was so frustrated with my lonely status at the college that I refused to even drive up there in the last few weeks. I left my home in the mornings, pretending to my mother that I was going to college, but instead I went to Barnes & Noble and sat there until my mother left for work, and then I would go back home. I made sure to stay at Barnes & Noble for at least two hours, just in case my mother left later than usual. I have always ever been meticulously careful at everything I’ve done. On the last day, I went to my classes, quickly took my final exams, and left. When my classes lined up for the final exams, everyone had a group to socialize with while I stood on the side, alone. Everyone must have thought I was a complete loser. Thank goodness it was the last day. The people in those classes angered me to no end. That was the last time I would ever see that college. On the drive home, I cried to myself as I listened to music on the radio, as I always did. I failed to get the life I wanted at Moorpark. I had nothing going for me in my life, except for the prospect of starting a new life in Santa Barbara. That was my only hope, and it seemed very bleak. From the way things went at Moorpark, I feared the worst for how things might turn out in Santa Barbara, but I had to give it a try. I was desperate to have the life I know I deserve; a life of being wanted by attractive girls, a life of sex and love. Other men are able to have such a life… so why not me? I deserve it! I am magnificent, no matter how much the world treated me otherwise. I am destined for great things. At the end of Spring I had to commence with my summoning to jury service. I received the summons in the mail a few months prior, but I postponed it until May because I was too anguished to deal with such trivial matters at the time. The Courthouse was all the way in Santa Monica. As I sat in the waiting room before my interview with the judge, I saw a very pretty girl who looked about the same age as I was. She had a face that melted my heart. What I would give to hold her in my arms and kiss that pretty face of hers… I wanted to talk to her, but I just couldn’t. I felt too insecure. I was afraid she would think of me as a creep, as all other girls did. To my fury, another guy came in and struck up a conversation with her. They started talking comfortably, and he even made her laugh! I had to watch it all, and it broke my heart. I wanted to get out of there as soon as I could. I hoped that I could make an excuse to avoid having to do jury service. When I was called in for the interview, I requested to be excused due to the fact that I was moving to Santa Barbara soon. To my relief, the judge told me I can go and wished me good luck. As I drove out of the Courthouse parking lot, I saw the same pretty girl. She must have been excused as well. Again, I wished I could have said something to her. She would have made the perfect girlfriend for me, but she was probably already attracted to that other guy who sweet-talked her in the waiting room. Damn him! I felt so sad on the drive home. When I passed by the Palisades, I stopped by at a park that I used to play at with James when the two of us were little. I walked around for a bit and took a ride on the swing, reminiscing about happier times. At the very end of May, my mother gave me an unpleasant surprise by telling me that I had to move to Santa Barbara on June 4th, which was just in a few days. I wasn’t prepared to move so soon. I thought I would go there towards the end of June, right before I start my summer class. I wanted more time to emotionally and mentally prepare for such a huge undertaking. And it was a huge undertaking. For the first time in my life, I was moving out of my parent’s house; and on top of that, I had to move into an apartment with other college students. I had no idea what to expect, and of course I was very nervous. My mother and I found two apartment complexes in Isla Vista that I could potentially move into. I went with my mother and father on a day trip to Santa Barbara to take a look at them. We first had lunch at a restaurant on Cliff Drive, and while there I admired how beautiful Santa Barbara truly was. I found it to be like a mixture of Malibu and Santa Monica, depending on what part of it I was in. I was astounded when we toured through Isla Vista. It was a whole town of college students living together, right next to UCSB, and right next to the beach. I had never seen anything like it in my life. When I read about it online I thought it was too good to be true, but there it was. It was exactly as I expected it to be. There were hot blonde girls walking around everywhere. I always theorized that one of the main hindrances to me living the life I desire was my situation of living in my mother’s apartment. I thought to myself, as we explored more of this college town, that if I lived there, then there was no way I would have trouble getting a social life and losing my virginity. It was the perfect environment to do so. If I can’t get laid there, then there is no hope for me at all. The first apartment building we looked at was pleasant, but they only had shared rooms, and I wanted my own room. The second apartment building was called Capri Apartments, and they had a setup of many two-bedroom apartments shared between three college students, in which one occupies the single room and the other two occupy the shared room. The single rooms cost more, of course, but it wasn’t much. My parents and I sat down at a café to talk about it. We agreed that Capri Apartments was the best choice. My mother went back to their office to arrange a lease deal. Capri was a very popular apartment complex, so it was hard to get a spot there so late in the year. They didn’t have any Autumn semester apartment units ready until July, so it was arranged that I would stay in a temporary apartment unit for the first month, and then move to a permanent one in July once it was ready. The lease was signed and the deal was set. I was going to move to Santa Barbara on June 4th . My mother was very adamant that I move on that particular date. She said it was because she wanted me to go there and settle in before college started, but I knew the real reason. She always wanted me out of her house because she hated having to deal with me. The Santa Barbara plan would free her of me, and she wanted that so badly that she was willing to pay $900 a month for my apartment room rent. Basically, she was paying money to get rid of me. I realized that once I moved out, there was no going back. It will set a precedent, and the threshold will be crossed. My mother will never welcome me back to live with her permanently ever again. In the remaining days I had at my mother’s apartment, I spent a lot of time meditating about how I would deal with this huge change. I had to prepare myself as much as possible, so I did a lot of introspecting and evaluated myself in great detail. This move to Santa Barbara was the only chance I had of attaining the life I desire. I had to do my best to make this work, proclaiming to myself that this time, I will not fail. I exercised in the gym for many hours to boost my confidence as much as possible, and I went to the mall to shop for clothes. Last Christmas I got a few gift cards for Macy’s, and I spent them all on a few shirts that I thought I would look good in, as well as new shoes. After doing everything I could do to physically boost my confidence and appearance, I was ready. And so ends another era of my extraordinary and tragic life. I call it the era of Hope and Hopelessness, where I drifted and languished in lonely despair while I lived at my mother’s apartment and attended two colleges. At various intervals, something happened to give me a new hope for my life, only to have it shattered later on. My life had been moving in that same pattern for a long time now, and I was sick and tired of it. All while I was suffering this lonely existence, other boys my age lived their happy lives of pleasure and sex. I can never forgive such an injustice, and it was my bid to overcompensate for it in the future. I had to make up for all the years I lost in loneliness and isolation, through no fault of my own! It was society’s fault for rejecting me. It was women’s fault for refusing to have sex with me. The move to Santa Barbara is the endgame, the ultimate climax of everything. I saw it as a new chance that was given to me to finally have the things I want in life: love, sex, friends, fun, acceptance, a sense of belonging. But I could never forgive the world for denying me such things in the past. I was already turning twenty soon. I had already lost many years of my life. I deserve better than that. I am an intelligent gentleman, and I deserve the love of girls more than the other obnoxious boys of my age, and yet they get girls and I don’t. That is a crime that can never be forgotten, nor can it be forgiven. I always wanted to exact my revenge on humanity for forcing me to live such a life, but I’ve also always had the hope that if I can do things in life to make up for all my suffering, then that in itself would be a form of peaceful revenge. In truth, the move Santa Barbara was actually a chance that I was giving to the world, not the other way around! I was giving the world one last chance to give me the life that I know I’m entitled to, the life that other boys are able to live with ease. If I still have to suffer the same rejection and injustice even after I move to Santa Barbara, then that will be the last straw. I will have my vengeance. Part 6 Santa Barbara: Endgame Age 19-22 On Saturday, June 4th, 2011, I packed up all of my most important belongings into my car, said farewell to my mother, and drove off to face my destiny in the beautiful ocean-side town of Santa Barbara. It was raining as I arrived in the vicinity, and I felt a sense of ominous foreboding as I entered Isla Vista, my new home. My father met me outside my apartment; he came to help me move in. The two of us walked up to the leasing office where they gave me my new set of keys, and then one of the receptionists walked me to the apartment unit that I will be staying in for a month. I was introduced to two new housemates who would only be there for one week. One of them was named Artem, a quiet Russian student who went to UCSB; and the other, whose name I don’t remember, was a tall blonde surfer-type boy who went to SBCC. I was annoyed at how tall and attractive he was, though I didn’t show it. After I unpacked all of my belongings, father and I went out for a quick lunch before I said goodbye to him. And that was it. For the first time in my life, I was living independently, miles away from my parents, in a new town. I felt a sudden sense of anxiety, fear, and trepidation; but I also felt a sense of hope that my life could possibly change for the better. I exchanged small talk with my new housemates, and they seemed nice enough. It was hard to believe that I was actually living in an apartment with two other college students who I didn’t know until that day, especially for someone like me who has had very minimal social interaction with other young people. It felt so odd and peculiar. I was uncertain of what to expect, and the anxiety I felt from that uncertainty was overwhelming, but I knew I had to push through this. I knew this was the major turning point of my life. My life was finally changing, and I had to do my best to make that change a positive one. The very first night was traumatic and gave me a very bad taste about everything. Through my window I heard a lot of students partying outside, and I wondered, with a great amount of fear, how I would ever be able to join in on their fun. That was the reason I was there, after all. I didn’t think I was capable of it. Later in the night, I heard a boy and a girl having sex in the apartment above me. Just knowing that other young men get to enjoy the pleasures of sex while I get none of it has always filled me with envious rage, as well as bitter hatred towards the world; but to actually hear them doing it? That was even more traumatizing. I was prepared for this, however. I had done a lot of research about college life in the town of Isla Vista, and I knew that students had a lot of sex there. I had an inkling of a suspicion that I would eventually hear or even see people doing such things if I lived in that environment. Hell, the reason I moved there was because it was a sexually active place. I myself wanted to be sexually active. But when I heard that couple above me having sex, I couldn’t help feeling vile and miserable about it. I tried to calm myself down and convince myself that soon I will be doing the exact same thing. How wrong I was. My first week turned out to be very unpleasant, leaving a horrific first impression of my new life in Santa Barbara. My two housemates were nice, but they kept inviting over this friend of theirs named Chance. He was black boy who came over all the time, and I hated his cocksure attitude. Inevitably, a vile incident occurred between me and him. I was eating a meal in the kitchen when he came over and started bragging to my housemates about his success with girls. I couldn’t stand it, so I proceeded to ask them all if they were virgins. They all looked at me weirdly and said that they had lost their virginity long ago. I felt so inferior, as it reminded me of how much I have missed out in life. And then this black boy named Chance said that he lost his virginity when he was only thirteen! In addition, he said that the girl he lost his virginity to was a blonde white girl! I was so enraged that I almost splashed him with my orange juice. I indignantly told him that I did not believe him, and then I went to my room to cry. I cried and cried and cried, and then I called my mother and cried to her on the phone. How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves. I deserve it more. I tried not to believe his foul words, but they were already said, and it was hard to erase from my mind. If this is actually true, if this ugly black filth was able to have sex with a blonde white girl at the age of thirteen while I’ve had to suffer virginity all my life, then this just proves how ridiculous the female gender is. They would give themselves to this filthy scum, but they reject ME? The injustice! Females truly have something mentally wrong with them. Their minds are flawed, and at this point in my life I was beginning to see it. The more I explored my college town of Isla Vista, the more ridiculousness I witnessed. All of the hot, beautiful girls walked around with obnoxious, tough jock-type men who partied all the time and acted crazy. They should be going for intelligent gentlemen such as myself. Women are sexually attracted to the wrong type of man. This is a major flaw in the very foundation of humanity. It is completely and utterly wrong, in every sense of the word. As these truths fully dawned on me, I became deeply disturbed by them. Deeply disturbed, offended, and traumatized. Those two housemates moved out within a week. I was glad to see them go, after that horrible incident. I was then presented with two new housemates, who would be staying in the apartment for the rest of the month that I was there. Their names were Daniel Faynshell and Reed Mankins. Reed was a quiet Asian-American student who was studying biology at UCSB, and Daniel was a heavy-set Russian student who had a witty personality. Both of them were older than me by a couple of years. Daniel was very social and talkative. He often tried to start conversations with me, which I actually liked. Social interaction was always welcome in my lonely life, and I found him to be a very interesting person. It was nice to have someone reach out to me. Soon enough, my summer session at Santa Barbara City College began. I had enrolled for two classes, a history class and a geography class. The history class started at 8:00 in the morning. When my alarm rang, I enthusiastically put on one my new shirts as I got ready to start my first day of my new college. The weather was sunny and bright as I made the drive down the 101 Freeway. This was it. This was the moment of truth. My whole life has led to this. I was starting a new college, in a beautiful new town. This was my fresh start to attain the life I’ve been craving for so long. If I am unable to make it in this opportunistic environment, then I am doomed forever. I felt a surge of confidence as I ascended the flight of stairs that led up to the main campus. For my first class, which was history, I had to cross the iconic bridge to the west campus. I tried to feel as confident and sure of myself as possible, thinking that all of the girls I passed were attracted to my appearance. They should be. I spent a lot of time choosing out that shirt and doing my hair. When I reached the classroom, I saw some pretty girls waiting outside. My new classmates, I thought with excitement. I was a bit dismayed that they didn’t pay any attention to me. They didn’t even look at me. I was sure I had an attractive appearance that day, but those girls didn’t seem to notice it. Perhaps I was deluding myself. As all of the students started pouring in, a group of typical popular-type boys sat near me. Their overly social and obnoxious personalities offended me, and I felt like getting up and leaving. They somehow knew all of the pretty girls in the class, and it broke my heart to watch them chat up the girls. How could I compete with those popular kids? I hated them so much. I’ve wanted to be like them all my life, ever since elementary school, but they never accepted me. They have caused my life to be a living hell for so long. Right then, on the very first day of SBCC, I was going through the exact thing as I did at every other school I’ve been to; the feeling of being a lonely, unwanted outcast. That class was horrible, but I didn’t want to give up so soon. I couldn’t! My whole life depended on my success in Santa Barbara. I attended my geography class next. This class was much more interesting, and more relaxed, but it didn’t have any pretty girls in it. After lunch I walked over to the cafeteria area, and I saw so many pretty blonde girls sitting around. I wished I had the courage to go up to them and ask one on a date, but they would have seen me as a creep. Girls are so cruel. After I left the campus I drove around downtown Santa Barbara to explore new areas. I went up and down State Street, the main common area of the city where everyone frequents. Countless restaurants and shops lined a magnificently designed street with wide walkways. It was absolutely beautiful… a true paradise, for those who were thriving there. I can only imagine how heavenly it would be to walk with a beautiful girlfriend down that street. My life would be complete if I get to do that. It would be the epitome of gratifying perfection. To have a beautiful blonde girl by my side, to feel her hand clasping my own as we walk everywhere together, to feel her love! That is what I want in life. Instead, I had to watch other men experience my idea of heaven while I rot in bitter loneliness. And there were a lot of young couples on State Street. The whole area was full of young people enjoying their pleasurable little lives. I saw groups of good looking popular boys and girls gleefully walking together. It reminded me of that fateful night, years ago, when I walked through the Calabasas Commons and saw the same thing. And there I was, over two years later, still in the exact same position. It was very hard to deal with. I quickly drove back to my apartment and cried to myself, soaking my pillow in the tears of my agony. So far, Santa Barbara was not working. I dreaded how horrible it would be to continue suffering my miserable, lonely, celibate life in such a beautiful city where everyone else experienced the pleasures of sex and love. That would be the darkest hell. And that was exactly what was in store for me. After a couple of days I decided to drop my history class. I couldn’t stand watching those obnoxious popular boys talk to all of the pretty girls in the class. The girls actually liked them! I should be the one they pay attention to, but they treated me like I was invisible. I didn’t want to torture myself any longer. I felt a sense of guilt as I did it, because I made a bid to make the best of my time in Santa Barbara. Once the class was dropped, I felt a sense of relief. I was still enrolled in the geography class, and it was only the summer session. I had plenty of time to make up for it. I spent the rest of my first month trying as hard as I could to put myself out in the social environment of Isla Vista. Daniel was twenty three years old, so I asked him to purchase some alcohol for me, a bottle of vodka in particular. In that college town, everyone went out with at least a little alcohol in their system. I wasn’t an alcoholic, but drinking alcohol always helped me with being more confident and sociable. On weekend nights, I took a few shots from my vodka bottle and set out on walks around the town, desperately hoping that I would stumble across some opportunity to make friends. I often ended up sitting alone at some café, hoping girls would talk to me before I sobered up. No girl ever did. I then went back home to lie in my bed alone. On one such night I got drunk enough to introduce myself to some other students who lived in the same apartment complex. They were sitting in the common area of the apartment, and I went up to their group and sat down with them. They weren’t hostile towards me, and I was able to exchange some form of small talk with them. After a while though, I ended up just sitting there awkwardly, and they eventually questioned why I was so quiet. I hated when people did that… no one ever understands the troubles of someone who suffers from social anxiety. They offered me a few beers, which I gladly accepted. I ended up getting so drunk that I completely blacked out. I stumbled back to my apartment and vomited on the floor, just like I did on that embarrassing night at Addison Altendorf’s birthday party. The next morning, I didn’t even remember that I vomited. Daniel informed me of what happened, with an amused grin on his face. I felt so ashamed, but at least I did something more social than anything else I’ve done in the last few years. That was some progress, I supposed. Due to living in an entirely new environment, with lots of new experiences to come with it, the first month in Santa Barbara went by very slowly. I was relieved when July arrived, and I was able to visit home for a weekend. When I arrived back in Woodland Hills, I felt like I hadn’t been there for ages. It was a pleasant feeling, as it gave me the subconscious impression that my life was finally moving forward instead of staying stagnant. When I arrived back at my mother’s apartment, she was away at work, and Georgia was at school. I took a moment to relax after going through so much trauma and unrest, catching up on all of the Game of Thrones episodes that I missed, including the Season 1 finale. Later that night, I met my mother and father at an upscale restaurant near Warner Center, and they both seemed very proud of me. I wasn’t proud of myself, as I barely met my expectations in my first month in Santa Barbara. I had an exquisite meal at the restaurant, and while there I saw a pretty girl walk in with her family. I glanced at her and she glanced at me. I desperately wondered if she thought I was attractive, and I tried to convince myself that she was attracted to me, in an effort to feel better about myself. Whether she was attracted to me or not is a question I will never know the answer to. There was no school on the following Monday, due to the 4th of July Holiday. I went with my mother to the annual 4th of July party at the Lemelson’s. There, I saw James for the first time in a while. It felt good to see him again. He had been ignoring me in the last couple of months, but the two of us reignited our good friendship at the party. I told him that I was now going to college in Santa Barbara, and he seemed happy for me. As I ate dinner with him, Noah, and a few of Noah’s friends at a table outside, I filmed a funny video that I still have on my phone to this day. On the next morning, I made my drive back to Santa Barbara to finish the second half of my summer session. I prayed that I would have a better experience from then on. When I got back to Capri Apartments it was time for me to transfer to my permanent apartment unit, the apartment unit that I was set to stay in for the whole year. I loaded all of my belongings into my car and said goodbye to Daniel and Reed. I enjoyed my stay with them. They made for excellent college housemates. Before I left, Daniel told me that I should come to visit in the future. My new apartment was in another Capri Apartments building. The main building was on Seville Road, in the center of Isla Vista. The other building that I was meant to stay at was on Abrego Road, a few blocks away, towards the edge of the town. At first I was unsure of the location, though it was still walking distance from all of the action. It was definitely quieter in that area, so that was a positive. One of the receptionists showed me to my new bedroom. The apartment unit was empty. My new housemates wouldn’t be moving in until August, so I would have the whole apartment to myself for the month of July. I quite liked that. It would provide me with the comfort to settle into the place. I had no idea who my new housemates were going to be, and I was hoping they would be people I could be friends with to help improve my social life. All of the rooms were randomly assigned at Capri Apartments, so I had no control over who I would end up with. I could only hope that they would be at least tolerable, because they were to be my housemates for the whole year. My father drove up to Santa Barbara to meet me a few days later. The two of us went to have lunch at a restaurant in the Camino Real Marketplace, an area that I often frequented. When we sat down at our table, I saw a young couple sitting a few tables down the row. The sight of them enraged me to no end, especially because it was a dark-skinned Mexican guy dating a hot blonde white girl. I regarded it as a great insult to my dignity. How could an inferior Mexican guy be able to date a white blonde girl, while I was still suffering as a lonely virgin? I was ashamed to be in such an inferior position in front my father. When I saw the two of them kissing, I could barely contain my rage. I stood up in anger, and I was about to walk up to them and pour my glass of soda all over their heads. I probably would have, if father wasn’t there. I was seething with envious rage, and my father was there to watch it all. It was so humiliating. I wasn’t the son I wanted to present to my father. I should be the one with the hot blonde girl, making my father proud. Instead, my father had to watch me suffer in a pathetic position. Life is so cruel to me. When I said my farewell to father before he drove home, I felt absolutely miserable. I then went back to my room and sulked for hours. Another incident happened on the following day, near the same location. I went to the Starbucks at the Camino Real Marketplace by myself, like I usually did every morning. I ordered my coffee and sat down on one of their chairs to relax. A few moments later, when I looked up from my drink, I saw a young couple standing in line. The two of them were kissing passionately. The boy looked like an obnoxious punk; he was tall and wore baggy pants. The girl was a pretty blonde! They looked like they were in the throes of passionate sexual attraction to each other, rubbing their bodies together and tongue kissing in front of everyone. I was absolutely livid with envious hatred. When they left the store I followed them to their car and splashed my coffee all over them. The boy yelled at me and I quickly ran away in fear. I was panicking as I got into my car and drove off, shaking with rage-fueled excitement. I drove all the way to the Vons at the Fairview Plaza and spent three hours in my car trying to contain my tumultuous emotions. I had never struck back at my enemies before, and I felt a small sense of spiteful gratification for doing so. I hated them so much. Even though I splashed them with my coffee, he was still the winner. He was going home to have passionate heavenly sex with his beautiful girlfriend, and I was going home to my lonely room to sleep alone in my lonely bed. I had never felt so miserable and mistreated in my life. I cursed the world for condemning me to such suffering. I wanted to do horrible things to that couple. I wanted to inflict pain on all young couples. It was around this point in my life that I realized I was capable of doing such things. I would happily do such things. I was capable of killing them, and I wanted to. I wanted to kill them slowly, to strip the skins off their flesh. They deserve it. The males deserve it for taking the females away from me, and the females deserve it for choosing those males instead of me. Ever since I was seventeen, I often fantasized about becoming powerful and inflicting suffering upon everyone who has wronged me in the past, but I never thought I would actually do it. At this point, after going through so much suffering and injustice, all of my innocence had been swept away. The world had been cruel to me, and it molded me to become strong enough to actually have the capability of returning that cruelness to the world. I had never been a violent person in nature, but after building up so much hatred over the years, I realized that I wouldn’t hesitate to kill or even torture my hated enemies if I was given the opportunity. I spent the next five days in my room, trying to forget about the horrific experiences I had to go through. But even in my room, I couldn’t escape from being reminded of my worthlessness. Every time I looked out my window to the courtyard, I saw young people socializing. Obnoxious drunk boys were chatting up pretty girls, and I wondered with great panic if they would be having sex together in the night. I often fantasized about barging into their rooms while they had sex and slashing them to death with my knife. Before I knew it, it was July 12th and the countdown on my internet homepage was up. The new Song of Ice and Fire book, A Dance with Dragons, was released. I emailed my mother to order me the book from Amazon. The countdown was ultimately over, and I had nothing to show for it. I was still a virgin, even after a month of living in a town full of college kids who had sex all the time. I realized that I had only twelve more days as a teenager! I was going to turn twenty very soon. One of my hopes was to at least lose my virginity before my time as a teenager was over. Being a virgin at the age of twenty would make me feel very defeated. I made a bid to do everything I could to lose my virginity in those few remaining days I had. With a tremendous amount of panic, I wondered what I could possible do. The only thing I could think of was to go out to the common areas of Isla Vista as much as possible. I had to put myself out there, even if it only increased my chances of having sex by one percent. One percent was still better than zero. For those crucial twelve days I had left as a teenager, I walked over to the center of Isla Vista every day and sat at one of the tables outside Domino’s Pizza, hoping against hope that a girl would come up and talk to me. Why wouldn’t they? I looked good enough, didn’t I? Or did I not look good enough? Such thoughts flew through my head in frantic waves. For dinner, I always walked over to the healthy restaurant called Silvergreen’s. There were always hot girls there, but none of them deigned to even look at me. On every one of those nights, I walked home alone, with my head down in defeat. I made no progress in school either. My geography class had no pretty girls in it, so I had no hope there. I spent a lot of time sitting in the cafeteria area, but all of the beautiful girls I saw intimidated me too much. One time, as I was walking across the huge bridge that connected the two campuses, I passed by a girl I thought was pretty and said “Hi” as we neared each other. She kept on walking and didn’t even have the grace to respond to me. How dare she! That foul bitch. I felt so humiliated that I went to one of the school bathrooms, locked myself in a toilet stall, and cried for an hour. On one of my very last days as a teenager, as I was sitting at my usual place at the food court outside Domino’s, I saw a sight that shattered my heart to pieces. A tall, blonde, jock-type guy walked into one of the restaurants, and at his side was one of the sexiest girls I had ever seen. She too was tall and blonde. They were both taller than me, and they kissed each other passionately. They made me feel so inferior and worthless and small. I glared at them with intense hatred as I sat by myself in my lonely misery. I could never have a girl like that. The sight was burned into my memory, and it caused a scar that will haunt me forever. When they walked away, I followed them in my car for a few minutes, and when they entered a less inhabited area I opened my window and splashed my iced tea all over them. It was all I could do at the time, but at least it was something. At least I made some effort to fight back against the injustice. I felt sick with hatred that night. The hatred boiled inside me with burning vitriol. My summer session ended with no positive effect on my life. After I completed my final exam, on which I received the grade of a B, I drove back to my hometown feeling defeated. Shortly after, my 20th birthday finally came. Soumaya and Jazz were away in Morocco for the summer, so father met up with me, my mother, and my sister at an upscale restaurant in Encino. My parents didn’t show any concern for how miserable I felt about being a twenty-year-old virgin. They treated it as if it was any normal birthday. They didn’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation, which annoyed me immensely. The restaurant had an “all-you-can eat” buffet system, and I greatly stuffed myself that night. Delicious food was the only vice I was able to enjoy, since I was deprived of sex. I had a very fast metabolism, so I could eat as much as I wanted without getting fat. I suppose that was one advantage in my rather disadvantageous life. When I got back to my mother’s apartment, she let me have a bottle of wine, and I truly drank my fill. “Everything’s better with some wine in the belly.” I spent the rest of the night pondering over what was in store for me at that point in life. I was no longer a teenager, and I’ll never be able to experience having sex as a teenager. My teenage years were completely denied to me by the cruelness of women. The only way I could make up for it was if I could have an extraordinary sex life in my twenties. I would have to have a profoundly amazing decade in my twenties to compensate for all the misery I experienced in my teens. If I fail to do that, then I have nothing to live for. Sadly, I will only experience the opposite in my early twenties, and it will destroy me. 20 Years Old I stayed in my hometown for a week. One of my birthday presents was a gift card to Nordstrom. I spent it on a couple of new polo shirts that made me feel a little more confident. Buying new clothes would always give me a temporary boost of confidence, and I practiced it as if it was a drug. Before I left for Santa Barbara, I reunited with Philip and Addison after a very long period of not seeing them. The three of us met up at the Calabasas Commons, and then we went in Philip’s car to Malibu for a few adventures. We ended up settling down at Starbucks and had a few insightful conversations. Addison had changed and matured tremendously, and he was no longer associating with the popular Malibu high school kids. This didn’t change my resentment towards him, and I kept confronting him the whole time about the insulting way he treated me over a year ago. After a lot of debating, we agreed to resolve our conflict with each other. This didn’t mean I forgot all of the slights he dealt to me in the past, however. I never forget. I never forgive. One day I’ll show him how superior I am. On the day after I saw Philip and Addison, I went over to James’s house. I hadn’t been there for ages, and the two of us relived our traditional walks around the Palisades town center, just like old times. It felt strange and nostalgic to experience it after so long, especially after going through so many changes in Santa Barbara. I told James about my turmoil of being a twenty-year-old virgin, and my desperate hope that things will get better once I start my Autumn semester at my new college. I talked about all the beautiful blonde girls I saw walking around my college, and my deep wish that I will have one day have one as a girlfriend. James sympathized with me greatly, for he was also going through similar troubles in life. He seemed glad that I was finally taking some steps to bring changes to my life. I drove back to Santa Barbara in a slightly better mood than I was in when I left it. I had a month until the new semester started, and I could use that time to prepare and recuperate. My new housemates were meant to move into the second bedroom of my apartment on August 5th. I had an anxious feeling of anticipation for what they will be like. August 5 th came quickly, and I prepared myself to be in a pleasant mood to meet them. Their names were Ryan and Angel, and to my dismay they were of Hispanic race. In addition, the two of them were already friends with each other, which meant that they could possibly gang up against me if any conflicts were to arise. They also seemed like rowdy, low-class types. My first impression of them soured me, but I tried to be pleasant and not show it. The two of them acted cordial to me on the first day, but after observing them for a bit, I had a bad feeling that they would be trouble to live with… And they were to be my housemates for a whole year! When I was alone in my room, I panicked to myself at how dire a situation this was. This was extremely disappointing. I was hoping I would get decent, mature, clean-cut housemates. Instead I got low-class scum. On the second day, they started inviting their equally rowdy friends into my apartment, and we exchanged more small talk. To my indignant surprise, they asked me the question I always dreaded answering: “Are you a virgin?” I admitted that I was a virgin. I always admitted the truth about this. It was my life struggle, and I couldn’t lie about such a thing. They then had the audacity to tell me that they lost their virginity long ago, bragging about all the girls they had slept with. I particularly hated Angel because of his ugly pig-face. How could such an ugly animal have had sexual experiences with girls, and yet I haven’t? What was wrong with this world? I got so angry that I went to my room and punched the wall. They heard me and started laughing. It was almost a repeat of what I experienced with that black boy named Chance in the old apartment, except this time it was worse because these were my housemates for the year! On the day after, I almost got into a physical fight with Angel. The ugly pig kept acting as if girls thought he was more attractive than me. Hah! I am a beautiful, magnificent gentleman and he is a lowclass, pig-faced thug. I had enough of his cocksure attitude, and I started to call him exactly what he was. I tried to insult him as much as I could, telling him how superior I am to him, and saying that he was lowclass. He tried to attack me, but Ryan, being the more mellow of the two, held him back. A pity, I was itching for a chance to hurt that obnoxious little animal. Though I suppose it was for the best… My life was too important to risk doing anything rash. In a panic, I immediately called my mother as soon as I could and told her of the dire situation. There was no way I could live with those two imbeciles for the whole college year. They already ruined my weekend. My mother agreed that I needed to get out of there, so I went to the leasing office and explained to the manager everything that happened. He told me that there was another room available for me to transfer to, but it would cost one hundred more dollars a month, because it was a larger two bedroom unit and I would only be sharing it with one housemate, who would occupy the other room. I called my mother and she gave me permission to go through with it. I signed the new lease, arranging to transfer when the room became available in September. I would have to bear living with them for the rest of the month until then. To help get through the month, my mother let me come home every weekend until I was able to transfer to the new apartment. I would only stay in Santa Barbara during the weekdays, but on those weekdays Angel and Ryan went out of their way to make my life a living hell. Every time they went out they kept yelling to me how they’re going to sleep with hot girls that night. I knew they were just lying to make me jealous. They always made fun of me for being a virgin. At night, they frequently made noise to wake me up. I was literally being bullied, and it was truly horrific. I wanted to kill them both, but of course I was smart enough not to go through with that desire. All I could do was remember every single insult, so I can get revenge in a more efficient way in the future. That is who I am. I don’t act stupidly or rashly. I remember every insult, and I wait until the time is right to strike. When that time comes, I will crush all of my enemies in the most devastating and catastrophic way possible, and the results will be beautiful. On one of the weekends in which I went home during August, my mother moved out of the Versailles apartment complex, and moved into the Summit Townhomes, near Warner Center. It was an abrupt decision to move there. I helped her pack everything and watched as the movers transported all of our belongings to the new place. The Summit was much nicer looking than her old apartment; I’ll say that for it. It was a townhome with an upstairs room that I would occupy whenever I visit home. I was glad that she moved to a better place, but I would have much rather she got married to a wealthy man and moved into his mansion. Even though she was no longer seeing Jack, she dated other men of high class. She had a special way of charming them. I continued to pester her to get married so that I can be part of an upper class family and enjoy all the benefits that would come with that, but she always refused, claiming that she never wants to get married due to her unpleasant experiences with my father. I told her that she should suffer through any negative aspects of marriage just for my sake, because it would completely save my life, but she still refused. I went over to James’s house during my visit home. The two of us chatted online a lot, and when I told him that I was in town, he seemed eager to see me. I was eager to see him too, as he was my closest friend and I had a lot to talk to him about. I drove up Topanga Canyon to his house, not knowing that it will be the last time I ever visit him. The two of us did what we usually did. We walked out to the Palisade’s Bluff’s where we discussed our hopes and dreams. We then went to the Palisades town center to have dinner. This time we chose to eat at Panda Express. While we were eating, some high school kids walked in. James saw them first, and right when he saw them he said the words “We’re fucked”. James knew I would have trouble with them. They were popular boys who had a flock of pretty girls with them. One of them sat down with two of the girls, putting his leg up on another chair with a cocky smirk on his face. I was livid with rage, and I wanted to pour my drink all over his head. James knew exactly what I was planning to do; we had been through similar incidents before. He made a lot of effort to try to dissuade me from acting on my anger, pointing out that there was a security guard nearby. I did the only other thing I could do; I packed up my dinner and left the restaurant, fleeing in defeat and shame. James soon followed, and we decided to finish our meal at his house. A dark and ominous aura clouded over our friendship that day. When the two of us got back to James’s house, I was still seething with rage. I didn’t understand why James wasn’t angry like me. The sight that we just witnessed was horrible to watch. To see another male be successful with females is torture for males like us who have no success with females. I was so angry that I told James of all of the acts of revenge I wanted to exact on those popular boys. I told him my desire to flay them alive, to strip the skins off their flesh and make them scream in agony as punishment for living a better life than me. James became deeply disturbed by my anger. I wished that he wasn’t disturbed. I wished he could be a friend that felt the same way about the world that I did. But he wasn’t that kind of person. He was a weakling. Once I had calmed down, the two of us had a long conversation in his room, and I ended up crying in front of him as I explained how hopeless I felt about life. Soon after that, I left his house, never to return there again. He will never invite me over after that incident, and our friendship will slowly fade to dust. During the last few days that I had to endure living with those barbaric housemates, I often walked out to Isla Vista hoping that I could meet a girl and take her home with me. I wanted to prove to them all that girls liked me, to see the look on their faces when they see a girl by my side. But of course, I had nothing to prove because girls didn’t like me. Every time I tried to go out and meet a girl, I ended up walking home alone in anger. On one of these nights, I crossed paths with a boy who was walking with two pretty girls. I got so envious that I cursed at them, and then I followed them for a few minutes. They just laughed at me, and one of the girls kissed the boy on the lips. I’m assuming she was his girlfriend. That was one of the worst experiences of torture from girls that I’ve had to endure, and it will be a scar in my memory forever, to remind me that girls think I’m unworthy compared to other boys. I ran home with tears pouring down my cheeks, hoping that my horrible housemates wouldn’t be there to witness my shame. I tried to spark a positive attitude on the first day of my Autumn semester at Santa Barbara City College. I was registered for three classes; history, astronomy, and math. My history and astronomy classes were in the morning, and my math class was late in the afternoon, so on school days I had to spend the entire day at the college. I figured this would be beneficial, because it would keep me out of my room and in a place where possible opportunities might come my way. I had to wait a couple of hours before my math class started, and I spent those hours roaming around the college or sitting in the library, looking at all of the hot girls and wishing I could have one as a girlfriend. I was like a starving man surrounded by a feast that I was prohibited to eat. All of my classes left me feeling hopeless and depressed. Not only was I unable to meet any girls, and there were a lot of pretty ones, but I also had a hard time making any friends. I’ve always had a hard time making friends… I’m not the type of person that can fit in with a group of outgoing people; the last time I did such a thing was when I was twelve. I had to make friends. Having a social circle will provide me with more opportunities to meet girls, and it was the only way to get invited to all of those exciting college parties. But no one even wanted to be my friend. I actually tried to initiate small talk with guys who sat next to me, but it never went far. I had a horrible feeling that I was in for a very miserable time in Santa Barbara. I did make one friend through spending time in my apartment’s courtyard. This friend’s name was Andy Chan; he was a foreign student from China. Andy shared the same eagerness as I did to experience college life in Isla Vista to the fullest; and unlike most people my age, I found him to have some intelligence and substance. The two of us walked out to Del Playa Street in Isla Vista a few times, the place where all the parties happen, but nothing ever came of it. I still felt like an outcast, even though I had a friend with me; and I still felt inferior compared to all of those guys who walked around with beautiful girls. On September 5th, I was finally able to move into my new permanent apartment unit. I felt relieved that I would never have to deal with the likes of Ryan and Angel ever again, though I did worry that I will eventually run into them again because my new unit was still in the same apartment complex. Once I was given the keys, I quickly transported all of my belongings to the new place. I was supposed to have only one housemate who would live in the other room of the unit, but he hadn’t moved in yet. I had no idea who my new housemate would be, but I was told that he was an older student who attended the University. That knowledge made me feel assured that he would be tolerable to live with. He was set to arrive in two weeks, so I had the place to myself until then. I unpacked all of my things and set up my new room. Once I was done, I looked at it and thought to myself that this was it; this was my new living place in the college town of Isla Vista, and if I could finally have the life I wanted, then this may well be the room where I lose my virginity! How wrong I was. It would only be another room where I suffer miserable loneliness. No girl will ever step foot in it. Santa Barbara was not going well for me. I was already months into my twentieth year and I had nothing to show for it. As I spent the first weeks of September in my new room, all alone, I fully realized how much I was failing at life. Santa Barbara was supposed to be a place of hope, a place where I could start a new, happy life. I couldn’t believe how wrong everything was turning out. Instead of finally getting a chance to live a life of sex and love like other young people did, I only experienced worse rejection and humiliation than I had ever experienced before. This was unbelievable and unforgivable. If humanity continued to insult me with such cruelty, then there really was no hope for happiness in my life. At Santa Barbara City College, I had exactly the same experience that I had at Moorpark. I had to watch beautiful young people enjoying their lives together as I languished in loneliness and despair, because no one accepted me. I dropped my math class – I just couldn’t bear having to be at the college all day long, sitting in the library watching couples kiss each other. I retained my two morning classes only because there was still some small inkling of desperate home inside me. My usual day went as follows: I woke up alone in my bed, with no girl beside me, and did a few minutes of exercise before I showered and got ready for college; I then drove to Starbucks to have my morning latte and felt envious whenever I saw a young couple there; I would then attend my two classes where no one said a word to me, having to endure the torment of watching other guys talking to the girls I liked; And then I would go home alone, open the door to my lonely room, and feel absolutely miserable. The loneliness was suffocating. I could barely breathe. If only one pretty girl had at least given me a chance and tried to get to know me, everything would have turned out differently, but girls continued to treat me with disdain. The loneliness was torturing me so intensely that I even started up my WoW account and played the game constantly for the month of September. James still played WoW, and the two of us played together online for a few days, but he treated me very coldly the whole time. I could tell that the kind of friendship we had for so many years no longer existed. That last incident in the Palisades stabbed our friendship deeply, and it was in the process of bleeding away. At the time, I felt offended by his attitude towards me, so I called him out on it. This sparked a long argument between us that resulted in James refusing to talk to me online anymore. A few days after that, I deactivated my account again. My new housemate arrived in the middle of September. His name was Spencer Horowitz; a short, chubby UCSB student who was about a year older than me. He seemed like a friendly, mature sort of person; definitely a pleasant contrast from the housemates I had to suffer through in the previous month. I didn’t expect to have any problems with him. However, I was a disappointed due to the fact that I was hoping my new housemate would be someone I could relate to… someone who could be my friend and help me integrate with the social life in Santa Barbara. I didn’t see Spencer as the type of person I would become friends with. We could get along, but we had nothing in common. In addition, I was a bit shocked when Spencer told me that he used to have a girlfriend. It was a casual comment that came out of a conversation we had. I didn’t understand how a chubby and unattractive guy like Spencer would have been able to get a girlfriend, while I’ve never had the chance to. The guy was three inches shorter than me, and even I am considered short for my age. I could not fathom how such a thing was possible, and I concluded to myself that this former “girlfriend” of his that he mentioned must have been just as unattractive as he was. There was no need for me to be jealous. After a few weeks of living with him, I realized that I had a psychological problem with his presence in my apartment. Even though there was no trouble between us, I hated having someone constantly in my vicinity to judge how pathetic my life was. I could hide the details of my lonely, celibate life from the rest of the world, but I could not hide it from Spencer. The fact that I never had any girls over to my room was clear enough that I was an undesirable outcast, and I hated it when people knew this about me and judged me for it. Spencer was there to witness it all, and I would eventually come to hate him just because of that. During the months of October and November, I made another desperate bid to improve my social life as best as I could. I failed in making any friends in my two college classes, and I didn’t have any interactions with girls at my school. I was an invisible ghost, just like I had always been. I continued to see Andy, the one friend that I made. We often met up to have dinner at a restaurant somewhere. He soon introduced me to a few friends of his. One of them was named Stan, a European from Holland whom I particularly got along with. I enjoyed having conversations with Stan about a wide variety of subjects, including politics, history, business, and architecture. I wisely refrained from revealing any of my political views, of which disturbed most people. During the month of October I went out with Andy, Stan, and some of their friends quite often. We did things like walk around State Street or Isla Vista, or went to the movie theatres together. I soon found that even having these few acquaintances to hang out with didn’t make me feel any better. I still felt inferior whenever I saw other guys walking with beautiful girls. At the movie theatres, I felt just as pathetic about walking in there with a group of friends as I did years ago when I went to the movies with my parents… It was that pathetic feeling of not having a hot girlfriend on my arm while some other boys in the theatre did. What I truly wanted… what I truly NEEDED, was a girlfriend. I needed a girl’s love. I needed to feel worthy as a male. For so long I have felt worthless, and it’s all girls’ fault. No girl wanted to be my girlfriend. Halloween weekend in the college town of Isla Vista is a renowned event. Young people pour in from all over the county to attend the raucous parties there. My experience during this weekend is just what one would have expected it to be, a miserable disaster. When I was a child, I used to love Halloween. It was a holiday of fun and excitement where I went trick-or-treating, going from house to house collecting candy with my friends and family. For young adults, Halloween is a very different sort of holiday, of which one is supposed to dress up in sexually explicit costumes, attend wild drinking parties, and have sexual experiences with girls. For other young people, who are able to do such things, Halloween must be a blast. But I am unable to do such things. I wasn’t invited to ANY party, and girls don’t want to have sex with me. As a teenager and a young adult, Halloween has been a holiday of torment and depression because of this. In Isla Vista, this was greatly intensified. I tried my best to put myself out there on the Halloween weekend. I made many laps around Isla Vista, trying to bolster up the courage to talk to a girl or walk into a party, but I just couldn’t. I knew they would all reject me. What I saw during those walks shook me to the very core. Girls dressed up in extremely revealing outfits, and the sight of them filled my sex-starved self with hunger and desire that I knew I could never quench. On the last night of the Halloween weekend, I went out there with Andy and Stan and a few others. It made absolutely no difference. We didn’t get into any parties, and just walked around the streets like losers. Being friends with them wasn’t benefitting me at all. If only I had a beautiful girlfriend to experience such an event with! I would have even dressed up in a costume with her. It would have been so blissful and euphoric, to walk around in all of that excitement with a beautiful girl on my arm, to attend every single party because anyone would admit a beautiful girl into it, to make passionate love to her in my room at the end of the night, to snuggle next to her sexy warm body as we drift off to sleep together. THAT is the life I should have lived. So many other guys are able to experience that, and just thinking about if filled me with extreme agony. Life is not fair. In November, my brief friendship with Andy, Stan, and their group faded away. I often saw on Facebook that they did things together without even inviting me, which is the same thing I’ve had to experience with other groups of friends that I’ve had in the past. I was always an outcast, even among people I knew. I grew tired of their lack of consideration for me, so I stopped calling them. They weren’t even popular anyway, and I wasn’t benefitting at all from their friendship. I still continued to meet with Andy at restaurants on occasion, however. Every day that I spent at my college, the more inferior and invisible I felt. I felt like such an inferior mouse whenever I saw guys walking with beautiful girls. I hated having to endure it, but I had already worked so hard on my two classes that I couldn’t quit just then. The only way that I could gain a boost in to my self-esteem was to buy better looking clothes. My mother gave me a few more gift cards to Nordstrom, and I spent them on $200 dollar designer Jeans. When I wore these to school, I saw that I was wearing better Jeans than most other guys, and that made me have a slightly higher sense of self-worth. I also bought a few more shirts, and a pair of new Hugo Boss sneakers. Doing this started a new obsession for me. I became more and more obsessed with my appearance. Because my mother, father, and grandmother constantly paid me extra money now that I was living in Santa Barbara, I had saved up enough to indulge in this obsession. Familiarizing myself with all of the top designer brands, I bought new clothes every time I visited my hometown. My favorite brands were Hugo Boss and Armani. I always stopped by at the Camarillo shopping center on my way back to Santa Barbara. I loved it there – they had a store for almost every brand. One time, as I was shopping at the Calvin Klein store in Camarillo, I saw such a sexy-looking blonde girl with perfectly tanned skin. She looked so beautiful and sexy that I had an erection instantly. Oh, the heavenly things I wanted to do to her… And then I saw her hunk of a boyfriend. My entire being was filled with anguish and despair. I could only imagine how amazing and pleasurable that guy’s life was. They were older than me – probably mid-twenties – and I thought with desperate hope that when I’m that man’s age I would be worthy enough to have such a girlfriend by my side, to shop with her at that same shopping mall in heavenly bliss. My life was a life of starvation and yearning. I visited home for Thanksgiving, and went with my mother to Rob Lemelson’s house for a small Thanksgiving get-together. James was there… And the last time I spoke to him since then was when we had our bitter argument online. The one person who has been my friend through all of my hardship didn’t even want to speak to me during Thanksgiving. I tried to ask him why he was overreacting about an argument we had two months previously, but he just glared at me coldly and told me to “keep my proximity”. I was highly offended. After a few hours, the Thanksgiving feast was served. To my profound annoyance, Julian Ritz-Barr and his equally obnoxious older brother Leon Ritz-Barr also came for the dinner. I remembered the extreme envy I felt for Julian months ago, and I tried to ignore them as much as possible, which proved to be difficult because they talked loudly all the time. I was seated next to James for the dinner, and after awkwardly sitting next to each other for a few moments, he decided to warm up to me again. As the two of us caught up with each other about our lives, a small inkling of our old friendship ignited like a weak flitter of flame in a candle. It was nice, for the brief moment that it lasted. The two of us talked about our usual fantasy scenarios, and joked about how stupid and obnoxious the Ritz-Barr brothers were acting. On that same weekend that I went home, I got together with Philip and Addison. The three of us went out to a restaurant in L.A., and then we headed to the Griffith Park Observatory, just like old times. The last time I was there with the two of them was on that horrible night when Addison told me that “No girl will ever want to fuck me.” The words were still embedded in my mind, and going to Griffith Park reminded me of that night. The three of us took a few pictures of us posing at various spots at the Observatory, some of which were uploaded onto Facebook, and then we went to the Calabasas Commons to hang out at Barnes & Noble, where I had a few insightful conversations with Addison. Despite our past hostilities, I considered Addison to be one of the most interesting people I knew. I went back to Santa Barbara for a couple of weeks to finish off my two classes. In my history class, I kept feeling weak with inferiority as I watched this tall, handsome blonde jock constantly sit and talk with two beautiful girls. There was no way that I couldn’t watch it; they were in the middle of the class. I hated that class so much, and I decided to stop attending it until the final exam. Once I took the final exams, I felt glad to be done with those horrifically frustrating college classes. It was just as I had feared. My first actual semester at Santa Barbara City College was an absolute, brutal failure. I didn’t even have one girl’s phone number in my cell phone. Was I going to be a virgin forever? I franticly wondered as I drove away from my school after taking my exams. I felt like my whole life was over. If I couldn’t make it in such a beautiful and opportunistic place like Santa Barbara, then I was doomed to misery and dissatisfaction. I knew that I would rather die than suffer such a fate, and I knew that if it came to that, I would do everything I can to exact revenge before I die. I didn’t want it to resort to that! Some part of me still clung to hope. I didn’t want to give up so soon. As I made the long scenic drive back to my hometown for the Holidays, I made a vow to give it all another try when I start my new semester in the Spring, and to use the time I had during the winter break to prepare for it as much as I could. My mother told me that she had made plans for me, my sister, and her to go to England for a week. Upon hearing this, I said I didn’t want to go. I felt so dissatisfied and defeated, and I didn’t want to appear that way to my relatives in England. There was nothing about me that they could be proud of. I felt ashamed of having to face them the way I was. After some persuasion, I agreed to go. I figured that if anything, it would give me a respite from all the pain society has dealt to me, just like our old visits to Jack’s beach house in Malibu. Before we left for England, we attended the annual Christmas party at the Lemelson’s. I had recently bought a flashy new shirt from Armani Exchange that made me feel particularly fabulous, so I decided to wear it for the party. I loved admiring how awesome I looked in the mirror as I wore it. Wearing flashy new clothes made me feel like a new person. I found it to be a very efficient way to boost my confidence. When I entered the party, I felt gratified when Sue Lemelson, Rob’s ex-wife, complimented me on how good I looked. My mother pointed out that it was unusual for Sue to compliment anyone, so I must have made a good impression. James was at the party, of course. He didn’t act outwardly cold toward me this time, but there was still a distance between us. During the course of the event, I had my fill of multiple glasses of wine as I casually chatted with James about my insights and life problems. We interacted as if we were still friends, but I could tell that things were very different between us. The friendship that we have had for so long was dying. When I said goodbye to him that night, it was the last time I ever saw him. After having a quick Christmas celebration at father’s house, I took off for England with my mother and sister. We flew Business Class on Virgin Atlantic, and since they followed the laws of the U.K., I was allowed to drink alcohol on the flight. I took delight in sipping the wine that was served while I enjoyed the relaxing journey. The last time I had been on an airplane since then was the disastrous trip to Morocco when I was seventeen, and this made for a pleasant contrast. When we landed in England I felt the sense of wonder that came with being in another country. I hadn’t been to my home country of England for almost a decade, and I couldn’t believe I was there once again. The decision to go on the trip came so quickly. We stayed at a very nice hotel in the town of Colchester, near where my relatives on my mother’s side live, including my grandma Ah Mah. After we unpacked all of our belongings, we went to their house for dinner. I hadn’t seen those relatives since our trip to Malaysia. It felt peculiar to see them all again. They were exactly the same as I remembered. It was very heartwarming to see that grandma Ah Mah had baked her delicious peanut cookies that I loved so much as a child; she had them ready and waiting for me. We visited them again on Christmas Day. They prepared an exquisite lunch, and afterward we exchanged our gifts. I got a bit drunk on that day, as it was the only thing I could do to pass the time. I tried to relax and forget about all of the pain I had experienced in Santa Barbara. I wished there was something I could talk to my relatives about that would make them proud, but there was nothing interesting or impressive about my life to talk about. I wished that I could show my grandma that I was thriving in Santa Barbara; that I had a girlfriend and I was enjoying a full and healthy life. But no, that is something I was never able to do. I felt so ashamed of myself. My grandma, Ah Mah, gave me a gift of great value. After we exchanged all of the presents with the relatives, Ah Mah presented me with a 22 karat golden necklace. It was very extravagant, and it had been in her possession for a long time. Now it was mine. I wore it instantly and took a great liking to it. From then on, I would wear it in every waking moment. I could have sold it for well over a thousand dollars, but I never did. It was special to me. My favorite part of the trip was the breakfasts at the hotel. The hotel we stayed at was quite luxurious, even by my standards. And the breakfasts… they were absolutely delicious. Every morning there was a buffet full of delectable choices, such as crispy pork sausage, croissants, bacon, ham, roast potatoes, all kinds of fruit, and much more. On every one of those mornings, I stuffed myself like there was no tomorrow. I was deprived of sex all my life, so the only vice that I could derive a sense of pleasure from was eating delicious food. I took full advantage of that on this trip. My high metabolism prevented me from getting fat from it. Before the trip was over, we all went on a tour through London. We were supposed to visit grandma Jinx in Smarden on that same day, but grandma Jinx was in France at the time. We rented a comfortable Mercedes van that could fit eight people and made a long drive through the English countryside to the capital city of London. I didn’t remember much of the city from my previous visits, so it was kind of like a new experience for me. I found the city to be very ugly in most areas, but in contrast there were some attractive parts that were awash with beautiful architecture and a cultural atmosphere. Once we parked our van we set out on foot, and sometimes took the Underground subway, to explore all of the main attractions of the city. It was cold, dreadfully cold, but I bore it without much concern. Walking through the streets of London at night, especially in Trafalgar Square and the area around Harrods was truly breathtaking, or it would have been if I had a beautiful girlfriend by my side to experience it with me. It was the sort of place that one would go with a girlfriend, and I had none. I saw other men being able to experience it with their girlfriends, and the sight soured my whole experience. When we had dinner at a restaurant, I scoffed a big meal and imbibed two glasses of wine to make myself feel better during the rest of our tour. My favorite part was walking through the store Harrods. Harrods is a gigantic, renowned luxury designer clothing store. Every facet of it exuded beauty and excessive opulence. It was my type of place. I wished I was rich enough to buy anything I wanted at the store – there were so many choices of fabulous clothing – but alas, I had to settle with buying only one Giorgio Armani shirt. If my mother had been wise enough to marry one of those wealthy men she dated, perhaps then I would have been rich enough. Such a pity. At the end of the night of our London tour, I felt cold and miserable. Walking through that exciting, cultural city made me realize that the world was full of wonders to explore, but if I had to do it alone while other men were able to do it with their girlfriends, then what was the point? My life was so mundane and wasteful compared to the lives all those other men lived. They were in heaven and I was in hell. When we took off on the airplane for the journey home, I wondered how my life would have turned out if we never moved to the United States. I saw a lot of beautiful blonde girls in England, just like there were in California. Would I have lived a completely different type of life? Would I have been able to have a girlfriend in England? Would girls in England have been more accepting of a guy like me? Those are questions I will never know the answer to. I spent a few hours recovering from jet lag after we arrived home. On the day after that, it was New Year’s Eve. I didn’t want a repeat of the previous New Year’s, when I spent them alone and miserable in my room, so I decided to go with my father and Soumaya to a party and Antje Twinn’s house. My father was still friends with them, despite not being friends with the Bubenheim’s anymore. I wanted to wear something new for the party, in order to boost my sense of self-confidence, so I went to Nordstrom and bought a new, flashy Hugo Boss shirt, decorated with different hues of blue. I didn’t have dinner before the party, because I expected dinner to be served there. When we got there, I saw that they didn’t offer dinner, only a few party snacks; but there was lots and lots of wine. I heard from Antje that Vincent was in town, but he was attending a party at Leo Bubenheim’s house, with all of Leo’s popular teenage friends. The mere mention of Leo put me in a bad mood. I couldn’t believe that Vincent, too, was now experiencing the pleasures of partying with young people while I sat all alone at the adult’s party, sipping my wine in lonely depression. I should be partying with my own friends, and my own girlfriends, but I had NONE. After I had already gotten quite drunk from having so much wine on an empty stomach, I overheard Antje talking to her friend about how Vincent now had a beautiful girlfriend. She was so proud of her son. That is something my mother was never able to tell her friends about me. I had never had a girlfriend in my WHOLE LIFE! I remember when Vincent used to be a little nine-year-old boy while I was thirteen. He used to look up to me, and he always watched me play my online games on father’s laptop. Now, he was sixteen and I was twenty. He had the pleasure of having a girlfriend, while I’ve never had one. I was four years older than him, but he surpassed me. The envy, rage, and feeling of inferiority I felt almost made me explode with rage right there at the party, but instead I went to the bathroom and vented to myself in the mirror of how much I hate Vincent and wanted to kill him. I drank a lot more wine that night, pouring myself glass after glass. By the time Vincent arrived after his party at Leo’s, I greeted him with drunken contempt, and drank even more wine. I drank too much. On the next morning, I thanked the heavens that at the end of the party I had the sense to go to the bathroom to vomit instead of vomiting in front of everyone. That would have been extremely embarrassing. I spent a week at my mother’s house before I went back to Santa Barbara to give my life there another try. During this week, I once again met up with Philip and Addison. This outing was much longer than the last. I decided to wear the same Hugo Boss shirt that I wore for New Year’s. First, we went on a hike up to the Hollywood sign and watched the glorious sunset. Afterwards, we visited the Getty Museum to admire the brilliant scenery and architecture. While there, I overheard Philip telling Addison that some girls were checking him out. Feeling jealous, I asked Philip if any of those girls checked me out, and he had the audacity to say no, none of them did. I felt so heartbroken that I left the two of them and cried to myself, ruining my whole experience at the museum. How could girls check out Addison but not me? I asked myself repeatedly as I tried to hide my tears from people who walked by me. I walked out to the edge of the grand terrace of the museum, looking out at the city lights of Los Angeles as well as the stars above. In that moment, I fell into a sort of despair-ridden trance, contemplating my reason for existing in this universe and what was in store for my future. It was a very ominous and surreal experience. I calmed down when we left the museum and acted cordial to both of them. I didn’t want to spoil the night with my emotional problems. We toured around Hollywood for a bit, and while there I saw lots of young people out and about with their attractive cliques of friends. The sight enraged me for the rest of the night. We decided to have dinner at a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. At the restaurant, there were three hot model-like girls who sat a few tables down from us. Their bodies looked so sexy and tantalizing that Philip had to go to the bathroom to masturbate. I was itching to do exactly the same thing, but I didn’t want to look like a fool in front of Addison. When I got home, I began to cry because of all the emotions I experienced that night. My mother heard me and showed some concern, as she always did. She was used to me crying a lot, but she never understood why I was so miserable. I always had to explain it to her – that I was a lonely, miserable, unwanted virgin who women treated with disdain – but she could never grasp how severe this was to me. After all, how could she? She was a woman herself. I arrived back in Santa Barbara with a renewed, carefully constructed sense of confidence, especially because of the new collection of designer clothes I had bought over the winter break. I tried to adopt a sophisticated and suave persona, and made my accent sound more eloquent. I did this out of the hope that girls would find something attractive about it. It was the only persona that truly fit me. I was incapable of being an outgoing, boisterous jock, and I didn’t want to be one. I was disgusted by such people, and I was disgusted at how girls were attracted to such filth. I wanted them to be attracted to me. That is how it should be, and I deserved it. During the few weeks I had before my first day of class, I couldn’t really do anything to improve my social situation. I had a fear of going out to Isla Vista without any friends, and I was hoping to make those friends once college started. Because of this, I became depressed again from all of the loneliness. Even though Spencer was there, I felt completely and utterly alone, as the two of us never talked that much. So far, Spencer and I had gotten along quite well despite the fact that we never talked much. An incident happened at the end of January that changed all of this. I one day discovered that Spencer had a girl in this room. I couldn’t believe it. The short, chubby guy was able to get a girl into his room before I did! I was so shocked and outraged that I waited outside his room until the girl left, so I could get a glimpse of how she looked. To my relief, she wasn’t that attractive. What made me even more angry is that Spencer gave me a smug look when I saw the girl, even though she was ugly. He had the nerve to feel like he was better than me, just because he managed to get a girl over to the apartment before I did! I confronted him in the kitchen on that same night, telling him that he is foolish to feel proud about having an ugly whore in his room. This made him angry and offended, which is what I wanted. I wanted to offend him as punishment for his insolence. After that incident, the two of us became more and more hostile towards each other. In the beginning of February, my Spring semester at Santa Barbara City College began. The classes I registered for were Sociology, Math, Film Studies, and English. My English class was an online class, but the other three were normal classes that I attended at the college. Sociology and math were on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and my film class was on Friday mornings. It made for a convenient setup. This was the last chance. I had already failed to change my life in the last semester. I must not fail again. I remembered how hard it was to keep up those two classes in the Autumn. The people in them made me feel so miserable. I knew that if the same thing happens in the coming semester, I would end up dropping all of my classes, and if that happened, all of my hope would be doomed. On the morning of the first day, I donned my fabulous Armani Exchange shirt and put on my new Gucci sunglasses that my mother gave me. I admired myself in the mirror for a few moments, and began to feel a surge of enthusiasm. I wanted everyone to see me looking like that. I was hopeful that some girls would admire me. I said to myself that there was no way I could possibly have trouble with getting girls now. I stopped by at Starbucks to buy a latte and set off for my college with the confidence that I would appear as a superior gentleman to all of the students there. I was a superior gentleman. That was what I was born to be, and it was now time to show it to the world. It was a bright, sunny day as I as ascended the familiar steps up to the beautiful college campus of SBCC. I immediately went to the restroom to look at myself in the mirror a few times, just so that I can feel more assured of myself. Yes, I thought. I am the image of beauty ad supremacy. I kept saying it over and over again, as if it was a mantra. When I crossed the renowned bridge that connected the two halves of the campus, I felt as if everyone was admiring me. As I passed by groups of girls, I pretended to imagine that they secretly adored and wanted me. After all, that was how it was meant to be. The more I walked around the campus, the more I tried to convince myself that that was the case. My first class was sociology, and I waited until everyone was seated before I walked in. I came in through the front entrance so that everyone could look at my fabulous self. To my utter dismay, I saw that no one turned their head to look at me at all. No girl tilted a head or lifted a pretty little eyebrow at my approach. After all that effort, I was still being treated like I was invisible. The sociology class flew by like a breeze, and my next class was math. In this class, I saw one of the prettiest girls I had ever seen in my life. She was the only pretty girl in the class, and she was absolutely stunning. Of course, she didn’t even notice me as I walked in. Her beauty was so intimidating that I couldn’t bring myself to sit near her, out of fear of her judgment. As the lecture proceeded, I couldn’t help myself from constantly glancing at her, admiring every inch of her enticing body, from her silky blonde hair to her smooth, skinny, lightly tanned legs. The most beautiful thing about her was her face. It was a face that broke my heart the second I laid eyes on it. I wanted her with so much intensity, and I constantly fantasized about her during my masturbation sessions. This was the kind of girl who was always meant to be my girlfriend. This was the girl that I was meant to go through college in Santa Barbara with. My life would only have meaning if I could go through college with a girlfriend like her. As I made my way back from school one day during the first week, I was stopped at a stoplight in Isla Vista when I saw two hot blonde girls waiting at the bus stop. I was dressed in one of my nice shirts, so I looked at them and smiled. They looked at me, but they didn’t even deign to smile back. They just looked away as if I was a fool. As I drove away I became very infuriated. It was such an insult. This was the way all girls treated me, and I was sick and tired of it. In a rage, I made a U-turn, pulled up to their bus stop and splashed my Starbucks latte all over them. I felt a feeling a spiteful satisfaction as I saw it stain their jeans. I then quickly speeded away before they could catch my license plate number. How dare those girls snub me in such a fashion! How dare they insult me so! I raged to myself repeatedly. They deserved the punishment I gave them. It was such a pity that my latte wasn’t hot enough to burn them. Those girls deserved to be dumped in boiling water for the crime of not giving me the attention and adoration I so rightfully deserve! This incident soured my first week of college, but for the sake of all of my hopes and dreams, I tried to forget about it. For the month of February, I continued with the trend of attending my college classes and trying to make the most of it. With each passing day, my confidence about how I appeared to everyone started to wane. I still didn’t make any friends, and I still didn’t talk to any girls. By the end of the month, I began to question what I was doing so wrong. I saw obnoxious slobs who dressed in basketball shorts and T-shirts walking with hot girls. And there I was, decked out in Armani, all by myself. It was preposterous! I should have been the one walking with the hot girls! I soon realized that no one cared at all about how well I dressed. No girls admired me. No girls even gave me a second look. I soon found out the name of the beautiful girl in my math class. Her name was Brittany Story. Being the obsessed stalker that I was, I looked her up on Facebook, and what I found shattered my already wounded heart to pieces. She had a boyfriend. Not only that, but her boyfriend was the type of boy I have always hated and despised: a tall, muscular surfer-jock with a buzz cut. As I looked at all the pictures of the two of them together, I shivered with pure hatred. I could physically feel the hatred burn through my entire body. I wanted to kill both of them, and I was capable of doing it. Brittany Story should have been mine, and if can’t have her, no one should! I fantasized about capturing the two of them and stripping the skin off her boyfriend’s flesh while making her watch. Why must my life be so full of torment and hatred? I questioned to the universe with turmoil roiling inside me. I screamed and cried with anguish that day. My housemate Spencer heard it all, but I didn’t care. I dropped my math class immediately after learning that Brittany had a boyfriend. I couldn’t look at her beauty anymore, knowing that some punk was able to enjoy having sex with her every day. I can only imagine how heavenly that guy’s life must be. He was in heaven and I was in hell. Shortly after dropping my math class, I decided to drop all of my other classes in a rage. There was no point to it anymore. No matter how hard I tried, girls were not attracted to me. What was the point of going through college, getting a degree, and finding some mundane professional job afterwards if I could never experience the pleasure of girls along the way? I didn’t want to torture myself with going to college and looking at all of those beautiful girls I could never have. Nothing beneficial came out of it. There was no hope for me to ever have a desirable college life. My life was devoid of friends, devoid of girls, devoid of sex, and devoid of love. I realized that I will never be able to look back on my youth, the time that I should be having a blast, and feel satisfied about all of the happy memories I have. There were no happy memories; only misery, loneliness, rejection, and pain. The only thing I could do was even the score. I wanted to make everyone else suffer just as they made me suffer. I wanted revenge. When I dropped my college classes, I crossed a threshold that I knew existed, but never actually believed I would cross. It completely ended all hope I had of living a desirable life in Santa Barbara. I realized that I would be a virgin forever, condemned to suffer rejection and humiliation at the hands of women because they don’t fancy me, because their sexual attractions are flawed. They are attracted to the wrong type of male. I always mused to myself that I would rather die than suffer such an existence, and I knew that if it came to that, I would exact my revenge upon the world in the most catastrophic way possible. At least then, I could die knowing that I fought back against the injustice that has been dealt to me. Ever since my life took a very dark turn at the age of seventeen, I often had fantasies of how malevolently satisfying it would be to punish all of the popular kids and young couples for the crime of having a better life than me. I dreamed of how sweet it would be to torture or kill every single young couple I saw. However, as I said previously in this story, I never thought I would actually go through with these drastic desires. I had hope inside me that I could one day have a happy life. It was only when I first moved to Santa Barbara that I started considering the possibility of having to carry out a violent act of revenge, as the final solution to dealing with all of the injustices I’ve had to face at the hands of women and society. I came up with a name for this after I saw all of the good looking young couples walking around my college and in the town of Isla Vista. I named it the Day of Retribution. It would be a day in which I exact my ultimate retribution and revenge on all of the hedonistic scum who enjoyed lives of pleasure that they don’t deserve. If I can’t have it, I will destroy it. I will destroy all women because I can never have them. I will make them all suffer for rejecting me. I will arm myself with deadly weapons and wage a war against all women and the men they are attracted to. And I will slaughter them like the animals they are. If they won’t accept me among them, then they are my enemies. They showed me no mercy, and in turn I will show them no mercy. The prospect will be so sweet, and justice will ultimately be served. And of course, I would have to die in the act to avoid going to prison. That is when I realized that this threshold existed, and if I crossed it, I will have to carry out this Day of Retribution. It has remained stagnant in the back of my mind ever since, until this point. After dropping my Spring classes at Santa Barbara City College, I knew that the Day of Retribution was now very possible. I even wrote about it in my diary, but I later tore out the pages because I feared someone might find them. A shiver ran through me, realizing how twisted my world had become, that I would have to resort to doing something that I would consider unthinkable a few years ago. I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to live. Thinking about the Day of Retribution made me feel trapped. I wanted a way out. After some deep contemplation, I had the revelation that the Day of Retribution wasn’t the only way I could make up for all of the suffering I’ve had to experience. If I could somehow become a multimillionaire at a young age, then my lifestyle would instantly become better than most people my age. I would be able to get revenge on my enemies just by living above them and lording over them. That was a form of happy, peaceful revenge, and it became my only hope. Once again, I started to desperately ponder over ways that I could become extremely wealthy at a young age. It was my only way out. This is when I realized that wealth was the only way I could lose my virginity, the only way I could have the beautiful girlfriend I know I deserve. Due to all of my past experiences with girls, it is evident that girls are not attracted to me as a person. They are repulsed by me. The only way I could possible become worthy of their love and attraction is if I become wealthy. In the beginning of March, I went home in a sullen and disturbed mood. I did my best to hide it from my parents. I also had to hide the fact that I dropped all of my college classes, and I kept up the pretense that I was still attending college, talking to my father about my lectures and so forth. The weekend that I visited home was quite an eventful one, and I had been looking forward to it for some time. On Sunday, March 11th 2012, I went with my mother and sister to a private, exclusive Katy Perry concert; and on March 12th 2012 I went with my father and Soumaya to the red carpet premiere of the Hunger Games. The invitation to the private Katy Perry concert was actually meant for Rob Lemelson, as the concert was held for extremely wealthy people who were clients of Net Jets, a private jet company. Rob had no interest in such things, so he gave the tickets to my mother. I was eager to go, because I loved attending exclusive events; it made me feel special. For most of the time spent at the concert, I just walked around at ate food at the buffet tables while everyone waited for Katy Perry to perform. There was upbeat music playing the entire time, and a lot of wealthy families with their kids attended. Every family there must have had a net worth of at least twenty million, to be able to hire private jets. I tried to pretend as if I was part of a wealthy family. I should be. That was the life I was meant to live. I WOULD BE! If only my damnable mother had married into wealth instead of being selfish. If only my failure of a father had made better decisions with his directing career instead wasting his money on that stupid documentary. I couldn’t help but feel a bitter form of envy at all of the rich kids at the concert. They grew up in lavish mansions, indulged in excessive opulence, and will never have to worry about anything in their pleasurable, hedonistic lives. I would take great pleasure in watching all of those rich families burn alive. Looking at all of them really drilled in my mind the importance of wealth. Wealth is one of the most important defining factors of self-worth and superiority. I hated and envied all of those kids for being born into wealth, while I had to struggle to find a way to claim wealth for myself. I had to be ruthless, and do whatever it takes to attain such wealth. After all, it was my only hope of ever being worthy of getting a girlfriend and living the life of gratification that I desire. The red carpet premiere of the Hunger Games was an even more exclusive event. The reason we got in was because my father was friends with the director, Gary Ross. My father even contributed to the film as a second unit director. Gary Ross had been coming over to father’s house for dinner quite frequently in the past few months. When he told me about the Hunger Games, I had never heard about it before, so I decided to read the books that the movie would be based on. It was quite an enjoyable story and I became a fan. At the same time, my step mother Soumaya was in the process of filming a French reality T.V. series, called Les Vraies Housewives. Her status as a reality T.V. star, coupled with my father’s important association with Gary Ross, enabled us all to attain VIP tickets to the red carpet premiere, including admittance to walk on the red carpet itself, which was actually a black carpet, in a literal sense. I didn’t own any suits, but I wore my extravagant Hugo Boss shirt, which I thought looked elegant enough to walk on the black carpet. As we were lining up for our walk on the black carpet, some dumb bitch of a security guard had the audacity to question “who the hell are these people”. This made me so enraged that I almost said “we are people who are more important than you, you ugly cunt”, but Soumaya’s publicist calmly informed her of our invitation. We then proceeded to walk across the long black carpet as cameras flashed at us from one side, and a crowd of pathetic fans who reminded me of sheep cheered from the other side. I felt extremely gratified at walking on the black carpet with father and Soumaya, and I cockily smiled at all of the stupid fans who had to remain on the side, rubbing it right in their faces. There were some actors and celebrities on the carpet with us, and the paparazzi yelled at me a few times to get out of the way as they were taking pictures of some cunt actress. I discreetly gave those paparazzi pigs my middle finger. Elliot Rodger will not move aside for a stupid, good-for-nothing, over-glorified actress, whoever the fuck she was. I didn’t see. We walked through all the chaos until we finally reached the theatre where the movie was being screened, called the Nokia Theatre. It was one of the biggest theatres I had ever seen, able to see hundreds of people. At the entrance, father and I greeted Jack Ross, the son of Gary Ross. He was a spoiled brat of a sixteen year old, and to my embarrassment he stood taller than me. I immediately hated him on sight. He was living the life I should be living, if only my father had become as successful a director as Gary Ross. I equally hated his repugnant friends, who ended up sitting in front of me and partially blocking my view for the entire movie. Throughout the whole film, I had to fight the urge not to splash my drink all over the little shitheads in a vehement rage. They spoiled it for me, and it was quite a good movie too. The movie was entertaining, but my favorite part of this premiere was the after party. Yes, we were invited to the after party, where only the most important guests could attend. I felt so special as I handed my VIP tickets to the guards outside, gaining admittance. The party was extravagant, with buffet tables set up in every corner serving exquisite delicacies. I excitedly went from plate to plate, helping myself to all of the food. Father and Soumaya went off to socialize with Gary Ross and his entourage of producers. I didn’t know anyone there, of course, so I just spent time with my sister Georgia. A few moments into the party, I ran into an old face. He noticed me first and called out my name, saying “Is your name Elliot?” He was none other than Ashton Moio from Pinecrest Middle School! I hadn’t seen him since 8th grade. He was now in the process of starting a career in acting, and he had a small part in the movie. I actually read about this beforehand, but I didn’t expect I would run into him at the after party. Ashton’s sister, Monette Moio was nowhere to be seen. I suppose the bitch wasn’t invited, hah. I remembered all of the pain she caused me during my 8th grade year at Pinecrest. I tried to act as cool and confident as I possibly could with Ashton, though I felt intimidated. He was one of the most popular kids at Pinecrest, and now he was becoming an actor, one of the most attractive careers a man can have. I assumed he had probably slept with countless beautiful girls. Damn him. I had a brief conversation with him before trying to leave his presence as fast as I could. I didn’t want him to find out how pathetic my life was. While roaming around the after party, I bore witness to many successful young men who pranced in with their hot model girlfriends. Some of them were even actors my own age, stars of the movie. I had a particular burning hatred for the actor Alexander Ludwig, who I saw sitting arrogantly on a couch as people crowded around him in adoration. I hated everything about him; his golden blonde hair; his tall, muscular frame; his cocky, masculine face. That boy could get any girl he wanted. His life was completely opposite from my own. If only I could get a taste of how he lived for just one day… As I saw all of these successful young men with their beautiful dates, I became even more convinced about how important money and status was in attaining a desirable life of love and sex. It made me even more obsessed with my goal of becoming wealthy at a very young age. That was the only way to live life. The whole premiere, from the red carpet to the film to the after party, was an extraordinary experience, and I will never forget it. I still felt very bitter that I wasn’t able to bring a girl with me as a date. The majority of men at the event had a date with them, and I felt so pathetic for not having a date. If only a girl at my collage had been attracted to me; I would have gladly brought her to the premiere as my date. When I returned to Santa Barbara, I realized that I had absolutely no obligations. Since I had dropped all of my college classes, I had all the time in the world. I wanted to make use of that time as much as I could. Franticly, I tried to come up with ways to find some sort of idea to make millions of dollars. Some would say this was folly, but it has been done before! Many people have succeeded in coming up with an idea and making millions, or even billions, instantly. I was an extraordinary, magnificent person destined for great things. If other people could do it, why not me? It was my destiny, my whole purpose on this world. For the next week or so, I spent time meditating in my room, trying to come up with ways to get rich. I could either invent something, start a great business idea, or go back to my original idea I had of writing an epic fantasy story that could be made into a movie. That reminded me of the reason why I gave up on that idea in the first place… the amount of time it would take to achieve success from such a prospect. I was so desperate and I needed to do something right there and then. It was a matter of life and death. If I couldn’t make it, then I had nothing to live for. After a lot of deep thinking, I couldn’t come up with anything. Was I doomed to fail at everything? I began to feel hopeless, until I saw the current jackpot for the Megemillions Lottery. It was rising very high in the month of March. I had saved up a lot of money at the time, so I had enough to spare on lottery tickets, so long as I didn’t go under $5000 dollars, which I wanted to keep as my minimum amount of savings just in case of an emergency, or in case I would have to carry out the Day of Retribution. As it so happened, I had well over $6000 saved up at the time, from all of the allowance, Christmas money, and birthday money that my parents and grandmothers had been sending me. For the first time since moving to Santa Barbara, I began to take a serious interest in playing the Lottery again. I believed that it was destiny for me to win the Megamillions Lottery, particularly this very jackpot. People win the lottery every single month, so why not me? I was meant to live a life of significance and extravagance. I was meant to win this jackpot. It was destiny. For the first few drawings I played, I spent $50 to $100 on tickets, but to my profound frustration I still didn’t win, and the jackpot kept rising. This only increased my enthusiasm. I started to picture a whole new, perfect life for myself after I won. I imagined buying a beautiful, opulent mansion with an extravagant view, and acquiring a collection of supercars which I would use specifically to attract beautiful girls into my life. I planned to go back to college once I had bolstered myself with all this wealth, and lord myself over all the other students there, finally fulfilling my dream of being the coolest and most popular kid at school. As I sat meditating in my room, I imagined the ecstasy I would feel as scores of beautiful girls look at me with admiration as I drive up to college in a Lamborghini. Such an experience would make up for everything. I had to win this jackpot. As the jackpot reached over $200 Million, I spent more of my saved money on lottery tickets, but I still didn’t win. I knew that the more I spent on tickets, the higher chance I had of winning. I was so desperate to live a satisfying life that I spent $400 dollars on tickets when the jackpot hit $290 Million. When I failed to win that, I spent $500 dollars on tickets when it reached $363 million, and I still didn’t win it on that one… And then the jackpot reached a number that I never imagined it would… $656 Million. I was astounded and filled with a feverish enthusiasm of hope and desire. This was the highest lottery jackpot in history. I knew I was always destined for great things. This must be it! I was destined to be the winner of the highest lottery jackpot in existence. I knew right then and there that this jackpot was meant for me. Who else deserved such a victory? I had been through so much rejection, suffering, and injustice in my life, and this was to be my salvation. With my whole body filled with feverish hope, I spent $700 dollars on lottery tickets for this drawing. As I spent this money, I imagined all the amazing sex I would have with a beautiful model girlfriend I would have once I become a man of wealth. After the ultimate and fateful drawing, I waited three days to check the result. I was too anxious about what I will see. The result would determine the fate of my whole life. For those three days, I meditated alone in my room, trying to convince myself that I was the winner. I held all of the tickets in my hand, excitedly pondering over which one was the true winning ticket. There were many times during this period where I was about to check the result, but cancelled the webpage in the last second out of fear of what I might see. The prospect of finding out that I lost was devastating. On the fourth day, I decided to just go through with it. The result was already decided, and the amount of time it took for me to check it wouldn’t change anything. I had to see the truth. My heart was beating rapidly as I loaded up the webpage to the Megamillions website. What I saw crushed all of my hope completely. My whole body shivered with horrific agony. I didn’t win. Three people won that jackpot, and it was split between them. But none of those three people were me. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was certain I would be the winner. It was destiny… fate. But no, the world continued to give me no justice or salvation whatsoever. I sank into one of the worst depressions of my life. It was Spring Break, and while all other young boys my age were going off to vacation with their attractive friends, I was feeling miserable and alone in my room because I failed to win the lottery jackpot that would enable me to rise above them ALL! I was so depressed that even when my mother came up to Santa Barbara with my sister and her friends for a short day trip, I refused to see them. For the next month, I barely left my room. I was completely and utterly at the end of all hope. My life is over, I thought. Without that wealth, what was there to live for in the future? I still couldn’t believe I didn’t win. I kept thinking about the heavenly life I would be living if I had won. I was certain of my victory, right at the moment of the drawing. Instead, it turned to a crushing defeat, just like everything else in my life. Everything I had tried to do in the past, ever since childhood, had been a failure. It was very hard to feel good about myself anymore. I spent all of my time drifting aimlessly, doing nothing with my time except brooding over my fate. I didn’t want to think about anything. I could barely breathe from the stifling loneliness. All of my energy had been sapped out of me. In the month of April, James Ellis officially ended the friendship between us. James hadn’t contacted me at all since the Lemelson’s Christmas party, and I felt extremely offended by this. For the first few months of 2012, I had been trying to contact him, demanding to know why he continued to act so cold and distant to me. I thought that after we spoke with each other at the Lemelson’s, things would get better between us. I was dead wrong. I got hold of him on the phone in February, and he said a few words to me before quickly making an excuse to hang up. A month later I messaged him on Facebook to tell him how rude he was on the phone, and in April I received a response from him. He blatantly said he didn’t want to be friends anymore. He didn’t even deign to tell me why. After he said the fateful words, he refused to talk to me ever again. That was the last time I ever spoke to him. It was the ultimate betrayal. I thought he was the one friend I had in the whole world who truly understood me, who truly understood my views and the reasons why I thought the way I did about the world. I confided everything to him, because I thought we were on the same page. To be betrayed in such a manner wounded me deeply, though I never admitted it to anyone. On the day of the betrayal, I thought back on our entire friendship. James Ellis was my oldest friend. I remembered the first time I met him, as we kicked dust together as First Graders at Topanga Elementary school. I remembered all of the good times I spent at his various houses in the Palisades, trading Pokemon cards when we were little, our brief interest in skateboarding, playing World of Warcraft together as teenagers, all of our walks through the Palisades town center… He was a big part of my life. And now he was gone, faded away into memory. I didn’t have any friends left anymore. No friends in the entire world. I didn’t want to see Philip and Addison after I cried in front of them at the Getty museum. I was completely and utterly alone, in the darkest pit of despair. And in that pit I withered in agony. My deep depression lasted well into the summer. My life stayed stagnant and miserable, and my hatred towards everyone, especially women, for depriving me of a happy life only grew stronger. I questioned myself over and over about what was going to happen to me now. I didn’t want it to resort to having to exact ultimate vengeance. I didn’t want to die. I wanted something to live for. There had to be a way for me to become wealthy. I continued to see it was the only way I would ever have a beautiful girlfriend and lose my virginity. My ultimate dream was to experience the pleasures of love and sex with girls once I become rich enough to be worthy of them, and then I would settle down with a beautiful girlfriend and have beautiful children with her, whom I would raise up to live a much better life than the one I’ve had to suffer through. That would be the most satisfying vengeance against all those young people who thought they were better than me. If I could show them that I lived such a life, my purpose on this world would be complete. To see the look on all of their faces once I’ve risen above them… I couldn’t imagine anything sweeter. I so happened to come across a book called the Power of Your Subconscious Mind, by Joseph Murphy. This book would fill me with hope for the next few months. It was very similar to The Secret, the book I read over a year ago, and it had the same effect on me. It gave an even more in-depth view on the law of attraction. A year previously, I had given up on believing in such a concept, but when I read through this book thoroughly, I desperately convinced myself to give it a try. I wanted to believe the theory could work. I needed something to live for. I began to visualize myself winning the lottery. I did this all throughout the month of June. After continuous analyzing and contemplation, I concluded that winning the lottery was the only way I could become wealthy at a young age, and thus it was the only way to enjoy the rest of my youth. If I didn’t have a satisfying youth, I would be bitter and miserable for the rest of my life, but of course that would never happen. If it came to that, then I would have to carry out the Day of Retribution. Indeed, it was the only way I could attain any sort of wealth at my age. I had no talents, so it was impossible for me to become a professional actor, musician, or athlete; and those were usually the ways that young people acquired such money. I could invent something, or start a business just like Mark Zuckerberg did with Facebook, but the chances of me achieving such a thing were the same chances I had of winning the lottery anyway. I didn’t even have the skills of a computer programmer. After reading this book, I wanted to believe that there was some sort of supernatural power that I could harness to change reality as I saw fit. For the months of June and July, I took frequent walks around Girsh Park in Goleta, dreaming and visualizing about winning the lottery. I affirmed that once the jackpot rose to over $100 million, I would buy a ticket and that ticket would be the winner. For all of the months of summer, people kept winning the lottery, and the jackpot kept resetting, but I was so desperate that I still clung to my faith that I would soon win. On one of the days in July, when I was roaming around Girsh Park, a group of popular college kids arrived to play kickball in the fields. They all looked like typical fraternity jocks, tall and muscular. The kind of guys I’ve hated and envied all my life. With them came a flock of beautiful blonde girls, and they looked like they were having so much fun playing together. One of the girls did a handstand in the grass, and her sexy bare stomach showed as her shirt hung down. All of the girls were scantily clad. Rage boiled inside me as I watched those people who thought they were better than me enjoying their pleasurable little lives together. The rage was so intense that I couldn’t take it. I was insulted too much. I couldn’t leave them without getting some form of revenge, so I drove to the nearby K-mart, bought a super-soaker, filled it up with orange juice that I bought at the same store, and drove back to the park. They were still there, having the time of their lives, and I wanted to ruin it for them. I wanted to ruin their fun just like they ruined mine, as they would never accept me among them. I screamed at them with rage as I sprayed them with my super soaker. When the boys started to yell and chase after me, I quickly got into my car and drove away. I was giddy with ecstatic, hate-fueled excitement. I wished I could spray boiling oil at the foul beasts. They deserved to die horrible, painful deaths just for the crime of enjoying a better life than me. I drove to a secluded are of the parking lot at the Camino Real Marketplace nearby, my heart beating rapidly. After I had calmed down, I was overcome with the worry and fear that I would get in trouble for it. I wondered with panic if there were any cameras at the park that could have caught me in the act. The worry lasted for a few days, but eventually I became relieved that no trouble came out of it. My mother and sister came up to Santa Barbara for my 21st Birthday. I didn’t want them to come up, but they came anyway. I suppose my mother felt sorry for me, that I would be alone on my 21st Birthday. And it’s true, I would have been alone. Isn’t that such a sad thing to contemplate? Being alone on my 21st Birthday. Most other men have huge drinking parties with their friends and girlfriends to mark their passing over the legal age limit to drink alcohol. I’ve read stories online of how exciting other men’s 21st birthdays are. I had absolutely no one to celebrate mine with. Having no friends, the only people who even wished me a happy birthday were my immediate family members. When my mother and sister arrived in Santa Barbara, they wanted to meet up at a restaurant in State Street, but that prospect horrified me. State Street was filled with young couples walking around arm in arm as they went out on their blissful dates. I was already tortured at the fact that I was now a 21-yearold virgin. I didn’t want to torture myself anymore. I looked online for a quieter restaurant that we could meet at, a place where young couples most likely wouldn’t know about. I came across a secluded Japanese restaurant in Montecito named Sakana. I suggested this to mother, and since it was my birthday, she gave me the choice of where to eat. I met the two of them outside the restaurant as they were waiting to be seated. I was in a sullen and depressed mood. Turning 21 as a kissless virgin was indeed a dark day. How pathetic it was, to be 21 and still a virgin while kids were having sex at the age of 14? The unfairness of life on this world is staggeringly horrific! The restaurant Sakana turned out to be a very good choice. They served the most delicious Japanese food I had ever tasted in my life. They had so many creative dishes to try, and I ordered so many meals that the bill reached over $200. I eagerly devoured all of it, compensating for my sorrows with delectable food. My mother loved the restaurant as well. She had been to all of the best Japanese restaurants in L.A. with her various wealthy boyfriends, and she proclaimed that Sakana topped all of them. From this point onwards, it would become a tradition for us to eat here whenever my mother came up to visit me. After dinner, we went to the Starbucks in Montecito, and I washed the exquisite meal down with a nice warm latte. I never explored much of Montecito before, and I found it to be a lovely, beautiful place. It reminded me of Calabasas, though much quieter and more conservative. I figured I would be spending a lot more time there in the future. 21 Years Old In August, I continued to build up my faith that I am destined to win the Megamillions jackpot. It is the future that was meant for me; the perfect, happy conclusion to the tragic life I’ve had to experience in the past. I couldn’t wait to rub my status as a wealthy man right in the faces of all the people who looked down on me, and all of the girls who thought of me as unworthy. I mused that once I become wealthy, I would finally be worthy enough to all of the beautiful girls. I spent the whole month meditating in my room or roaming around the park, visualizing the final outcome of my victory. Through the power of the law of attraction, which I had studied so intensely with the new book I found, I felt certain that I would become the winner. I looked forward to it with profound eagerness. This was also the last month I had at the apartment unit I was staying in. I was set to transfer to a room in the main complex of Capri Apartments for the next school year. The conflict between Spencer and I had calmed down over the summer. He brought a few girls to his apartment, but they were all ugly, so I tried not to get jealous. I still hated him for the fact that he was able to witness how lonely and miserable my life was. I had spent an entire year in Isla Vista, Santa Barbara, and I had not had a single girl into my apartment. The pure rage and hatred I felt over that fact was enough, but to have someone like Spencer in my vicinity to judge me on it was salt on the wound. I made plans to track Spencer down once I become wealthy and arrogantly show off my new life to him. That would be the only way to get even. I wanted to show to Spencer, to show to the whole WORLD, that I had worth. I didn’t think much about my imminent move to a new room, nor did I think much about who my new housemates would be. I firmly believed that I would win the lottery before then. I would then go back to my mother’s house, show her my ticket, and buy a mansion of my own to begin a new life of heavenly bliss. One could say that I was being delusional, but my desperation for happiness was so intense that I wanted to believe that this was true. I wanted to believe that I had the POWER to invoke this into my reality. I have craved power and significance all my life, and I will stop at nothing to find ways of attaining it. Before I knew it, my lease at my current room ended, and on September 5th, I transferred to the new room. Spencer and I didn’t deign to say goodbye to each other, we despised each other that much. I knew I would see him again, when I track him down to show off my wealth that I firmly believed I would attain. I found out that my new apartment in the main complex of Capri was the same exact apartment unit that I stayed in for the first month I had in Santa Barbara: apartment #7 on Seville Street. When I moved all of my belongings in, it was all empty. The manager told me that two housemates would be moving into the second bedroom within two weeks hence. I trusted that the manager had the sense to pair me with mature people, knowing my experiences with those two barbaric housemates I had to deal with a year previously. By the time I moved in, the jackpot had finally risen over $100 million. This was the moment of truth. I had been waiting all summer for this to happen. Overcome with trepidation, I spent the next week in my new room, meditating and visualizing winning the lottery very soon. I could feel the excitement I would feel once I see the six numbers on my ticket match the numbers that would be drawn. I imagined myself jumping up and down with joy once my victory was confirmed. On September 11th, the drawing for a jackpot worth $120 million commenced. I bought a five dollar ticket and proclaimed that this had to be mine. When I saw that the winner was from California, my heart beat like a drum. This was it. Fate was being decided right at that moment. I didn’t win. I looked at my ticket over and over again, and then at the winning numbers. No match. It was just like what happened in March, except this was worse because I had built up anticipation for the entire summer. The winner was some guy from Riverside. He took MY money. What a waste. What an injustice. I was so certain that the universe would finally grant me salvation after a life of torture and suffering. I then looked at my small, cramped room and realized that my lonely, depressing life of virginity will continue on mercilessly. That night, I threw a wild tantrum, screaming and crying for hours on end. I had the whole apartment to myself, so there was no one there to hear me. I raged at the entire world, thrashing at my bed with my wooden practice sword and slashing at the air with my pocket knife. I even downed an entire bottle of wine, and got so drunk that I spilled my wine all over my laptop, permanently destroying it. I soaked my pillow with tears as I drifted off to sleep in my lonely bed. On the next morning, I felt so drained and depressed. I then realized that I destroyed my laptop, so I called my mother, begging her to buy me a new one. I made up the story that the laptop randomly died and I had no control over it. After some persuading, I managed to make her agree to buy me a new one. I quickly drove to Best Buy to look for a new laptop, and decided to choose a newer, updated version of the Asus laptop I had previously. As it turned out, the Best Buy in Santa Barbara didn’t have one in stock, so I had to drive all the way to Oxnard to pick one up. I paid the $1500 dollars for it, with the assurance that my mother will drive up to bring me a reimbursement in a few days. I had to wait a few hours for them to prepare the laptop for me, and while I waited I decided to go to the shooting range in Oxnard. I had the knowledge, in the back of my mind, that the Day of Retribution was very possible now. Going to the shooting range while I waited for my laptop gave me the perfect opportunity to gain some initial training in shooting guns, which will be the main weapons I use as vengeance against my enemies when the Day of Retribution ultimately comes to pass. I walked into the range, rented a handgun from the ugly old redneck cashier, and started to practice shooting at paper targets. As I fired my first few rounds, I felt so sick to the stomach. I questioned my whole life, and I looked at the gun in front of me and asked myself “What am I doing here? How could things have led to this?” I couldn’t believe my life was actually turning out this way. There I was, practicing shooting with real guns because I had a plan to carry out a massacre. Why did things have to be this way, I silently questioned myself as I looked at the handgun I was holding in front of me. I paid my fee and left the range within minutes, feeling as if I was going to be sick. I spent the rest of the waiting period at the Coffee Bean in Oxnard, where I sat by myself feeling absolutely disgusted. My whole world was twisted. Within the following days, I spent a lot of time at the park, watching the wind blow through the trees and the children playing in the fields. I questioned the very fabric of reality. Why did this all exist? I wondered. How did life come to be? What was the nature of reality? What was my place in all of it? There was no point to my life anymore. I was never going to lose my virginity. I was never going to get a girlfriend. Because girls are repulsed by me, I was never going to have children and pass on my genes. The only way that I could have been worthy enough to beautiful girls is if I become wealthy at a young age, and the faith I had in that happened had just been crushed. There was no hope left. The life I could have had ceased to exist. I will never have sex, never have love, never have children. I will never be a creator, but I could be a destroyer. Life had been cruel to me. The human species had rejected me all my life, despite the fact that I am the ideal, magnificent gentleman. Life itself is twisted and disgusting, I mused. Humans are brutal animals. If I cannot thrive among them, then I will destroy them all. I didn’t want things to turn out this way. I wanted a happy, healthy life of love and sex. But if I’m unable to have such a life, then I will have no choice but to exact revenge on the society that denied it to me. My new housemates moved into the other room of my apartment at the end of September. They didn’t know each other before they moved in, which was better for me because then they wouldn’t gang up on me. Not like they would do such a thing anyway, since my two new housemates were both timid, geeky types. One of them was a funny-looking curly haired boy named Chris Rugg, and the other was an Asian American named Jon. After the first few days of their stay, I felt content with these new housemates. They were quiet, respectful, and very friendly. And best of all, they never invited any friends over. I doubt they even had any friends. All they did was stay in their room and played video games all day. Of course, I had no desire to be friends with them, because they had absolutely nothing to offer, but I knew I would have no problems with them in my apartment, and that was the best I could hope for. On Halloween weekend, I made the wise decision to go home to my mother’s house. There was no way I was going to torture myself by staying alone in my room while the entire town of Isla Vista erupted in raucous debauchery. All of the tall, hunky jocks that girls love so much will be having all of the sex and all of the fun, while an unwanted outcast like myself would rot in loneliness. I imagined that some attractive guys who only visited Isla Vista for the Halloween event will be getting laid that weekend. They’d be getting sex from just one night in Isla Vista, while I’m still a virgin after living there for over a year. It was too unfair. I wanted to punish them all. I imagined how sweet it would be to slaughter all of those evil, slutty bitches who rejected me, along with the fraternity jocks they throw themselves at. To see them all running from me in fear as I kill them left and right, that would be the ultimate retribution. Only then would I have all the power. They treated me like an insignificant little mouse, but on the Day of Retribution, I would be a God to them. They will be the mice, and I will be the predator. I considered setting the date for the Day of Retribution to be the next Halloween of 2013. That would give me a year to prepare, but I soon dismissed it. If the Day of Retribution were to happen, it would have to be on a normal weekend. There would be too many cops walking around during an event like Halloween, and cops are the only ones who could hinder my plans. I spent the time at mother’s house relaxing and trying to forget about Halloween. I drank some of my mother’s delicious wine until I was too buzzed to think about how much fun everyone else my age was having on that night. I didn’t even bother to register for college classes that semester. There was no point. I believed that I would either fulfill my dream of becoming wealthy at a young age in order to be worthy enough to attract beautiful women, or exact my revenge upon the world and die in the process to escape punishment. There was no other path for me. Of course, I “registered” for some classes, but only to keep up the pretense to my parents that I was still attending college. If they somehow found out that I had dropped my classes right after registering for them, they would have stopped all of their support for me, and my life would have to end right then and there. Thankfully, I was a good liar. During the Autumn of 2012, I had all the time in the world to figure out how I was going to triumph against the society that was torturing me. I spent a lot of time at the library in Goleta, just a few miles away from Isla Vista. At the library, I read countless books on history, business, and philosophy, learning as much as I could. It was better than staying at home in my room. Besides, I didn’t want my housemates to find out that I wasn’t going to college. That would be embarrassing, and I always cared about what others thought about me, even my nerdy housemates. I continued to visit the website of the Megamillions lottery. I still clung to the hope that it may rise above $100 million again and I would be the winner. So far, I saw that as my only way out of my horrible situation. My situation was indeed horrible. I couldn’t leave the house without seeing a young couple walking around somewhere. Everywhere I went, I was all by myself, while other young people had friends and girlfriends. I was ashamed to show myself to the world. Even though I wore expensive designer clothes, what was the point if girl’s still weren’t attracted to me? No one respects a man who is unable to get a woman. A man wearing shorts and a T-shirt would be seen as superior to me if he walks into a store with a beautiful girl on his arm and I walk in all alone. A man having a beautiful girl by his side shows the world that he is worth something, because obviously that beautiful girl sees some sort of worth in him. If a man is all alone, people get the impression that girls are repulsed by him, and therefore he is a worthless loser. I saw winning the lottery as the only way out, and I became so frustrated when the Megamillions jackpot kept resetting. In the end of November, the jackpot was very close to getting high enough, but then it sank to the bottom once again. It was at this point that I learned about the Powerball lottery. The Powerball hadn’t yet come to California, so I knew nothing about it before. I looked at the website and saw that the jackpot was over $500 million! California didn’t have a Powerball lottery, so in order to buy a ticket, I would have to drive all the way to Arizona. Earlier in that day, as I drove through Isla Vista, I saw this one particular young couple that stood out from the rest only because the girl looked absolutely perfect. She was tall, blonde, and sexy. She would have towered over me in height, and her boyfriend of course towered over her. They were both wearing beach gear, and the girl was in her bikini, showing off to everyone her sensual, erection-causing body. Her blonde hair was wet from swimming in the ocean, and it only made her look more arousing. The two of them were holding hands, and it was clear that they were in love. I saw the boyfriend place his hand on the girl’s ass, and when he did this the girl looked at him and smiled with delight. That guy was in heaven. I can only imagine how amazing it must be to have sex with a girl like that. I had to witness everything I wanted but could not have. It made me feel dizzy with anguish. I immediately thought about that couple, and how impossible it was for me to have the same experience as that guy. Impossible, as I was at that point. But it would be possible for me to get a tall, blonde, sexy girlfriend if I was a multi-millionaire! Oh yes, it would be very possible. Becoming a multimillionaire is the ONLY way I could have such an experience, and winning the lottery was the ONLY way I could become a multi-millionaire at my age. As I stared at the Powerball jackpot that was over $500 million, I knew that I HAD to win it. It was midnight when I had this revelation, and the drawing was on the following day. The only way I could get a ticket before the drawing was if I left for Arizona right then and there. And so that is exactly what I did. I quickly looked up the best route on Google Maps, packed some food into my backpack, and took off. The sun rose as I crossed the long stretch of desert in between Palm Springs and the border of Arizona. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. When I saw the sun creeping up before me in the horizon, igniting the clouds with its orange glow, I proclaimed that sunrise as the sunrise of my destiny. I was riding towards my destiny, to obtain the record-breaking Powerball ticket of $500 million! As I drove, I thought about every event in my life that led up to that journey. I considered that journey as the ultimate culmination of the tragic suffering and sexual starvation I had to go through for so long. That Powerball jackpot was meant for me. Once I won it, I’d be able to have my beautiful blonde girlfriend, I’d be able to show the world that girls consider me worthy, I’d be able to show the world how superior I am. And of course, I would be able to live above everyone who has wronged me, and rub it all in their faces as a form of gratifying vengeance. That was my ultimate purpose in life, my reason for living. I didn’t win. It was almost the same scenario that I suffered through in March, except this one was twice as devastating. When I finally arrived home from the long trip, I immediately went to bed after not sleeping for so long. It was very difficult to stay awake on the road, but I managed to do it due to the severe importance of the journey. The Powerball drawing occurred while I slept, and my last thought before drifting off to sleep was that when I woke up, I would be a multi-millionaire, and my life would be saved. I slept for a very long time, and when I awakened it was already the morning after the drawing. I was overcome with anxiety. I was so confident and certain that I would win before the drawing occurred, but once that point in time had passed, I feared the result. I feared that I might not have won. I spent the next three days in my room, trying to garner enough courage to check the winning numbers that would determine my fate. After realizing how much time I was wasting, I visited the Powerball website to see the result. At the very first second of viewing the webpage, I caught a brief glimpse of it before closing it out of fear and panic. In that brief glimpse, I saw that there were three winning tickets, and one of them was in Arizona! My heart started beating rapidly. That had to be me! I thought, with hope and excitement welling up inside my whole body. There was an Arizona winner, and I had bought my ticket in Arizona. After that long, emotional journey; driving toward the sunrise in the middle of the desert, fighting off sleep just to get there in time, visualizing my whole future before me, with a beautiful blonde girlfriend and the children I would have with her… After all that, who else could the winner be but me? It was meant for me. It was fate, destiny. I took out my tickets, of which I had purchased fifty, and sifted through them to find the one that matched the winning numbers. I felt dizzy and ecstatic as I did it, feeling so certain that my victory will be confirmed. When I reached the end of my stack of tickets, I didn’t find any that matched. For the first few moments, I couldn’t even believe what was happening. I looked through all of my tickets again and again and again, and still, nothing. I didn’t win. I sat very quiet and still in my desk chair for a long time, all of the emotion swept out of me. I didn’t react with rage or anguish. I just sat there, cold and dead, mentally trying to contemplate what I had just done. I had driven all the way to Arizona just to buy lottery tickets, because I was so desperate for a happy life in which girls would be attracted to me; I was so certain I would win, building up all that hope, only to have it shattered right before me at just that moment. I then drove out of my apartment and made my way to the Girsh Park. I had to be somewhere peaceful. Along the way, I saw couples strolling along the streets of Isla Vista, walking arm in arm; I saw groups of good looking young people walking together, laughing and enjoying each other’s company. I felt completely dead inside, and torment racked my entire body, as I realized that I now had no chance to rise above them. I lost. When I got to the park I sat in my car for hours, crying and crying and crying. I wailed with agony. My tears streamed down my face and stained my collar. I couldn’t take it anymore. Feeling the need to talk to someone, I called the only people I had in my life: My parents. I called them both, first my mother and then my father, and I told them both how much I was suffering from my loneliness, and my utter realization that I had no hope of ever having a happy life. I told them that they must be ashamed of me, that I was a 21 year old virgin who is unable to get a girlfriend or making any friends whatsoever. I was not the son any parent would want. My tantrum to my parents on the phone deeply disturbed them, and they arranged for me to see my psychiatrist, Dr. Charles Sophy, when I return home for the winter break. As the phrase that I had coined goes: If I cannot join them, I will rise above them; and if I cannot rise above them, I will destroy them. I’ve been trying to join and be accepted among the beautiful, popular people all my life, but it was to no avail. They have always treated me like scum. Girls have always deemed me unworthy of their love and sex. I tried to overthrow them by gaining wealth at a young age, from trying to come up with invention ideas, to contemplating writing an epic story, and finally to trying to win the lottery. At this point, the prospect of overthrowing them seemed hopeless. The final solution to triumph over my enemies was to destroy them, to carry out my Day of Retribution, to exact my ultimate and devastating vengeance against all of the popular young people who never accepted me, and against all women for rejecting me and starving me of love and sex. At this point, it fully dawned on me that the possibility of having to resort to exacting this Retribution was more real than ever before. Without the prospect of becoming wealthy at a young age, I had nothing to live for now. I was going to be a virgin outcast forever. I realized that I had to start planning and preparing for the Day of Retribution, even though I hadn’t yet had any idea of what day that would be. My first act of preparation was the purchase my first handgun. I did this quickly and hastily, at a local gun shop called Goleta Gun and Supply. I had already done some research on handguns, and I decided to purchase the Glock 34 semiautomatic pistol, an efficient and highly accurate weapon. I signed all of the papers and was told that my pickup day was in mid-December. That fell in nicely, because that was when I was planning on staying in Santa Barbara till. After I picked up the handgun, I brought it back to my room and felt a new sense of power. I was now armed. Who’s the alpha male now, bitches? I thought to myself, regarding all of the girls who’ve looked down on me in the past. I quickly admired my new weapon before locking it up in my safe and preparing to go back to my hometown for the winter break. I didn’t attend the Lemelson’s Christmas party that year, nor would I ever again. The only person I ever really hung out with at those parties was James, and James was no longer my friend. It would have been extremely awkward to be there while James is there, knowing that the two of us, who used to be old friends since first grade, would be avoiding each other. It would be a foul and bitter experience, and I had already gone through enough anguish in the last few months. A few days before Christmas, I took off with my mother and sister for another vacation in England. She had called me a month previously to tell me about it. At first, I didn’t want to go, knowing that I will feel miserable about going on a vacation without a girlfriend to experience it with me, along with the shame of having to once again appear to my relatives in a fashion that I was unsatisfied with. A year had passed since the last trip, and I was in exactly the same position in life. I had nothing for my grandmothers to be proud of. No girlfriend, no future prospects, no life at all to talk about. The one thing that persuaded me to go was the fact that my mother planned to have us travel on Virgin Atlantic Upper Class, the highest form of travel the airline offers. I hadn’t traveled First Class for a long time, and I just couldn’t refuse such an offer. I have always had a penchant for luxury, opulence, and prestige; and traveling on Virgin Atlantic Upper Class would give me that experience, if only for a short time. After all of the anguish I had been through, I figured I needed a sense of respite by going on this luxurious vacation. For just this one brief period of my life, since I speculated that my life could very well be ending soon, I decided to try my best to forget about everything and indulge myself in every way I could on this trip to England. Before we took off, we spent some time at the exclusive Upper Class lounge at the LAX airport. There was a buffet with all sorts of goodies for me to pick at, and I had my fill of smoked salmon and champagne. While there, I had a discussion with my mother about whether I had any more hope in my life, and what I could possibly do to get what I want in life. As holders of First Class tickets, we skipped to the front of the line as we boarded the plane, and I took great satisfaction as I passed by all of the other people who flew economy, giving all of the younger passengers a cocky little smirk whenever they looked at me. Once I had settled in my big, luxurious bedseat in the First Class cabin, I had even more champagne, followed by an exquisite dinner of steak and potatoes, and some red wine to wash it all down. I ordered glass after glass of red wine during the whole ride, and became quite drunk as I watched a few movies, one of them being the new Ice Age movie which I found quite funny. When we arrived, we were chauffeured in a limousine to our hotel in Colchester. This time, we stayed at the Holiday Inn, which was very similar to the hotel on the last trip. Our relatives, even Ah Mah who rarely left the house in her old age, came to our hotel to greet us. We then went to their house, where Aunt Min had cooked a nice dinner for us. I felt so amazed to be back in England again. It had been a whole year since the last trip, but I felt as if nothing had happened. Nothing had improved in my life, that’s for sure. I was in the exact same position as I had been on the year before, and a year before that… and so on. I was now a 21-year-old virgin, still suffering the same injustices of the world. I tried not to think about it, for the sake of enjoying my trip, but the angst was too overwhelming. Our hotel served the same type of exquisite breakfast buffet as the hotel we stayed in last year, and once again I took delight in indulging in the endless amounts of pork sausages, croissants, ham, bacon, and every other delectable treat at the buffet; every single morning. For this vacation, I mostly stayed at the hotel, relaxing and trying to establish a sense of peace and serenity. When my family went on a tour through London, I refused to go. There was no point. I would just be miserable from having to be alone while other men walked around there with girlfriends. I proclaimed to them all that I will never go for a night out in London unless I had a beautiful girlfriend on my arm. While they were in London, I stayed at the relative’s house with my grandma Ah Mah. Ah Mah cooked me a delicious dinner, just like she did when I was a little child living in the Old Rectory in England. I drank a whole bottle of wine that night, and I was quite drunk by the time they came back from London. We did manage to visit grandma Jinx during this trip. Before we left back to America, uncle Andrew drove us to Smarden, Kent to visit her at her house. I hadn’t been to grandma Jinx’s house since I was ten years old, and it looked exactly the same. Grandma Jinx asked me a lot of questions about my life, as she always did. I had to stiffly pretend that everything was going well, and it pained me that I had nothing going for me to boast about. I hated being the shameful grandson. I bet cousin George was living a better life than me. I’m sure he had a lot to say that made grandma Jinx proud. All in all, it was a relaxing, peaceful, and luxurious trip. I didn’t regret going. From the way my life was going, I needed something like that to fill in as one my last few enjoyments. On the way home, we spent time at the Upper Class lounge at Heathrow Airport, and this lounge was even more impressive than the one in LAX. They had all sorts of luxury food, and a whole bar full of every drink one could imagine. On the way home, I had multiple glasses of red wine again before drifting off to a nice, drunken sleep. As we were about to land in L.A., our plane hovered around the city for a while, waiting for the traffic on the runway to clear up below. While the plane hovered, I filmed a few videos of the entire city of L.A. It was quite an experience, to look down upon such a city. Everything looked so small, and the people and cars looked like little insects. I briefly fantasized about being a god as I looked down upon them all. I imagined having the power to destroy everything below with destructive, supernatural powers. It made for a fine scenario, worthy of being discussed with James Ellis, if only he were still my friend. On New Year’s Eve, I stayed at my mother’s house, feeling lonely and miserable. I believe father and Soumaya went to Antje Twinn’s house again. There was no way I would go there again after the incident that occurred the year before. I found it quite hilarious that everything during this holiday was playing out just the same way as it played out in the previous year; the trip to England, father and Soumaya attending the same party at the Twinn’s house, my same miserable, lonely, virgin status. Indeed, my life was moving in vicious circle of torment with no way out. The only thing that got me through it all was my hope that there was a way out, and that hope had been shattered too many times. I couldn’t live like this anymore. I knew that if things continue to be the same, I would have to carry out my ultimate Retribution and die in the process. I didn’t want to die. I fear death, but death is better than living such a miserable, insignificant life. I remained in my hometown for a couple of weeks, and then I went back to Santa Barbara, the place of beauty and romance that I’ve had to suffer in lonely hell. I only signed up for online classes for the Spring semester, but that was only to placate my parents. I didn’t see the point in even bothering with college anymore. Having to walk through SBCC with all of those beautiful girls strutting around in their revealing shorts, showing off their sexy legs… It is torture, because I know that they would all reject me. There are so many beautiful girls in Santa Barbara, but not one of them ever wanted to be my girlfriend. Life would have been so perfect there if only girls were attracted to me. For the month of January 2013, I stayed in my room all the time, assessing my situation. I brooded and contemplated about everything. I could hear all of those happy young people partying and enjoying themselves as the new semester came to a start. I mused that I should be out there, experiencing a happy, healthy college life with a group of friends, meeting up with girls and sleeping with them, just like all other guys did in college. I thought about how it was almost two years since I had moved to Santa Barbara, and that only made my rage and frustration grow. As I listened to all of those young people having so much fun right outside my window, my hatred of them all for not accepting me only festered and boiled inside me, filling me with immense pain. At one point, I looked out my window and saw couples strolling around the street, on their way to some party. They probably slept with each other that night. The sight made me feel so inferior, like a little mouse. I felt like I was at the bottom of the food chain. I couldn’t fathom how I had to endure such a painful life. On that same night, I looked at the Powerball again, and saw that the jackpot had risen to over $100 million. This prompted me to drive to Arizona again, in another desperate attempt to become instantly wealthy so that I could attract beautiful girls and live the life I want. After all of the rejection and mistreatment I’ve experienced at the hands of women, I knew that becoming wealthy was the only way I could become worthy of them, and so my obsession with becoming wealthy at a young age came back in full force for the first few months of 2013. By the month of April, I had driven to Arizona three more times, making a total of four trips to Arizona in my lifetime, just to buy lottery tickets out of intense desperation, believing it to be my only hope of attaining the life I desire, the life I know I’m worthy of. I kept dreaming of the life I would have once I won; the beautiful blonde girlfriend, the luxurious mansion with a magnificent view, all of the exotic cars I would drive to impress girls. It gave me hope. It gave me something to live for. That hope was shattered after each attempt. None of the tickets I bought on those trips fulfilled my dreams. The reason I kept going, even after I didn’t win, was because I truly believed I was supposed to win. I wanted to believe it because I wanted something to live for. I needed to have hope. I knew that if I lost all of my hope, I would have nothing to live for but revenge. Any chance of having a happy life would be doomed. At the end of March, when I checked my last set of tickets that I had bought from my last trip to Arizona, and saw that I didn’t win, any hope I had of becoming wealthy at a young age was finally and indefinitely shattered. It fully dawned on me that the life I had envisioned for myself would never come to pass. The children I would have in the future with a beautiful blonde girlfriend ceased to exist, as if they were murdered. There won’t be any beautiful blonde girlfriend for me now. No girl would be my girlfriend unless I had great wealth… I learned that from my life of being rejected. I was doomed to a life of lonely virginity. In April, the Powerball lottery was introduced in the state of California, so if I ever wanted to play it again I would no longer have to drive to Arizona. However, I was so shaken by not winning in the last few months that I gave up on it for a while, but eventually I would have episodes of little surges of hope in which I’d buy a few tickets, just to have something to hope for as I endure the last few months of my torturous life. All of those little surges of hope, of course, would be shattered as well. During this Spring of 2013, I began to seriously think about planning the Day of Retribution. My next step towards planning for it was to buy my second handgun, a Sig Sauer P226. It is of a much higher quality than the Glock, and a lot more efficient. In turn, it was also a lot more expensive. My Glock 34 was around $700 dollars, whereas my new Sig Sauer P226 was $1100. These prices were of no concern to me, however. When I first moved to Santa Barbara and experienced all of those horrible revelations about the nature of humanity, I knew that something like the Day of Retribution could very well happen if the world continued to mistreat me. I began to carefully save up all of the money that my parent’s and grandmothers were sending me. It was an ample amount to live on, leaving me with a lot left over to build up in my bank account. When I hit the $5000 dollar mark, which was fairly soon after my move to Santa Barbara, I decided never to go under it, deeming that $5000 was enough to buy all of the supplies and equipment I would need if I had to do something like this. The Day of Retribution had always been in the back of my mind as a final solution if all else failed in my life, ever since I had moved to Santa Barbara. As it so happened, all else did indeed fail. Women continued to reject me and mistreat me, and I remained an unwanted virgin. For the last months of Spring, I went home a lot because the loneliness in Santa Barbara was too stifling. Going home to visit my parents was always an emotional refuge for me. During these trips home, I spent a lot of time with my little brother Jazz. My father let me drive his Mercedes SUV while I was in town, and I often took Jazz on outings with it. On these outings, I began to really bond with the boy. We went to places like Barnes & Noble, the playground at the park, and local cafés where I treated him to coffee and pastries. The parks I took him to were Serrania Park and the Woodland Hills recreation center. I like to watch him play in the playground at these parks, because those were the exact same playgrounds I played in when I was his age… When my life as actually happy. As I watched him, I dreamed about that happy life I used to live, before my whole world turned to darkness. I realized how much different my brother Jazz was from me at that age. While I was shy, short, and physically weak; Jazz was tall for his age and very social. He had no problem going up to other boys at the playground and making instant friends. I began to form a bitter envy towards him, though I hid it really well. My little brother had all the potential to grow up to be a popular kid and live the life I was never able to live. I cursed the world for granting my little brother Jazz so many more advantages than me. I tried not to let this ruin my relationship with him. My little brother really looked up to me. He was one of the few people who treated me with adoration, and that made me feel at least a small twinge of self-worth. It was quite surprising that he respected me so much, since I had nothing in my life to boast about to him. He even asked me once if I had ever had a girlfriend, and I angrily told him that the matter was none of his concern. I didn’t want to admit to him that girl’s thought I was a loser. If he found out about that, he would respect me less. In order to boost his high opinion of me, I often sugarcoated all of my early accomplishments, such as telling him that I was an expert skateboarder and video game player. People having a high opinion of me is what I’ve always wanted in life. It has always been of the utmost importance. This is why my life has been so miserable, because no one has ever had a high opinion of me. My little brother Jazz was the only one who had such an opinion, and that is why I enjoyed spending so much time with him, despite my envy of his social advantages. During one of my frequent visits home in late Spring, I reunited with my old friends Philip and Addison. I hadn’t seen them since the night I emotionally cried in front of them at the Getty museum in the beginning of 2012. This reunion was sparked by the political and philosophic conversations I had been having with Addison over Facebook. I decided to meet them at Philip’s house, where we would make plans for an outing around Malibu and L.A. I brought my father’s Mercedes SUV to use as our mode of transportation. First, we went to Point Dume in Malibu, where Addison used to live. Going there brought back bitter memories of my previous conflict with Addison. The three of us hiked to the very tip of Point Dume, where there was a cliff that overlooked the beach. After Malibu, we decided to have dinner at the BOA Steakhouse in Santa Monica. Driving through Santa Monica was an extremely infuriating experience, just like it had always been. There were so many good looking young couples walking about, enjoying the pretty night life that the attractive city had to offer. Groups of young people walked about in their little cliques. It reminded me to State Street in Santa Barbara, as well as Isla Vista. As I watched all of those obnoxious boys walking around with their beautiful blonde girlfriends, I wanted to run them all over with my father’s Mercedes SUV. I fantasized about how delightful that would be. To literally crush their lives to a pulp, just like they had crushed mine. I tried as hard as I could to hide my envy-fueled rage from Philip and Addison. Philip was easy to fool, but Addison could tell how enraged I was. Addison knew me all too well. In Santa Barbara, I spent almost all of my time in my room, brooding. I began building on all of my philosophical views and theories about the world. I had to question why things were the way they were. The world is so twisted, and I wanted answers. I hated all of those obnoxious, boisterous men who were able to enjoy pleasurable sex lives with beautiful girls, but I hated the girl’s even more, because they were the ones who chose those men instead of me. It was their choice. They are the ones who deprived me of love and sex. My hatred and rage towards all women festered inside me like a plague. Their very existence is the cause of all of my torture, pain and suffering throughout my life. My life turned into a living hell after I started desiring them when I hit puberty. I desire them intensely, but I could never have them. I could never have the experience of holding hands with a beautiful girl and walking on a moonlit beach, I could never embrace a girlfriend and feel her warmth and love, I could never have passionate sex with a girl and drift off to sleep with her sexy body beside me. Women deemed me unworthy of having them, and so they deprived me of an enjoyable youth, while giving their love and sex to other boys. In all of those years I suffered a life of sexual starvation and unfulfilled desires. I will never get those years back. My life has been wasted, all because women hate me so much. All I had ever wanted was to love women, but their behavior has only earned my hatred. I want to have sex with them, and make them feel good, but they would be disgusted at the prospect. They have no sexual attraction towards me. It is such an injustice, and I vehemently questioned why things had to be this way. Why do women behave like vicious, stupid, cruel animals who take delight in my suffering and starvation? Why do they have a perverted sexual attraction for the most brutish of men instead of gentlemen of intelligence? I concluded that women are flawed. There is something mentally wrong with the way their brains are wired, as if they haven’t evolved from animal-like thinking. They are incapable of reason or thinking rationally. They are like animals, completely controlled by their primal, depraved emotions and impulses. That is why they are attracted to barbaric, wild, beast-like men. They are beasts themselves. Beasts should not be able to have any rights in a civilized society. If their wickedness is not contained, the whole of humanity will be held back from advancement to a more civilized state. Women should not have the right to choose who to mate with. That choice should be made for them by civilized men of intelligence. If women had the freedom to choose which men to mate with, like they do today, they would breed with stupid, degenerate men, which would only produce stupid, degenerate offspring. This in turn would hinder the advancement of humanity. Not only hinder it, but devolve humanity completely. Women are like a plague that must be quarantined. When I came to this brilliant, perfect revelation, I felt like everything was now clear to me, in a bitter, twisted way. I am one of the few people on this world who has the intelligence to see this. I am like a god, and my purpose is to exact ultimate Retribution on all of the impurities I see in the world. The Spring of 2013 was also the time when I came across the website PUAHate.com. It is a forum full of men who are starved of sex, just like me. Many of them have their own theories of what women are attracted to, and many of them share my hatred of women, though unlike me they would be too cowardly to act on it. Reading the posts on that website only confirmed many of the theories I had about how wicked and degenerate women really are. Most of the people on that website have extremely stupid opinions that I found very frustrating, but I found a few to be quite insightful. The website PUAHate is very depressing. It shows just how bleak and cruel the world is due of the evilness of women. I tried to show it to my parents, to give them some sort dose of reality as to why I am so miserable. They never understood why I am so miserable. They have always had the delusion that everything is going well for me, especially my father. When I sent the link of PUAHate.com to my parents, none of them even bothered to look at the posts on there. After a Spring season spent in absolute despair while other young people lived healthy lives of sexual pleasure, summer arrived. Summer is even worse than Spring, especially in Santa Barbara. Flocks of hot, young girls go out in their shorts and bikini’s, further tantalizing my sex-starved body every time I look at them. Knowing that they gleefully show off their desirable forms, yet they would never give me a chance to be their boyfriend only increased my already boiling hatred towards all women. I could not leave my apartment without seeing at least a few of them. The only place I could go where I could be at peace was the Lake Park in Goleta. I spent a lot of time there, trying to establish a sense peace and serenity whenever my loneliness in Isla Vista became too unbearable. As I looked at all of the beautiful trees around me, and the towering mountains in the background, I wondered how a world so beautiful can be such a dark and cruel place. Indeed, a beautiful environment is the darkest hell if you have to experience it all alone, while other men get to enjoy the company of women. I had nothing left to live for but revenge. Women must be punished for their crimes of rejecting such a magnificent gentleman as myself. All of those popular boys must be punished for enjoying heavenly lives and having sex with all the girls while I had to suffer in lonely virginity. It was already June, and I had been living in Santa Barbara for two years. Two whole years. I lived in a college town full of young, attractive students who partied and had sex all the time, and I didn’t get to experience any of it. No one invited me to any parties, and in all the times I went out by myself to Isla Vista, none of the beautiful blonde girls showed any interest in having sex with me. Not one girl. These are crimes than cannot go unpunished. The more I thought about all these injustices that were dealt to me, the more eager I became for revenge. It’s all I had left. I didn’t want to die, but I knew that I had to kill myself after I exacted my revenge to avoid getting captured and imprisoned. For a while, I had been deciding on whether I would exact my Retribution in Isla Vista or at Santa Barbara City College. In both places, I had suffered greatly at the hands of everyone there. I have seen attractive young couples walking around in both places, and those were my targets. I wanted to kill as many attractive young couples as I possibly could. After a lot of thinking, I came to the conclusion that the Day of Retribution will take place in Isla Vista. On weekend nights, the streets of Isla Vista are always flooded with young couples and good-looking popular kids walking to their parties. What better place is there to exact my Retribution on my enemies? Every time I walked around Isla Vista, trying to meet girls or fit in with popular kids, I’ve only been treated with disdain, as if I’m an inferior mouse. On the Day of Retribution, the tables will indeed turn, I mused to myself. I will be a god, and they will all be animals that I can slaughter. They are animals… They behave like animals, and I will slaughter them like the animals they are. It came to a point where I had to set a date for the Day of Retribution. I originally considered doing it on the Halloween of 2013. That is when the entire town erupts in raucous partying. There would literally be thousands of people crowded together who I could kill with ease, and the goal was to kill everyone in Isla Vista, to utterly destroy that wretched town. But then, after seeing footage of previous Halloween events on Youtube, I saw that there were too many cops walking around. It would be too risky. One gunshot from a cop will end everything. The Day of Retribution would have to be on a normal party weekend, so I set it for some time during November of 2013. This goal would give me five months to plan and prepare. Five more months of life, but then again I wouldn’t even call it life. The existence I’ve had on this world during the last eight years is anything but life. A feeling of overwhelming dizziness and anxiety swept over me. I was actually going to die. I couldn’t believe it. Then I realized that my life was already over anyway. I was never going to lose my virginity; I was never going to experience love and sex; I was never going to have children. This final act of Retribution is the only thing I could do. It was very hard to come to terms with this fact. I felt very trapped and lost. I hated the feeling of being trapped and lost. I wanted a way out, but I saw none. I had already spent two years in Santa Barbara, and I was still a virgin. There was no way I could ever attract a girl without becoming extremely wealthy, and all of my prospects of becoming wealthy at a young age seemed impossible now. In the beginning of summer, I went on a few walks around Isla Vista during daylight hours. While on these walks, I saw so many attractive young people walking around in their little groups, having the time of their lives. Some of the guys in those groups weren’t even good looking, while I am good looking. I couldn’t understand how they could be accepted, while I wasn’t. I furiously questioned why I haven’t been able to have such experiences after living in Isla Vista for two years. It was unfathomable. I wanted answers. I wanted to know why it had to come to this. If only one pretty girl had shown some form of attraction to me, the Day of Retribution would never happen. I’d never even consider it. The Day of Retribution is mainly my war against women for rejecting me and depriving me of sex and love. If only one girl had given me a chance, tried to get to know me, let me take her out on a date… None of this would have to happen. It was so hard to accept that things would have to resort to me having to perform this act of Retribution I was planning. While I visited home, my parents, along with my psychiatrist Dr. Charles Sophy, arranged for a counsellor to meet me frequently and help me out with my life. His name was Gavin Linderman, a cleancut twenty five-year-old. He had a similar role to Tony, my old counsellor from the regional center back when I was nineteen, except Gavin was much younger and acted more like a friend who could take me out to places. Every time I went back to visit my parents, I would meet up with Gavin once. We usually met up at a restaurant somewhere, or went on a hike. I told him about all of my problems with girls, and all of the hardships I’ve had to face in Santa Barbara. Being familiar with Isla Vista himself, since he spent a great deal of time there when he was younger, he confirmed to me that yes, the girls in Isla Vista prefer tall, muscular, rowdy jock-type men. Gavin was the only young person I really interacted with at the time, besides the occasional meetings with Philip and Addison. He was a good-looking guy, with a chiseled jaw and bright blonde hair. Whenever we went out to a restaurant, or anywhere that had girls, I got extremely jealous when I saw that girls were checking him out instead of me. This one girl at a restaurant in Santa Monica was staring at him the whole time we were sitting there. No girl had ever done that to me. This only made me more aware that girls did not consider me physically attractive. My hatred of the female gender could grow no stronger. It was too much. On Father’s Day, I went with my family to the Four Season’s Resort in Westlake Village. The Four Season’s held their annual Father’s Day buffet. The place was very beautiful and opulent, and there was delicious food of all kinds to choose from. I always looked forward to events like this. Since I had no access to sex, food was my only vice. As with all buffets that I had attended, I stuffed myself tremendously, trying to sample every single thing they offered. There was pork sausage, bacon, smoked salmon, sushi, filet mignon, roast chicken, roast potatoes… And I took pleasure in eating as much as I could. I filled my plate three times and devoured all of them. As I enjoyed my exquisite meal, I took in the scenery all around me; the perfectly built architecture of the building, the pretty flowers in the gardens, the luxurious furniture and décor, the cascading fountains. It truly made me feel good, a welcome respite from all of my suffering in Santa Barbara. Respites like these make me more aware that there are so many good and beautiful things in this world to enjoy. If my status in life were better, I would think this world to be a magnificent place, and I could truly enjoy life. If I was satisfied with my circumstances in life, I would be able to enjoy this beautiful world to its fullest. I can’t be satisfied with life if I’m a virgin and girls are repulsed by me. It’s such a tragedy. I realized that I didn’t want to give up on life in this world. I wanted to live a happy life, a life in which I could have a beautiful girlfriend and experience this amazing world with her. I decided that since my plans for the Day of Retribution wouldn’t be taking place until November, I could use the time I had during the summer to give life another chance; one last chance before the end, one last ditch effort to attain happiness. In late June, my mother moved out of the Summit Town Homes and bought a house in West Hills. It was the first time my mother bought a house, as she had only rented in the past. The house had recently undergone a renovation, so it was practically brand new. The house had a swimming pool and was located in a nice enough area, though I would have still preferred it if my mother had gotten married to a wealthy man and moved into a mansion. I still continued to pester her to do this, and she still stubbornly refused. I will always resent my mother for refusing to do this. If not for her sake, she should have done it for mine. Joining a family of great wealth would have truly saved my life. I would have a high enough status to attract beautiful girlfriends and live above all of my enemies. All of my horrific troubles would have been eased instantly. It is very selfish of my mother to not consider this. With the help of Gavin, my parents arranged for me to have a couple of social skills counsellors to work with me in Santa Barbara. They would have a similar role that Gavin did, providing someone to take me out and help me practice socializing. They would be like hired friends. Of course, I did need something like this, and I should have signed up for it when I first moved to Santa Barbara. It was a little too late at this point, I feared, but I went along with it anyway. I was so lonely in Santa Barbara, and in my loneliness I always craved having someone to talk to. The first counsellor was a very easy going man named Karlin, who was the same age as Gavin. On my first night of meeting Karlin, he took me out to Isla Vista, but nothing came out of it. We just ended up walking around until his time was up. During our walk, I asked him if he had ever had sex with girls in Isla Vista, and he told me he had sex with four girls! I was very jealous. Karlin was half Hawaiian and half Mexican, and he wasn’t that good looking. How on earth could he have managed to sleep with four girls in Isla Vista, while I had been there for two years and had none? It seemed absolutely preposterous. I didn’t want to see him at all after I found this out. The second counsellor that was assigned to help me was a girl named Sasha. She was only a year older than me. Sasha was the first young girl I had interacted with in the entire time I stayed in Santa Barbara, and she was only hired to talk to me. How pathetic is that? At first, I didn’t want to have a female counsellor, but when I was introduced to her, I saw that she was quite a pretty looking blonde. I couldn’t refuse the opportunity to hang out with a blonde girl, despite the fact that she was a hired friend. It was the only time in my life that I had the experience of spending time with a girl my age, and even though it was all fake, I really enjoyed it. I felt so much better about life after each time we met. But then, I thought about how unfair it was that I could only get a fake little taste of such an experience, while other men get to do such a thing every single day with their girlfriends. Eventually, Sasha had to move out of Santa Barbara, and I decided not to have any more female counsellors. It has the same effect as hiring a prostitute, I imagine. It temporarily feels good for the moment, but afterward it makes one feel like a pathetic loser for having to hire a girl when other men could get the experience for free. In July, I spent a lot of time exercising in my room in a final effort to appear as attractive as possible to girls. I proposed that after two weeks of rigorous exercising, I will try my hardest to go out in Isla Vista and do everything I can to meet a girl and lose my virginity. It had been a long time since I went out to Isla Vista by myself, but I knew that I had to do it. I had nothing to lose, and my whole life was on the line. Before would set the definite decision to plan the Day of Retribution, I wanted to give women and humanity one more chance to accept me and give me a chance to have a pleasurable youth. I resolved that if I go out to Isla Vista for this final time, and I still end up going back to my room as a lonely virgin, I will have no choice but to plan my Retribution. I even attended college at SBCC again. I signed up for a summer sociology class and attended it for a week, before dropping it out of the familiar frustration of girls talking to other boys instead of me. This last ditch effort of desperation to once again try to live an enjoyable college life in Isla Vista came to an ultimate and devastating culmination on Saturday night, July 20th, just a few days before my 22nd Birthday. It was the day that I decided to go out in Isla Vista in an attempt to lose my virginity before I turned 22. That was the only thing that could have saved me. I was giving the female gender one last chance to provide me with the pleasures I deserved from them. I was too nervous to go out there sober, so I bought a bottle of vodka and took a few shots to garner enough courage to walk out at such an hour. I had taken one too many, for by the time I reached Del Playa Street, my head was clouded with drunkenness. At the start, it benefited me greatly. I saw lots of good looking popular kids socializing in groups all over the place, and if I wasn’t drunk it would have intimidated me too much. I was so drunk that I walked right into a wild house party that was taking place on Del Playa. They had a DJ playing annoying hip hop music that all the young people liked these days, and there was a ping pong table set up where lots of popular kids were playing “beer pong”, a crude drinking game. There were about one hundred people at that party, and everyone was socializing with a group of friends except for me. I walked around in my drunken confidence for a few moments, helped myself to the beer they had, and tried to act like a normal party-goer. I soon became frustrated that no one was paying any attention to me, particularly the girls. I saw girls talking to other guys who looked like obnoxious slobs, but none of them showed any interest in me. As my frustration grew, so did my anger. I came across this Asian guy who was talking to a white girl. The sight of that filled me with rage. I always felt as if white girls thought less of me because I was half-Asian, but then I see this white girl at the party talking to a full-blooded Asian. I never had that kind of attention from a white girl! And white girls are the only girls I’m attracted to, especially the blondes. How could an ugly Asian attract the attention of a white girl, while a beautiful Eurasian like myself never had any attention from them? I thought with rage. I glared at them for a bit, and then decided I had been insulted enough. I angrily walked toward them and bumped the Asian guy aside, trying to act cocky and arrogant to both the boy and the girl. My drunken state got the better of me, and I almost fell over to the floor after a few minutes of this. They said something along the lines that I was very drunk and that I needed to get some water, so I angrily left them and went out to the front yard, where the main partying happened. Rage fumed inside me as I realized that I just walked away from that confrontation, so I rushed back into the house and spitefully insulted the Asian before walking outside again. I stood awkwardly in the front yard for a bit, realizing how pathetic I looked all by myself when everyone was partying around me. To calm down, I climbed up onto a wooden ledge that bordered the street and plunged down on one of the chairs there. Isla Vista was at its wildest state at that time, and I saw lots of guys walking around with hot blonde girls on their arm. It fueled me with rage, as it always had. I should be one of those guys, but no blonde girls gave me that chance. I looked down at all of them, and in my drunken carelessness, extended my arm out and pretended to shoot them all, laughing giddily as I did it. Eventually, some partiers climbed up onto the ledge. They were all obnoxious, rowdy boys whom I’ve always despised. A couple of pretty girls came up and talked to them, but not to me. They all started socializing right next to me, and none of the girls paid any attention to me. I rose from my chair and tried to act arrogant and cocky toward them, throwing insults at everyone. They only laughed at me and started insulting me back. That was the last straw, I had taken enough insults that night. A dark, hate-fueled rage overcame my entire being, and I tried to push as many of them as I could from the 10-foot ledge. My main target was the girls. I wanted to punish them for talking to the obnoxious boys instead of me. It was one of the most foolish and rash things I ever did, and I almost risked everything in doing it, but I was so drunk with rage that I didn’t care. I failed to push any of them from the ledge, and the boys started to push me, which resulted in me being the one to fall onto the street. When I landed, I felt a snap in my ankle, followed by a stinging pain. I slowly got up and found that I couldn’t even walk. I had to stumble, and stumble I did. I tried to get away from there as fast as I could. As I stumbled a few yards down Del Playa with my shattered leg, I realized that someone had stolen my Gucci sunglasses that my mother had given me. I loved those sunglasses, and had to get them back. I vehemently turned around and staggered back towards the party. At that point, I was so drunk that I forgot where the party was, and ended up walking onto the front yard of the house next to it, demanding to know who took my sunglasses. The people in this house must have been friends with the ones I previously fought with, for they greeted me with vicious hostility. They called me names like “faggot” and “pussy”, typical things those types of scumbags would say. A whole group of the obnoxious brutes came up and dragged me onto their driveway, pushing and hitting me. I wanted to fight and kill them all. I managed to throw one punch toward the main attacker, but that only caused them to beat me even more. I fell to the ground where they started kicking me and punching me in the face. Eventually, some other people from the street broke up the fight. I managed to have the strength to stand up and stagger away. It was the first time in my life that I had been truly beaten up physically to the point where my face was bruised up. I had suffered a lot of bullying in my life, but most of it wasn’t physical. I had never been beaten and humiliated that badly. Everyone in Isla Vista saw what happened, and it was truly horrific. The worst part of this whole ordeal was not getting beaten up, oh no. It was the fact that no one showed any concern. There was only one group who helped me to the end of Del Playa, but after that they abandoned me. Not one girl offered to help me as I stumbled home with a broken leg, beaten and bloody. If girls had been attracted to me, they would have offered to walk me to my room and take care of me. They would have even offered to sleep with me to make me feel better. But no, not one girl showed an ounce of concern for me. They didn’t care. No one cared about me. I was all alone. As I got to my room, I was so traumatized that I called the only people in the world I knew, my parents and my sister. Yes, I even called my sister, someone I never got along with. I sulked for a long time, and then I reached up to my neck to feel my special golden necklace, and I felt nothing there. In the midst of the fight, one of those horrible punks had snatched off my special golden necklace that my grandma Ah Mah had given me! That necklace was one of the most special items I had, and now one of those evil, wretched thugs will be selling it to buy drugs. I broke down in anguish and wailed in agony, crying and crying until I passed out in my bed, all alone. When I woke up the next morning, my leg was in absolute agony. It was purple and swollen, and I could not even stumble anymore. I had to crawl. Being fully sober, all of my anxiety came back. It became very clear to me what had happened. I felt enraged by everything, but also fearful that I might get in trouble. I did try to push girls off of a ledge and threatened to kill all of those people, which could implicate me. I had to concoct a fairly altered story to explain to the police, who would inevitably have to interview me once I got to the hospital and reported my injury. My father drove up to Santa Barbara to bring me to the hospital. Two police did interview me, and I told them that those boys deliberately pushed me off of the ledge after I acted “cocky” towards them. I didn’t mention the girls at all. I expressed to the police of my wishes that they should all be punished for this. The police then went to interview them, and they had their own version of the story. Since there was no actual evidence, the whole case was shortly dismissed. The physician at the hospital put me in a temporary cast and gave me crutches. On top of all other things in the world that made me feel inferior, I was now a cripple. I felt so defeated and broken. To my horror, the physician said that I would have to be in crutches for the next six weeks, and I might have to get surgery. The leg that broke was my left leg, so I was still able to drive. Shortly after the incident, I drove home to spend the rest of the summer recovering. It was a depressing drive. I had never felt so defeated and wronged in my life. I had actually gone out to a party in Isla Vista, hoping that I would be walking back to my room in triumph with a beautiful girl on my arm, but instead I stumbled back to my room with a shattered leg and shattered hopes. My 22nd Birthday was a miserable experience. I sat around at my mother’s house, staring at my broken leg, feeling so pathetic for being a cripple, as well as a 22-year-old virgin. My mother bought me a new golden necklace to replace the one that was stolen from me, as she knew how heartbroken I was about losing it. 22 Years Old The highly unjust experience of being beaten and humiliated in front of everyone in Isla Vista, and their subsequent lack of concern for my well-being, was the last and final straw. I actually gave them all one last chance to accept me, to give me a reason not to hate them, and they devastatingly blew it back in my face. I gave the world too many chances. It was time for Retribution. I went into surgery in the beginning of August. After visiting the local orthopedist, he recommended that I have my broken ankle surgically screwed in place instead of waiting for it to heal by itself. I decided to go through with it, just so I could be out of crutches sooner. My mother drove me to the hospital early in the morning, and I was wrought with fear. I had never been through such a thing in my life. They put me to sleep with anesthesia, and when I woke up my leg burned with pain, though the pain medication they injected in me afterward helped ease this. A new cast was placed on my leg. I didn’t even want to think about what it looked like underneath. I was told that they screwed in a titanium plate to hold the fractured bone in place, and it required six screws. I rested in the hospital for a few hours before I was allowed to go home, under the instructions that I would have to keep my leg raised at all times for the next week. Shortly after my surgery, my mother and sister went on a vacation to Hawaii. They had been planning this for a long time, and of course I refused to go with them when they initially asked me months before. My mother didn’t want me to stay in her house all alone in the crippled state that I was in. Taking care of the house in such a condition would be too difficult, and there would be no one there to provide immediate assistance in case of an emergency. I asked father if I could stay at his house, but Soumaya was having some of her relatives staying for the summer, so she refused to let me stay there because it would be “too much for her to handle”, despite the fact that father’s house had six bedrooms and plenty of space for me to occupy. Father, of course, gave in to Soumaya’s rules as he always had. My respect for him was already so low that it couldn’t get any lower because of this. Due to this little difficulty, my mother booked me a hotel room at Extended Stay America in Woodland Hills. I was content with this. The hotel was comfortable enough, and my mother stocked me with a lot of food for the week that I would be there. It provided a nice atmosphere to recover from the horrific experiences I had just recently endured. The only thing I disliked about this hotel was that it was located right across the street from Taft High School, so whenever I looked out the window I saw a place that had caused me great suffering in the distant past. I thought about the bullying I received at Taft, and in a way my experience there was quite similar to what had just happened to me on that fateful night in Isla Vista. I was bullied by thugs, and the girls adored the bullies instead of me. Indeed, a very similar scenario. Only now, I was ready and capable of fighting back against the cruelty of women. Back when I was a weak and timid boy at Taft High School, I was powerless and frightened, having to resort to hiding in a life of playing video games. All of the suffering, loneliness, rejection, and humiliation I had to experience since then had strengthened me. The hatred that festered inside me in all of those years leading up to this point had empowered me in a dark, twisted way. I was now armed with weapons, possessed great intelligence and philosophical insight, with the willpower to exact the most catastrophic act of vengeance the world will ever see. I spent the next week in that hotel room brooding about the injustices of life and my place in the world. It fully dawned on me that I would now have to bring about the Day of Retribution. There was no other hope. I mused that once I descend upon Isla Vista, armed with my weapons and my burning hatred, I would definitely make sure to target the people who lived in that house I was attacked in. The plan was to destroy the entirety of Isla Vista, and kill every single person in it, or at least kill as many popular young people I could before the police arrive and I’d have to kill myself. I felt so shocked and overwhelmed upon realizing that it was definitely going to resort to this. I was going to die soon, and that in itself was hard to accept. I didn’t want to die, but I would have no choice. Vengeance is the only path; all other paths had been closed shut. I thought it to be such a tragedy that I was actually going to wage war against women and all of humanity. But then again, women’s rejection of me was a declaration of war. They insulted me by deeming me inferior of their love and sex. They hate me, and I will return that hatred one-thousand fold. I will inflict suffering on everyone in Isla Vista, just like they have made me suffer. In the past, I have always been at their mercy, and I was given none. On the Day of Retribution, everyone will be at my mercy, and in turn I will show them no mercy at all. My Retribution will be so devastating that it will shake the very foundations of the world. My broken leg was a setback, of course. Even with surgery, I’d have to be in crutches for six weeks, and even after that it would take a while to be able to walk normally again. I figured I won’t be walking normally until October. There was no way I’d be well enough to prepare for the Day of Retribution by November. There was too little time. I made a new plan to set the ultimate and final date for the Day of Retribution to be at the end of the Spring of 2014. This would give me plenty of time to prepare. The Day of Retribution was now my whole reason for living. It’s all I have to live for. This act of deadly vengeance against the people who have wronged me is my sole purpose on this world. I needed as much time as possible in order to plan it efficiently. Postponing the Day of Retribution also gave me a few more months of life. Perhaps I would also use that time to look for a way out. I have always been itching for a way out of this, and even with the recent events that had occurred, a small part of me still clung to that inkling of hope. Gavin came to visit me at the hotel, and he was welcome company. It was really getting lonely there, though it was definitely better than being lonely in Isla Vista. The two of us sat down for three hours in my hotel room to have an important conversation. I explained to him my finely altered version of everything that happened on that night in Isla Vista. He didn’t seem surprised. When he was my age, he used to go up to Isla Vista quite often. He told me that the kind of brutal, rowdy atmosphere I’ve witnessed was part of the culture there. The boisterous, wild frat boys get all of the beautiful girls, and everyone is looking for a fight, like the vicious animals they are. He said it was a truth I had to accept, advising me to move out of there. I couldn’t accept this truth, because it was unjust. I couldn’t let such evil exist, and I will not run away from it by moving out of there. I will either thrive there, or destroy the place utterly. Since I failed to thrive there, I had no choice but to plan my Retribution. When my mother came back from Hawaii, I went to stay at her house for the next month, until my leg healed enough for me to lose the crutches. I didn’t want to go back to Santa Barbara while still in crutches, it would be too humiliating, and I had felt humiliated enough there already. For the first week after surgery, my leg suffered intense searing pain, though that searing pain was nothing compared to the hatred that burned in my heart. During that time, I could barely leave my bed, because whenever I did, the blood rushed to my leg and triggered the pain. For the entire time that I was in the hotel, I stayed in my bed like a vegetable. After that initial week, the pain subsided, and I was able to move about on my crutches with greater ease. I often did laps around my mother’s backyard as a way of venting my anger, sometimes swinging my crutches around as if they were swords, slashing at all of the enemies who had wronged me in life. The month that I spent at mother’s house was very relaxing, and I tried my best to calm myself down as time passed. I spent a lot of time watching movies, reading books, introspecting, and contemplating about life. I stayed in the house all the time, for I despised having to go out and be seen as a cripple. I already felt insecure enough about myself for being a lonely virgin. Being seen as a cripple was too much salt on the wound. Gavin came to visit me again, and this time we sat in my mother’s dining room to have yet another important conversation about my life and where I was going. He tried to advise me again to move out of Isla Vista, but I refused to hear it. I moved to Isla Vista with the goal of losing my virginity and attaining the life I desire. If I’m unable to have it, I will destroy it. I will never run away in defeat. My parents arranged for us to have a conference with my Psychiatrist, Dr. Charles Sophy. I set out with my mother to meet father outside Dr. Sophy’s house in Beverly Hills, and when we got there we were surprised to see that Soumaya had come for the conference too. This presented a conflict, because Soumaya and my mother had recently had an argument due to Soumaya refusing to let me stay at father’s house during my mother’s trip to Hawaii. For more than half of the conversation, the doctor spent time resolving this petty conflict instead of addressing the troubles that I was going through. When we finally did get to my situation, Dr. Sophy ended up giving me the same useless advice that every other psychiatrist, psychologist, and counsellor had given me in the past. I don’t know why my parents wasted money on therapy, as it will never help me in my struggle against such a cruel and unjust world. The doctor ended up dismissing it by prescribing me a controversial medication, Risperidone. After researching this medication, I found that it was the absolute wrong thing for me to take. I refused to take it, and I never saw Dr. Sophy again after that. Towards the end of the month, my mother invited Maddy and Mo Humpreys over for dinner. Mother had recently been reconnecting with her old friend Mo. Maddy had just graduated from USC, a university renowned for its abundance of spoiled, bratty students who partied all the time, very similar to UCSB. I often call USC the “University of Spoiled Cunts”, just like I call UCSB the “University of California’s Spoiled Brats”. Brilliant, fitting nicknames! Before Maddy came, I stalked her Facebook for a bit, and I saw that she was the exact image of everything I hated in women. She was a popular, spoiled USC girl who partied with her hot, beautiful blonde-haired clique of friends. All of them looked like absolute cunts, and my hatred for them all grew from each picture I saw on her profile. They were the kind of beautiful, popular people who lived pleasurable lives and would look down on me as inferior scum, never accepting me as one of them. They were my enemies. They represented everything that was wrong with this world. Maddy was my first friend in America. As a child, I played with her as an equal. Now she was my enemy. I would take great delight in torturing and flaying her and every single one of her spoiled, obnoxious evil friends. When she and her mother came to eat dinner with us, I had to keep calm as I hobbled out of my room on my crutches to greet them. That relaxing month at mother’s was like the comfort before the storm. Once I go back to Santa Barbara, fully recovered, the final dark chapter of my life will commence. I dreaded what will come of it. After six weeks of hobbling about on crutches whenever I had to go somewhere, I visited my orthopedist, asking if it was finally time for me to walk without them. After examining my leg, he agreed that I can proceed to a “walking cast”. This would enable me to limp around, without crutches, though I would have to use a cane. Though uncomfortable, it was much, much better than having to go about on those damnable crutches. When I got home, I delightedly practiced moving around with this new setup. Before long, my mother said I was now well enough to return to Santa Barbara. My new college classes were starting soon anyway, though she didn’t know that I had only signed up for online classes for the Autumn semester out of fear that I might have to start college while still crippled. She had grown tired of having to deal with me, as she always was in the past. I spent a few more days at mother’s with my walking cast and cane before she made me go back to Santa Barbara, telling me I can return to visit in two weeks. I made my ominous drive back to Santa Barbara, and as I drove I thought about all of the injustices I had to face in the last two years I had spent there. Injustices that had never been set right. Now was the time to set them right. Now was the time for Retribution. When I got back to my apartment, I saw that my housemates Chris and Jon had moved out. A pity, as they were the most pleasant housemates I could have hoped for. I feared what my new ones would be like, and I was told they would be coming in a few weeks. I had the place to myself for that period, which suited me well. I refused to leave my room at all until I was able to at least lose my walking cast. I spent the time doing the same thing I did at mother’s house. I watched a lot of movies, and sat around contemplating my future. Upon my visit home, I went to see my orthopedist for one last time, and he told me I can finally walk without any cast around my leg, though I would need the cane for a few more weeks. I was content with this, as I didn’t mind the cane that much. It had a peculiar elegance about it. On that same weekend, I met up with Philip and Addison. We had been planning to meet during the summer, but I had to postpone it because of my terrible injury. I took them out in my father’s Mercedes SUV, and we went on another one of our adventures around Los Angeles. First, we went to an exquisite Japanese restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. I was thankful I didn’t see any young couples my age there, most of them were older than us. Afterwards, we went to Griffith Park Observatory, under Philip’s suggestion. Going there brought back memories, both good and bad. It was ever a tradition for the three of us to go there, as we had been so many times. The place provided an expansive view of the city of L.A. At night it was absolutely exquisite. The Griffith Park Observatory was truly a wondrous place to admire the beauty of the world… but the whole experience was ruined, of course, by the sight of so many young couples kissing there, right under the stars. Those boys must have been in heaven, to experience such a place with their beautiful girlfriends. Seeing all of those young couples at Griffith Park filled me with rage for the rest of the night. It reminded me of the injustices I have to face in life, and my war against it all. When I drove down the hill from the Observatory, I saw more young couples walking around, and I had the desire to run them over with the Mercedes as a sweet act of revenge. I already planned to use the Mercedes SUV as one of my weapons on the Day of Retribution, since Isla Vista on weekend nights was always filled with my enemies walking right in the middle of the road. They would be easy targets. After the disastrous experience at Griffith Park, we decided to take a late night trip all the way to Palos Verdes, just to admire the scenery. I had never been down there, and Addison told me it was a peaceful, quiet, and exquisite place that provided an extraordinary view. When we arrived at a beach park in Palos Verdes that overlooked the ocean, Philip had fallen asleep, so it was just me and Addison who went out to walk around. I took an instant liking to the place, and explored it as much as I could, even though I was still limping with my cane. As the two of us looked up at the stars, we had a few insightful conversations. Addison told me more about his experiences among the popular kids of Malibu, in which I still envied him greatly for. I told him about all of my newfound philosophical views regarding women, and how I believe they are mentally flawed and need to be contained. He didn’t show any hint of how he felt about this. Addison told me that I was a person of high intelligence, and that I shouldn’t waste it by doing something “rash”. I believe he had a suspicion that I was indeed planning on massacring my enemies and then killing myself. Of course he would have that suspicion… In a way I think he knew me better than anyone else. I am indeed an intelligent person, but the cruelty of this world gives me no choice but to exact my Retribution. I tactfully told Addison that I had no intentions of “doing anything stupid”. That was my last conversation with him. It was also the last time I ever saw Philip and Addison. I also went to meet with my father’s friend Dale Launer on that weekend. Dale Launer is a successful Hollywood screenwriter and producer who owns a nice house in the Pacific Palisades. Dale and my father have been friends for many years. When I was a child, father sometimes took me to dinner parties at his house. I hadn’t seen Dale since I was a child, but within the last few months I began to have email conversations with him after he found out I was having trouble with girls. He wanted to help me overcome my troubles because he is a so-called expert with women. He even showed me pictures of all of the gorgeous women he has dated in his life, and there were a lot of them. This man truly lived. A few men who are successful with women have offered me help and advice about this in the past, but nothing ever came of it. I suppose they want to help because it would be a boost to their already big egos, and also because they feel sorry for me. People should feel sorry for me. My life is so pathetic, and I hate the world for forcing me to suffer it. I feel sorry for myself. In truth, there is nothing men like Dale can really do to help me attract girls and lose my virginity. They can’t mind-control girls to be attracted to me. It’s all girls’ fault for not having any sexual attraction towards me. My brief friendship with Dale would, however, spark a few more interesting email conversations where I confide to him about how cruel I think women are by nature. He would only be amused by this. Of course he would be amused. Women were never cruel to him. They gave him sex and love all his life. I had an argument with Soumaya while I was visiting father’s house. It started when she began to boast that my brother Jazz was recently signed by an agent to act in T.V. commercials. She said that by the time he is my age, he will be a successful actor. I talked about how Jazz was already so socially savvy for his age, and how I’ve always envied him for it. She told me he will never have any problems with girls, and will lose his virginity while he’s young. I had to sit there and listen to the bitch tell me that my little brother will grow up enjoying the life I’ve always craved for, but missed out on. It is very unfair how some boys are able to live such pleasurable lives while I never had any taste of it, and now it has been confirmed to me that my little brother will become one of them. He will become a popular kid who gets all the girls. Girls will love him. He will become one of my enemies. That was the day that I decided I would have to kill him on the Day of Retribution. I will not allow the boy to surpass me at everything, to live the life I’ve always wanted. It’s not fair that he has the chance to have a pleasurable life while I’ve been denied it. It will be a hard thing to do, because I had really bonded with my little brother in the last year, and he respected and looked up to me. But I would have to do it. If I can’t live a pleasurable life, then neither will he! I will not let him put my legacy to shame. In order to kill Jazz, I would have to kill Soumaya too, but that will be easy. All I would need to do is think about all of the hurtful things she had said to me in that past as I plunge my knife into her neck. But what if father is in the house to stop me? Would I have to kill him too? That would be too much. I remember, when I was a child, I had dreams about my father dying, and I woke up crying to my mother, in which she would comfort me and tell me that it was just a dream. How could my life have resorted to the point where I am the one to kill my own father? I felt sick to my stomach. I concluded that I would have to set the Day of Retribution during a time when my father is out of the country, on one of his business trips. It would be too risky to try to kill him. I might hesitate at the last second. When I thought about all of this, I truly did feel sick. I felt a shiver run through me. My whole world had become so twisted and wrong. I didn’t want it to come to this. I desperately wanted a way out. To make me feel more confident, my mother provided me with a better car to drive in Santa Barbara, a BMW 3 series Coupe. I had always wanted this, since I cared a lot about my appearance. I had been asking my parents for a more upper-class car ever since I found out that there was a car hierarchy, and that some students at my college drove better cars than others. Now I was one of the students with a better, high-class car. Having a nicer car than most other students my age did indeed make me feel more confident. Mother should have bought this car for me when I first moved to Santa Barbara. It made me feel better about going out more while I was there. This, coupled with my newly healed leg, gave me one last twinge of hope as the remaining months of 2013 passed. For those last remaining months, my extreme desperation and desire for happiness took hold of me, knowing full well how my life will turn out if I don’t get what I want. I went out every single day, just to put myself out there in the world in order to see what opportunities arise. I explored the entirety of Santa Barbara and Montecito, and it fully dawned on me what a beautiful environment I had been living in. However, a beautiful environment is the darkest hell if I have to experience it all alone. That fact that I had wasted the last two years in such a beautiful place filled me with anguish. I thought about what an enjoyable life I could have had, if only girls were attracted to me. Two new housemates moved into my apartment for the Autumn semester. They were two foreign Asian students who attended UCSB. These were the biggest nerds I had ever seen, and they were both very ugly with annoying voices. My last two housemates, Chris and Jon, were nerds as well, but at least they were friendly and pleasant. These two new ones were utterly repulsive, and one of them had a very rebellious demeanor about him. He went out of his way to start arguments with me whenever I raised the issue of the noise he made. Hell, even living with Spencer was more pleasant than these two idiots. I knew that when the Day of Retribution came, I would have to kill my housemates to get them out of the way. If they were pleasant to live with, I would regret having to kill them, but due to their behavior I now had no regrets about such a prospect. In fact, I’d even enjoy stabbing them both to death while they slept. I was assigned a new counsellor to meet with me every week in Santa Barbara, since Karlin and Sasha no longer worked for that company. My new counsellor was named Robert, a UCSB student who is one year older than me. I had coffee with him a few times, and we went volunteering together twice, in an effort to get me out of my room and doing activities. Nothing conducive to attaining the life I desire came out of these meetings, but the social interaction he provided was pleasant, and it gave me an outlet to express myself. I visited my mother’s house quite often in the Autumn. To my extreme rage, I discovered that my sister now had a boyfriend, and that she had lost her virginity. She had casually “dated” boys in the past, but never to the serious extent that she did with this one. This one was a half White, half Mexican named Samuel, and I immediately took an intense disliking to him when I was first introduced to him. He seemed like the typical obnoxious slob that most young girls are sexually attracted to. Georgia invited him to my mother’s house all the time, and it angered me to watch him lurking about, eating my mother’s food and drinks, and making use of my mother’s house. He was freeloading off my mother, and she didn’t even realize it. I eventually grew to hate him after I heard him having sex with my sister. I arrived at the house one day, my mother being at work, and heard the sounds of Samuel plunging his penis into my sister’s vagina through her closed room door, along with my sister’s moans. I stood there and listened to it all. So my sister, who was four years younger than me, managed to lose her virginity before I did. It reminded me of how pathetic I was, that at the age of twenty-two, I was still a virgin. I hated her boyfriend as well. My sister said that he’s been with other girls before her, and I’m sure he lost his virginity at a much younger age. It is such an injustice. The slob doesn’t even have a car, and he is able to get girlfriends, while I drive a BMW and get no attention from any girls whatsoever. My sister even showed me a picture of one of his ex-girlfriends, a pretty brunette white girl. My hatred towards him only intensified after that. I refused to speak to him whenever he came over, and I constantly pestered my mother to ban him from the house, but she refused to heed my demands. Even worse, she constantly talked about him admiringly. He reminded me of Leo Bubenheim, a typical obnoxious boy who has been able to experience a great sex life from a young age. An enemy had now infiltrated the household of my mother, the one place in the whole world where I’ve always sought refuge from injustice. Things were getting too out of hand. Grandma Jinx came to visit father’s house in late October. When she last visited, she resolved an intense conflict between me, my father, and Soumaya. In a way, this recent visit paralleled the last one, since I was having conflicts with Soumaya this time as well, just not to the same extreme. I went over to father’s house to see my grandmother. She suggested that I take her out for a coffee, and I knew just the place. I took her to Barnes & Noble at the Calabasas Commons, a place of great significance in my past. While there, I showed her all of the spots I had spent time at years ago. Afterward, before I said my goodbye, a feeling of sadness swept over me, as I knew that was most likely the final farewell. On Halloween, I found it hard to believe how fast time had gone by. I remember how on the last Halloween I had considered exacting my Retribution on this very day. Time indeed will inevitably pass, and soon enough my fate will have to be decided. I went home to my mother’s on Halloween, of course. I wouldn’t be able to stand being alone in my Isla Vista room while all of that partying happened around me. It was the exact same scenario as last year. In the afternoon, I saw a new psychologist, Dr. Randy Gold. In truth, he was my old psychologist whom I visited briefly when I was only thirteen. That was back when my life was just starting to fall into this dark path, and now I was still in the same position, except that the dark path was soon going to reach its climactic end. After my therapy session, I got drunk in my mother’s hot tub, trying not to think about all of the fun and sex that other young people were having that night. Nothing came out of my desperate outings in Santa Barbara during the last months of 2013. Girls still didn’t show any interest in me. I drove to SBCC a lot, even though I was only signed up for online classes. While there, I saw other boys who had inferior cars driving around with hot girls in their passenger seats. I have a BMW and never had any hot girl in my passenger seat. Not once. It only made me fume with rage. Santa Barbara was such a beautiful town, but I could go nowhere without being insulted by my enemies. The mere sight of them enjoying their happy lives was an insult to me, because I deserve it more than them. One place of refuge I often went to was the Coffee Bean in Montecito. It was located in a beautiful little town center, and most of the couples there were older than me. It provided a quiet and peaceful place for me to contemplate and brood. On the eve of my last day in Santa Barbara, before I went home for the winter break, I went to the Sandpiper Golf Course in Goleta to watch the sunset. It was my usual sunset spot, and on that evening the shape of the clouds on the horizon made it exceptionally beautiful. I basked in its radiance as I stood there, wondering with despair how a world so beautiful could be so cruel. And then, one final insult came along, as if the world was taking one last spiteful lash at me. A young couple came and stood near me, making out with each other as they watched the very same sunset. There were lots of other people there as well, for it was quite a unique sunset. All of them must have had thoughts of admiration towards the couple, and thoughts of contempt towards me because I was all alone and unwanted. I have lived such an unnatural life, devoid of love, sex, and pleasure. Watching sunsets was one of the few joys I had left, and now that too was taken from me. How can I enjoy a sunset anymore, knowing that other men get to enjoy them with their beautiful girlfriends at their side? There was no more life for me to live. During the winter break, I was able to experience one final respite before 2014 came, the year my sad story will at last come to its tragic end. My mother and sister planned another trip to England at the end of December, this time for two weeks. For those two weeks, I stayed at my mother’s house by myself, taking advantage of the time to have one last period of relaxation and peace. They decided to take my sister’s boyfriend Samuel to England with them, and upon hearing this I became very infuriated. Samuel was my enemy, someone who has enjoyed a happy life of sex while I have starved for years. And now my own mother was paying for his ticket to England, something he doesn’t deserve. I felt so betrayed by my mother because of this. She should have been more considerate for how I would feel. I am her son, and she should be on my side. But then again, my mother is a woman, and women are all mentally ill. There was no way she could possibly understand my point of view. I attended my father’s Christmas party during this winter break. At the party, I ran into Karl Champley. I hadn’t seen him since he hired me to work on his house years ago, and it was nice to speak with him again. I felt very bitter and ashamed, having to appear to all of my father’s friends as the same awkward, unwanted outcast I had always been. Some of them asked me about my life in Santa Barbara, and a few even asked if I had a girlfriend. I had to suffer having to tell them that no, I don’t have a girlfriend because girls are not attracted to me. I wished I could tell them all that I had an amazing life there, with a girlfriend who would be with me at that very party. I wish I could have made them all proud of me, but of course, I had nothing about me to be proud of. The only solace I had for that shame was the knowledge that I will soon rectify everything on the Day of Retribution. My mother told me that I can have one bottle of wine from her pantry while she was away, and on New Year’s Eve I chose to open the best one in the lot, a fine vintage that I slowly sipped throughout the night as I stayed at my mother’s house, all alone. I knew that other young popular people were having the time of their lives that night, partying the night away. As I sipped my wine alone, in the moonlit darkness of my mother’s backyard, I assured myself that soon I will have my revenge on all of those young popular people. Soon… After a restless sleep, I arose from my bed early on New Year’s Day, 2014. This was the final year. This was the year in which everything will come to a close. In this year, I will finally have my closure, my vengeance, my retribution! My whole tragic life had led to this, and I was ready. I had been rejected, insulted, humiliated, cast out, bullied, starved, tortured, and ridiculed for far too long. Humanity is a cruel and brutal species, and the only thing I could do to even the score was to return that cruelty one-thousand fold. Women’s rejection of me is a declaration of war, and if it’s war they want, then war they shall have. It will be a war that will result in their complete and utter annihilation. I will deliver a blow to my enemies that will be so catastrophic it will redefine the very essence of human nature. It was time to plot exactly what I will do on the Day of Retribution. I will be a god, punishing women and all of humanity for their depravity. I will finely deliver to them all of the pain and suffering they’ve dealt to me for so long. The first thing I had to consider was the exact date it will take place. Valentine’s Day would have been very fitting, since it was the holiday that made me feel the most miserable and insulted, the holiday in which young couples celebrated their happy lives together. The problem was that Valentine’s Day was only a month away. I needed more time than that. Also, on Valentine’s Day most young couples will be spread out in various restaurants in the city instead of being packed together at parties in Isla Vista. Another option was Deltopia, a day in which many young people pour in from all over the state to have a spring break party on Del Playa Street. I figured this would be the perfect day to attack Isla Vista, but after watching Youtube videos of previous Deltopia parties, I saw that there were way too many cops walking around on such an event. It would be impossible to kill enough of my enemies before being dispatched by those damnable cops. I wanted to set an exact date, on a normal Isla Vista party weekend, and once I set that date I will never change it. After a lot of thinking and consideration, I concluded to bring about the Day of Retribution on Saturday, April 26, 2014. In the first months of 2014, which are the last months of my life, I tried to make the most out of every day. There was no a single day where I stayed in my room. Every morning, I set out in my BMW to go on adventures around the vicinity of Santa Barbara and Montecito, and I wouldn’t return until late in the night. I went on hikes in the mountains of Montecito, wandered around aimlessly in beautiful parks, took strolls along the beach, sipped lattes at various cafes, and watched the sunset at my many contemplation spots, staying there until the stars lit up the night sky. Every time I did this though, there was no escaping the sight of young couples doing the exact same thing together. It made me even more eager for the Day of Retribution to come. My life was a living hell, and that hell needed to come to an end. I had enough extra money saved up to live comfortably and indulgently before I die. I didn’t spend all of it though, for I still needed supplies that were vital to my plans. First, I needed to buy a third handgun, just in case one of them jams. I needed two working handguns at the same time, as that was how I planned to commit suicide; with two simultaneous shots to the head. I also needed to buy magazine clips and ammunition, as well as knives and carrying cases for my equipment. Even in the first months of 2014, leading up to the tragic day in April, the little twinge of hope inside me never faded. It remained, as if it were tiny, flickering flame of a candle in a dark room. I suppose that little flame is what prompted me to actually attend the two Spring Semester classes I registered for at SBCC. That lasted a good two weeks, before I realized how pointless it was and dropped them. There was no hope now, and I had to accept it. After going through every single fantasy I had about how I would punish my enemies, I started to detail all of my exact plans for how the Day of Retribution will play out. On the day before the Day of Retribution, I will start the First Phase of my vengeance: Silently killing as many people as I can around Isla Vista by luring them into my apartment through some form of trickery. The first people I would have to kill are my two housemates, to secure the entire apartment for myself as my personal torture and killing chamber. After that, I will start luring people into my apartment, knock them out with a hammer, and slit their throats. I will torture some of the good looking people before I kill them, assuming that the good looking ones had the best sex lives. All of that pleasure they had in life, I will punish by bringing them pain and suffering. I have lived a life of pain and suffering, and it was time to bring that pain to people who actually deserve it. I will cut them, flay them, strip all the skin off their flesh, and pour boiling water all over them while they are still alive, as well as any other form of torture I could possibly think of. When they are dead, I will behead them and keep their heads in a bag, for their heads will play a major role in the final phase. This First Phase will represent my vengeance against all of the men who have had pleasurable sex lives while I’ve had to suffer. Things will be fair once I make them suffer as I did. I will finally even the score. The Second Phase will take place on the Day of Retribution itself, just before the climactic massacre. The Second Phase will represent my War on Women. I will punish all females for the crime of depriving me of sex. They have starved me of sex for my entire youth, and gave that pleasure to other men. In doing so, they took many years of my life away. I cannot kill every single female on earth, but I can deliver a devastating blow that will shake all of them to the core of their wicked hearts. I will attack the very girls who represent everything I hate in the female gender: The hottest sorority of UCSB. After doing a lot of extensive research within the last year, I found out that the sorority with the most beautiful girls is Alpha Phi Sorority. I know exactly where their house is, and I’ve sat outside it in my car to stalk them many times. Alpha Phi sorority is full of hot, beautiful blonde girls; the kind of girls I’ve always desired but was never able to have because they all look down on me. They are all spoiled, heartless, wicked bitches. They think they are superior to me, and if I ever tried to ask one on a date, they would reject me cruelly. I will sneak into their house at around 9:00 p.m. on the Day of Retribution, just before all of the partying starts, and slaughter every single one of them with my guns and knives. If I have time, I will set their whole house on fire. Then we shall see who the superior one really is! The Final Phase of the Day of Retribution will be my ultimate showdown in the streets of Isla Vista. On the morning before, I will drive down to my father’s house to kill my little brother, denying him of the chance to grow up to surpass me, along with my stepmother Soumaya, as she will be in the way. My father will be away on one of his business trips, so thankfully I won’t have to deal with him. If he didn’t go away on that trip, I might even have to postpone the whole plan because of my fear that I might hesitate if I have to kill him. Once I’ve taken care of my brother and stepmother, I will switch over to the Mercedes SUV, and drive it back up to Isla Vista. I will use it as one of my killing machines against my enemies. An SUV will cause a lot more damage than my BMW coupe. After I have killed all of the sorority girls at the Alpha Phi House, I will quickly get into the the SUV before the police arrive, assuming they would arrive within 3 minutes. I will then make my way to Del Playa, splattering as many of my enemies as I can with the SUV, and shooting anyone I don’t splatter. I can only imagine how sweet it will be to ram the SUV into all of those groups of popular young people who I’ve always witnessed walking right in the middle of the road as if they are better than everyone else. When they are writhing in pain, their bodies broken and dying after I splatter them, they will fully realize their crimes. Once I reach Del Playa Street, I will dump the bag of severed heads I had saved from my previous victims, proclaiming to everyone how much I’ve made them all suffer. Once they see all of their friend’s heads roll onto the street, everyone will fear me as the powerful god I am. I will then start massacring everyone on Del Playa Street. I will pull up next to a house party and fire bullets at everyone partying on the front yard. I will specifically target the good looking people, and all of the couples. After I have destroyed a house party, I will continue down Del Playa, destroying everything and everyone. When I see the first police car come to their rescue, I will drive away as fast as I can, shooting and ramming anyone in my path until I find a suitable place to finally end my life. To end my life, I will quickly swallow all of the Xanax and Vicodin pills I have left, along with an ample amount of hard liquor. Immediately after imbibing this mixture, I will shoot myself in the head with two of my handguns simultaneously. If the gunshots don’t kill me, the deadly drug mixture eventually will. I will not suffer being captured and sent to prison. I must plan this very efficiently. Nothing can go wrong. It needs to be perfect. This is now my sole purpose on this world. My plans will come to fruition, and I mustn’t let anyone stop me. On the week leading up to date I set for the Day of Retribution, I uploaded several videos onto Youtube in order to express my views and feelings to the world, though I don’t plan on uploading my ultimate video until minutes before the attack, because on that video I will talk about exactly why I’m doing this. I titled one of the videos I uploaded “Why do girls hate me so much?” in which I ask the entire population of women the question I’ve wanted to ask them for so many years. Why do they hate me so much? Why have they never fancied me? Why do they give their love and sex to other men, but not me, even though I deserve them more? In the video, I show that I am the perfect, magnificent gentleman, worthy of having a beautiful girlfriend, making the world see how unreasonable it is that I’ve had to struggle all my life to get a girlfriend. It is my attempt to reason with the female gender, to ask them why they have mistreated me. I was hoping I would get some sort of answer from girls. In fact, a small part of me was even hoping that a girl would see the video and contact me to give me a chance to go on a date. That alone would have prevented the Day of Retribution, if one girl had just given me one chance. But no… As expected, I got absolutely no response from any girls. The only responses I got were from other men who called me names and made fun of me. Women don’t care about me at all. They won’t even deign to tell my why they’ve mistreated me. This just shows how evil and sadistic they are. Oh well, they will realize the gravity of their crimes when I slaughter them all on the Day of Retribution. How dare they reject a magnificent gentleman like me! As April 26th drew ever closer, I prepared myself to the fullest extent. All I had left to do was finish writing this story and film my final video. But then, on Thursday, April 24th, I woke up with a terrible cold. I rarely ever get colds! I’ve always had a strong immune system. It was as if fate itself was trying to stop me from doing it. But what other reason do I have for living? Alas, there was no way I could carry out my plans if I had a cold. Everything had to be perfect. In addition, I found out that father had arrived home two days earlier than he originally said he would, so if I had indeed went forth with my plans, I would have had to kill my father, which I wouldn’t be mentally prepared for. I hastily decided to postpone it to Saturday, May 24th, 2014. I would definitely be fully recovered from my cold by then. This will also give me a few more weeks of life, and more time to prepare. A few days earlier, I felt so ready to finally strike back at women and humanity, with all my rage and hatred. I was profoundly eager to do it! But for some strange reason, having a few more weeks of life made me feel relieved. I took in a deep breath and relaxed. Coupled with my hate-fueled eagerness to carry out my act of revenge, there was also an extreme sense of fear inside me. Part of me still didn’t want to do it. It will mean my death, and I have always been afraid of death. I didn’t want to be in Isla Vista on April 26th, the day I previously planned on carrying out my plans. Hearing all of my enemies partying and having a good time on the day I was supposed to kill them all would be too much to bear. I immediately called my mother and asked her if I can stay at her house for the whole weekend, exaggerating my illness so that she would let me. While there, I visited the doctor to ask about the condition of my cold, and spent the weekend in deep, peaceful contemplation. Upon my return to Santa Barbara, I assured to myself that this was it. May 24th, 2014 was the final date. There is no postponing it anymore, no backing out. If I don’t do this, then I only have a future filled with more loneliness and rejection ahead of me, devoid of sex, love, and enjoyment. I have to do it. It’s the only thing I can do. May 24th , is the absolute last weekend in the Spring semester in which I can carry out this plan efficiently. After May 24th, the Spring semester at SBCC will end, and all of the SBCC students will go back to their hometowns, which means less enemies to kill in Isla Vista. Sure, UCSB would still be in session, but I want to kill both UCSB and SBCC students. The Day of Retribution is my sole purpose on this world, and I am ready. After only a week passed since I uploaded those videos on Youtube, I heard a knock on my apartment door. I opened it to see about seven police officers asking for me. As soon as I saw those cops, the biggest fear I had ever felt in my life overcame me. I had the striking and devastating fear that someone had somehow discovered what I was planning to do, and reported me for it. If that was the case, the police would have searched my room, found all of my guns and weapons, along with my writings about what I plan to do with them. I would have been thrown in jail, denied of the chance to exact revenge on my enemies. I can’t imagine a hell darker than that. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case, but it was so close. Apparently, someone saw my videos and became instantly suspicious of me. They called some sort of health agency, who called the police to check up on me. The police told me it was my mother who called them, but my mother told me it was the health agency. My mother had watched the videos and was very disturbed by them. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know the full truth of who called the police on me. The police interrogated me outside for a few minutes, asking me if I had suicidal thoughts. I tactfully told them that it was all a misunderstanding, and they finally left. If they had demanded to search my room… That would have ended everything. For a few horrible seconds I thought it was all over. When they left, the biggest wave of relief swept over me. It was so scary. It was all because of the videos. I must have expressed too much anger in them. I immediately took most of them off of Youtube, and planned to reupload them a few days before the Day of Retribution. This incident made me realize that I needed to be extra careful. I can’t let anyone become suspicious of me. All it takes is for one person to call the police and tell them that they think I’m going to perpetrate a shooting, and the police will be coming to my door again, demanding to search my room. For the next few days, I felt extremely fearful that they could show up anytime. I kept one of my handguns with a few loaded magazines near me just in case such a thing did happen. If they did show up, I would have to try to quickly shoot them all and escape out the back window. I would then have to perform a hasty mockery of my plans, with the police on my tail. That will ruin everything. Thankfully, all suspicion of me was dropped after I took down the videos from Youtube, and the police never came back. During the last few weeks of my life, I continued my daily adventures around town, trying to experience as much of the world as I could before I die. Upon doing this, I realized that the only world I can possibly ever experience is a twisted world of constant suffering. No matter where I go, I have to face all of the same injustices. Young couples are everywhere! They constantly remind me of what I have lacked all my life. I cannot go out of my room without seeing a young couple that would make me feel envious and enraged. How dare those girls give their love and sex to those other men and not me, I constantly think when I see young couples. There is nowhere in the world I can go anymore. There is no more life to live. The Day of Retribution is all I have. It is the final solution to all of the injustices of this twisted world. By doing this, I will set right all of the wrongs I’ve had to face in my sorry excuse of a life. Every single time I’ve seen a guy walk around with his beautiful girlfriend, I’ve always wanted to kill them both in the most painful way possible. They deserve it. They must be punished. The males deserve to be punished for living a better and more pleasurable life than me, and the females deserve to be punished for giving that pleasurable life to those males instead of me. On the Day of Retribution, I will finally be able to punish them ALL. When I think about the amazing and blissful life I could have lived if only females were sexually attracted to me, my entire being burns with hatred. They denied me a happy life, and in return I will take away all of their lives. It is only fair. I am not part of the human race. Humanity has rejected me. The females of the human species have never wanted to mate with me, so how could I possibly consider myself part of humanity? Humanity has never accepted me among them, and now I know why. I am more than human. I am superior to them all. I am Elliot Rodger… Magnificent, glorious, supreme, eminent… Divine! I am the closest thing there is to a living god. Humanity is a disgusting, depraved, and evil species. It is my purpose to punish them all. I will purify the world of everything that is wrong with it. On the Day of Retribution, I will truly be a powerful god, punishing everyone I deem to be impure and depraved. Epilogue And that is how my tragic life ends. Who would have thought my life will turn out this way? I didn’t. There was a time when I thought this world was a good and happy place. As a child, my whole world was innocent. It wasn’t until I went through puberty and started desiring girls that my whole life turned into a living hell. I desired girls, but girls never desired me back. There is something very wrong with that. It is an injustice that cannot go unpunished. There is no way I could live a happy life with such a scenario. Not only did I have to waste my entire youth suffering in loneliness and unfulfilled desire, but I had to live with the knowledge that other boys my age were able to have all of the experiences I craved for. It is absolutely unfair and unjust. In addition, I had to suffer the shame of other boys respecting me less because I didn’t get any girls. Everyone knew I was a virgin. Everyone knew how undesirable I was to girls, and I hated everyone just for knowing it. I want people to think that girls adore me. I want to feel worthy. There is no pride in living as a lonely, unwanted outcast. I wouldn’t even call it living. I am not meant to live such a pathetic, miserable life. That is not my place in this world. I will not bow down and accept such a horrific fate. If humanity will not give me a worthy place among them, then I will destroy them all. I am better than all of them. I am a god. Exacting my Retribution is my way of proving my true worth to the world. In the midst of my suffering, I have been able to see the world much clearer than others. I have vision that other people lack. Through my suffering, I have been able to see just how twisted and wrong this world really is. The current state of humanity is what makes it wrong. I look at the human race and I see only vileness and depravity, all because of an act known as… sexuality… Sex is by far the most evil concept in existence. The fact that life itself exists through sex just proves that life is flawed. The act of sex gives human beings a tremendous amount of pleasure. Pleasure they don’t deserve. No one deserves to experience so much pleasure, especially since some humans get to experience it while some are denied it. When a man has sex with a beautiful woman, he probably feels like he is in heaven. But the world is not supposed to be heaven. For some humans to actually be able to feel such heights of heavenly pleasure is selfish and hedonistic. The ultimate evil behind sexuality is the human female. They are the main instigators of sex. They control which men get it and which men don’t. Women are flawed creatures, and my mistreatment at their hands has made me realize this sad truth. There is something very twisted and wrong with the way their brains are wired. They think like beasts, and in truth, they are beasts. Women are incapable of having morals or thinking rationally. They are completely controlled by their depraved emotions and vile sexual impulses. Because of this, the men who do get to experience the pleasures of sex and the privilege of breeding are the men who women are sexually attracted to… the stupid, degenerate, obnoxious men. I have observed this all my life. The most beautiful of women choose to mate with the most brutal of men, instead of magnificent gentlemen like myself. Women should not have the right to choose who to mate and breed with. That decision should be made for them by rational men of intelligence. If women continue to have rights, they will only hinder the advancement of the human race by breeding with degenerate men and creating stupid, degenerate offspring. This will cause humanity to become even more depraved with each generation. Women have more power in human society than they deserve, all because of sex. There is no creature more evil and depraved than the human female. Women are like a plague. They don’t deserve to have any rights. Their wickedness must be contained in order prevent future generations from falling to degeneracy. Women are vicious, evil, barbaric animals, and they need to be treated as such. In fully realizing these truths about the world, I have created the ultimate and perfect ideology of how a fair and pure world would work. In an ideal world, sexuality would not exist. It must be outlawed. In a world without sex, humanity will be pure and civilized. Men will grow up healthily, without having to worry about such a barbaric act. All men will grow up fair and equal, because no man will be able to experience the pleasures of sex while others are denied it. The human race will evolve to an entirely new level of civilization, completely devoid of all the impurity and degeneracy that exists today. In order to completely abolish sex, women themselves would have to be abolished. All women must be quarantined like the plague they are, so that they can be used in a manner that actually benefits a civilized society. In order carry this out, there must exist a new and powerful type of government, under the control of one divine ruler, such as myself. The ruler that establishes this new order would have complete control over every aspect of society, in order to direct it towards a good and pure place. At the disposal of this government, there needs to be a highly trained army of fanatically loyal troops, in order to enforce such revolutionary laws. The first strike against women will be to quarantine all of them in concentration camps. At these camps, the vast majority of the female population will be deliberately starved to death. That would be an efficient and fitting way to kill them all off. I would take great pleasure and satisfaction in condemning every single woman on earth to starve to death. I would have an enormous tower built just for myself, where I can oversee the entire concentration camp and gleefully watch them all die. If I can’t have them, no one will, I’d imagine thinking to myself as I oversee this. Women represent everything that is unfair with this world, and in order to make the world a fair place, they must all be eradicated. A few women would be spared, however, for the sake of reproduction. These women would be kept and bred in secret labs. There, they will be artificially inseminated with sperm samples in order to produce offspring. Their depraved nature will slowly be bred out of them in time. Future generations of men would be oblivious to these remaining women’s existence, and that is for the best. If a man grows up without knowing of the existence of women, there will be no desire for sex. Sexuality will completely cease to exist. Love will cease to exist. There will no longer be any imprint of such concepts in the human psyche. It is the only way to purify the world. In such a pure world, the man’s mind can develop to greater heights than ever before. Future generations will live their lives free of having to worry about the barbarity of sex and women, which will enable them to expand their intelligence and advance the human race to a state of perfect civilization. It is such a shameful pity that my ideal world cannot be created. I realized long ago that there is no way I could possibly rise to such a level of power in my lifetime, with the way the world is now. Such a thing will never become a reality for me, but it did give me something to fantasize about as I burned with hatred towards all women for rejecting me throughout the years. This whole viewpoint and ideology of abolishing sex stems from being deprived of it all my life. If I cannot have it, I will do everything I can to DESTROY IT. My orchestration of the Day of Retribution is my attempt to do everything, in my power, to destroy everything I cannot have. All of those beautiful girls I’ve desired so much in my life, but can never have because they despise and loathe me, I will destroy. All of those popular people who live hedonistic lives of pleasure, I will destroy, because they never accepted me as one of them. I will kill them all and make them suffer, just as they have made me suffer. It is only fair. Why do things have to be this way? I’m sure that is the question everyone will be asking after the Day of Retribution is over. They will all be asking why. Indeed, why? That is the question I’ve had for everyone throughout all my years of suffering. Why was I condemned to live a life of misery and worthlessness while other men were able to experience the pleasures of sex and love with women? Why do things have to be this way? I ask all of you. All I ever wanted was to love women, and in turn to be loved by them back. Their behavior towards me has only earned my hatred, and rightfully so! I am the true victim in all of this. I am the good guy. Humanity struck at me first by condemning me to experience so much suffering. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want this. I didn’t start this war… I wasn’t the one who struck first… But I will finish it by striking back. I will punish everyone. And it will be beautiful. Finally, at long last, I can show the world my true worth.
 
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autisticdragonkin said:
My Twisted World The Story of Elliot Rodger By Elliot Rodger Introduction Humanity… All of my suffering on this world has been at the hands of humanity, particularly women. It has made me realize just how brutal and twisted humanity is as a species. All I ever wanted was to fit in and live a happy life amongst humanity, but I was cast out and rejected, forced to endure an existence of loneliness and insignificance, all because the females of the human species were incapable of seeing the value in me. This is the story of how I, Elliot Rodger, came to be. This is the story of my entire life. It is a dark story of sadness, anger, and hatred. It is a story of a war against cruel injustice. In this magnificent story, I will disclose every single detail about my life, every single significant experience that I have pulled from my superior memory, as well as how those experiences have shaped my views of the world. This tragedy did not have to happen. I didn’t want things to turn out this way, but humanity forced my hand, and this story will explain why. My life didn’t start out dark and twisted. I started out as a happy and blissful child, living my life to the fullest in a world I thought was good and pure… Part One A Blissful Beginning Age 0-5 On the morning of July 24th, 1991, in a London hospital, I was born. I breathed in the first breath of life as I entered this world, weighing only 5.4 pounds. My parents must have been filled with happiness and pride that day. They had just witnessed the birth of their first child, and they named me Elliot Oliver Robertson Rodger. I was born to young parents. My father, Peter Rodger, was only 26 when he impregnated my mother, Chin, who was 30. Peter is of British descent, hailing from the prestigious Rodger family; a family that was once part of the wealthy upper classes before they lost all of their fortune during the Great Depression. My father’s father, George Rodger, was a renowned photojournalist who had taken very famous photographs during the Second World War, though he failed to reacquire the family’s lost fortune. My mother is of Chinese descent. She was born in Malaysia, and moved to England at a young age to work as a nurse on several film sets, where she became friends with very important individuals in the film industry, including George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. She even dated George Lucas for a short time. My mother and father had been married for a couple of years before my mother became pregnant with me. In fact, her pregnancy was an accident. She had been taking pills to prevent pregnancy, but when she visited my father on one of his film sets, she fell ill and the medication she took for that illness thwarted the effect of the anti-pregnancy pills, and so their lovemaking during this period resulted in my life. Only a couple of months after my birth, I went on my first vacation. My parents took me on a boat to France. I was already a traveler! Of course, I have no memories of this trip. My mother said that I cried a lot. At the time that I was born, my mother and father were living in a house in London, but shortly after my birth they decided to move to the countryside. We moved to a large house made of red brick in the county of Sussex, with vast grass fields surrounding it. The house even had a name: The Old Rectory. This was where I spent my early childhood, the first five years of my life, and it was beautiful. The memories I have of this period are only memories of happiness and bliss. My father was a professional photographer at the time, just in the stage of becoming a director. My mother gave up her nursing career to stay at home and look after me. My grandma on my mother’s side, who I would call Ah Mah, moved in with us to help out my mother. I would spend a lot of time with Ah Mah during these years. This was a time of discovery, excitement, and fun. I had just entered this new world, and I knew nothing of the pain it would bring me later on. I enjoyed life with innocent bliss. I can remember playing in the fields and going on long walks with Ah Mah to pick berries. She would always warn me not to touch the stinging nettles that sometimes grew in our fields, but my curiosity got the better of me, and I got stung a few times. There was a swing in the back of our yard, which I had many good times on. The first birthday I remember was my 3rd birthday. My parents threw a party for me in our field. I had a helicopter birthday cake. I can remember one of my friend’s parents cutting off the first piece and giving it to my friend. I threw a tantrum because I was expecting to get the first piece… It was my birthday after all. My father bought me a toy tractor that I could ride around in, and I would play with it all the time after that. Sometime after my 3rd birthday, we all went on a vacation to Malaysia, my mother’s home country. I have only flashes of memory of that vacation. I enjoyed it very much. We visited a few of my mother’s relatives. For preschool, I was enrolled at Dorsett House, an upscale all-boys private school in the countryside, near where we lived. I was forced to wear a uniform, which I hated because I had to wear uncomfortable socks up to my knees. I was very nervous and I cried on my first day there. I can remember two friends I made by name, George and David. I would always play in the sandpit with them. I didn’t like school at Dorsett House very much. I found the rules to be too strict. My least favorite part of it was the football sessions. I never understood the game and I could never keep up with the other boys in the field, so I always stood by the goal-keeper and pretended to be the “second goalkeeper”. My favorite part was playing in the woods after lunch. There was a particular climbing structure that I had a lot of fun with. My preschool class once went on a field trip to the park, where I had the misfortune of getting lost. As my class was eating lunch, I ventured off to another area of the park, and when I returned, my class had moved on. I remember panicking and asking strangers for help. It was a terrifying experience for me. I was eventually led to my class by the strangers I talked to. I remember one funny incident when we were taking school pictures. They forced us to sit crosslegged, which I hated doing, so I absolutely refused to sit that way for the picture. The teachers eventually conceded, and the picture was taken with me being the only one sitting differently. The holiday season was the best part of the year for me. It must have been very cold in England, but I don’t remember the cold. I just remember how much fun I had. I was filled with joy when it started snowing outside – I loved playing in the snow. My father helped me build a snowman once. We would start with little snowballs, and roll them around our field until we formed the body, and then we would decorate it. During Christmas, my parents always had parties and gatherings. My father’s best friend, Christopher Bess, who was also my godfather, came to our house frequently. We would often go to my father’s parent’s house in Smarden, Kent. I would call my grandmother on my father’s side “grandma Jinx”. My memories of my grandfather, George Rodger, are faint; he had fallen very ill at this period. My father’s brother, uncle Jonny, had a son one year younger than me, who was named George, after my grandfather. I always played games with cousin George in grandma Jinx’s garden. The two of us got along well. On New Year’s Eve our neighbors once set up a bonfire party in the field next to our house. I was fascinated by how big the fire was. I had never seen anything like it, and it astounded my little mind. This was also the first time I saw fireworks. My father gave me one of those sparklers to play with, which I was enraptured by. There was one very special place that my father would often take me to. It was at the top of a range of beautiful rolling hills that I termed the “London Hills”, because I thought that London was on the other side of them. We would go there to fly kites. I can remember these experiences vividly. The hills were full of tall straw-like grass, and the weather was always windy – perfect for kite flying. It was a time of utmost happiness and joy for me. My father taught me to fly a kite by myself. The wind was so strong that I feared it would lift up my frail little body and carry me into the clouds. Once I got the hang of it, it was exhilarating. We would fly our kites together and run with the wind. I will never forget that place. My favorite childhood film was The Land Before Time. I used to watch that movie all the time with Ah Mah. It was about a baby dinosaur named Littlefoot who had just lost his mother and was journeying through a dangerous world to find the “Great Valley”, a land of prosperity and peace. I remember the feeling of utter sadness I felt during the scene when his mother died, and the triumphant and happy emotions that swept over me when he finally discovered the Great Valley, after going through all the hardship to get there. I watched this movie so many times that just thinking about it brings the emotions back. It was a big part of my childhood. Already a world traveler, I went on a trip to Spain with my parents and my parent’s friends Patrick and Lupe. It was the fourth country I’ve been to at such a young age. We stayed in an exquisite castlelike house that I believe was owned by a friend of ours. The house had a tower that I was extremely curious about. At one point, my parents and their friends ventured up to the top of it, but they made me stay below because I was too young. I was sorely disappointed. As they were climbing the tower I went outside to look at the cacti surrounding the house. These cacti also sparked my curiosity, and I foolishly decided to touch a cactus. I ended up getting cactus needles all over my hand, and it took a long time for my mother to remove them. Shortly after my trip to Spain, we went on another trip to Greece. We stayed at a hotel near the beach. It was very hot there. The weather was new to me, as I was used to the cold British climate. The trip to Greece was significant because during this time, my father received the news of the death of my grandfather George Rodger. He died of natural causes on my 4th birthday, at the age of 87. It was the first experience I had of the death of a close relative, and the first time I saw my father cry. My 4 year old self could not imagine my father ever crying, and so when I saw him cry that day, I knew how shaken he was. It was a very sad day for all of us. We immediately flew home. I believe that it was during the time after my 4th birthday that my father came to the decision to eventually move to the United States. As he was just becoming a director, he believed Los Angeles would offer more opportunities. We took a short trip to California to gain an initial look at it. I don’t remember much of this trip, but I do remember having a good time. At the age of 4, I, Elliot Rodger, had already been to six different countries. Who can claim that, eh? The United Kingdom, France, Spain, Greece, Malaysia, and the United States. It was also during this time that my mother became pregnant again. I was going to have a sibling. My parents decided to have another baby, this pregnancy being planned, so that I can have a sibling to grow up with. We later discovered it was going to be a girl. Before my 5th birthday, my mother went into labor to deliver the baby. I can remember the night vividly. I was very ill that night, a bad omen. I stayed at home with Ah Mah while my mother and father were at the hospital, and we watched movies together. I was fraught with anticipation the whole time. And then my parents came back late in the night, and with them they brought a little black-haired baby wrapped in a bundle. I had a baby sister, and they named her Georgia. I have no memories of what happened on my 5th birthday. Shortly after it, we were making plans to permanently move to the United States. The news excited me, but I was sad at the prospect of leaving my life in England behind. My father took a short trip to the U.S. by himself to scout out houses. I remember talking on the phone to him while he was there. He told me he found a very nice house for us to move to. I asked him if it had a swimming pool, and he said it did. This news made me very happy. And then the time came. We started packing everything up at the Old Rectory. On my last day at Dorsett House school, my teacher was giving all of us candies when my mother came to pick me up early. I said goodbye to all the friends I had there. That was the last time I saw them. My father was given the offer to buy the Old Rectory for about 400,000 Pounds (we were only renting it at the time), but he declined, a decision he would regret later on, as it would have been a worthy investment. I cried as we drove away from the Old Rectory. All the experiences I had there; playing in the fields, driving my toy tractor, tending to my garden, going on walks with Ah Mah, swinging on the swing; all those experiences were gone. I was about to start a new life. We boarded the plane and took off to America. Part 2 Growing up in America Age 5-9 The plane ride was like a dimension between worlds. I was about to enter a whole new world. A whole new life. But none of that went through my little 5 year old head at the time. I slept for most of the journey there, and I can remember looking out the window at the vast stretch of clouds below us. I wondered what it would be like to go down there and run along them as if they were a landmass, not thinking about the fact that I would fall right through! When we arrived in America, I was very tired. We collected our luggage and loaded them onto a new SUV that my father rented. The image of us driving out of the airport is still fresh in my mind. I often think of it as my first step into my new life in the U.S. I was so sleepy when we reached our new house that I didn’t even bother to look around yet. The house was partly furnished, and we already had a sofa and a television. The first thing we did was watch a movie. The movie was Independence Day, and I fell asleep at some parts, but managed to watch most of the movie. In the morning I was full of energy. I eagerly clamored up the stairs to search for my new room. I looked at all the rooms before singling out the one that I wanted as mine. When I told my mother about my decision, she told me that the room I picked was meant to be my sister Georgia’s room. I got a bit upset, but eventually settled for the room next to it. The house was quite big, with white walls and a beautiful backyard that led to a gated swimming pool area. It was located in an upscale part of Woodland Hills. The town of Woodland Hills has great significance in my life. It would be the town that I grow up in. A large portion of all my life experiences, good and bad, would take place in this town. I can recall the first time I said the name on my lips… Woodland Hills… my new hometown. Soon after settling into our lovely new home, we were disturbed by a problem typical of California: An earthquake. My mother woke me up in the middle of the night, and we all hid under the kitchen table. The earthquake actually turned out to be very small, with even smaller aftershocks following it, but I was still scared. Having never experienced an earthquake before, the only impression I had of earthquakes were the huge, land rupturing earthquakes I saw in The Land Before Time. After this experience, I began to see earthquakes as common, minor disturbances. And there I was, a young 5 year old boy who has so far lived a happy and joyful life about to embark on a new journey; the journey of growing up in the United States of America. I felt a surge of enthusiasm at the prospect. I now considered myself an “American kid”, as I told my parents. I got accustomed to all the American T.V. shows, and I started to adopt an American accent. I was looking forward to my new life. Soon enough, I was enrolled in school. My father did some extensive school-searching after our arrival, and he found a small private school on Shoup Avenue named Pinecrest. I was to attend kindergarten there. Pinecrest… My 5-year-old self at the time could not imagine how significant this place will eventually become for me. A great turning point of my life will eventually take place there, a tragic turn for the worse. But that will come later, in a darker chapter of my story, when I enter my preteen years. For now, I was a kindergartener who was enjoying life to the fullest. Kindergarten at Pinecrest didn’t turn out so well. I had a very unpleasant teacher who was impatient with how far behind I was in my schoolwork, as I had missed a couple months of school due to the move. During playtime, this teacher would keep me in the classroom to do extra work in order to catch up. My parents didn’t like this teacher, and one of their friends recommended another school for me, a private school nearby named Farm School; it was named after the farm that was attached to it. After only a couple of weeks at Pinecrest, my parents took me out of it, and I would not return again until I go there for Middle School six years later. My first day at farm school turned out to be a good start. I had two teachers, and they made an effort to introduce me to the other kids. There was one particular boy named Joey who they assigned to show me around. He was nice to me at first, but would soon turn out to be a rotten little prick who I would always get into fights with. He then became my greatest enemy at the school. The first real friend I made in the United States was a girl named Maddy Humphreys. Isn’t that ironic? The first friend I made in the United States was a girl! She was the first female friend I’ve ever had, and she would be the last. Maddy and I started playing together at Farm School, and eventually my parents became very good friends with her parents. Maddy’s father is the famous British musician Paul Humpreys, and her mother is named Maureen, though we would call her Mo. They had a nice house in Hidden Hills. Our families got together often to have barbeques and dinners. I was a 5 year old boy playing with a girl my own age like any normal boy would do. I was enjoying life in a world that I loved. I was happy, and completely oblivious of the fact that my future on this world would only turn to darkness and misery because of girls. This girl who was my friend, Maddy Humpreys, would eventually come to represent everything I hate and despise; everything that is against me, and everything that I’m against. I was playing innocently with this girl, in the manner that all children play. We even took baths together; it was the only time in my life that I would see a girl my age naked. When I think about the experiences I had during my friendship with her, it makes me think ominously of the fact that all children, boys and girls, start out the same. We all start out innocent, and we all start out together. Only through the experiences and circumstances of growing up do we drift apart, form allegiances, and face each other as enemies. That is when wars happen, and that is when the true nature of humanity rises to the surface. At this stage of my life, of course, my war hadn’t started yet, and it wouldn’t start for a long time. I was enjoying my life without a care in the world, not knowing that all of my joy is destined to turn to dust. My Kindergarten year at Farm School was filled with exciting, new experiences, all healthy for a growing boy. I had friends, I had playdates, I socialized with the other boys at school, despite getting into lots of conflicts with Joey. I only got into trouble once, over a quarrel with another boy during playtime, and I was sent to the principal’s office. Having never been in such trouble at school before, I recall being overcome with nervousness and fear, which caused me to cry for an hour. I especially enjoyed our arts and crafts time, and I loved it when our class would go on visits to the school’s farm. After a bright and joyous school year, it was time to graduate. I was swelled with pride as I wore my graduation cap at the ceremony. I loved that school very much, and I was sad to leave it. Kindergarten was over, and soon enough I would enter elementary school. My 6 th birthday soon followed. My parents arranged a Disney-themed party at a play center that my mother had been taking me to frequently. I invited everyone from my Farm School class, all the boys and the girls, except for Joey. I deliberately omitted Joey as an act of revenge for being mean to me throughout the year, and I felt a sense of satisfaction in doing so. The party was cheerful, and there was a man dressed as Merlin to host the festivities. I sat at the end of the table during my birthday meal, wearing a wizard hat. As my cake was presented to me, I felt only elation and glee as I took in a breath and blew out my candles. Life was good. 6 Years Old My favorite part of the day during this jubilant period of my life was our afternoon trips to the park. Specifically, Serrania Park. This park was beautiful and green, with concrete pathways cutting through fields of grass and a fun playground for us kids to play in. I always took to playing on the slides, and sometimes I would go on the swing, though my father had to push me. I remember getting jealous of other boys who were able to swing by themselves, boys who were even younger than myself. It was the second time I realized my lack of physical capability. The first time I had such an inkling of my shortcomings were those disastrous football sessions at Dorsett House. Eventually, my father got around to teaching me how to swing by myself, and after some practice, I was able to do it. After that, I would always soar up and down on that swing in the Serrania park playground well into the hour of twilight. I was very small and short statured for my age. I never gave this much concern during my early childhood, but this fact fully dawned on me the day my family took a trip to Universal Studios. At the time, I loved dinosaurs. I was fascinated by them. I had just recently watched the movie Jurassic Park, and when I found out that there was a Jurassic Park themed ride at Universal Studios, I couldn’t wait to go on it. We queued up in the line and waited for an hour. When reached the front, the park staff presented me with a measuring stick, and I didn’t fit the requirements. I saw other boys my age admitted onto the ride, but I was denied because I was too short! The ride that I was so excited to enjoy at the theme park was forbidden to me. I immediately fell into a crying tantrum, and my mother had to comfort me. Being denied entry on a simple amusement park ride due to my height may seem like only a small injustice, but it was big for me at time. Little did I know, this injustice was very small indeed compared to all the things I’ll be denied in the future because of my height. We resorted to trying out the E.T. ride, which I was admitted to. I had a miserable time on this ride, however, because the dark atmosphere and the mechanically moving alien statues that lined the queuing area scared the hell out of me. By the time we got to the actual ride, I was crying in fright, but later calmed down as the ride turned out to be mild and relaxing towards the end. I always enjoyed my family’s get-togethers with the Humphreys. These get-togethers became a common occurrence in my life. Maddy became a very close friend of mine. She was the only friend from Farm School who I continued to see after I graduated. They had a huge back yard area, and the two of us would go on adventures. She also grew up watching The Land Before Time, and we would watch the sequels together whenever they released a new one. Sometimes when I went to her house, she would have other female friends there, and I played with them too. I had no trouble interacting with girls at that age, surprisingly. My six-year-old self was playing with girls, unbeknownst to the horror and misery the female gender would inflict upon me later in my life. In the present day, these girls would treat me like the scum of the earth; but at that time, we were all equals. Such bitter irony. It was now time for me to start First Grade. My parents enrolled me at Serrania Avenue Elementary School, which was just down the street from Serrania Park. I wouldn’t remain at this school for long, however, because only weeks into my First Grade year, my parents decided that they were going to move to Topanga. Most of the kids at Serrania Avenue school will end up going to Taft High School nearby, a place that will cause me great suffering in the future. Perhaps some of the kids in my class at Serrania will end up turning into those who would bully me at Taft. I don’t remember any of the kids from my class there, so I will never know the answer to that. It’s very disturbing to think about. I quite enjoyed my brief time at Serrania. My parents sometimes made me stay an hour after school; I believe this was because they figured it would help me make friends. I can remember this after-school playtime being a positive experience. There were always games that I played with the other kids. And thus I was a bit frustrated when my parents told me they were going to transfer me to another school after only a couple of weeks of settling into Serrania. That frustration would soon cease, because the years that I would spend at Topanga Elementary school would be some of the best years of my life. The last years of being a carefree child. I started First Grade at Topanga Elementary School a couple of weeks before we prepared to move to Topanga. Topanga is a secluded, mountainous community surrounding a canyon that runs through the Santa Monica Mountains, located in between the San Fernando Valley and the Pacific Coast Highway. We had only passed through this community a few times, when we would take trips to the beach. It has a certain rugged beauty about it. On my first day at Topanga Elementary, I was very nervous. Since it was about a month after the first grade term started, I was going to be the “new kid” at school. I remember the nervousness taking over my body as my mother drove us up the steep road that led into the school proper. My new class was just lining up to start the day as we walked onto the main courtyard. My teacher, Mrs. Matsuyama, was very nice and understanding. My mother said goodbye and I got in line with the other students. The first kid I saw there was a chubby boy named Bryce Jacobs, who was staring at me strangely. As we got to class, Mrs. Matsuyama assigned one of the students to show me around and help me adjust. This student happened to be none other than Philip Bloeser. Philip was always very mature for his age, and he was nice to me on my first day. He became my first friend at Topanga Elementary. The day turned out to be one of great fun. Class time was not too boring, and we did some fun arts and crafts activities. For recess and lunch, there were two playgrounds: the Upper and the Lower. The first and second graders would go to the Lower playground, and the third, fourth, and fifth graders would go to the Upper. The Lower playground was smaller, but it had some nice amenities, especially the sloping hill to the side of it, where I would enjoy running up and down “kicking dust”, a game I instantly created due to the dust-like dirt on this hill. When my mother came to pick me up, I recall having so much fun that I didn’t want to leave! That’s a first. In the past, I was always eager to go home after spending hours at school. The drive to and from school was a long one, or at least long for my six-year-old self. My favorite part of the drive was the descent from Topanga into the Valley. The view of the broad expanse of the Valley was breathtaking as it opened up before us after clearing the final hill. I would make that trip through the winding roads of Topanga Canyon every day for the next couple of weeks, before we moved to the new house. Sometimes my mother would pick me up, and sometimes my nanny would. I don’t remember the name of this nanny, as she was only with us for a brief period of time. I loved the new house the moment I laid eyes on it. It was a beautiful, round, wooden house located up the road from Valley View Drive, in the better part of Topanga. It had two stories, a swimming pool, and a lovely deck that provided a view of the lush mountains. I instantly named it the “Round House”. I was sad to leave our house in Woodland Hills, our first house in America. I would miss the good times I had there, playing with Maddy and my other friends, swimming in the pool, the close proximity to Serrania Park where I spent a lot of time enjoying the elations of a carefree childhood. Our new Round House in Topanga, however, turned out to be a worthy replacement. My room at the Round House was a bit smaller than my old one, but I remember it being very cozy. Shortly after we moved in, Ah-Mah came to visit from England, and she baked my favorite peanut cookies. We had some very happy times during the beginnings of my life there. My father’s new directing career was taking off quite well too, and he would go away a lot to direct commercials for prestigious companies, leaving my mother and the nanny to look after me. The only downside of this was my father’s absence from my life. Despite this, I always looked up to him as a powerful and successful man. Adjusting to my new environment in Topanga was quite easy for me, especially since school was so much fun. I was now a Topanga Kid. During recess at school, I started noticing this boy with slightly long blonde hair who also enjoyed kicking dust. Before I met him, I always mentally nicknamed him the “King Arthur Kid”, due the regal look his hairstyle gave him. It was only a matter of time before our dusting kicking antics would collide with each other. We then teamed up and starting playing the game together, and this was the start of a long and interesting friendship. This boy’s name was James Ellis, and he would become my best friend for the next 14 years of my life. Sometimes, the two of us would join with Philip Bloeser and some other boys, and play fun games like handball, war games, and tag. Soon enough, I would start having frequent playdates with James Ellis. His house was just down the hill from mine. James’s father was named Arte; and his mother, Kim, became one of my mother’s best friends. Christmas arrived quickly, and for my present I got my first video game console, a Nintendo 64! I had little knowledge of video games before this. I barely knew what they were. My father is the one who introduced me to them. With the Nintendo 64, my father bought the games Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. I was fascinated with this new form of entertainment, and my father and I would bond a lot over our video game sessions. Of course, while playing these video games, my innocent, happy self knew nothing of the significant role video games would play during a large portion of my life… and the sanctuary such games would eventually provide for me from the cruelties of this world. For now, they were just a form of entertainment like any other hobby. Life was good at the round house, but soon enough I had to witness my mother and father get into a lot of arguments. I was too young at the time to understand what they were arguing about, but I knew they were not getting along. It didn’t really concern me all too much, because every other aspect of my life was wonderful. I had playdates with James Ellis every week. Sometimes he would surprise me with a visit after school, as we lived so close by. I went over to Philip Bloeser’s house a few times as well, and I met his younger brother, Jeffrey. The Bloeser’s also became good friends with my mother. They lived in a nice house up the road from our own, with a deck that provided an extraordinary view of the Topanga mountains. At some point I learned about the possibility that parents can separate… divorce… no longer live together. The prospect baffled my little mind. I once sat down with my mother on our outside deck and asked her if she and father would ever divorce. She told me it will never happen, and that I had nothing to worry about. I was relieved by that. Little did I know, such a thing would happen in only a few months time. My first grade year ended splendidly. I made a few lasting friends, and I had a blast at Topanga Elementary. I always considered myself a good, well-behaved student, so I was a bit disappointed at the few times I got in trouble. My class had a system where if we do something wrong, we would change our card color from green to yellow, and then to red if we did any more troublemaking. I thought I would never have to change my card, but I had to change it to yellow a few times for minor things. When first grade ended, I made the resolution that in second grade I will never be forced to change my card. After my last day of school, I was looking forward to a long summer break, my favorite time of the year. I was a bit dismayed when my parents made me attend summer camp. My father had to go away a lot for work, and my mother needed to have some time to look after baby Georgia. Summer camp wasn’t all that bad, I had some fun. It consisted of kids from First through Fourth grade, and we played lots of games and watched movies. 7 Years Old My last memory of my parents being together was my 7th birthday, and I would always cherish it. We didn’t have a party for my seventh birthday, but more of a small get-together for lunch. Maddy and the Humpreys were our only guests. We celebrated it at Gladstones, my favorite restaurant at the time. It was in the Pacific Palisades, right on the beach. I had my favorite meal, lobster. It was a very happy day for all of us. I was turning seven. That was a big number for my little mind. I had spent seven years on this fascinating world, and my life was at a good start. I had loving parents, I had friends to play with, I was having fun at school, and I had all the toys a little boy could want. A stranger would look at this seven year old boy and think that he has a great life in front of him, that there is nothing to worry about. Indeed, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about… But I was just a child. I still had a few more years to enjoy life in carefree bliss before I would eventually discover how twisted and cruel this “fascinating world” really is. My parents seemed happy that day. I remember them laughing and having a good time. It would be the last time I remember them being happy together. Perhaps they really weren’t, perhaps they were just putting up a front so that I could enjoy my birthday. I couldn’t even fathom the possibility of my parents separating. Very shortly after my seventh birthday, the news came. I believe it was my mother who told me that she and my father were getting a divorce; my mother, who only a few months before told me that such a thing will never happen. I was absolutely shocked, outraged, and above all, overwhelmed. This was a huge life-changing event. My father was to stay at the round house, and my mother would move to another smaller house in Topanga. It was arranged that me and my sister will mostly be living with our mother, and we would go to father’s house on the weekends. My father was required to pay child support to my mother so that she can look after us. My life would change forever after this. The family I grew up with has split in half, and from then on I would grow up in two different households. I remember crying. All the happy times I spent with my mother and father as a family were gone, only to remain in memory. It was a very sad day. Just like the move to the U.S., it would be like starting a whole new life with a new routine. Despite the initial sadness I felt from my family splitting in half, my new life situation wasn’t all that bad. It was still practically the same life, though I lived with my mother in one house and my father in another. My mother’s new house was small and red in color, located up a steep driveway from Topanga Canyon Boulevard. I would call it the “Red House”. It was the smallest house I’ve lived in at that point. It only had two bedrooms, and I had to share a room with my sister Georgia. We had a bunk-bed, and I slept on the top. I was quite uncomfortable with this change at first, being used to having my own room and living in bigger houses. My mother’s kind and loving nature, however, made up for this, and she turned the household into a fun environment which I enjoyed living in. After spending the first week at mother’s house, father came to pick me and my sister up for the weekend. Georgia had become very attached to mother after this week, and she burst into tears when we drove off. I too, was a bit distressed at having to go from one house to the other every week, but I would soon get used to it. The Round House was very different without mother being there. When we entered, I felt a wave of sadness creep over me as I was reminded of my life when mother and father were together. The house was full of memories; happy, cheerful memories that were lost in the past. With my mother missing from it, there was a sense of bleakness and loss to the place. Father did his best to cheer us up. I could tell that he, too, was very saddened by the recent events. My father soon rented one of the rooms of the round house to his good friend Dan Perelli, one of his first friends in America. Dan used to live close to our house in Woodland Hills until he was struck with financial troubles, which I’m assuming is why he started renting a room from my father. I would always call him “Uncle Dan”. From this point on, Uncle Dan would stay with us as a lodger for a few years. The time to start Second Grade arrived. My new teacher was named Mrs. Weisberg, and she was very kind. The students in my class were mostly the same as my First Grade class, with only one or two new students who transferred from other schools. I made a few new friends, such as Shane and Tommy. I was very disappointed to find out that James Ellis would not be returning to Topanga Elementary for second grade. In fact, his family would be moving out of Topanga to the Pacific Palisades, where they would be renting a house from their friends, the Lemelson’s. My father’s stay at the round house was very brief. He suffered some temporary financial setbacks on top of the divorce, so he decided to move to a smaller house on Old Topanga Canyon. It was a very abrupt move, and I would never see the round house again. One day, after he picked me and my sister up from mother’s, he took us to the new house and that was it. The house was a small, two-story house in a more rustic part of the Topanga mountains. The upstairs portion had only a bedroom and bathroom, and it was rented to Uncle Dan. All around the outside of the house were very small hills and hiking trails that led up to the mountains. Overlooking these hills was a massive, imposing rock called “Big Rock”. When I first saw Big Rock, I told myself that one day I’ll climb to the top of it! I took a liking to this new environment, and every time I visited father on the weekends, I would always be outside, exploring and adventuring. There were always new places to discover in that secluded region. I didn’t venture too far into the wilderness, however, because of the danger of coyotes and mountain lions. After only a couple of months since my seventh birthday, a new and very important person would come into my life. After father picked us up from school one day and took us to his house, I saw a woman with dark hair and fair skin standing in the kitchen, and she introduced herself as Soumaya. She would become my stepmother. Father told me she would be living with us from now on. At first I thought she was just another friend who was temporarily staying with father, similar to what Uncle Dan was doing. My father having a girlfriend so shortly after divorcing my mother didn’t even occur to me. I couldn’t understand it. Soon enough, though, I realized that Soumaya was, in fact, his “girlfriend”, and they were together just like how my father and mother were together. It was the first time I learned the concept of a “girlfriend”, and it was hard to grasp. Before that, I always thought a man and a woman had to be married before living together in such a manner, and that it would take a long time for such a union to happen. Father finding a new girlfriend in such a short amount of time baffled me. I was completely taken aback. Because of my father’s acquisition of a new girlfriend, my little mind got the impression that my father was a man that women found attractive, as he was able to find a new girlfriend in such a short period of time from divorcing my mother. I subconsciously held him in higher regard because of this. It is very interesting how this phenomenon works… that males who can easily find female mates garner more respect from their fellow men, even children. How ironic is it that my father, one of those men who could easily find a girlfriend, has a son who would struggle all his life to find a girlfriend. I soon became accustomed to Soumaya being part of father’s household. She hails from the Akaaboune family, a very prominent family from the country of Morocco. For the initial period of her being a new member of the family, we got along well, and she was quite fun. But soon she would start to discipline me in a harsh way that I wasn’t used to. I felt that because she wasn’t my real parent, she had no right to discipline me in such a way, and so I rebelled. That’s where the first conflicts arose. There would be many more to come in later years. Along with the addition of Soumaya, I had two new nannies. The first nanny was a French woman named Celine, though she was only with us for a brief period, so I don’t remember much of her. My second nanny was a German woman named Christine. Christine would stay with us for a year, and I became very fond of her. She would always look after me during my time at father’s house, and whenever I went on my adventures into the hills, she always accompanied me. Halloween this year marked my first time going Trick-or-Treating. My mother took me to my friend Shane’s house, and we walked around his neighborhood collecting candy. Still obsessed with dinosaurs, I dressed up as a dinosaur for that Halloween. Trick-or-Treating was a new thing for me, as it wasn’t so popular in England. When it was all over, I was amazed that I had so much candy. Even though James Ellis no longer went to Topanga Elementary, he was still my best friend, and I saw him a lot. Mother would take us to his house in the Palisades almost every week, where I would play with James, and Georgia would play with James’s sister Sage. He got me interested in a new phenomenon that gripped many children of the era: Pokemon. When I got my first Gameboy console, I started playing Pokemon Red Version, and I was hooked instantly. I then started collecting Pokemon cards, and James and I always compared and traded them. The Pokemon anime cartoon became my favorite show on television. It was a very fun, captivating hobby, and every boy at my school had a folder of Pokemon cards. It provided something to have, something to show off, something to talk about. The best cards were the “shinies”, and everyone coveted them. Mother was still friends with George Lucas, so we got invites to the red carpet premiere of Star Wars Episode 1. I always was and always will be a huge Star Wars fan. I had already seen the original trilogy many times, and I considered myself very lucky to be able to go to the premiere of the new Star Wars movie. It was an absolutely astonishing experience. It was just me and my mother – Georgia was too young, so she stayed at home with a babysitter. Episode 1 is infamous for being the lesser movie of the three new prequels, but as a kid I enjoyed it very much. Afterwards, I met some of the actors, and I shook the hand of Jake Lloyd, the actor who played Anakin Skywalker in the movie. My Second Grade year flew by like a breeze. I don’t remember much of it, but I did have a blast. During recess and lunch, I played a lot with Shane and Tommy. We would play Pokemon on our Gameboys, and sometimes we would have playdates where we played Nintendo 64 games such as Banjo Kazooie, Super Mario 64, and Donkey Kong 64. I failed in my goal of never having to change my card, which really disappointed me. I went through most of the year without changing my card, but right when the year was about to end, I was caught talking in class with a friend named Danny Dayani, who sat next to me, and I had to change my card to yellow. I blamed Danny for it, because he was always talking in class, but I still had to change my card. After a fast and fantastic year, summer came quickly, and with it my 8 th birthday. My 8 th birthday was mellow, but pleasant. I remember my mother inviting a few of my friends from my second grade class and we had a cake. During my weekend at father’s house, we all went to the restaurant Typhoon in Santa Monica to celebrate it. It was quite a fancy restaurant next to a small airport, and they had a lot of exotic dishes that I tried. 8 Years Old As I was now eight-years-old, father decided that I was old enough to climb Big Rock. Whenever I was at father’s house, I would always see Big Rock looming in the distance, and I was just itching to climb it. I had already conquered every other rock in the area… there was only Big Rock left. And so I set out with father and a few of father’s friends to finally climb to the top. The furthest I had climbed on this rock was about half way up with Christine. There was a very steep rise which I wasn’t able to ascend without some help. The second half of the journey was quite a challenge, but it was so exhilarating! I was very nervous the higher we climbed. The best part, of course, was reaching the top, and the sense of accomplishment I felt. I finally did it! Looking down, I could see the vastness of the Old Topanga Canyon region, and father’s house looked tiny down there. I was too scared to venture close to the edge, and I felt a sense of dread at the prospect of falling from such a height. The way down was even more challenging, but I felt so proud of myself for climbing that rock that it wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. I was very excited to start Third Grade. As Third Graders, we now got to play in the Upper Playground of Topanga Elementary, and I considered myself one of the “big kids”. The Upper was vast, with a bigger playground, more handball courts, and four basketball courts. My classroom was located in a bungalow adjacent to the Upper, and my teacher was named Mrs. Buntin. She was a young teacher; I believe she was in her late 20’s. Being used to having very old teachers, I was surprised at how young my new teacher appeared. I continued to play with the same friends during recess and lunch, where we would spend our time comparing and trading Pokemon cards. In the midst of elementary school, I didn’t interact with girls much, but this was normal. I was at that period of life where the boys played with the boys and the girls played with the girls, completely separate from each other. Girls were the last thing on my mind. Maddy was still the only friend I had who was a girl, and I only saw her on the occasions when our families would have a get-together, which became more and more rare after Maddy’s parents divorced and Paul Humpreys moved back to England. It was as if the girls in elementary school were part of a separate reality. Despite not having much interaction with them, they treated me cordially, as they treated all other boys of my age. This was fair, and I was content with this. I hadn’t gone through puberty yet, and so I had no desire for female validation. My eight-year-old self had no inkling of the pain and misery girls would cause me once puberty would inevitably arrive and my sexual desires for girls would develop. Sexual desires that would be mercilessly spurned. Some of the boys in my class would grow up to be embraced by girls, while I would grow up to be rejected by them. But at that moment in time, we were just innocent children growing up together. All innocence is destined to be shattered and replaced with bitter brutality. I was living in ignorant, innocent bliss. And I was happy with it. This period of my life, aside from my early childhood in England, was one of the best periods. Life was fair and life was satisfying. As kids, proving our self-worth and gaining validation among our peers was achieved in a fair manner, by how good we were at the games we played, or how big our collection of Pokemon cards were. No one had unfair advantages. This was perfect, and this is how life should be. And… boy did I have a lot of fun. James’s family had to move to yet another house in the Palisades, and mother would always take us there. She became great friends with James’s parents Kim and Arte. James and I would battle on our Gameboys, trade Pokemon cards, and walk to the recreation center down the street to play in the pool, and then for dinner we would all go to the restaurant Mott’s in the center of the Palisades. I was quite proud of my collection of Pokemon cards. I had gained a few “shinies” over the last few months, and I enjoyed showing them off to other boys. Shiny cards came randomly in card packets our parents would buy for us. The card that I coveted the most was the Charizard card, and one morning when my mother opened a packet for me and I looked through the new cards… there it was. It felt like the best day ever, and I was swelled with excitement. I jumped up and down all around the Red House, and I couldn’t wait to show it to James, who already had a Charizard himself. Through being friends with James Ellis and going to his house a lot, we became acquainted with the Lemelson family, who were family friends of Kim and Arte. The Lemelson family is a very wealthy family who has been financially helping James’s family for a while. Rob Lemelson is the son of Jerome Lemelson, the inventor of the bar code, and his net worth is in the hundred-millions. Rob’s son, Noah, is our age and great friends with James, and eventually I became friends with him too, though we would never be close friends. Sometimes we would all go to the Lemelson’s house, also in the Palisades, and the three of us played together. For Halloween, we went to the Lemelson’s for Trick-or-Treating, and from then on it would become tradition to go Trick-or-Treating with them. I dressed up like a dinosaur again, because I couldn’t think of anything else to be. I wanted to dress up as Ash Ketchum from Pokemon, but no store had that costume in stock. The Palisades was full of wealthy families, so the candy they gave us would be in much larger amounts, obviously. I remember competing with James and Noah as to who would get the most candy at the end. Afterwards, we would have dinner at Rob’s house, and then we would dump our candy in piles on the floor to examine what we got. That was my favorite part of it. Early in my Third Grade year, my mother would often take us to a festival near Topanga Canyon Boulevard, where small concerts were held and people barbequed great food. A friend of hers had something to do with these events, and I played with the son of this friend. He was named Riley Anapol, and he was two years younger than me. A First Grader. I played with some other younger kids there as well, peers of Riley, and I had a good time. Riley became a common friend for a while. The significance of this is that Riley Anapol would eventually become someone I would harbor a great hatred for. Riley would grow up to get lots of girls, and I would grow up to be rejected by girls. But back then he was a friend, a peer, and we were playing together as equals. It’s funny how the world works. When the holidays arrived, my father announced that we were going to take a family vacation to Soumaya’s home country of Morocco and meet her family there, and afterwards we were to stop by in England. I wasn’t excited about Morocco, since I didn’t know much about it except that it was in north Africa, and I wasn’t too excited about the fact that we’ll be staying there for six weeks either, which meant that my entire winter break would be spent in a foreign country that I knew nothing about. But of course, I had no choice in the matter, and Morocco was added to the list of the many countries I’ve been to at such a young age. I looked forward to visiting England afterwards and seeing family there. Morocco was very strange and foreign to me, even more so than Malaysia, which was more westernized. I found it to be very backwards, though it had a lot of culture and the people were friendly. I remember disliking a lot of the meals, but enjoying the deserts and pastries. Soumaya’s parents were divorced, though they lived walking distance from each other in the Kasbah, a historic community located in the center of Tangier. Soumaya’s mother, Khadija, has a small but elegant house, and her father, Abdesalem, has a very large, almost castle-like house that is famous for being a location where a scene from James Bond: The Living Daylights was shot. This fascinated me, as I was a huge James Bond fan at the time. In the center of this house there was an open courtyard where I always played with a kid named Ayman, and his two younger brothers. They were adopted by Soumaya’s father a few years ago and live with him. After a long stay in Morocco – too long in my opinion – we made our stop in England to visit relatives. We stayed at grandma Jinx’s house, and I was able to play with my cousin George for a few days. On one of the days we stayed in England, my mother’s sister, Aunt Min, and my grandma Ah Mah came to visit and brought me a lot of English chocolates which I relished. All in all, it was a good trip and I was glad to be able to experience it, though the length of the trip cut into my school schedule, and I missed a couple of weeks of school. After the holiday season, my nanny Christine had to leave back to Germany, and this saddened me deeply. Chistine would always be my favorite nanny, and I was in a sullen mood on the day she left. The remainder of my Third Grade year went by quickly. I continued my Pokemon endeavors, increasing my card collection and progressing on the Gameboy game. I had a conflict with my friend Shane during this time. Because of some arguments we previously had, I started to play a game with him in which he would become my enemy and rival at the school. For me, I was just playing with him, but he took it seriously and the conflict escalated a lot more than I thought it would. We once got into a small physical fight in which I hit him on the arm and was sent to the principal’s office. That was the biggest trouble I’ve been in at Topanga Elementary. This little conflict with Shane lasted for the rest of Third Grade, but we would later reconcile and play again as friends in Fourth Grade. Before summer came, my father’s spontaneous career as a commercial Director took off once again, and he became very successful. At this point, he was probably the most successful he’s ever been. With this success, he decided to move to a bigger and better house. After doing some searching, we moved to a house in an upscale area of West Hills, near Woodland Hills. I loved this house at first sight. It had five bedrooms, which was more than enough space for our family along with Uncle Dan who was still staying with us. It also had a huge swimming pool with a spa, a large grass field to play in, a basketball court, and a nice view of the Valley. I was a Valley kid again. Despite father’s move to a much larger house and all the benefits that came with it, I still preferred my time at mother’s house, just because of her gentle and fun attitude and the energy of her household. My mother indulged in me more than my father and Soumaya ever did. She knew what I liked and what I didn’t like, and she would go out of her way to make my life pleasant and enjoyable. I was quite annoyed with the recent decision between my mother and father to extend my stay at father’s by two days of the week. From that point on, me and my sister would only be at mother’s house from Monday to Thursday, and on Thursday night we would go to father’s house until the following Monday. My 9 th Birthday was spent at father’s house, and father and Soumaya threw a party for me. They invited a few of my friends from Topanga Elementary, though the only friend I remember being there was Philip and his younger brother Jeffrey. James was invited, but he wasn’t able to make it. They also invited a few of Georgia’s friends, which really annoyed me, since it was my birthday, and not Georgia’s. It was quite an eventful party, and it took place in our backyard. My father hired a magician to perform tricks for everyone. 9 Years Old My ninth year was very interesting, and I went through a lot of changes emotionally and intellectually. It was the year in which I matured to a point where I would start observing the world more conscientiously. Before I turned nine, I was living life as a carefree child in a world that I thought was only good and pure. From this point onwards, I would gradually discover more about the world and society. I would face problems and frustrations that I wouldn’t even think about before. My life would still be positive and bright, however, and I would live it to its fullest. The first frustration of the year, which would remain for the rest of my life, was the fact that I was very short for my age. As Fourth Grade started, it fully dawned on me that I was the shortest kid in my class – even the girls were taller than me. In the past, I rarely gave a thought to it, but at this stage I became extremely annoyed at how everyone was taller than me, and how the tallest boys were automatically respected more. It instilled the first feelings of inferiority in me, and such feelings would only grow more volatile with time. I desperately wanted to get taller, and I read that playing basketball increases height. This sparked my brief interest in basketball, and I would play it all the time during recess and lunch in the Upper. Most of the basketball courts were unused, so I would play it by myself, or with anyone who cared to join me. During my time at father’s, I would spend hours playing basketball at father’s basketball court, shooting hoop after hoop long into the evening, and I also remember lying on the ground in the basketball court trying to stretch my body as much as I could in between basketball sessions. When I played basketball at school, some boys would join me, and when they did I saw that they were much better at the sport than me. I envied their ability to throw the ball at double the distance than I could. This made me realize that along with being short, I was physically weak compared to other boys my age. Even boys younger than me were stronger. This vexed me to no end. My fourth grade classroom was located in the center area of the school, and my teacher was named Mrs. Gill, who had an assistant named Mr. Devine. Fourth grade was a strange year due to the emotional problems I would go through, and I didn’t have as much fun at school as I did in previous years. In class, I sat near Keaton Webber, and I got into a few conflicts with him. We weren’t quite enemies, but I disliked him intensely and I would always consider him a foul prick. By nature, I am a very jealous person, and at the age of nine my jealous nature sprung to the surface. During playdates with James, sometimes he would have other friends over as well, and I would feel very jealous and upset when he paid more attention to them. Feeling left out, I would find a quiet corner and start crying. My mother and Kim were very understanding, and did the best they could to console me. On the rare occurrence that my mother would have Maddy and Mo over for dinner, or if we would go to visit them at their house, Maddy often played with my little sister Georgia instead of me, and this too made me jealous. I remember all the times I cried when this happened. Jealousy and envy… those are two feelings that would dominate my entire life and bring me immense pain. The feelings of jealousy I felt at nine-years-old were frustrating, but they were nothing compared to how I would feel once I hit puberty and have to watch girls choosing other boys over me. Any problem I had at nine-years-old was nirvana compared to what I was doomed to face. A few months into fourth grade, it was decided by my parents to change me and my sister’s living arrangement yet again. This time, we would be switching between mother’s house and father’s house each week. One week would be spent at mother’s, and the next at father’s. This was a fair split. At first I wasn’t so sure about it, because I always disliked any change to my life, but I found it to be a better arrangement. This enabled me to spend weekends at mother’s house, during her week, and I was very excited about this. I’ve only ever spent weekends at father’s beforehand. During father’s week, I would mostly be looked after by our two new nannies, Rosa and Amparro. They were of South American origin and didn’t speak much English, but they were very kind. I started to have intense conflicts with Soumaya. I hated the rules she imposed on me, which I believed she had no right to impose, as she wasn’t my true parent. I hated how she would force me to drink milk every morning and very foul-tasting soup for dinner. I made such a fuss about having the soup that she used it as a punishment. Whenever I did something wrong, she would force me to drink the soup. I once had a playdate with Philip at father’s house, and when I yelled at my sister because she was annoying us, Soumaya punished me by sending me to my room for an hour, embarrassing me in front of Philip. After this incident, I never had a playdate at father’s house ever again. This conflict with Soumaya started a trend in which I would love being at mother’s house and dread the weeks I had to spend at father’s house. On top of the conflicts with Soumaya, father was rarely there, as he was always out of town for his work. After spending a nice week at mother’s house, I would cry when Sunday came and I had to go to father’s on Monday. I would then spend the entire week at father’s house looking forward to going back to my mother’s. I remember those Mondays when my mother dropped me off at school for the first day of father’s week… I felt so sad that I cried when I saw my mother’s car driving away. Of course, I would hide the tears to avoid embarrassment at school, but I would feel miserable for that whole day. I always had a pleasant experience during mother’s week. She always arranged playdates for me, because she knew I was too shy to initiate them myself. She always made everything fun. On weekends after dinner, we would have “treat time”, where she would bring out a box of candies for me and my sister to choose from. I had a lot of playdates with Philip, and through Philip I also played with his brother Jeffrey, who was two years younger than us. While Philip was calm and mature, Jeffrey was the complete opposite. Jeffrey Bloeser was wild and boisterous, which often brought a lot of fun to my playdates with Philip. My mother once had a party at her house and invited all of our family friends. James Ellis came over, and so did Philip and Jeffrey. It was the first time I saw all of them together, and it made for an interesting experience. I got a bit jealous, however, when Philip and Jeffrey seemed to respect and pay more attention to James than they did to me. When we were playing on my Nintendo 64 and I was competing against James, they rooted for James, which really upset me. As my fourth grade year approached its end, my little nine-year-old self had another revelation about how the world works. I realized that there were hierarchies, that some people were better than others. Of course I was subconsciously aware of this in the past, but it was at this time of my life – at nine years old – that I started to give it a lot of thought and importance. I started to see this at school. At school, there were always the “cool kids” who seemed to be more admirable than everyone else. The way they looked, dressed, and acted made them… cooler. These “cool kids” as I called them, included Keaton Webber, Matt Bordier, Michael Ray, Trevor Bourget, Zalman Katz, John Jo Glen, and a few more. They were cool, they were popular, and they always seemed like they were having a good time. The peaceful and innocent environment of childhood where everyone had an equal footing was all over. The time of fair play was at its end. Life is a competition and a struggle, and I was slowly starting to realize it. When I became aware of this common social structure at my school, I also started to examine myself and compare myself to these “cool kids”. I realized, with some horror, that I wasn’t “cool” at all. I had a dorky hairstyle, I wore plain and uncool clothing, and I was shy and unpopular. I was always described as the shy boy in the past, but I never really thought my shyness would affect me in a negative way, until this point. This revelation about the world, and about myself, really decreased my self-esteem. On top of this was the feeling that I was different because I am of mixed race. I am half White, half Asian, and this made me different from the normal fully-white kids that I was trying to fit in with. I envied the cool kids, and I wanted to be one of them. I was a bit frustrated at my parents for not shaping me into one of these kids in the past. They never made an effort to dress me in stylish clothing or get me a good-looking haircut. I had to make every effort to rectify this. I had to adapt. My first act was to ask my parents to allow me to bleach my hair blonde. I always envied and admired blonde-haired people, they always seemed so much more beautiful. My parents agreed to let me do it, and father took me to a hair salon on Mulholland Drive in Woodland Hills. Choosing that hair salon was a bad decision, for they only bleached the top of my head blonde. When I indignantly questioned why they didn’t make all of my hair blonde, they said that I was too young for a full bleaching. I was furious. I thought I looked so silly with blonde hair at the top of my head and black hair at the sides and back. I dreaded going to school the next day with this weird new hair. When I arrived at school the next day, I was intensely nervous. Before class started, I stood in a corner franticly trying to figure out how I would go about revealing this to everyone. Trevor was the first one to notice it, and he came up to me and patted my head, saying that it was very “cool”. Well, that was exactly what I wanted. My new hair turned out to be quite a spectacle, and for a few days I got a hint of the attention and admiration I so craved. My interest in Pokemon faded away at this time. In third grade, Pokemon was considered “cool” and everyone was playing it. Towards the end of fourth grade, I found out that everyone was growing out of Pokemon, and the only ones who played it were the geeky kids. I heard some kids joking about how lame Pokemon players were, and I decided it was time to quit. I talked to James about this. He was still interested in Pokemon, so I gave him my Charizard card as a gift, and as an act of my resignation from the game. Pokemon gave me some really happy and memorable experiences, but it was time to move on. I then started to notice that all of the cool kids were interested in skateboarding. I had never even ridden on a skateboard before, but if I wanted to be cool, I had to become a skateboarder. I expressed this to my parents, and my father was glad that I was showing an interest in an active sport. He took me to the store Val Surf on Ventura Boulevard to buy me a new skateboard, and I was fascinated by all of the different choices. I settled for a red Val Surf branded Skateboard, and they took it down from the wall and built it for me. I was thrilled to have this new skateboard and the possible chance it gave me to be a cool kid. It was time to start practicing. I found it very hard to even ride on it in the beginning, and I spent many hours outside trying to get the hang of it. And that was that, I was now a skateboarder, though not yet good enough to reveal myself as one to the kids at school. This was the start of an obsession to copy everything the supposed “cool kids” were doing. Part 3 The Last Period of Contentment Age 9-13 Fourth grade ended, and once the summer started, I took a vow to mold myself into the coolest kid I could possibly be by the time Fifth grade began. I anticipated the approval the other cool kids would have of me once I reveal myself as being similar to them, and I looked forward to it. After about a year and a half of living in the house on Hatteras St. in upper West Hills, my father decided to move into an even better house. This time, all of us spent a day looking at open houses together as a family. We went with a real estate agent and examined some beautiful homes around Woodland Hills. My favorite one was a 3-story house on Llano Drive, in the Woodland Hills Heights, the most prestigious area of Woodland Hills that bordered Calabasas. It didn’t have a pool, but it had a sloping backyard almost three-times as large as our current one. The house had six bedrooms, and I took an intense liking to one particular bedroom that had its own bathroom and a personal balcony. My father showed extreme enthusiasm about possibly buying this house, and I became obsessed with getting that particular bedroom as my own room. When I brought it up with father and Soumaya, they said that the room would most likely be Georgia’s because it was closer to the master bedroom. They said that I would get a bedroom downstairs, one without my own bathroom or balcony. I was furious, and I threw a huge crying tantrum. Soon enough, father went ahead with the decision to buy this house. I made a big deal about the possibility of not getting that lovely bedroom I wanted, and I kept sulking to father and Soumaya about it. When they finally moved and the first week of father’s at this new house started, I was very anxious. But then, as we entered, father and Soumaya surprised me and revealed that they decided to give me the room I wanted. I was so happy! I danced and leaped with joy all over the house, and then I went to my new balcony and looked out at the beautiful view of Woodland Hills for an hour. After the move to this new house, father would never move again, and he still lives there to this very day. I would have many important experiences there for the next decade, both good and terrible. I needed a skateboard for mother’s house too, and so my mother took me to Val Surf and bought me a gray Val Surf skateboard. I would use this skateboard much more than the red skateboard I had at father’s house, since I had all of my playdates during mother’s week, and mother would make more of an effort to indulge in my new interest, eventually taking me to skateparks every weekend. I became very excited about my new hobby, and I shared it with James Ellis and Philip Bloeser, my two main friends. I wanted to get them interested in skateboarding as well. It was tricky to get James into it, but he soon got his own skateboard, and we would start skateboarding together around his neighborhood. As I now considered myself a skateboarder, I wanted to dress in the clothes that all the cool skateboarders were wearing. My mother took me to Val Surf once again, this time to shop for new shirts. I picked out a few that had the logos of skateboard companies on them. Later that day I put on one of my new shirts, and I was thrilled to start going around in it. I felt cool. At father’s house, I was introduced to a new nanny who would be living with us. Rosa and Amparro left back to their home countries a few months before we moved house. This new nanny was an African American woman named Tracy. She had a very fun personality, and I always had a pleasant time when she looked after us. She was able to drive, unlike my previous nannies, and so she would be the one who would always pick me up from school during father’s week from that point on. Uncle Dan had a quarrel with my father, and he was forced to move out. I would never see him again after that. Tracy would, in a way, replace Uncle Dan as the lodger who would live at father’s house. Early in the summer, father forced me to attend summer camp at an elementary school nearby our new house. This school was Bay Laurel Elementary School in Calabasas. I hated the prospect, and I vehemently protested it. The last thing I wanted to do was spend my coveted summer at a school where I didn’t know anyone. I was starting to like going to father’s house a lot more after moving to our lovely new house with my exquisite new room, but this decision of father’s made me dislike my weeks there again. At mother’s house, I had it my way more often, and that’s how I wanted to live. I hated having to go to camp during the summer, and I was miserable at the start, but a couple weeks into it I made friends with two brothers named Thomas and Tyler. On mother’s week, I spent more and more time practicing skateboarding, and I had lots of playdates with James where we would skateboard together. We also had a lot of fun playing Nintendo 64 games, such as Donkey Kong 64, Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, James Bond Goldeneye, and many more. He also got me interested in collecting Beanie Babies. At first I thought such a thing was very lame and girly, but we used them to fuel our imagination and have mock battles and wars with each other. It was our secret hobby that we told no one about. I was relieved when summer camp ended, and once it was over my 10th birthday arrived. I had been on this world for a decade, and what a decade it was… full of discovery, fun, and happy adventures. I can’t say the same for the following decade. I didn’t have a party for my 10th birthday, and I believe I celebrated it during mother’s week. We went out with James and his family to a restaurant in the Palisades. 10 Years Old I was eager to re-bleach my hair to a fully blonde color, after the disastrous failure of my previous attempt. This time, Soumaya took me to the right salon, and they gave me a short haircut and bleached all of my hair blonde. When I looked at myself in the mirrior, I felt an intense level of satisfaction. I went to James’s house soon after I acquired my new hair color, and the look of surprise on his face when he first saw me gave me a good laugh. A couple of weeks later, my hair started to grow and my black hair would show at the roots, but the blend turned out to suit me well, and this would become my hairstyle for the next year. Mother took me and my sister on a short vacation towards the end of the summer. We drove up the 101 Freeway to Ventura, where we stayed at the Holiday Inn (which has now been replaced by the Crowne Plaza). I found the hotel to be comfortable and luxurious. It was located right on the Ventura Promenade, a beautiful walkway along the beach that led to a long pier. At this stage, I was very enthusiastic about my new interest in skateboarding, and I took my skateboard with me. I enjoyed practicing on my new skateboard all along the Ventura Promenade. During this trip, mother took me to my first skatepark, which was called SkateStreet. It was humungous, and I was awed by all the towering ramps. I attended a beginner’s class, and the instructor taught me the basics of riding on these ramps. I was absolutely terrified at first, but by the end of the class, I was able to go up and down the smallest of them, and I had a blast. When we got back to the hotel, we had a nice room-service dinner, and then the three of us watched the movie Finding Nemo on the hotel television. It was a lovely little trip. Before Fifth grade started, I went with my father and Soumaya to a dinner party at their friend’s house. I forgot who these friends were, but it was a nice house in Beverly Hills. There were lots of guests, and I did what I usually did at such dinner parties… I sat around eating snacks and talked with my sister, sometimes going to father and to ask for a sip of wine. During this party, I found myself having a conversation with father, Soumaya, and one of the party guests, a boisterous middle-aged man who I can’t recall the name of. Father and Soumaya were talking about how I just turned ten years old, and we discussed life and what the future had in store for me. This man we were talking to… he patted me on the back and told me that I have a great life ahead of me. With a grin on his face, he told me that “in the next ten years, you’ll have a great time… a great time”. I had no idea what he meant by that. I wasn’t even thinking about my future at that point; I was living in the moment. Now I know what he meant. Childhood is fun, but when a boy reaches puberty a whole new world opens up to him… a whole new world with new pleasures, such as sex and love. Other boys will experience this, but not me, it pains me to say. That is the basis of my tragic life. I will not have a great time in the next ten years. The pleasures of sex and love will be denied to me. Other boys will experience it, but not me. Instead, I will only experience misery, rejection, loneliness, and pain. At that moment in time, I didn’t think much about this man’s comment. I don’t even remember who he was. But after those ten years have passed and I’ve experienced what I’ve experienced, I can’t help but think about that moment. If only I knew what was in store for me, right then and there. It was time to begin Fifth Grade. It started out excellently. My teacher was named Mrs. Damart, and she would always be very kind to me. For the first week of Fifth Grade, I was at mother’s house. I considered myself to be very “cool” by now. I had gotten better at skateboarding, I had blonde hair, and I dressed like a skateboarder. I felt great anticipation for what the cool kids would think of me once they saw my transformation. To my disappointment, no one really cared. They were all in their own worlds. I don’t remember any kids showing recognition of my new “coolness”. Eventually, I was regarded differently than I was in Fourth grade, which I became content with. The cool kids talked to me more, and I started hanging out with them during recess and lunch. When father’s week came, I felt frustrated because I didn’t have enough cool clothes there, and it took a while for me to get father to find the time to buy some for me. Mother always got me what I wanted, right when I wanted it. At mother’s house, all of my needs were met with excellent precision, whereas at father’s house, there would always be a time delay because father and Soumaya had less time for me, and paid less attention to me. Shortly after my Fifth grade year began, my mother decided to move out of the Red House to a small house in Woodland Hills. This new house was located on Topanga Canyon Boulevard, near Dumetz street. Father’s house was just up the hill from there, so it was practically walking distance to father’s house. I would miss the Red House, despite its smallness and the fact that I had to share a room with my sister. I had some very good times there. This new house was more convenient. It was still a two bedroom house, but one room was big enough to be split in two, and so by having a wall built in the middle, my sister and I each got our own room. As I got better and better at skateboarding, my mother made an effort to take me to a skatepark every week. By now, skateboarding wasn’t just a sport I was doing to copy the cool kids. I was truly interested in the sport. I even had hopes and dreams of becoming a professional skateboarder. That became my life goal. I loved skateboarding so much. I pictured myself doing amazing tricks in front of a cheering crowd, just like I saw Tony Hawk do in some videos. I pictured the admiration on their faces, and it was awesome. The skatepark my mother took me to was Northridge Skatepark, and she would take me there every Friday. Northridge Skatepark was an average-sized outdoor skatepark with fine wooden ramps. First, we would have dinner at the Northridge Mall, and then I would sign up for the 7pm to 10pm session at the skatepark. I usually went alone, but after a few weeks of going I made a few acquaintances there, and people knew me. This became a Friday tradition during mother’s week. On the following Saturday, James usually came over for a sleepover. We would play Nintendo 64 games like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Donkey Kong late into the night, and then on Sunday morning mother would take us both to Skatelab, an indoor skatepark in Simi Valley. James had become really interested in skateboarding too, or so I believed. I was always better at it than him though, and I liked it that way. This was the way every weekend went during mother’s week, and I had the time of my life. I was so interested in skateboarding that I took my skateboard trick-or-treating for Halloween. My costume, of course, was myself as a skateboarder. We went to the Lemelson’s for a nice dinner and then set out to collect our candy. It was quite tricky to hold a bag full of candy while skateboarding, but I had fun. I remember some teenagers seeing me on my skateboard and saying “why didn’t I think of that”. Hah, that was gratifying. For Christmas, my mother bought me the new Playstation 2. I had been wanting it for a long time, and when I unwrapped the present and saw the box, I felt so elated. Beforehand, the only video game console I played was the Nintendo 64 (and the Gameboy, if that counts). The Playstation 2 was much more advanced in graphics, and it amazed me. When mother announced that I would have to share it with my sister Georgia and that I can’t keep it in my room, my excitement turned to indignation, and I threw quite a tantrum. After crying for a bit, I calmed down and settled to sharing it with Georgia. She wouldn’t be using it much anyways, I told myself. Even after getting a Playstation 2, I still played my Nintendo 64 a lot because I loved the games I had for it, and I had an emotional attachment to it. The Nintendo 64 was the first video game console I played, and it would always have a special place in my heart. One day during winter break at father’s house, father and Soumaya went out for a few hours and left me and my sister with Tracy. When they came back, they had a little puppy with them, and announced that it was our new pet. It was mainly a present for Georgia. Georgia had been desperately asking father for a pet puppy for the last year, but I didn’t think he would actually go through with it. I was so shocked that we now had a dog. I was always afraid of dogs when I was little, and I never imagined having one as a pet. The only pets I’ve had previously were my turtle and iguana, who both died within a year of acquiring them. Georgia was given the choice on what to name the puppy, and she named it Lucky. I thought this was a very lame and stupid name. When I returned to school after the winter break, I noticed that all the cool kids had another interest: Hacky sacking. It was a simple sport consisting of kicking a bean-sack into the air as many times as you can without it landing on the floor. They all had hacky sacks, and they would spend recess and lunch kicking them with each other, since skateboarding wasn’t allowed on school grounds. I didn’t have a hacky sack, and I decided that I needed to do something about that. Mother took me to the store Pac Sun where I got a hacky sack with an orange and green design. When we got home from the mall, I started practicing. I remember struggling with it first, but I spent the next few afternoons concentrating on getting good at it. I spent many hours well into the night practicing in my backyard. Once I was able to kick the hacky sack properly, I made a big deal of the fact that I was now interested in it. I would go up to the group of cool kids and show off my skills, and I played with it every single minute I spent outside during school time. The Upper playground was rebuilt over the break, and there was a brand new playground to play on. I always loved brand new things, and the new playground was quite engaging. On the very first day that we were allowed to use it, I played tag with Philip Bloeser, Addison Altendorf, Bryce Jacobs, and a few others. I never really became good friends with the so-called “cool kids”. I would see them more as competitors than friends. During recess and lunch, I mainly played with Philip and his little clique which consisted of Addison Altendorf, Kevin, and T.J Tassone. I made a few Fourth Grade friends through hacky sacking, though I forget their names. I mainly played with them during recess and lunch. One day, after I stayed an hour after school at the Upper, I was hacking sacking with them and I kicked my hacky sack up onto a roof. It wasn’t first hacky sack, thank goodness, but I was quite fond of it and I was sad to lose it. I wonder if it’s still up there… No, it would have been cleared away by now. I still refused to have any playdates when I was at my father’s house due to the incident with Soumaya in Fourth Grade. Because of this, my father and Soumaya became concerned that I didn’t have any friends. Soumaya forced me to befriend some of the neighbor’s kids who lived just down the road. They would often skateboard outside of their houses. I was aghast… the prospect of walking up to a bunch of kids who I didn’t know and asking to play with them was terrifying to me. They were “cool” skateboarders, and that made it even more intimidating. Of course, I wanted to be friends with them and join in their fun, but I was too scared that they would think I’m weird. I have always been shy by nature. Soumaya didn’t understand this, and she gave me no choice in the matter. She sent me out of the house and wouldn’t let me back in until I introduced myself to them. I tried pretending that I was playing with them, but instead I would hide in a quiet street corner. To my surprise, Soumaya somehow knew I was doing this, and she came to confront me. She then got Tracy to take me down to where the kids were playing and push me into it. Tracy went up to the kids and asked if I could play with them. I felt embarrassed and timid, but they welcomed me. I always had the subconscious preconception that the coolest kids were mean and aggressive by nature, which is quite true, and I was shocked that these kids were being nice to me and letting me play with them. After a fun afternoon skateboarding around the streets of Woodland Hills, I regretted not befriending them sooner. They went to Woodland Hills Elementary School, the school my sister would soon go to. A couple of weeks later, Soumaya forced me to befriend yet another group of Woodland Hills kids. This second group lived nearer to my house, and they weren’t skateboarders, however they liked riding bikes and scooters. One of them was a black boy named Lucky Radley, who I thought was very nice at the time. I found it strange that he had the same name as my dog. He was a fourth grader, and he would later go to the same middle school as me, where he would become an object of my extreme jealousy and hatred. Looking back, I can’t believe I actually played with him as a friend in my father’s neighborhood. In the spring, uncle Jonny and the cousins came to stay at father’s house. Cousin George bunked with me in my room, and the two of us became instant friends. I hadn’t seen him since my last trip to England, and back then we were little kids. I enjoyed having a friend to play with on a daily basis without having to arrange a playdate, and the week that they stayed with us was great fun. I once took him along to play on scooters and skateboards with the neighbor kids, and we also went to the beach a lot. Indeed, it was a great week, and I was sad to see them go. I looked forward to seeing him again when we were to go on our vacation to France and England in the coming summer. After Jonny and the cousins left, Soumaya’s mother Khadija came to stay for a few months, and I was made to share my room with her, because father had converted two of the guest rooms into his office, and Tracy was staying in the downstairs room. I had an extra bed in my room, so I suppose it made sense to them. I was a bit annoyed with this at the start, but I bonded well with Khadija, so I soon became ok with it. She was like a third grandmother to me. My mother attained tickets to the red carpet premiere Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones. We received four tickets. Georgia was old enough to go, and I persuaded mother to let me give the fourth ticket to James. I was awestruck by the time the movie ended. It found it to be absolutely phenomenal. James and I talked about it for hours afterward. My life at school was starting to become mediocre again, and I became frustrated with my struggle to be cool. I didn’t have a regular group of friends who I always played with. I was like a nomad, moving from group to group and trying to fit in with each one, but never fully integrating. I feared that the cool kids didn’t regard me as one of them, and even Philip’s clique never considered me one of their core friends. Despite all of my attempts to be cool, I didn’t feel as if the other kids respected me as such. I was still quite the outcast, as I always will be. My social life changed somewhat when Mrs. Damart announced that we would have new seating arrangements in class, and the process of deciding on who sits where was up to us. Our class consisted of tables that seated about five to six people, and when our name was called randomly, we could choose anywhere to sit, meaning that everyone had a chance to sit with their group of friends. I didn’t have a core group of friends, so I was thrown into a state of panic. Originally, I was sitting at the table where Philip’s clique sat, but all of their names were called before me, and I was booted from their table. At this point, I just chose to sit anywhere, and I ended up sitting next to John Jo Glen. Matt Bordier and Danny Dayani also sat at our table. These were kids who I regarded as cool, so I was content with sitting with them. I never really interacted with John Jo Glen that much in the past. He was one of the biggest jerks of the school, next to Trevor and Keaton. We quarreled a bit at the start, but soon enough we started socializing, and I talked with him about some new games I got for my Playstation 2. We became friends when John Jo suddenly asked me if he can come over to my house. I felt happy that he asked me this… it would be the first playdate I would have without my mother arranging it for me. This would spark a fun new friendship that would last well after Fifth Grade. The random seating arrangement next to John Jo was the best thing to happen to me in Elementary School. Despite my struggles to be regarded as “cool” and my obsession with attaining such recognition, Fifth grade was my favorite school year in Elementary School. I played with more people than I ever did in previous grades, I was less shy, I wasn’t a dork, and I had an awesome time learning how to skateboard and hacky sack. It was memorable year filled with joyful experiences. I didn’t want the school year to end. Once Fifth grade was over, I will have to go to Middle School, and the prospect filled me with anxiety. My little innocent mind always looked at Middle School as something far in the future, when I grow up. I didn’t want to grow up. I was enjoying my life as a kid right at that moment. I didn’t think about the future. Kids in my class told many rumors of Middle School life that filled me with fear and sent a shiver through my spine. Even through watching movies and T.V. shows I got a glimpse of what was in store for a Middle Schooler. There was talk of girls, and how it would soon be “cool” to be popular with the girls. Girls were like completely foreign creatures to me. I never interacted with them… I wasn’t expected to. In Elementary School, boys played with boys and girls played with girls. That was what I was used to. That was my world. I heard stories of how boys are expected to start kissing girls in Middle School! Such things overwhelmed me. I tried to dismiss it as much as I could and enjoy my life in the present moment. My school arranged a camping trip for the entire Fifth Grade class before graduation day. At first I didn’t want to go because I would be away from my parents for five days, something I was never used to. I was afraid I would get too homesick. I never spent more than one night away from my parents. On the rare occasion that they had to go out of town for a few days and left me with a nanny, I would cry at night. My teacher Mrs. Damart came up to me one morning before class started and persuaded me to go, saying that the graduation trip was something I wouldn’t want to miss. It would be a once in a lifetime experience, and after some hesitation I agreed to go along. I forgot exactly where this camping trip took place. It was located at a special camping retreat somewhere in the forest to the north of Los Angeles. It was very secluded… a small village of cabins and tents surrounded by wilderness and hiking trails. For the trip there, I decided to go with my friends Bryce and Charlie in a car instead of taking the school bus with everyone else. This was much more comfortable, and I was glad to have snagged a spot in the car with them. Everyone was assigned to groups of five to share a cabin or a tent. I was originally placed in the group with Charlie, Bryce, and a few others… but that group was given a tent to sleep in. I was appalled by how drab and uncomfortable the tents looked. I wanted a cabin. So I went to my teacher and asked to be transferred to a group that was sleeping in a cabin. She placed me in a group of some cool skateboarder kids, including Michael, Sam, Trevor, Matt, and Stephen. I felt a sense of pride to be part of this group. During the daytime on this trip, the whole Fifth Grade class participated in games, outdoor activities, nature hikes, and barbeques. It was great fun. Nighttime in the cabin was like having a sleepover with five people, and it was a new experience that excited me. Before bedtime, Michael Ray took out a magazine that had pictures of beautiful model women, and all of the boys gathered around and looked at them. So… even at the early age of ten, boys were starting to be attracted to the female body. I didn’t understand this… I hadn’t yet reached that stage. I pretended to be interested just so that I wouldn’t appear uncool. All of those boys probably lost their virginity by sixteen. Damn them. The trip ended up being so fun that I didn’t cry at all about being away from my parents for so long. And finally, it was time to graduate from Elementary School. Before the ceremony, our whole class watched a video full of footage of school life throughout the year. I saw a few glimpses of myself caught in the footage, and I felt gratified. My life at Topanga Elementary School was a blast, full of memorable experiences and wonderful times. I dressed in a nice shirt with a tie for the ceremony. All of the Fifth Graders lined up and walked down an isle through the center of the Auditorium, with the audience of parents and siblings on either side. When I saw my parents, they looked so proud of me. Each student had to walk up to their teacher on the stage and receive a graduation award. We weren’t required to give a speech, to my relief. I would be too nervous to talk in front of an audience. The graduation theme song was “Time of Your Life” by the band Green Day, one of my favorite bands. Whenever I would hear this song again, I would think about that glorious day, and the memories would make me feel an extreme sense of nostalgia. In the afternoon, there was a graduation party at the Top of Topanga community recreation center, a lovely place that provided a view of the whole Valley. My mother took me to have dinner at the sushi restaurant Kabuki afterwards. It was just me and her. As we sat down at the restaurant after all the excitement, I took a moment to fully ponder over the fact that Elementary School was all over. It was done. I felt so accomplished and proud… I was happy, things were good. But along with that happiness was a feeling of sadness that I will be leaving all of those experiences behind. A whole chapter of my life had just passed, and a new one was beginning. That day was such an extraordinary day. A day to remember, a memory to cherish. For the first few weeks of summer, mother arranged playdates with various friends and acquaintances I made from Topanga Elementary, including Trevor Bourget, Matt Bordier, Charlie Converse, John Jo Glen, and Philip Bloeser. It was interesting to have Trevor and Matt over. I never thought I would have playdates with them. Matt was one of the coolest kids in the school; he was a skateboarder and a baseball player who seemed to garner respect from everyone. I envied him during Elementary School even when we were friends, and I would deeply envy and hate him later on in life, when I find out how much success he would have with girls. Again, I repeat, that as children we all play together as equals in a fair environment. Only after the advent of puberty does the true brutality of human nature show its face. Life will become a bitter and unfair struggle for self-worth, all because girls will choose some boys over others. The boys who girls find attractive will live pleasure-filled lives while they dominate the boys who girls deem unworthy. Matt Bordier will go on to live a life of pleasure. Girls will throw themselves at him. And I will go on to be rejected and humiliated by girls. At that moment in time, we were just playing together as children, oblivious to the fact that my future will be dark and his will be bright. Life is such a cruel joke. My mother continued to take me to Northridge Skatepark every Friday, and I also attended a skateboard camp at Pedlow Skatepark for a couple of weeks. At this camp I bumped into one of the kids I played with around father’s house. I had been trying very hard to get better at skateboarding, but when I saw that there were boys a lot younger than me who could do more tricks, I realized that I sucked. I was never good at sports or any physical activity, and when I discovered skateboarding, I thought that finally here was a sport that I could excel in and even became a professional at. It crushed me a little inside to see that I was a failure at skateboarding after more than a year of practicing it. I could never master the kickflip or heelflip. All I could do was the ollie jump and ride down a few ramps. I saw eight-year-old boys at the skatepark who could do a kickflip with ease, and it made me so angry. Why did I fail at everything I tried? I asked myself. My dreams of becoming a professional skateboarder were over. I felt so defeated. Because of this, my interest in skateboarding slowly faded away during this summer. James had recently told me that he was no longer interested in the sport, so I no longer had him to skateboard with anyway. I just decided to forget about it for the moment. James’s family moved to a new house in Malibu. The house was owned by the Lemelson’s, and they were staying in it temporarily. Mother took us there a few times where I adventured with James in the wilderness area that surrounded the house. We would often go to a small plaza in the center of Malibu. There was a playground there, with a few shops and restaurants surrounding it. It was time for my 11th birthday. I was at mother’s house and just decided to have a small playdate for my birthday. I invited James over, along with another kid who I had befriended at the Woodland Hills recreation center. My mother made a small cake, I blew out the candles, and that was it. I was eleven years old. 11 Years Old The trip to France and England began shortly after my birthday. We had been talking about it for a while at father’s house, and I was really excited to go. We traveled on Virgin Atlantic Upper Class. I was extremely enthusiastic about this, as I always loved luxury and opulence. We stopped by in England for a couple of days to say hello to grandma Jinx. The cousins weren’t there, they were already in France, so it was a bit boring. When we arrived in France, the feeling of wonder and curiosity swept over me as it always did when I visited a foreign country. The last time I was in France, I was only a few weeks old. This was the first time I was able to truly experience the country. France was a whole different world, and it was a world that I liked. French culture is so exquisite and refined compared to American culture. After booking a couple of rooms at a small Inn near the town of Toulouse, we met up with Jonny and the cousin’s at Aunt Jenny’s house. Aunt Jenny is my father’s sister, and the last time I saw her was when I lived in England, before the move to America. She had a few kittens in her house that I loved to play with. George and I immediately resumed our friendship that started in the spring. There was a vast forested area surrounding the house. George told me there were lots of wild boars in the forest, so we went “wild boar hunting”. It was just a game, and we never ended up seeing any boars at all, but the suspense of possibly finding one was what made it fun. We stayed in Toulouse for about a week, and then we said goodbye to the relatives and set off to tour the country. We toured many cultural towns and stayed in castle-style hotels. This should have been a great experience for me, but my conflicts with Soumaya soured it. There were a few incidents in which she punished me by making me stay in my hotel room while she, father and Georgia all went out to dinner at a restaurant. I hated her for this. On the way back, we stopped at grandma Jinx’s house in England for a week. The cousins were there this time, and it was a lot of fun. We all slept in one room, so it was like having one big sleepover. One day we went on a trip to a museum, where I had an argument with Soumaya. She shouted at me in front of George and threatened to punish me. This was so embarrassing that I fell into a miserable mood for the rest of the day. I always loved traveling, but I learned that traveling with Soumaya just ruins the whole experience. And this wouldn’t be the last time I would be forced to travel with Soumaya either, to my utmost dismay. The trip lasted three weeks in length, the perfect length of time for a vacation, in my opinion. I quite enjoyed it, if I don’t count the times Soumaya ruined it. It felt nice to be back home after a long, cultural vacation. At father’s house, my nanny Tracy got into an argument with father, and she was forced to leave. I was sad to see her go. She was always pleasant and fun to be around. Once Tracy left, Georgia and I would no longer have any nannies. We were getting too old for it. I wasn’t a little child anymore… having nannies became a thing of the past. From now on, if father and Soumaya had to go out to a dinner party, they would just hire a baby-sitter to look after us, and soon I would be old enough to stay by myself in the house. I got a haircut, and this time I decided not to bleach my hair blonde. The black hair always grew out anyway, so the full-blonde look only lasted for a couple of weeks. Having blonde hair seemed to have lost its spark, so I just didn’t bother with it anymore. The summer was pleasant and relaxing, but it quickly came to an end. The time for Middle School had come. My fear of this day haunted the back of my mind all summer. I was enrolled at Pinecrest Middle School for Sixth Grade. I had mixed feelings about going to this school because I didn’t like my experience there during kindergarten. Father said it’s the best option for me, because it was a small private school. I didn’t want to go to a large school like Hale Middle School… that would have been too overwhelming for me. On the first day, I was shaking with anxiety and fear. I didn’t know what to expect. Transitioning to Middle School was a big deal for me, even more so than starting elementary school. I was much older and I cared more about what people thought of me. I was no longer an innocent little child who didn’t have to worry. I had to worry about a lot of things, and oh, did I worry! It was a whole new school full of people I didn’t know. They all previously went to elementary school together, so most of them already knew each other. That made me even more nervous. The only person I knew who was going to Pinecrest was a geeky kid named Nate Grossman, who I didn’t really interact with that much in Topanga. I also felt an intense fear of what Middle School life would be like. I didn’t know how to act around girls, I didn’t know what was cool anymore, I had no friends there. I simply didn’t know what to do. I felt like I was walking into a snowstorm without a coat. My parents led me into the school to say goodbye, and then it was time for me to start my first class. I had to take multiple classes with different teachers now. This was also a new concept for me and it made me extremely uncomfortable. Since this was a private school, I had to wear a uniform, something I hadn’t done since going to Dorsett House in England. I thought of this as a good thing though… I didn’t have to worry about what I would have to wear on the first day. For the first few days, I withdrew into a defensive shell and didn’t really talk to anyone. I did observe, however. I observed how everyone acted, who the “cool kids” were, what they were like… and it was all so intimidating. The social challenges that I faced in Fifth Grade were intensified tenfold. I noticed that there were two groups of cool, popular kids. There were the skateboarder kids, such as Vinny Maggio, Ashton Moio, Darrel, Wes, and Alex Dib. And then there were the boys who were popular with girls, including Vincent, Robert Morgan, and Oren Aks. They all seemed so confident and aggressive. I felt so intimidated by them, and I hated them for it. I hated them so much, but I had to increase my standing with them. I wanted to be friends with them. I also observed the girls. I was still very short for my age, and most of the girls were taller than me. I hadn’t reached puberty yet, but I was starting to admire female prettiness. There was one group of pretty, popular girls, and they all seemed to like hanging out with that boy Robert Morgan. I didn’t yet desire girls sexually, but I still felt envy towards Robert for being able to attract the attention of all the popular girls. What was so special about Robert Morgan? I constantly asked myself. I thought all of the cool kids were obnoxious jerks, but I tried as best as I could to hide my disgust and appear “cool” to them. They were obnoxious jerks, and yet somehow it was these boys who all of the girls flocked to. This showed me that the world was a brutal place, and human beings were nothing more than savage animals. Everything my father taught me was proven wrong. He raised me to be a polite, kind gentleman. In a decent world, that would be ideal. But the polite, kind gentleman doesn’t win in the real world. The girls don’t flock to the gentlemen. They flock to the alpha male. They flock to the boys who appear to have the most power and status. And it was a ruthless struggle to reach such a height. It was too much for me to handle. I was still a little boy with a fragile mind. Thinking about such things would only crush my innocence, and it eventually will. But not at this point. I subconsciously wanted to enjoy my childhood as much as I could, so I tried not to think about this new revelation and enjoy life in the moment. I put it all aside, to be pondered over later. My whole world had changed. The “cool” thing to do now was to be popular with girls. I didn’t know how to go about doing that. Skateboarding, I was able to do… dressing well, that was simple… But attracting attention from girls? How in the blazes was I going to do that? I didn’t even understand what was so special about it either, but everyone seemed to place so much importance on it. This made me even more shy, and I became known as the “shy new kid.” Thankfully, some kids started reaching out to me, and I had a few chances to integrate within a couple of weeks. The first boy to talk to me was Brice Miller. He asked me if I had any friends at the school, because he always saw me alone. I admitted that I had no friends, and he offered to be my first friend. I was very grateful for this. Once again, I used skateboarding as a way to increase my standing, telling the skateboarder kids that I knew how to skateboard and that I could do some tricks. This got them to treat me more cordially. I even talked to Robert Morgan a few times, who I hated and yet subconsciously revered for being so popular. Whenever a so-called popular kid would say a word to me or give me a high five, I felt immense satisfaction. Inevitably, I started to become known to the girls of my school; and surprisingly, they treated me quite well. It was a huge relief. Middle School would be the last time in my life where I wouldn’t be completely invisible to girls. All of the pretty girls had a peculiar habit of hugging boys they knew as a form of greeting, and some of them hugged me. I didn’t understand why, but it felt like the best feeling ever. I was one hundred-times more satisfied from getting a hug from a pretty girl than getting a high five from a popular boy. It was a new experience that enraptured every fiber of my being. The 7th and 8th grade girls were especially kind to me. I guess they thought I was “cute” in a boyish sort of way. This made my initial experience of Middle School much better. I decided to attend the school dance in early October. A school dance was completely foreign to me. Elementary Schools didn’t have them, of course, and I only knew about them from watching typical American shows on television. I thought it was something I had to do in order to be cool. I was very nervous, naturally, but I pushed myself to go ahead with it. When I got there, Robert Morgan saw me and asked me if I wanted to hang out with his group. I was grateful for this, and I ended up having a nice time. I was shocked that some 7th and 8th grade girls offered to dance with me. They came up to me in a group and taught me how to “slow dance”. I had to place my hands on their hips, while they placed their hands on my shoulders, and we would move slowly with the music. They were all taller than me, and I was terrified, but it felt so… good. That would be the only time in my life where I would have a satisfying experience with girls. The only time. Halloween of this year marked the last time I would ever go trick-or-treating. After this year I would be too old for it. Mother took us to the Lemelson’s, and I decided to not dress up in any costume. I went as myself, sporting my black Pinecrest sweater. As it was my last time trick-or-treating, it would be the last time I would have any sort of fun on Halloween. And I did have a lot of fun. It was nice to go out collecting candy with James and Noah, like we had been doing for several years past. My father cut off a portion of the child support he had been paying my mother, which forced my mother to move house. We moved to a small blue house on Glade Avenue in Canoga Park. I didn’t like Canoga Park at all. It was a very ugly and low-class area to the north or Woodland Hills, and I felt it demeaning that we would have to live there during mother’s week. The house did have some upsides. It had four bedrooms and a bigger living room than mother’s old house. My new room was a lot larger than my old one. And of course, my mother always had her own ways of making everything better. I would still enjoy my time at mother’s small house more than my time at father’s big Woodland Hills house. Along with this move, there came a new change in our rotation schedule. My parents decided that we would stay at our mother’s house more, instead of switching one week-one week. Mother would have us for all of the weekdays, and we would go to father’s on the weekends when he was in town. Around the same time that my mother moved, James’s family moved as well, to another Lemelsonowned house in the Palisades. They would only remain in this house for a very brief period, because a tragic event would soon occur in James’s family. One day at school, I was sitting in my class when I was suddenly called to the office. My mother was there, waiting to pick me up. I got into her car, and the three of us drove out of my school and parked on the side of Shoup Avenue. She told us the dire news. James’s mother, Kim Ellis, had just passed away from breast cancer. I cried for a bit. Kim was a very kind-hearted person, and the mother of my best friend. She had been suffering from breast cancer for several years, but I never thought she would die from it. I immediately thought of how James must be feeling. He just lost his own mother! It made me think of how horrible I would feel if the same thing happened to my own mother, just the thought alone filled me with pain. There was to be a get-together of family friends at James’s house that night, in honor of Kim. On the way, I thought about how I would approach James on the subject. The amount of grief he must be feeling… I couldn’t even imagine it. The last similar experience was the death of my grandfather, and I was only four years old then. When we arrived, I looked for James, and found him sitting in his room. I gently offered my deepest condolences for his loss. He remained very strong, obviously hiding his emotions. He looked very sad, in an extremely stoic sort of way. He told me he fully accepted what had happened, that his mother was dead and that was the end of it. That was all we spoke on the matter. We tried not to think about it for the rest of the night, and later on I played tag in his backyard with him and some of his friends. I remained very shy during my Sixth Grade year, and I would always be labeled as a quiet kid. I wasn’t able to establish any friends that I could have playdates with, so the only playdates I had was with old friends from Topanga Elementary. This filled in the social void, and I was content with it. I tried my best to improve my social situation during school time. A few girls continued to pay attention to me, saying hi as I walked by them and occasionally giving me hugs, but I felt bitter at the fact that I wasn’t able to truly hang out with them like the popular boys were doing. In order to not be seen as a complete loner at school, I ended up making friends with a kid named Connor Hanrahan. Connor was not a popular kid, because girls didn’t like him. Despite this, he was one of the most pompous assholes of the school, even more so than any of the most popular boys. Connor was a true bully. I started hanging out with him during recess and lunch, and we made a few jokes with each other and had a few good laughs, but he would always push me around and act tough. I was so timid back then that I didn’t care. I just wanted someone to hang out with. When I stayed back after school one day, my mother saw me with Connor when she came to pick me up. She has been concerned about me not making any new friends at Pinecrest, and I suppose she was relieved to see me with a “friend”. She invited Connor to come over to my house, which he accepted. I was a bit hesitant to invite anyone from Pinecrest to my mother’s house, because it was located in Canoga Park, a bad area, and most of the kids at Pinecrest were upper-middle class who would look down on me for living there. But I couldn’t back out of this once my mother invited Connor. He came over and all went well, we played a few video games for a couple of hours. But after that playdate, he would always rip on me for living in a “poor” house. He would also tell other kids at Pinecrest about it. This infuriated me to no end, and I would keep proclaiming that my father lives in a prestigious threestory house in the Woodland Hills Heights. I became vehemently obsessed with proving to Connor and everyone else that I wasn’t poor. I went so far as to bring pictures of my father’s house to school. I even considered inviting some people over to father’s house, but I remembered my vow of never doing that due to the possibility that another incident would happen with Soumaya, like the one that occurred years ago. It was at eleven years old when I first started using the internet on a regular basis. The internet was still considered a new phenomenon at the time. Before eleven, I roughly knew how to browse websites and use email, but once I fully immersed myself in it, it really fascinated me. The popular social networking tool at that period was AOL instant messenger, or “AIM”. I made my first AIM account on my mother’s computer, and she would let have one hour a day to explore it. I joined a few chat rooms. The prospect of talking to strangers from a computer was new and astounding to me. Towards the end of sixth grade, I still hadn’t made a group of friends who I could see outside of school. The only social interactions I had outside of school were playdates with old friends from Topanga every now and again. Joining chatrooms through AOL temporarily filled in the social void for a few weeks. This will definitely not be the first time I would try to fill in that void with the internet. Once I established myself in the chat rooms, I made a few friends who I instant messaged frequently. Most of them were in middle school and some were in high school. I also talked to a few people I knew from Pinecrest over AIM. One friend who I met through a chat room suddenly emailed me pictures of beautiful naked girls, telling me to “check this out”. When I looked at the pictures, I was shocked beyond words. I had never seen what beautiful girls looked like naked, and the sight filled me with strong and overwhelming emotions. I didn’t know what was happening to me. Was it the first inkling of sexual desire in my body? I was traumatized. My childhood was fading away. Ominous fear swept over me, and I stopped talking to that person. As the Sixth Grade year came to a close, I felt dissatisfied and insignificant. Indeed, a whole new world had opened up before me, and I had no idea how to prevail in it. I still wanted to live as a child. I never established any proper friends at Pinecrest, and the only playdate I had was the one with Connor that my mother arranged, and that turned out to be a disaster for me. My mother and father both showed concern that I wasn’t making any friends, but because I still saw some friends from Topanga, they didn’t make a big deal out of it. I consider Sixth Grade to be the better year out of the three years I would spend in Middle School. Girls actually paid attention to me. They knew who I was and I didn’t feel like I was completely invisible. I was extremely shy with girls and could barely have a conversation with them, but I still interacted with girls more during this year than I would for any following year. The cool kids treated me nicely, despite my reputation as the “quiet kid”. I always felt like a loser compared to them, and I hated them for it, though I still wanted their approval. I wanted to be one of them… I wanted to be their friend. The closest I came to truly being one of them was when Vinny and Robert both invited me to their birthday parties, which were only a couple of weeks apart at the very end of the school year. Both parties were at Skatelab skatepark. I hadn’t been to Skatelab for about a year, and when I walked in, all of the memories of going there with James filled my mind. I hadn’t even skateboarded for a while, but after a few minutes on the ramps my ability came back like magic. They were all quite impressed. I bet they thought I would end up sucking at it. I was happy to prove them wrong. Indeed, Sixth Grade was the peak of my life at Pinecrest. It would only go downhill from there. My mother bought me a brand new video game console, the Xbox. I heard a lot of kids talking about how great the Xbox was at school, so I was really eager to have one. I liked the Xbox much more than the Playstation 2. The graphics were better and the games were more to my taste. With the Xbox, I got the game Halo. At first, I found Halo to be very difficult and I gave up on it a few times. I had no idea that Halo would soon become one of my favorite video game series that I ever played. I was extremely happy and relieved when summer came. Middle School was much more stressful than Elementary School, both socially and academically. Summer would provide a well-needed break from all of it. I started seeing some old friends from Topanga more frequently. Among these were John Jo Glen and Charlie Converse. Charlie wasn’t really one of my main friends at Topanga Elementary. I had a few playdates with him here and there, but not that many. It was only until after Fifth Grade graduation that our real friendship began. He always had a charming and humble personality, and he was well-liked by everyone at Topanga. He came over to my mother’s house a few times after I got my Xbox, where he tried to help me get past the hardest level on Halo. John Jo and Charlie were very close friends with each other, and eventually I would start to see them at the same time. John Jo invited me to his father’s apartment in Hollywood for a sleepover. I found his apartment to be very dingy, but I had so much fun that I didn’t even care. He lived just across the street from the huge Scientology building. We got together with a group of his friends and snuck into the building’s courtyard at night to play hide-and-seek tag. This was the first time I had been out having fun with a group of kids my age without any adult supervision. It was very amusing. When we went back to his apartment, we played Conker’s Bad Fur Day on the Nintendo 64. The Nintendo 64 was a very old console at this point in time, especially after I now had an Xbox and a PS2, but I was entertained by Conker’s Bad Fur Day so much that I asked my mother to buy it for me the next day. James Ellis moved yet again to another house in the Palisades. After the death of his mother, James’s father Arte quickly made the decision to move again. Arte rented a small house on Temecula Street, near the renowned Palisades Bluffs. There they would remain for a very long time, and all of the most significant experiences I would have with James in the future would take place there. At this time, though, I wasn’t seeing James that much. We slowly drifted apart after we lost our common interest in skateboarding. We still considered each other friends, and we would still see each other occasionally, almost as a courtesy. But our friendship would be at a standstill during our middle school years. I was enjoying a lovely summer, but suddenly my mother said that I had to go to summer camp at Pinecrest. This was a decision she made with my father, because they thought it would be healthy for me. I didn’t like this one bit. It was a last minute decision. One moment I was relaxing and enjoying my summer break, the next my mother is waking me up early to take me to my first day of camp at Pinecrest. Gratefully, summer camp would only last for four weeks. Summer camp at Pinecrest was located at the Elementary School section, and I recognized my old kindergarten class. It was a mix of middle school and elementary school kids, and I made a few friends with some kids who were younger than me. At this camp, an incident happened that would scar me for life. The first time that I was treated badly by a girl occurred at this camp. I was innocently playing with the friends I made, and they were tickling me, something people always did because I was very ticklish. I accidently bumped into a pretty girl the same age as me, and she got very angry. She cursed at me and pushed me, embarrassing me in front of my friends. I didn’t know who this girl was… She was only at Pinecrest for summer camp… But she was very pretty, and she was taller than me. I immediately froze up and went into a state of shock. One of my friends asked me if I was ok, and I didn’t answer. I remained very quiet for the rest of the day. I couldn’t believe what had happened. Cruel treatment from women is ten times worse than from men. It made me feel like an insignificant, unworthy little mouse. I felt so small and vulnerable. I couldn’t believe that this girl was so horrible to me, and I thought that it was because she viewed me as a loser. That was the first experience of female cruelty I endured, and it traumatized me to no end. It made me even more nervous around girls, and I would be extremely weary and cautious of them from that point on. Before summer camp ended, I saw that same girl hanging out with Oren Aks a few times. Oren Aks was one of the popular kids in my grade. I hated Oren so much when I saw him with her. It made me feel so inferior… that this girl was mean to me and yet she liked Oren. Thankfully, Oren wouldn’t be returning to Pinecrest for Seventh Grade, and I would never see him again. I wonder what became of him… I bet he lived a good life. I felt relieved when summer camp ended. That experience with the mean girl ruined it for me. Hell, it ruined a part of my life. Whenever I think about summer camp I would think about that girl, and my emotions would flare up. My 12th birthday followed. I decided not to do anything for it. Mother took me and my sister out to a Japanese restaurant to celebrate it. Twelve seemed like a big number to me back then. One more year and I would be a teenager. It was hard to believe. 12 Years Old For the rest of the summer, I resumed my routine of relaxing and having playdates. I tried to forget about what happened at summer camp as much as I could. John Jo came over to my house, where he slept over for the first time. We played a few video games, and then he told me that he wanted to take me to a place called Planet Cyber, a cyber café that had all of the best online PC games. I knew nothing of the sort, but it was just down the street from my mother’s house. I walked there with him, eager to experience something new. This was my first experience with online gaming. Playing video games with people over the internet invoked a whole new level of fascination in me. Talking to people over AIM was fun and new, but this… this was tremendous. I always loved playing multiplayer mode on video games when I had friends over. With online gaming, I could do it whenever I want. I was a novice to these new games on the PC, but I got the hang of it after playing with John Jo for a few hours. The games we played were Day of Defeat and Counter Strike. Mother took me and Georgia on two little vacation trips in the same week. For the first trip we went to Long Beach, where we stayed at the Hyatt hotel. It reminded me of our little trip to Ventura two years previously. We visited the Harbor and the aquarium. The three of us really bonded on this trip. We went home for a couple of days before going on the second trip. For the second trip, we went to Legoland and stayed at the resort there. The resort was exceedingly beautiful, with a huge swimming pool and spa. We met up with a family of one of Georgia’s friends and explored the entirety of Legoland. When we got home from our marvelous trip, I had another sleepover with John Jo. He loved the fact that I lived near Planet Cyber, so he would soon be calling every week, asking to come over. I saw Charlie a few days later. Charlie was also familiar with Planet Cyber, and when the two of us went there, he introduced me to an RPG game called Diablo 2. I didn’t know what to make of this game, it was like an adventure game similar to Banjo Kazooie and Donkey Kong, but much more mature, with the ability to interact with other players online. It was only a matter of time before I started inviting John Jo and Charlie to sleep over at the same time. When the three of us went to Planet Cyber as a group, I had an absolute blast. It was one of the best experiences of my life. At father’s house, father would frequently invite his new friend Alexander Bubenheim over. Alex Bubenheim was a boisterous German man who worked as a composer and lived in the Top of Topanga community. Alex had a son named Lukas, who was a couple of years younger than Georgia. Lukas was a very girly and immature little boy, but I found him to be very amusing. They would come over almost every weekend that I was at father’s, and become a big part of my life there. Seventh Grade began. My coveted summer break was all over. On the first day, I noticed some people I met during summer camp start school there as Sixth Graders. One of them was Patrick Dib, the younger brother of Alex Dib. I would always view Patrick Dib as an obnoxious, rude lout. He was very ugly too, and it annoyed me that he carried himself around as if he wasn’t a freckled, chubby-faced imbecile. I said hello to everyone I knew from last year, including Robert Morgan and his clique of popular kids. There were also a flock of new kids who transferred from the Pinecrest in Van Nuys. I was soon to meet them. Among these were Alfred Graham, Anthony Glukov, Jonny Noone, Derek Olsen, Garrett, Rafael, and Edward. They already knew each other and always hung out together at the start of the year, but I soon noticed that each of them soon integrated into the already pre-established cliques of Pinecrest. I was jealous that Jonny Noone, an obnoxious Mexican kid, immediately became popular with the skateboarders because of his cocky attitude. Alfred Graham, a half-black boy whom I would have a semi-friendship with throughout the years was intensely disliked by everyone, mainly because he was ugly and had a habit of intentionally annoying people. He would eventually become friends with the skateboarders, however, due to his interest in the sport. My reputation as the “shy kid” continued, and I still didn’t make any friends who became close enough to see outside of school. I did socialize with various groups during school hours, so I wasn’t a complete outcast during Seventh Grade. James Ellis started middle school at Paul Revere Middle School as a Sixth Grader. Though he is the same age as I am, he was held back a year in elementary school. Coincidentally, he went to the same school as John Jo, Charlie, and a few other friends from Topanga. After this point, I would stop seeing James Ellis for a while. Our friendship became temporarily stale and would remain so for another year. The only time we saw each other during this period was when we had family get-togethers. James’s sister, Sage, often came over to play with Georgia, while James didn’t bother to come at all. John Jo and Charlie started to come over every Friday. This would soon become a tradition. Fridays were always my favorite time of the week, and this tradition made me always look forward to Fridays with intense eagerness. They would be dropped off by their parents shortly after school time, and then we would all walk to Planet Cyber and play games for hours. After a few of these Friday sleepovers, Charlie introduced me to his friend Elijah. Elijah was temporarily staying at Charlie’s house, and the two of them were like brothers. I immediately took a great liking to Elijah, and we became instant friends. He helped me beat some of the hardest levels of Halo. Elijah would then come over with Charlie and John Jo, and the four of us became a close group of friends. This was the only true social group I would ever have, and I had a great time with them. We sometimes hung out at Planet Cyber until 3:00 in the morning, the latest I had ever been out without parent supervision. We would switch between playing Halo at my house, playing games at Planet Cyber, or skateboarding around the neighborhood. I briefly got back into skateboarding for the sake of enjoying it with these friends. On the following Saturday morning, we would wake up by 9:00, have breakfast at Krispy Kreme and spend a few more hours at Planet Cyber before my friends were picked up by their parents. I would then go to father’s house for the weekend, if father was in town. My sister Georgia’s birthday was in November, and on that day my father hired a limo to pick up Georgia and her friends from mother’s house. Charlie and Elijah came over, though John Jo was absent that day. When the limo returned, we all celebrated Georgia’s birthday at the house together. I introduced father to my friends. It was a very happy experience. When the winter break finally arrived, my grandma Ah Mah came over from England to visit, and she stayed in the fourth bedroom at mother’s house. Ah Mah is just like my mother, she always knew what I liked and went out of her way to get it for me, just to put a smile on my face. She brought with her some of my favorite English chocolates, along with her famous peanut cookies that I loved so much. Mother had a party at her house, and a lot of family friends came over, including Maddy and her mom, James and his family, Philip and Jeffrey and their family, and a lot of mother’s old friends whom I hadn’t seen for a long time. Ah Mah, who is a professional cook, made some of her special dishes, and we set up a bouncy castle in our backyard. I invited John Jo, Charlie, and Elijah over, and we walked to Planet Cyber for a little bit, then walked back home and had some fun on the Bouncy Castle. James never really liked my group of friends… he told me he thought they were jerks. I suppose he was right about John Jo, but Charlie and Elijah were always nice people. Oh well, I never really liked James’s friends either, so that made us even, I guess. I had a great time during this party. James and Maddy were the last ones to leave. Me and my sister played with them for a while on the bouncy castle. It made for an interesting and peculiar experience, playing with both James and Maddy at the same time, my two oldest friends. It had been a long time since I had seen Maddy, and it would be the last time that we would ever play together as friends. Before the night was over, we all took a picture together outside my mother’s front door. James made a funny face for it, while I stood behind him awkwardly waving my hand. To this very day, my mother still has that picture in one of her photo albums. One time when John Jo, Charlie, and Elijah came over for our traditional Friday night sleepover, we met up with Armando and his younger brother Gus. I hadn’t seen them since Topanga Elementary school. We had a good time skateboarding with them at the church parking lot near mother’s house, and all over that area. Afterwards, we had some video game competitions at Planet Cyber. My mother took me to watch Lord of the Rings: Return of the King in the movie theatres. I already saw the first two movies, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the series until I saw this third one in the movie theatres. Watching that movie in the theatres was such an epic experience, and I will always remember it. Though it wasn’t as exciting as going to the red carpet premieres of the Star Wars prequels, it came quite close. After the movie, mother and I ate dinner at TGI Friday’s. When we got home, as I was getting ready for bed, I heard a knock on my door. It was Elijah asking if I wanted to go with him to Planet Cyber, which I did for a few hours. That day marked the last time I would ever go to the movie theatres with just my mother, except for premieres. Growing up, I always loved it when my parents took me to the movies. The large screen and loud surround-sound immersed me into the movie, and I liked that dizzy feeling I would feel when I walked out of a movie theatre and entered back into the real world. It was always a remarkable experience. Soon enough, the movie theatres would turn from a place of joy to a place of dread. Once puberty arrives, I would start getting jealous of all the young couples or groups of boys and girls who go to the movies together. That day that I saw the final Lord of the Rings movie was the last time I enjoyed the movie theatres in peace, without fear of humiliation. Aside from Fridays, I always met my group of friends at Planet Cyber on Wednesdays, because they were charging only one dollar per hour on Wednesdays. Usually my mother wouldn’t let me play video games for such a long time on a weekday, but she made an exception for Wednesdays. On one such Wednesday, Charlie introduced me to the game Warcraft 3. It was like no game I had ever played before. It enabled the player to build an army and battle against other players online. After the first round of Warcraft III, going up against John Jo and Charlie, I was captivated. The game was so much fun. I couldn’t help but think about it every second for the next two days. When the following Friday arrived, we played it for most of the day and well into the night. My initially happy interest in the game Warcraft 3 had an ominous tone to it. This was the beginning of a long relationship with the Warcraft franchise. In less than a year from that point, they would release their ultimate game, World of Warcraft, a game that I would find sanctuary in for most of my teenage years. Seventh Grade flew by very fast. My school life was a continuation of Sixth Grade. I mingled with acquaintances here and there and behaved nicely with everyone. The difference is that I was having so much fun outside of school with my friends at Planet Cyber that I didn’t really care about getting popular at school or getting attention from girls. I was enjoying my very last year of childhood. My twelfth year was one of the best years of my life, and the last year that I was happy. I’m glad that I can at least say I made the best of it. I gave no thought at all to my future, or the fact that puberty was just around the corner. I barely even knew much about what puberty was. With puberty, my whole world would change, and my entire life would collapse into utter despair. I wonder how I would have handled things if I knew… If was prepared… This summer was long awaited. I was having the time of my life, and once school was out I couldn’t wait to spend the summer relaxing and doing fun things. I was relieved that neither of my parents made me attend summer camp. I suppose I had gotten too old for it. This summer was mine to enjoy however I wanted. It was like a coveted treasure that I could only hold for a few moments, but those moments would last forever in memory. It was my last summer before puberty. My last summer of innocence. My last summer of true happiness and satisfaction with life. I continued my traditional Friday sleepovers with Charlie, John Jo, and Elijah. Because there was no more school, they would sometimes come over on other days as well. I managed to beat the entire game of Halo on legendary mode with Elijah’s help, an impressive feat. Philip and Jeffrey came over quite a lot as well. Philip was always the mature and insightful brother, while Jeffrey was the wild and funny one. Seeing the two of them together always made for an interesting and excitable mix. Their mother, Kathy, brought them over on weekdays quite often. We drank a lot of soda, ate a lot of candy, and played with scooters and skateboards around my mother’s neighborhood. I took them to Planet Cyber one time and showed them some of the games there. On the weekends I spent at father’s, we usually did something with the Bubenheims. They lived in the Top of Topanga community, where we often spent afternoons. I played with Georgia and Lukas in the swimming pool there, and being one who admires great views, I spent a lot of time looking out at the Valley. Going to that place would always remind me of my Fifth Grade graduation party, a good memory. Soumaya told us extraordinary news. On one sunny afternoon at father’s, me and my sister were asked to come to the dining room for a special announcement. It wasn’t announced by words, but by Soumaya indicating us to feel her stomach. She was pregnant! She and my father were having their first baby together. I was going to have a baby brother. I felt elated. I remember when I was a bit younger I always asked my father and Soumaya if they were going to have a baby, and they said they would like to. I still felt surprised when it was actually confirmed. It was that warm feeling that would envelop me when a good change happened in my life. I had no idea what it would be like, but I welcomed it. My step-grandmother Khadija came to stay with us for a second time, mainly to help Soumaya prepare for the birth. In the middle of the summer, mother took me and my sister on a vacation to Malaysia. This was the first time we would go on an overseas vacation with just mother, and I was pleased at the thought of it. We took off on my 13th Birthday. I spent my birthday on the airplane, a much more exciting birthday than the previous few. We traveled on Singapore Airlines, and though we weren’t traveling first class on this trip, I found it to be just as comfortable. The staff of Singapore Airlines knew it was my birthday, and they brought me a cake with a candle during the middle of the flight. It was a very nice gesture. We had to spend eight hours at the Singapore Airport. I thought this airport was such a pleasant place that I really enjoyed just spending time there. It was all part of the vacation experience. The airport was huge, and much more entertaining than LAX or any airport in Europe that I’ve been to. The three of us walked around and explored, went shopping, visited all the common areas, and had a nice meal at one of the restaurants. There were a lot of foreign candies and sodas that I was curious to try. Traveling with just my mother and sister was a lot less stressful than traveling with father and Soumaya. It was wonderful. When we arrived in Malaysia, we met up with my grandma Ah Mah, my mother’s sister Min and her husband Jack, and cousin Emma. They were also visiting Malaysia from England. We all stayed at a tall hotel building near the beach. After we unpacked everything at the hotel, some of my mother’s relatives who lived in Malaysia came to see us. We had a birthday celebration for me at the hotel that night. Before I went to sleep, I pondered over the fact that I was now a teenager. I had a lovely time on this vacation. Our hotel suite was on one of the highest floors of the building, and it had an exquisite deck that provided a view of the ocean. During the trip, we toured around the island of Penang, visited Georgetown, went to a fun waterpark, and had very delicious meals at many exotic restaurants. Just relaxing and watching movies at the hotel was a joy in itself. The vacation was so nice that I didn’t even miss my life at home. The three weeks flew by very fast, and I cried a little when it was over. It was a good sadness. I celebrated my birthday again at father’s house on the night we returned to America. I was allowed to have my very first glass of beer for this celebration. I always thought of alcoholic drinks, such as beer and wine, as mysterious drinks that were forbidden to children like myself. Father would let me have only a small sip of wine from time to time. Having my first glass of beer felt like a big honor. For my present, I got my first cell phone. During this era, cell phones were like a rite of passage for kids my age. I always envied the kids who had a cell phone. John Jo had a silver Sprint phone with green lighting that I always coveted. To finally have a cell phone of my own made me feel so proud. My phone was a silver T-Mobile phone with blue lighting. I loved the satisfaction I felt when I opened it up and saw the pretty lights. 13 Years Old I enjoyed the rest of the summer as best as I could. On the first Planet Cyber session after being back from vacation, I met up with John Jo. They had the new Warcraft 3 expansion available to play, and the two of us tried it out. I had a sleepover with Charlie and Elijah, and they introduced me to their friend Julian Ritz-Barr. Julian went to Topanga Elementary with us, though he was two grades lower, so I never knew him beforehand. I thought he was very cool, but a bit stupid. We competed with each other at Planet Cyber. I continued to see him with Charlie and Elijah a few more times after that. Coincidentally, Julian’s parents were friends with Rob Lemelson, and I didn’t know this at the time. A few years down the line, I would cross paths with Julian again at one of the Lemelson’s parties, where I would spitefully envy him for being so confident with everyone. When the summer ended, I cried a little. It was such a great summer. I went on a vacation, I saw lots of friends, played lots of games, and enjoyed life to its fullest. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that this was the last good summer in my life, but I still cried… as I always do after a joyful experience comes to an end. Eighth Grade began on a very mellow note. For the first couple of months, I continued on with the life I’ve been living, and things seemed ok. The main people I hung out with at school were Alfred Graham, Gavin Dowd, and Brice Miller. Alfred was just getting good at skateboarding, and he was starting to become popular with the skateboarders. He once brought his skateboard to school and landed a kickflip, the move I was never able to master in the past. I was secretly jealous, even though I insisted to everyone that I was no longer interested in skateboarding. I started to take more notice of the kids in lower grades, specifically the Seventh Graders. There was one who came in from Topanga Elementary, the older brother of one of Georgia’s friends. His name was Neil Davis. I observed the popular kids of Seventh Grade... In a way they visually mimicked the popular kids of my own grade. They were all the same, though the Seventh Graders seemed a lot meaner. I noticed that Neil Davis was starting to be friends with them, even with the pretty girls. I would gradually develop a great envy towards him. Another one was Lucky Radley, the black kid I played with in father’s neighborhood. He transferred to Pinecrest during that very year, and he immediately became popular with the pretty girls of his grade. I hated him for it. Things were getting more intense every year we grew older, and I didn’t want to grow up. I wanted to live the life I was comfortable with. I wanted to live in a world of fairness, and I tried not to accept that it would soon come to an end. The games I enjoyed playing at Planet Cyber were too powerful to run on my mother’s computer, so Planet Cyber was the only place I could play them. That was until I asked my father to buy me Warcraft 3 to install on his powerful laptop. I got the Frozen Throne expansion to go with it, and once it was installed I was able to play it on his laptop whenever he allowed me to. I thought it was really cool to actually play an online game from my own home. Father’s house became a lot more fun after this, though I hated it when Soumaya set limits on my playtime. When father invited the Bubenheims over, Alex sometimes brought his friends Gary and Antje Twinn. They had a son named Vincent, who was the same age as my sister and a good friend of Lukas. Vincent was a kind-hearted and sweet little boy who was a bit overweight. I showed him Warcraft 3 on my father’s computer. He was very interested in the game, and he would watch me for hours. He really looked up to me. We got along well. One day, I was looking up things on the internet about Warcraft 3. That is when I found out about a new, revolutionary Warcraft game coming out, called World of Warcraft. I didn’t think much of it at the time, ignorant of the effect it would have on me in my later life. Gradually, my friendship with John Jo, Charlie, and Elijah started to wane. They no longer came over as a group anymore. Our usual Friday sleepovers stopped happening, as they got more busy with other things. John Jo and Charlie slowly started to get bored of Planet Cyber, which caused them to lose their interest in coming over every week. I continued to see them individually; sometimes I would see Charlie and Elijah together, sometimes just Elijah, and sometimes just John Jo. Due to them coming over less often, I began to walk to Planet Cyber alone. I never did this before, because my friends came over so much and we would go together. I would usually play Diablo 2 or Warcraft 3 there. For a time, I did this as a routine without getting bored. Sometimes I would meet John Jo there and we would have intense Warcraft 3 competitions with each other. After a few more weeks into autumn, I began to get a bit depressed over the fact that the good times I had with my main group of friends was fading away. I started to walk to Planet Cyber alone just to reminisce such times. Sometimes I would stay there for hours into the night. I never thought I would get bored of the highly entertaining games there, but after playing them so much on my own, I was surprised that I was getting a bit bored. Good times always come to an end, and I always had a hard time accepting this fact. One time while I was alone at Planet Cyber, I saw an older teenager watching pornography. I saw in detail a video of a man having sex with a hot girl. The video showed him stick his penis inside a girl’s vagina. I didn’t know anything about sex at the time. I barely even knew what sex was. I was slowly starting to develop sexual feelings for hot girls, but I didn’t know what to do with them. To see this video really traumatized me. I had no idea what I was seeing… I couldn’t imagine human beings doing such things with each other. The sight was shocking, traumatizing, and arousing. All of these feelings mixed together took a great toll on me. I walked home and cried by myself for a bit. I felt too guilty about what I saw to talk to my parents about it. I was quite shaken for a few days. This was among the very first glimpses I had of sex. Finding out about sex is one of the things that truly destroyed my entire life. Sex… the very word fills me with hate. Once I hit puberty, I would always want it, like any other boy. I would always hunger for it, I would always covet it, I would always fantasize about it. But I would never get it. Not getting any sex is what will shape the very foundation of my miserable youth. This was a very dark day. Soon enough, I would inevitably find out about what sex was, whether I saw that foul video or not. Boys at my school started talking about it. Connor Hanrahan and his friend Jordan Carlton one day told me exactly what happens when a man and a woman have sex. Finding out about sex was just the beginning of my horrific downfall. My father and mother arranged to change our routine back to one-week, one-week. Father wanted to spend more time with us, and it was agreed that this would be the way. I was angry about this, because I felt satisfied with the way things were. If it went back to one-week, one-week, I would have to spend time at father’s even if father wasn’t there, and I hated that. I didn’t see how it enabled father to spend more time with us, because he was always going away for work anyway. But alas, I had no choice in the matter, and the arrangement was set. This is how it would remain from that point on... My living arrangement wouldn’t change again until I turn 18 and Soumaya kicks me out. When Christmas came, I told father that I would like a new computer game. Father took me out shopping for my new present. We first went to Comp USA on Victory Boulevard, but they didn’t have a large selection of games. I was on the verge of just choosing to buy Diablo 2, a game I had already spent hours on at Planet Cyber. But then, I decided that since Best Buy was just across the street, we should go and have a look at the games there. At Best Buy, I saw the game World of Warcraft. It had just come out a few weeks ago. I picked up the box and looked at it for a few minutes. The game looked amazing and alluring, so I decided to choose World of Warcraft as my Christmas present. I spent more time looking it over and reading about it on the way home. The only computer I could play World of Warcraft on was father’s laptop, but father was always using his laptop for work. I had to wait a long time to get a chance to play it. After reading the game manual, I got extremely excited to play it. It was a whole new type of game for me, an MMORPG that would enable me to make my own character in a huge online fantasy world, and it was a world I was already familiar with through playing Warcraft 3. This game was a hundred times bigger than any game I’ve played in the past. The more I read about the game, the more anticipated I became. After almost a month went by after getting World of Warcraft, I was finally able to play it. I made a WoW account with my father, and then I created my first character, a night elf druid. It really blew my mind. My first experience with WoW was like stepping into another world of excitement and adventure. It was a video game world, but they made it so realistic that it was like living another life, a more exciting life. My life was getting more and more depressing at that point, and WoW would fill in the void. It felt refreshing and relieving. I was only able to play it for a few hours for my first session. It was all I would think about when I wasn’t able to play it. Mother didn’t have a good enough computer to run World of Warcraft, so I felt a bit frustrated because of that. I thought of how awesome it would be if Planet Cyber had the game, but I doubted that it did. One afternoon, I walked to Planet Cyber with my WoW disks and asked them if they can install my disks onto one of their computers. The owner told me the game was already being installed, and I was thrilled to hear those words. It wasn’t ready yet, however, and I had to wait. I kept going back to Planet Cyber every day to wait for it, and played other games there while they were still processing it. It was a fun wait, and I knew I will eventually be able to play it. Finally, after spending three days at Planet Cyber waiting, it was ready. I loaded the game and logged onto my account. I was completely ecstatic. I spent all of my free time in the next few days playing it. The owner of Planet Cyber came to know me because of this series of events, and he named me his best customer. I invited Charlie over, and he came with Stephen, an old friend from Topanga Elementary whom I hadn’t seen for a while. I found out that they both had their own WoW accounts, and we went to Planet Cyber to play it together. I made a new character on their server just to play with them, though I would eventually discard this character. I saw Charlie only a few more times after that. Elijah was busy with some life problems and stopped coming over. John Jo simply vanished from my life at this point, for no particular reason. I can’t recall the exact last time I saw him, but it was around this period. My mother decided to move to an apartment in Woodland Hills. I reacted indignantly. An apartment! I had never lived in an apartment before, and I always thought of apartments as being poor and lowclass. I would be embarrassed to admit it to anyone. The apartment building was called the Renaissance Apartments, near the Warner Center area of Woodland Hills. We moved into a two bedroom apartment. Mother knew I was too old to share a room with my sister, so she gave me the second bedroom, and she and my sister shared the master bedroom. Leaving the blue house on Glade Avenue was hard. I had so many good times with my friends there. And to move out of it at the very time that I stopped seeing those friends… it was quite emotional. I cried on our last day there. My mother’s new apartment was not walking distance from Planet Cyber, and I was a bit embarrassed to show that I lived in an apartment, so I stopped seeing any friends. Elijah was the last person in the group who I saw. I was at Planet Cyber and he tapped me on the shoulder. It was a random meeting. The two of us talked for a bit about the new Halo 2 game, and I showed him my WoW character. That was the last time I saw him. Eventually, I lost all contact with Charlie, John Jo, and Elijah. The friends I had such a good times with for the last two years were no longer my friends. They were lost to me. I also stopped seeing Philip and Jeffrey… they simply just forgot about me, I assumed. The only friend who remained to me was James Ellis. The upside of moving to the apartment was that my mother acquired high speed internet. I was able to play World of Warcraft on her computer, along with Halo 2 on Xbox Live. This was the point when my social life ended completely. I would never have a satisfying social life ever again. It was the beginning of a very lonely period of my life, in which my only social interactions would be online through video games, with the sole exception being my friendship with James. The ability to play video games with people online temporarily filled in the social void. I got caught up in it, and I was too young and naïve to realize the severity of how far I had fallen. I was too scared to accept it. This loss of a social life, coupled with the advent of puberty, caused me to die a little inside. It was too much for me to handle, and I stopped caring about my life and my future. I even stopped caring about what people thought of me. I hid myself away in the online World of Warcraft, a place where I felt comfortable and secure. Part 4 Stuck in the Void Age 13-17 James Ellis also acquired Xbox Live with Halo 2. I started to play it with him online, and our friendship reignited after being stale for the previous year. We would meet up online after school, or on Saturday mornings. The two of us battled on Halo 2 over the internet, just like we did with our Nintendo 64 games when we were children. James would be my only friend throughout the next depressing and lonely period of my life. My friendship with James helped me cope with the loneliness. The very few fun times we would have were like a light in the darkness for me. Now that I was able to play World of Warcraft at my mother’s house with no limitations, aside from school and homework, I became very addicted to the game and my character in it. It was all I cared about. I was so immersed in the game that I no longer cared about what people thought of me. I only saw school as something that took time away from WoW. I became very bored at school, mainly due to the fact that I was still the invisible quiet kid. To alleviate this boredom, I started to act weird and annoying to people just to gain attention. I became known as the “weird kid” at Pinecrest, and people started to make fun of me, but I didn’t care. I had my online games to distract me from the harsh realities of life that I was too scared to face. The only time I did care was when a group of popular Seventh Grade girls started teasing me, which hurt a lot. One of these girls was Monette Moio, a pretty blonde girl who was Ashton’s younger sister. She must have thought I was an ultimate loser. I hated her so much, and I will never forget her. I started to hate all girls because of this. I saw them as mean, cruel, and heartless creatures that took pleasure from my suffering. At father’s house, I was forced to change my bedroom to the downstairs room that Tracy once occupied. My old bedroom was to be given to my baby brother… Soumaya was due to give birth to him very soon. I was quite annoyed at this. That room was the room that made me so enthusiastic about moving to that house. Father and Soumaya thought moving me was the best solution. The new baby would get a room close to them, and I would have the much bigger downstairs room. When I moved to the downstairs room, I slowly agreed that it was the sensible thing to do. My new room was twice the size of my old one, I still had my own bathroom, and I also had the hallway that led to it. Technically, I had the whole bottom floor of the three story house to myself. The only bad thing about this was that I would get scared to walk down those stairs at night when it’s dark… the light switch was at the bottom of the stairs. I’ve always been afraid of the dark. Soumaya gave birth to a newborn baby boy, and they named him Jazz. It happened during father’s week. While father and Soumaya were at the hospital, Alex Bubenheim picked us up from school and we stayed at his house in the afternoons. This occurred for three days, and finally, on the day of the birth, father showed up to announce the birth of Jazz. We had a little celebration, and the song “Jessie’s Girl” played from Alex’s sound system. Whenever I heard that song in the future, I would always think of that day. It was an exciting day. I actually had a brother… It was hard to believe. Technically he is my halfbrother, but I would always term him as my brother. I wasn’t as impacted by his birth as I expected myself to be, possibly because I was so caught up in my own personal and emotional changes that I was going through at that stage. Spring break came up, the first break from school since I started playing WoW. I considered myself extremely fortunate that I was at my mother’s house for that week. I disliked being at father’s house, because I had so many limits on the amount of time I could play my game. On the onset of spring break, I planned to spend the whole time on WoW, leveling up my character and forgetting about my horrible school life. I invited James to come over to my mother’s apartment for the first time. We played a round of Halo 2, and then I decided to show him World of Warcraft. He knew nothing about it. I was very eager to get him into it. WoW was his kind of game, after all. He seemed very interested. We went to father’s house for Easter Sunday. He took us to a party held by some new friends of his, the Thompsons. Alongside the Bubenheims, the Thompsons became frequent guests at my father’s dinner parties. They consisted of John Thompson, a successful film producer, and his wife Tatiana. They had three children: Isabella, the oldest daughter, was two years younger than me, and the twins Josh and Alessandra were the same age as my sister. On the first day me and my sister met them, and I believe it was on that Easter Sunday, we played with them splendidly in their backyard. But soon, after they came over a few more times, I began to have uneasy feelings of nervousness and fear around the two girls, mainly because I thought all girls hated me. The way I was treated by girls at my school played a big part in my resentment towards all of them during this time. This resentment would only grow larger the more I am treated unfairly by the female gender. Mother took us to the premiere of Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith. As a huge Star Wars fan, this was a big day for me. Episode 3 would complete the whole Star Wars saga. It was the most anticipated movie. To be able to see it before everyone else made me feel special. I really liked the character Anakin Skywalker, and I was amazed to see his epic transformation into Darth Vader on the high quality big screen. Finally having something to brag about, I told everyone at school the next day that I went to the premiere because my mother is friends with George Lucas. The problem was that most Eighth Graders thought of Star Wars as being a “nerdy” interest, and they didn’t really care. I was left frustrated and disappointed by their reaction. As middle school approached its ultimate end, I was having a miserable time there. I was extremely unpopular, widely disliked, and viewed as the weirdest kid in the school. I had to act weird in order to gain attention. I was tired of being the invisible shy kid. Infamy is better than total obscurity. The teasing I received was bittersweet. It felt horrible to be teased and bullied… it caused me a lot of pain and anger… but at the same time I got a kick out of getting so much attention. It felt good to be confident enough to pick fights with the popular skateboarder kids. It was either that, or continue to be ignored by everyone like I was in Sixth and Seventh Grade. I never knew how to gain positive attention, only negative. My experience during Middle School really darkened my view of the world, and it would only get darker from then on, as I suffered more and more. The way I was treated by girls at this time, especially by that evil bitch Monette Moio, sparked an intense fear of girls. The funny part of this is that I had a secret crush on Monette. She was the first girl I ever had a crush on, and I never admitted it to anyone. To be teased and ridiculed by the girl I had a crush on wounded me deeply. The world that I grew up thinking was bright and blissful was all over. I was living in a depraved world, and I didn’t want to accept it. I didn’t want to give any thought to it. That is why I immersed myself entirely into my online games like World of Warcraft. I felt safe there. I was so obsessed with playing WoW that I never gave much serious thought to the fact that I would have to go to High School soon. As the end of middle school neared, the prospect started to loom over me more and more. At one moment I pictured what my life in high school would be like, based on how things have been for me in middle school. It was not a bright picture. I didn’t want to have to deal with the cruelty of girls in high school, and I imagined that it would be much worse than anything I’ve ever experienced. I begged my parents to send me to Crespi Carmelite High School, a catholic all-boys school. Father took me there for a tour, and it didn’t look so bad. It was a very prestigious private school. At least I wouldn’t have to deal with any fear of girls there. We submitted an application. A few weeks later I received the news that I had been accepted to Crespi. Eighth Grade Graduation was a nightmare. Everyone was required to go up on stage and speak to the whole audience. We had to say our name, and tell everyone what school we were planning on going to. The audience consisted of all of the student’s families, as well as any siblings or friends who wished to attend. Both of my parents came, as well as Soumaya, Khadija, my sister, and even my baby brother Jazz. It took place in the evening. As I lined up, I could feel myself shaking. I was scared even to speak in front of a classroom. To speak in a microphone to hundreds of people was too much. I didn’t understand how everyone else seemed to be fine with it. I envied their bravery. When my name was called, I didn’t want to go, but it was required of me, and I pushed myself to do it. I walked up to the microphone and nervously said “My name is Elliot, and I plan on going to Crespi High School”. I heard my own voice in the speakers and saw everyone staring at me. It made me cringe. I quickly walked away for the next person to go up. It was over. Eighth Grade was over. Middle School was over. I said a few farewells to the people I knew. Alfred Graham and Brice Miller told me they were going to Crespi as well. At least I will know two people at Crespi on the first day, I thought. The thought of going to High School sent a shiver through me. I put it in the back of my mind to deal with later. After the ceremony, I said goodbye to the principal, and she congratulated me on completing middle school. On the way home, my family seemed very proud of me. I didn’t feel proud. I didn’t feel like I accomplished anything. Middle School, though it started out ok in the first two years, ended up being a disaster. For the summer break, I planned on spending the whole time playing WoW and forgetting about everything else. I reached the highest level on my WoW character: level 60. I actually considered this to be a huge and important accomplishment. I joined a guild with my character, and I made a few online friends though it. I couldn’t wait to play my character further, exploring everything the game had to offer and collecting more armor pieces and trinkets. In just a week into my summer break, my mother told me that father and Soumaya were going to Morocco, and I would be forced to go with them. This news upset me tremendously. I then asked how long this trip would be, and I was told it would be eight weeks. EIGHT WEEKS?! I could not believe what I was hearing. I threw a big tantrum. For one thing, I was never enthusiastic about Morocco. The country is very backwards, and that made me very uncomfortable. They didn’t even have the latest video games. And to be forced to go there for eight weeks? That would take up the entire summer and the first two weeks of high school. It was even longer than the last time we went, and I thought that was too long. I wouldn’t be able to play WoW at all for two whole months. The prospect devastated me. I begged my mother to not let me go, but father and Soumaya insisted on bringing me and Georgia, and my mother was probably looking forward to having two months without children to look after. The decision was made, the plans were set. They already had a plane ticket ready for me. I was going to Morocco. I bet they all knew I would protest against going, which is why they told me last minute. The last day of mother’s week was the day before we would depart. Mother took me and my sister to a barbeque at the house of her friends Alan and Rebecca. I was very sad for the whole day. I didn’t do anything at the barbeque except swing on their swing in misery. When we got home I played WoW for the very last time. I took advantage of the few hours I had left on it. My mother allowed me to stay up until midnight playing. I acquired a very nice piece of armor for my character. I didn’t want to leave it. When we arrived at father’s house the next day, I heard even more upsetting news. Father had to work for the first few weeks of summer, so he would joining us in the middle of the trip. It was only Soumaya taking us to Morocco! I always hated traveling with Soumaya. She made everything so difficult. Baby Jazz will be coming along with us, of course, and the stress of looking after a whelping baby while traveling will put Soumaya in a bad mood. I was not happy at all. As I expected, the journey there was a disaster. Baby Jazz cried a lot during the trip, and Soumaya wasn’t at her best of moods. We didn’t take First Class, and we had to make three stops; once in Michigan, again in Paris, and yet again in Casablanca, before taking a small plane to Tangier. It was a miserable journey, the complete opposite of the great time I had a year ago on the trip to Malaysia. We took a taxi to Khadija’s house right after we arrived. Khadija went home to Morocco on a different plane a few days before us, and she was already settled in. After unpacking at Khadija’s house, we walked to Soumaya’s father’s huge house where I met Ayman again. I remembered playing with Ayman on my last trip to Morocco… He grew up a lot since then. To my dismay, he was taller and stronger than me, despite being two years younger. I was always short and physically weak… that’s how it’s been all my life. We instantly became friends again after catching up a little, and I played hide-andseek tag with him and his two younger brothers. I disliked having to be in Morocco for the whole summer, but I tried to make the best of it. Ayman made the time I spent there more fun. We often went out by ourselves to explore the city of Tangier. Ayman knew where everything was, and Soumaya trusted him to show me around. Georgia sometimes came with us. We had a few good times together, and we got along well. The Thompsons joined us in Morocco a couple of weeks after we arrived. Georgia was happy that Alessandra, Josh, and Isabella were there to play with her. I was not happy about it. I was so scared of girls at that time that I kept my distance from Alessandra and Isabella. I didn’t want to admit to Ayman that I was scared of girls though, that would have been embarrassing, so I just told him that I thought they were too immature. He didn’t understand this, because I myself was very immature at the time. For my 14th birthday, Soumaya organized a small party at her father’s house. Most of the guests were her Moroccan friends, and some of them didn’t even know that the party was for my birthday. I was a bit annoyed by this. They had a cake arranged for me, and when it was brought out everyone gathered to wish me a happy birthday. That would be the last time I spent my birthday with more people than just my family. I was amazed that I was actually fourteen. Fourteen sounded like such a big number. I didn’t feel fourteen. I still felt like a kid, and in all appearances, I was. Father couldn’t even make it for my birthday. I was a bit upset about this. He came a few days after it. Once he arrived, we toured around Tangier and a few other areas as a family. Khadija and Ayman sometimes came along with us. Soumaya’s father owned a house on the beach, and we usually went there for beach trips. I caught a virus while swimming in the ocean once, which caused me to get extremely ill. I spent a whole week of the vacation in bed, aching and vomiting. I was never that ill before in my life. Whenever I would think about Morocco in the future, I thought about that horrid experience. At one time towards the end of the trip, when I had a sleepover with Ayman at Soumaya’s father’s house, he showed me some European porn videos in the middle of the night. I could observe the act of sex in much more detail than that one glimpse I had at Planet Cyber. I didn’t want to look, but my curiosity got the better of me. To see a video of human beings doing such weird and unspeakable things with each other revolted me. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. And yet, I noticed I was feeling aroused. I felt desire to do those things, to have sex with the naked women I saw in the video. It was a funny feeling that overwhelmed my whole body. I could feel my penis getting hard. This is when I noticed that I was finally going through puberty. Heavens save me. The trip was way too long, and towards the end I felt depressed and homesick. All I wanted was to go back home and play WoW, and yet I had to accept that once I did get home, I had to start high school right away. I supposed that being able to play WoW again would make up for that, though. And it would sure beat staying in Morocco for any longer. I was growing tired of it. 14 Years Old I felt a wave of relief when we arrived back in the United States. We had to travel separately from father again because he had a different flight schedule, but it wasn’t that bad on the way back because I was looking forward to playing WoW again. I only had one free day before I had to start school. When I got back to mother’s house, I gave her a big hug… That was the longest time I had been away from mother. After that, I immediately asked if I can go on her computer and play my game. I logged onto my character, which was just the way I left it two months ago. I said hi to all of my online friends and tried to catch up on everything. The dreaded day arrived all too soon. I had to start High School. School had already begun while I was still in Morocco, so I would be the “new kid” again. That made it so much worse. My father drove me there on the first day. When we got there, I was intimidated by all the huge high school boys, and I cried in the car for a few minutes, telling my father that I was too scared to get out. I had to go, and eventually I did. We walked to the main office where I ran into Brice Miller. We greeted each other before I was led up to join my first class of the day. Alfred Graham was in that class, and he helped me settle in. During lunchtime, Alfred showed me around the whole school. I started to feel a lot more comfortable. He introduced me to some of the other freshmen. In the courtyard, I met Pascal and his clique of friends. I immediately took a disliking to them. Pascal was cocky and popular, so I felt intimidated. He was like the Crespi equivalent of Robert Morgan. As I met a few more people, I ran into Keaton Webber! I didn’t expect to find any more people I knew at Crespi. It really took me by surprise. I hadn’t seen Keaton since he left Topanga Elementary at the end of Fourth Grade. Keaton was still the arrogant jerk he always was at Topanga, and he had his own clique of skateboarder friends, such as Andy Moussa and Aaron Amman. As I expected, I failed to make any new friends. I was so overwhelmed by the brutality of the world that I just didn’t care anymore. On the very first week, I had my first experience of true bullying, not just the teasing I had at Pinecrest. Some horrible Twelfth Graders saw me as a target because I looked like a ten year old and I was physically weak. They threw food at me during lunchtime and after school. It enraged me, but I was too scared to do anything about it. What kind of horrible, depraved people would poke fun at a boy younger than them who has just entered high school? I thought to myself. After the first few weeks of high school, I concluded that my time at Crespi would not be pleasant at all. I withdrew further into the World of Warcraft, neglecting my homework and spending all of my free time playing it. As a late birthday present, father bought me a new laptop that was able to run WoW. It wasn’t a very powerful laptop, but it performed adequately. This enabled me to have more time playing my game. During father’s week, Soumaya was always on my back about how much time I spent on WoW, but since my room was on the bottom floor, secluded from the rest of the house, I was able to sneak as much time on it as I could. While I was playing WoW after dinner at mother’s house once, I heard my sister watching the new show Avatar: The Last Airbender on the television. I decided to check it out. I soon found myself really enjoying it. It was a magnificent story set in a fantasy world where people can control the power of the elements. Once I watched the first episode, I was hooked on the story. Prince Zuko was my favorite character; he was a banished prince who was trying to regain his rightful place in the world. I always related to him. Avatar: The Last Airbender became my favorite T.V. show. My mother informed me that she was just on the phone to Arte Ellis, and he told her that James now played World of Warcraft. I was very pleased to hear this. I could now share my greatest interest in the world with my good friend… my only friend. I then went over to James’s house for a sleepover, which I hadn’t done for a while. He showed me his WoW character, who was only level 20. We weren’t on the same server, so we couldn’t play it together. The only way would be for one of us to start over, and we were too immersed in our characters to do that. I was fine with that. James was really fascinated by my level 60 character, and most of the time he would just watch me play, anyway. We also played a lot of Halo 2 together. Having these common interests with James reminded me of the good old days when we were children; when we were both interested in skateboarding, and before that, Pokemon. This nostalgic experience provided a small respite from my sufferings at school. My life at Crespi got even worse. Alfred and Brice apparently told everyone how weird I was at Pinecrest, and people in my own grade started to tease me. They found out that I didn’t like being called a skateboarder, and it was true. Because I failed to become good at skateboarding, I developed a hatred for the sport, and whenever someone called me a skateboarder, it reminded me of my failure and I got very angry. The whole school started calling me it just to anger me, along with other insulting names. They teased me because I was scared of girls, calling me names like “faggot”. People also liked to steal my belongings and run away in an attempt to get me to chase after them. And I did chase after them in a furious rage, but I was so little and weak that they thought it was comical. I hated everyone at that school so much. It got to a point where I had to wait in a quiet corner for the hallways to clear before I could walk to class. I also took long routes around the school to avoid bullies. My parents began to consider not letting me continue there after Ninth Grade. When winter break came, I felt like I had just landed on a peaceful island after swimming through a horrific storm. It was such a fine relief. The break was to last for three weeks, and I was sorely disappointed that two of them would be at father’s house, while only one was at mother’s. I hated being at father’s house because Soumaya became more and more suspicious of how much time I spent playing WoW, and she would place limits on my playtime whenever she caught me playing it. I wasn’t able to do my five-hour-long events to collect rare armor pieces for my character while I was at father’s house. It was during this winter break that I experienced my first masturbation and ejaculation. It was one of the most peculiar and memorable experiences of my life. At this point I was officially going through the stages of puberty, and I had lots of sexual urges. I often fantasized about hot naked girls while rubbing my penis against my mattress at night. One time, while doing this, I felt an intense stirring numbness all around my fully erect penis, and it extended all over my body. It felt magical and ecstatic, and I kept rubbing my penis on the mattress. That was when the orgasm happened. I couldn’t believe how much pleasure I felt from that. I looked down at my penis to see that my semen had poured out all over it, like a volcanic eruption of white, sticky fluid. What was happening to me? I thought to myself with nervous excitement. It was like nothing I had ever seen or experienced before, something completely out of my world. I felt really guilty afterwards, so I refrained from telling anyone about it. I started to masturbate on a regular basis. At first I only did it by rubbing my penis on my bed, but it eventually escalated to looking at pictures of girls online while rubbing my penis against my pants, fantasizing about doing sexual things with them. I didn’t know how to access any porn sites, so I would just browse regular websites until I found a picture of a hot girl to masturbate to. I developed a very high sex drive, and it would always remain like this. This was the start of hell for me. Going through puberty utterly doomed my existence. It condemned me to live a life of suffering and unfulfilled desires. Even at that young age, I felt depressed because I wanted sex, yet I felt unworthy of it. I didn’t think I was ever going to experience sex in reality, and I was right. I never did. I was finally interested in girls, but there was no way I could ever get them. And so my starvation began. The boys in my grade talked about sex a lot. Some of them even told me that they had sex with their girlfriends. This was the most devastating and traumatizing thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Boys having sex at my age of Fourteen? I couldn’t fathom it. How is it that they were able to have such intimate and pleasurable experiences with girls while I could only fantasize about it? I frequently started asking myself. This was an all-boys school… How in the hell were those boys even able to meet girls to have sex with? I wondered. I hoped they were lying. I hoped against all hope. Hearing that really shook me to the core. Words cannot describe how much hatred and envy I felt for those boys. That hatred would only fester the more I suffer from my sexual starvation. I was too scared to tell anyone about it, and I hid it well… for a time. These recent events cause me to withdraw even further away from the world. I drowned all of my misery in my online games. World of Warcraft was the only thing I had left to live for. My grades at Crespi dropped dramatically. I just didn’t care anymore. I hated that school. I didn’t think about my future. The only thing I gave any serious thought to was my WoW character. I had become very powerful in the game, and I was in one of the best guilds. With this guild, I participated in lots of five-hour raid events to collect better gear and armor for my character. Mother moved to a new house with a swimming pool that she was able to lease for a fair price. She picked me and my sister up from father’s house and took us there as a surprise. It was located near the old blue house, though in a nicer area. This was on a day that I had an event on WoW in the afternoon, and I was very concerned about whether or not I would make it in time, so when we got to the new house I didn’t even look around and immediately hooked up my laptop to play WoW. I was that obsessed. After being bullied so much in Eighth and Ninth Grade, I became more shy and timid than I ever was in my life. I felt very small, weak, and above all, worthless. I cried by myself at school every day. The very last day of Ninth Grade was the worst. I was having P.E. at the gym, and one of my obnoxious classmates named Jesse was bragging about having sex with his girlfriend. I defiantly told him that I didn’t believe him, so he played a voice recording of what sounded like him and his girlfriend having sex. I could hear a girl saying his name over and over again while she panted franticly. He grinned at me smugly. I felt so inferior to him, and I hated him. It was at that moment that I was called to the office. When I got there, my mother was waiting for me to take me home. I cried heavily as I told her about what happened earlier. That was the last day I ever set foot in Crespi Carmelite High School. Crespi was finished. I thought I could finally relax. Little did I know that the worst was yet to come. My parents shocked me with very horrible news. They were planning on sending me to Taft High School. Taft had five times as many students as Crespi, it was a public school, it had girls in it, and it had a bad reputation. I had never been so scared in my entire life. How could they do this to me, after knowing what I went through at Crespi? Taft High School would eat me alive and spit me out. I felt so betrayed by my parents. On top of that, they told me I had to go to summer school at Taft very soon. I failed a few classes at Crespi and I had to make up for them. The summer was supposed to be a time of peace and relaxation. This was turning out to be the worst summer of my life. I went with my parents to the Taft Orientation event, and it was a horrific experience. I felt so dismayed at how large the school was, and how intimidating all of the tall students were. I even begged my parents to send me back to Crespi, because I knew Taft would be much worse. I had a foul time at summer school. I remember how I used to hate it when my parents made me go to summer camp. Summer camp was like heaven compared to summer school at Taft. I got lost on the first day. I was so terrified that I hid in the hallways during break time. I spent my time at summer school gruelingly waiting to go home so I could feel safe playing WoW. My 15th Birthday was in the midst of this summer school term. I was so miserable during this period that I didn’t even give much thought to it. It was so uneventful that I barely remember anything about it. I believe I just had dinner with my mother and played WoW afterwards. 15 Years Old Toxic is the word that describes my first day of Tenth Grade at Taft High School. It was a toxic nightmare. Every single second of it was agony. I continued to beg my parents to not make me go, but it was to no avail. My father drove me there, and I didn’t want to get out of his car. He almost had to drag me out. I somehow found the will to put one foot in front of the other and walk towards that awful, ugly front building. The first week of Taft was living hell. I was bullied several times, even though I didn’t know anyone there. After being so used to wearing a polo shirt with khaki pants as a school uniform at private schools, I continued to dress like that even after leaving Crespi. I didn’t give any thought to how nerdy I looked. I was too withdrawn, like a turtle tucked into his shell. I was still in the process of going through puberty at the time, so I still looked and sounded like a ten-year-old. Such a persona attracted zero attention from girls, of course, but it did attract bullies like moths to a flame. I was completely and utterly alone. No one knew me or extended a hand to help me. I was an innocent, scared little boy trapped in a jungle full of malicious predators, and I was shown no mercy. Some boys randomly pushed me against the lockers as they walked past me in the hall. One boy who was tall and had blonde hair called me a “loser”, right in front of his girlfriends. Yes, he had girls with him. Pretty girls. And they didn’t seem to mind that he was such an evil bastard. In fact, I bet they liked him for it. This is how girls are, and I was starting to realize it. This was what truly opened my eyes to how brutal the world is. The most meanest and depraved of men come out on top, and women flock to these men. Their evil acts are rewarded by women; while the good, decent men are laughed at. It is sick, twisted, and wrong in every way. I hated the girls even more than the bullies because of this. The sheer cruelty of the world around me was so intense that I will never recover from the mental scars. Any experience I ever had before never traumatized me as much as this. I couldn’t do it anymore. On the morning before the second week of Taft started, I broke down and cried in front of my mother, begging her not to make me go to that horrible place. I was so scared that I felt physically sick. I continued crying in the car on the way there, and my mother gave in. Instead of taking me to school, we went to the café at Gelson’s in Calabasas where we had a big talk. I tried to explain how much I was suffering there. She just could not take me to school after that. When we were finished with Gelsons’s, she drove me to my father’s house and told him about what happened. They agreed to take me out of Taft. I didn’t go to school for a month while my parents decided what to do with me. I took advantage of the time to rest and recover at home, playing my online games. The pain and suffering I had to endure at Taft was all over, but the scars would remain. I tried to forget about it as much as I could. I took a deep breath and relaxed. After a month of recovery, my parents took me to look at two continuation high schools, which operate like home-schooling because you only spend three hours a day there and do the rest of the work at home. One of them was right next to El Camino High School, the other one was in Van Nuys. My parents preferred the one in Van Nuys because they felt it was more structured and organized. It was called Independence High School, and they decided to send me there. Independence was a very small school with only three buildings and 100 students. The teachers were all very nice and understanding, and it had a relaxed and calm environment. I figured this was the best option for me. A week later, I started going to Independence High School. I didn’t like any of the students there, as they were all slobs with the exception of two or three boys. This wasn’t a major concern, because I didn’t care about having a social life at the point. All I wanted to do was hide away from the cruel world by playing my online games, and Independence High School gave me the perfect opportunity to do just that. I only had to be at school for three or four hours per day, and all of the work was very easy with teachers available to help me with anything. After those short school hours, I had all the time in the world to do whatever I wanted, and I spent it playing World of Warcraft. One drawback was that I had to take the bus to school because my parents couldn’t pick me up at such an early time of the day. Though it was embarrassing, I didn’t care about appearances anymore, so I didn’t make a big deal out of it. This was the perfect set up for a World of Warcraft addict. After school, every day, I fully indulged myself in my addiction to WoW. My only social interaction was with my online friends and with James, who would occasionally come over to my house to play WoW with me. My father’s career as a commercial director hadn’t been as successful as it was a couple years before. He foolishly decided to invest all of his money in his first feature film, a documentary named “Oh My God”. In the film, he would interview various people about their opinions on religion and God. To make it, he took off to travel all over the world for a few months. Despite this, the one week-one week arrangement remained, and during father’s week I had to stay at father’s house with only Soumaya. This frustrated me tremendously, because Soumaya has always been a pain to live with, and she would obstruct my time on WoW. I was hopeful about father’s movie, however. He kept talking about how he will become very rich from it, and I fostered a hope that he would become rich. How naïve I was… the movie would only bankrupt him in the future. On top of this, I had to deal with another change at father’s house that angered me to no end. I had to give up my lovely, huge, and luxurious downstairs room. It was all because baby Jazz got a new nanny. Once again, Jazz’s existence caused me to lose my room at father’s house. This time, father made my room into his new office. He split his old office into two bedrooms, in which I got one of them and the nanny got the other. My new room was much smaller, and it didn’t have its own bathroom. My downstairs room was the best part of being at father’s house, and it was all gone. I started to really hate going there. Father came back shortly for the winter break, before taking off again. A new expansion for World of Warcraft, called the Burning Crusade, came out in the beginning of January. I was extremely excited for this expansion. It added many new features to the game, new areas to explore, and raised the level cap to 70. It was like a whole new WoW game. I asked my father to buy it for me as a Christmas present. I can still remember the intense anticipation I felt as I installed it onto my laptop. I decided to transfer my WoW character to the same server as James, so that we could play together online and level up our characters in the new expansion. Through doing this, I met two of James’s friends from his school, who also played on his server. They were two brothers named Steve and Mark. Steve is our age, and Mark is a couple years older. Me, James, Steve, and Mark would then always play together online as a group. I found them quite fun to play the game with, and it was nice to have some friends to play WoW with on a regular basis. Eventually, Steve and Mark decided to make new characters on a PvP server, which had play settings that were more to my liking. I chose to make a new character with them. I made a blood elf character that I leveled up very fast, and this became my main character in the game. James stayed on his old server for a while, but within a few weeks we persuaded him to join us on the new one. I had heated conflicts with Soumaya during every week that I was at father’s house. All I wanted to do was play WoW, and Soumaya strictly limited my playtime. Because my new room was just across from hers, she knew what I was doing at every single second. She was breathing down my neck the whole time. She kept making me do chores around the house. I despised doing work around the house, especially since we had a nanny who was supposed to do it. If I made a scene about doing the work, she took away my laptop for a day or two. This was the most horrible thing she could do to me, to take away my only source of joy left in the world. She sometimes did it even when father was at home, and father didn’t lift a finger to stop her. My first year at Independence high school came to an end very quickly. Nothing eventful really happened there, and I barely interacted with anyone. I would just go there for my required time, do my work, and go home. I was too absorbed in my game to care about anything else. At father’s house, in the beginning of the summer, I was introduced to someone who I would hate for a very long time: Leo Bubenheim. Alex Bubenheim married a German woman named Karina who had just moved to the U.S. with her two kids: Leo and Pollina, who became Alex’s step-children. They would then always come over as a family. Leo was 12 years old, and Pollina was a year younger than me. My fear of girls made me keep my distance from Pollina. She was a total bitch anyway, and her attitude would only get worse. She is a true representative of everything I hate about women. When I first met Leo, I didn’t think much of him. He was only twelve years old. I just thought of him as Lukas’s new older brother. I had no inkling of how much I will envy and hate him later on. Soon enough, my jealousy of Leo began to manifest. He had just moved to the U.S. from Germany, and yet he was already able to make lots of friends and had a great social life. He was tall, good looking, blonde-haired, and a skateboarder; the type of person I’ve always envied and wanted to be. Me, my father, and the Bubenheims all went on a camping trip to Big Bear. It was just the boys. We drove deep into the wilderness in my father’s big, formidable Lexus SUV. After setting up our tents, we built a nice fire to gather around and tell stories. It was quite fun, and it made for a small respite from my lonely life, though I had to suffer the presence of Leo and deal with my jealousy of him. One time during the trip, my father made me take Leo and Lukas out exploring. The three of us covered a lot of ground, and I tried to act tough in front of them by slashing my knife at any plant that got in our way. The 4th of July of this year was the day I saved my little brother’s life from drowning. I went with my family to Antje and Gary Twinn’s house, as they always had a 4th of July party. The Bubenheims were there, including Leo and Pollina. So was Vincent Twinn, who had grown up quite fast. The last time I saw him, he was the little kid who looked up to me when I showed him all of my computer games. Now he was just becoming a teenager, with an interest in skateboarding. The party was a pool party, and my brother Jazz had full exposure to the swimming pool. He had already learned how to walk, but he couldn’t swim. At one instance as I was eating lunch, I saw Jazz quickly run off from the adults, completely unattended. I then watched as he curiously examined the water, and then descended into steps of the shallow end of the pool. Before long, he lost his footing on the steps and his whole body sank into the water. Nobody noticed. He was going to drown, I thought with panic. I ran as fast as I could, plunging into the water with my clothes still on, and pulled him out. I asked him how he was doing, and he coughed up some water and told me he felt fine. The only person who saw this happen was a little girl who was swimming in the shallow end. I saved his life, and my brother remembers it to this very day. Every single second of my brother’s life, everything that happens to him in the future, will exist because I pulled him out of the water that day. I celebrated my 16th Birthday at mother’s house. She bought me an Xbox 360, which had just been released. I didn’t play it yet though, because the only game I wanted for it was Halo 3, which was set to come out in November. I was really looking forward to that game. It was supposed to be the best Halo game of all time. After I blew out my candles, I remember going outside and sitting by my mother’s pool to contemplate my life. Sixteen… what an age to be. I still felt like I was twelve. Most teenagers will start driving at this age… I couldn’t even fathom myself driving. The thought of it scared me. James came for a sleepover shortly after my birthday, and he helped me set up my Xbox 360. We played a round of Halo 2 to test it out. He didn’t bring his computer, because he had a desktop that was hard to transport, so I suggested that we go to Planet Cyber to play WoW together. Our parents dropped us off there and we had a good WoW session. It was nice to see that place again, to reminisce of happier times. I proposed, for nostalgia’s sake, that we walk home for the way back. My mother’s new house was three times the distance from Planet Cyber as her old blue house, but I really wanted to do it. On the way, we passed by that little blue house, and all of the memories came back. The two of us talked a lot, and shared some laughs. It was a very memorable night. 16 Years Old As summer’s end drew closer, I became more and more depressed. My life had gotten so lonely, and playing WoW barely made up for it. My mother noticed this and proposed that I get together with Philip again. She called Philip’s mother Kathy to arrange a meetup. And so Philip came over twice during that summer. I quite liked seeing him again… it was two years since the last time we spoke. Though he had no interest in my video games, he enjoyed playing in my mother’s swimming pool. I had one playdate with Jeffrey as well. Philip and his family went on a vacation to Catalina, and Jeffrey wanted to stay at home. I went to his house for a sleepover with just him there. Jeffrey had changed a lot. He was now Fourteen, and he told me he had a girlfriend. I was shocked, amazed, and envious. I wondered how an immature brat like Jeffrey could have a girlfriend at such a young age. I had the dreaded suspicion that he had already had sex with her, and I tried not to think about it. I was deeply jealous, but for the sake of our past friendship and the good times we had together in the past, I hid that envy well enough. Eleventh Grade at Independence began. I still took the bus to school, as I had no desire to learn how to drive at that age. I was way too afraid of even trying it out. Driving is something that adults are supposed to do, and I still felt like a child. I continued on with my lonely routine of doing my schoolwork in the morning and playing WoW with James, Steve, and Mark for the rest of the time. I gave no thought to my future at all. I just lived in the moment, in my comfort zone. My sex drive was at its peak at this age. Whenever I got back from school, I had to masturbate. The urge was too strong. During my masturbation sessions I often built elaborate fantasies in my mind that I had a hot, blonde-haired girlfriend to have passionate sex with; almost like having an imaginary girlfriend. I told no one about this. In fact, I didn’t talk to my parents at all about my sexual development. I felt too guilty and embarrassed about it. Whenever they probed me, I lied to them, telling them that I had no sex drive. My mother once caught me looking at pictures of girls online, and I franticly had to convince her that I stumbled on those pictures by accident. I also noticed that my voice was getting deeper. I was starting to sound like an actual teenager. The last stages of puberty were over. Halo 3 came out in November. I got my mother to buy it for me on the very day it was released. I had a lot of fun playing it while drinking the special mountain dew flavor that was released with the game; Mountain Dew Game Fuel, it was called. The game definitely lived up to its expectations, and to my surprise I found myself playing it more than WoW for the first couple of weeks. Father suffered through a deep financial setback because of his movie. Could things get any worse for me? As a result, my father abruptly cut off all of the child-support payments he was paying my mother. My mother was forced to find a better-paying job to make up for it, and she had to move out of her house to a condominium close by. Thankfully, Rob Lemelson offered her a job in his production company, Elemental Productions. This new job enabled my mother to make enough money to live comfortably. We hadn’t seen the Lemelsons much since the last time we went trick-or-treating with them years ago. It was good to reconnect with them. I missed mother living in an actual house, but at least the new place was a condominium, with more luxuries than the apartment we once lived in. The condominium had three bedrooms, and my room had its own bathroom. The bad part about this condominium was its location in Canoga Park, a lower-class area. I hated telling people that my mother lived in Canoga Park. It was highly embarrassing for me. But alas, in that lonely and depressing stage of my life, there was no one really to tell, and I barely cared about what people thought of me anyway. I was a complete dork, stuck in my own little world. An exchange student from France moved into my father’s house. His name was Max Bonon, a cultured, outgoing nineteen-year-old French guy. His parents are very wealthy hotel owners, and he would be staying with us for a few months while he studies English at Pierce College. At first, I wasn’t so sure about having this young person lurking about, but we soon developed a good friendship. He always invited me to play cards with him after dinner, and though Soumaya didn’t let me drink alcohol, he would always sneak me a beer. It was really nice to have that regular social interaction. I became really fond of Max. In just two weeks after Max arrived, we got the news that Soumaya’s father died in Morocco. Soumaya immediately left for Morroco, and she took baby Jazz with her. Though I was really sad about the death of Soumaya’s father, as he was a very kind and generous man, I was glad to see Soumaya gone. Father’s whole household changed for the better. I started to love going to father’s house, especially with Max there. He was like an older brother to me. My mother became really close friends with the Lemelsons due to her new job. Every year, they have an extravagant Christmas party at their newly built mansion in the Palisades, and we would now be invited to it. James also went to the party, and I had a pleasant time hanging out with him and Noah. During one week at father’s after the New Year, father had to leave for his work. For that week it was just me, my sister, and Max in the house. The three of us had a lot of fun together. Max took us to Universal Studios. Father allowed him to drive the big Lexus, for which I was a bit jealous. The last time I was at the Universal Studios amusement park was when I just moved to America. Mother took us to the Universal city walk a couple of times, but never the amusement park. I went on all of the rides, including the infamous Jurassic Park ride that I was rejected from going on when I was a child. When father came back, we talked to him about our time at Universal Studios. He suggested that we all go to Six Flags. The four of us set out for it the next day. Six Flags was the biggest amusement park I’ve ever been to. I was awed by all the gigantic roller coaster rides. Max, my father, and even my little sister were all eager to tackle the largest roller coasters. I was the only one who was scared out of my mind. Max talked me into it, so I nervously gave all of the rides a try, and ended up having some fun. To my chagrin, my father decided to take up motorcycle riding. He pulled up to the house one day in a roaring Harley Davidson, and I was completely baffled. I suppose it was due to some mid-life crisis he was going through. A motorcycle… Really? Alex Bubenheim got him into it. He and Alex would then ride their motorcycles all the time. He kept insisting that he take me on the motorcycle whenever we went out, instead of going in the car. This would be too embarrassing for me, and I adamantly refused to ever go on the motorcycle. I went with mother to the red carpet premiere of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This was my fourth premiere. Going to premieres were always an uplifting experience for me. The movie was quite a disappointment, however, and I much preferred the classic Indiana Jones films. The next day, I told some of my teachers that I went to this premiere, and they were very shocked. I bet I was the first kid at that school who has done such prestigious things. Soumaya and Jazz returned from Morocco. I was happy to see my baby brother again, but not so happy to see Soumaya. Things were a lot better at father’s house when she was gone. Soon after she came back, we started getting into various arguments again, which embarrassed me in front of Max. In the Spring, something horrible happened that will haunt me forever. We met up with the Bubenheims at the Sagebrush Cantina in Calabasas, and a friend of Pollina’s was there with them, named Nicole, a girl around my age. She sat next to Leo the whole time, and by the end of the dinner, the two of them were making out. Twelve-year-old Leo was making out with a girl who was almost my age. Not only does Leo have a better social life, but now he was making out with girls, AT AGE TWELVE! They made out for a long time, and I could see them tongue kiss. They knew I was watching with envy, and they still did it. I bet that lucky bastard took great satisfaction from my envy. There I was, watching a boy four years younger than me experience everything I’ve longed for… to kiss a girl… to be worthy of a girl’s attraction. On that day, I developed a vicious hatred for Leo that will never go away. A few days later, Max went home to France, never to come back again. I was deeply saddened by this. For the brief period that Max was staying at father’s house, I enjoyed life a lot more. He was a big part of my life there. He drove me to places when father and Soumaya were busy, we played card games and had pleasant conversations after dinner, and we always took walks to the top of the hill overlooking father’s neighborhood, which I called the Overlook. Most importantly, he made me feel less lonely. I was very saddened by his departure. Another horrible experience concerning the Bubenheims occurred. We were having dinner at their house, like we usually did. At the end of the dinner, a few of Pollina’s friends came over. They were all popular, good looking girls and boys. They were the kind of people who I’ve always had the desire to be a part of, but was never able to fit in with. Popular kids… cool kids. When I heard them talking about their awesome lives and their parties, I had a breakdown right then and there. I realized how much I’ve been missing out in my life, and I cried in front of everyone. I felt like I would never have a life as good as theirs. I told everyone that I wanted to commit suicide. Father, Soumaya, Alex, and Karina talked to me for three hours to cheer me up. Eleventh Grade at Independence ended. Like the previous year, my time at the school went by like a blur. I didn’t talk to anyone. I barely considered it a part of my life. I just did the work that I was required to do while I waited for the bus to take me home. Once summer started, I sank into a major depression. My feelings of inferiority were intensified by the recent events with the Bubenheims. The Bubenheims were family friends… but now they represented the very thing that destroyed my whole life and took away my happiness. It was at this time that I was just beginning to realize, with a lot of clarity, how truly unfair my life is. I compared myself to other teenagers and became very angry that they were able to experience all of the things I’ve desired, while I was left out of it. I never had the experience of going to a party with other teenagers, I never had my first kiss, I never held hands with a girl, I never lost my virginity. In the past, I felt so inferior and weak from all of the bullying that I just accepted my lonely life and dealt with it by playing WoW, but at this point I started to question why I was condemned to suffer such misery. There was nothing I could really do about my unfair life situation. I felt completely powerless. The only way I could deal with it was to continue to drown all of my troubles with my online games. I played WoW really hard, leveling two new characters to 70. At mother’s house, I sometimes played it for fourteen hours a day. James, Steve, and Mark would always joke that there was never a time that they saw me offline. I was known as the guy who was “always on WoW”. My laptop was getting slower and slower. It wasn’t a very powerful laptop, but it was the only computer I had to play WoW on. This was really frustrating me, because eventually it became so slow that it ruined my gaming experience. I kept pestering my mother and father to get me a faster laptop that was more efficient for gaming. For my 17th Birthday, my parents agreed to split the funds for a new laptop. My mother took me to Best Buy to choose it out, and I found the perfect one. It was a larger, highly efficient dark-colored laptop designed for gaming. After we bought it, we had dinner at the Japanese restaurant Kabuki on Ventura Boulevard, the same restaurant my mother took me to after my 5th Grade graduation. 17 Years Old Father told me that Max invited me to visit him in France for three weeks. I would have to travel there alone, and Max would pick me up at the airport near his hometown of Montpellier. At first I was very anxious about it, and I was about to say no. Father talked me into it, saying that I was lucky to have an opportunity like this. I really missed Max, and I wanted to see him again, so I quickly made the decision to go. I left around the beginning of August. This was my first time traveling alone, and I didn’t know what to expect. Father signed me up to have supervised travel assistance to help me along the way, otherwise I would get lost in the airport. On the way there, I made a stop in Frankfurt, Germany to transfer planes. Germany became another country I can add to the list of places I’ve been. When I arrived at the airport in France, I waited for a few hours and finally Max showed up. I was really happy to see him. I couldn’t believe I was actually in France again. Max and I stayed at his grandmother’s house in Montpellier. Montpellier was an exquisite city, with a romantic and cultured vibe to it. It was such a pity that I was too caught up in my own world to truly appreciate it at the time. Max introduced me to his life in France. I met with some of his friends and we went to bars together. In France, the legal drinking age is 16, so I was able to drink alcohol at a bar. It was astounding! For those three weeks, I had the faintest taste of what life was like for normal young people. The experience of hanging out with a group of young people, boys and girls, and enjoying life was something I never did before. It really turned my whole world around, for that short amount of time. So this is what everyone else gets to experience, I thought to myself with jealousy. I felt a sense of happiness and bliss that I hadn’t felt since childhood, when life was good. During the trip, we visited the town of Arles where we stayed in the hotel that Max’s family owns. Max told me about all of the sexual experiences he had. I never knew he had such an active sex life. The more he talked to me about it, the more envious I became. I questioned to myself why he got to experience such an amazing life, while I had to suffer so much loneliness and humiliation. I was introduced to some of the girls he had sex with in the past, and they were all pretty. On top of that, his family was extremely wealthy and they owned a sprawling mansion in the countryside. Where’s the justice? I thought. Why couldn’t I have been born into that life? I envied Max so much. His life must have been heaven on earth. Despite my envy of Max, I couldn’t hate him, at least at that time. He was the only popular young person who ever reached out to me. He invited me to visit his home, and he treated me like a friend. For that, I will always have a grudging respect for Max Bonon. After three weeks in France doing exciting social things, I returned to my lonely life in the U.S., where I became even more depressed than I was in the beginning of summer, especially after getting a taste of what life was truly like for normal people. I knew I could never live such a pleasurable life, and the knowledge haunted me. I was back to my routine of World of Warcraft. At least the new expansion was coming out soon, and I tried to look forward to that. When Twelfth Grade began, I made a vow to finish high school before the month of March. The high school system at Independence allows students to work at their own pace, so the more extra work I did, the sooner I could graduate. I was always depressed and bored for the few hours a day I had to spend there, and I disliked all of the degenerate, low-class students there. They repulsed me. I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could, and it became my goal for the year. At the end of school time every day I asked my teachers to give me extra homework assignments, and I stopped myself from playing WoW until I completed them. The second expansion for World of Warcraft finally released, called Wrath of the Lich King. When I got home from school, I wanted the game so badly. Mother wasn’t home from work yet, so she couldn’t drive me. I decided to walk all the way to Best Buy to pick up the game. It was a long walk that took almost an hour. On the way home I was very hungry and stopped at Panda Express to eat lunch. Planet Cyber was right next to that Panda Express, so I walked in there for a few seconds to reminisce about better times before hurrying home to install the game. Once it was installed, James and I played it together all afternoon. I found out that one of my teachers at Independence, Mr. Perales, also played WoW. From then on, the two of us would talk about the game every day. It was nice to have someone at school to talk to, and I enjoyed telling him about my daily progression with my character. This made my time at school a lot less mundane and boring. James, Steve, and Mark were the closest thing I had to a group of friends. I played with them online almost every day. We had so many adventures in WoW as a group, and yet… I felt like the outcast of the group. Steve and Mark only considered me an online friend, never a real friend. I found out that the three of them had WoW meet-ups at one of their houses a lot, and they never invited me. Sometimes, when I would be playing with them online, I would find out that they were all together in real life, and I was the only one left out. Whenever they did this, I acted bitter towards them through the game, but they didn’t even care. Even in the World of Warcraft, I was an outcast, alone and unwanted. The more lonely I felt, the more angry I became. The anger slowly built up inside me throughout all of the dark years. Even after the release of the new WoW expansion, I noticed that the game’s ability to alleviate my sense of loneliness was starting to fade. I began to feel lonely even while playing it, and I often broke down into tears in the middle of my WoW sessions. I began to ask myself what the point was in playing this game anymore. I spent less and less time playing it. One day I found some posts on the internet about teenagers having sex, and I was once again reminded of the life I had been denied. I felt that no girl would ever want to have sex with me… And I developed extreme feelings of envy, hatred, and anger towards anyone who has a sex life. I saw them as the enemy. I felt condemned to live a life of lonely celibacy while other boys were allowed to experience the pleasures of sex, all because girls didn’t want me. I felt inferior and undesirable. This time, however, I couldn’t just stand by and accept such an injustice anymore. I refused to continue hiding away from the world and forgetting about all the insults it dealt to me. I began to have fantasies of becoming very powerful and stopping everyone from having sex. I wanted to take their sex away from them, just like they took it away from me. I saw sex as an evil and barbaric act, all because I was unable to have it. This was the major turning point. My anger made me stronger inside. This was when I formed my ideas that sex should be outlawed. It is the only way to make the world a fair and just place. If I can’t have it, I will destroy it. That’s the conclusion I came to, right then and there. I spent more time studying the world, seeing the world for the horrible, unfair place it is. I then had the revelation that just because I was condemned to suffer a life of loneliness and rejection, doesn’t mean I am insignificant. I have an exceptionally high level of intelligence. I see the world differently than anyone else. Because of all of the injustices I went through and the worldview I developed because of them, I must be destined for greatness. I must be destined to change the world, to shape it into an image that suits me! At the beginning of the winter break, I decided to quit playing World of Warcraft entirely. On my last day on the game, I had a long, emotional conversation with James where I opened up about all of my troubles. I told him about all my newfound views of the world, and my belief that sex must be abolished. He seemed to be supportive of my stance, and I was glad that he understood me. It was a very memorable day. My father’s movie was released, but it did not do well at all. He was only able to get it released in a few select theatres, and no one was interested in seeing it. He stupidly invested all of his money into the movie, and he got absolutely nothing out of it. This caused him to fall into a financial crisis that he will be stuck in for a long time. I was annoyed that he kept having to make it clear to us that he was now in a “financial crisis”. He talked about it all the time, and it was embarrassing. What a bitter coincidence, that right at the point when my life fell even deeper into agony, my father is cursed with this financial crisis. Right at the time when I needed my father’s support the most, he lost all of his assets. It was as if some malevolent being cursed me with bad luck. I truly had no advantage at all. The universe was not kind to me. I formed an ideology in my head of how the world should work. I was fueled both by my desire to destroy all of the injustices of the world, and to exact revenge on everyone I envy and hate. I decided that my destiny in life is to rise to power so I can impose my ideology on the world and set everything right. I was only seventeen, I have plenty of time. I thought to myself. I spent all of my time studying in my room, reading books about history, politics, and sociology, trying to learn as much as I can. I became a new person, furiously driven by a goal. My torment would continue, but I had something to live for. I felt empowered. I went over to James’s house to have a sleepover. Usually when I went there we spent the whole time playing WoW, with the exception of walking to town for lunch. Because I quit WoW, this was the first time we had to find other things to do. We spent most of the time going on walks around the Palisades town center, or along the Palisades Bluffs, talking about our views of the world and our hopes and dreams. I told him more about my hatred of people who have sex. James quickly deduced the reason for why I was so fervent about abolishing sex… that in truth I really want to have sex but I feel like I can never have it, so I wish to take it away from everyone else. He read me very well. I had to admit that he was right. That is the exact reason for it. I fulfilled my vow of finishing high school by March. In fact, I finished a bit earlier than I expected – in mid-February. I completed so many homework assignments towards the end, especially since I no longer played WoW. I was glad to be done with it. School was finally over. Not having to go to school anymore gave me a lot of free time to think and brood. As time progressed, I realized how hopeless everything in my life was. The chances that I will ever rise to power and right the wrongs of the world were extremely slim. I had absolutely no idea or plan of how to acquire any sort of power. It was naïve of me to think that I could one day become a dictator. The only thing I could do was fantasize about it. My whole world twisted even deeper into darkness and despair as my depressing life continued on. My hatred for people who have sex festered inside me like a plague. I frequently went on walks around town to brood over how hopeless and unfair everything was. It was better than being stuck in my room all the time. When I saw young couples walking around at the mall, my anger and hatred intensified greatly. It was the worst torture ever to see them making out and being intimate. My life, if you can call it a life, was living hell. My parents quickly took note of how radical I was becoming, and they made a hasty plan to change my life. Of course, that is what they claimed. I think they were just trying to find a way to get rid of me because I was too hard to deal with. Soumaya was going back to Morocco, and they decided to send me with her. It was the most ridiculous plan I’ve ever heard. They announced this to me at a café near my mother’s house. I was expecting something extreme, something drastic, but this? It completely caught me off guard. Morocco? They think I’ll be happy there? I furiously thought with disbelief. I was devastated, and for a moment I couldn’t even speak. The last thing I wanted was to hide away in a backwater country with nothing to do, while all of my peers enjoy life in the U.S. I didn’t want to run away from my troubles in the U.S., I wanted to confront them. I just didn’t know how. Going to Morocco was the absolute worst solution for me, and they intended for me to stay there for a long time. After hearing this news, I felt a sense of urgency that I had never felt before. They already had a plane ticket ready for me, and I was scheduled to leave in five days. My immediate goal was to stop my parents from sending me to Morocco. Throwing a tantrum with my mother didn’t work. She was set on this. I spent the remaining five days at father’s house. While there, I chose not to protest at all, because I knew it wouldn’t work. They will force me onto that plane one way or another. I decided to keep quiet and devise a plan of escape. I bided my time, and didn’t talk much to father or Soumaya during those last few days. The plan I came up with was to run away on the morning before the flight, walk all the way to my mother’s condo, and hide in a secret spot on the roof. It would be a place where they least expected me to be. I kept quiet in the last couple of days to throw off their suspicion, but that backfired and made them even more suspicious. I suppose they expected me to protest about going, and my silence made them think I was up to something. When the time came, I decided to get up at 4:00 a.m. to prepare. To my dismay, I noticed that my father set an alarm on the front door. I was planning to run away at 6:00 a.m., when the garbage truck arrived, because the noise from the truck would mask any noise I make while leaving. The alarm, however, would definitely alert father and Soumaya. I got too nervous and abandoned that idea. Instead, I waited until everyone woke up and had breakfast. My plan was ruined by the alarm, and I had to come up with a new plan fast! I had little time left. I innocently told father I wanted to go on a small walk before the departure, and as soon as I exited the front door, I bolted at full speed. It was hasty, but I had to do something. I didn’t think father would catch on to my deception so quickly… After only clearing one block, I looked behind my shoulder and saw father chasing after me. All of my hope collapsed then and there, and I lost all of the fight in me. I stopped running and put my head down in defeat. Soumaya came in the car minutes later, and they both took me home. The plan failed. I was going to Morocco. The journey to Morocco was the most horrendous travel experience I’ve ever had. It was just me, Soumaya, and four-year-old Jazz. Jazz kept screaming and vomiting on the plane, Soumaya was in a sour mood, and I was completely miserable. I thought my whole life was all over. I had nothing to look forward to in the future. I wanted to die. Once I got there I felt like all of the life in me had drained out. I was so defeated. I couldn’t help but cry all the time, even in front of Soumaya’s relatives. Khadija didn’t understand why I was so upset, and she got offended that I was crying on the first day at her house. It was a complete disaster. I kept dreaming of home. I thought of the prospect of being able to return home, and a small hope sparked in me. I kept emailing my mother frequently, telling her how much I hated being there and how much I cried all the time. I told her that if she would give me one more chance and enable me to come home, I will try harder to lead a better life and become a person she could be proud of. After a week of doing this, mother gave in and flew to Morocco to take me home. I won. I was going home. When I returned to the U.S., I felt so relieved that I forgot about my troubles for a few days and relaxed. It was good to be back home. This is where my fight is, right here in the U.S., and nowhere else. The sense of elation I felt soon wore off. My lonely life as a social outcast resumed. I continued going on my usual long walks every day, feeling angry and hateful towards the world. During mother’s week, I would walk to the mall and sit on the balcony overlooking the food court next to the AMC theatres. There I would see all of the young couples lining up to see a movie, and I boiled with hatred. During father’s week, I walked to the Calabasas Commons nearby, and sometimes I rode my bicycle. I also walked up the hill near my father’s house to the Overlook. I spent a lot of time up there, contemplating about my life and fantasizing about becoming powerful enough to punish everyone I hate. On one dreadful day, when I was riding my bicycle near Calabasas, a group of popular teenagers in an SUV drove by and made fun of me. I suppose my appearance didn’t help with that. I looked exactly like the outcast I was. I was still wearing plain polo shirts and khaki pants at the time, covered with a blue zip up hoodie and a black baseball cap. It was a torturous experience, and the pain I felt from it never went away. All I wanted was to fit in with those popular kids who lived such pleasurable lives, but instead I was ridiculed and reviled by them. They made me feel so inferior and undesirable. I will never forget that experience. It was burned into my memory. My misery became harder and harder to bear, and none of my parents understood my plight. My father thought that all was well with me. How could he be so blind? He was so caught up in his failing work that he didn’t care about how my life was turning out. I cursed him for it. My father never made any effort to prepare me for facing such a cruel world. He never taught me how to attract girls. He never warned me that if I didn’t attract girls at an early age, my life would fall into a miserable pit of despair! Again… How could he be so blind? I asked myself constantly. It all came to a climax on one of the days that I walked to the Calabasas Commons. I treaded through the area with my head down, all alone, in a state of complete despair about my life. I looked around me and saw lots of young couples holding hands and groups of good looking teenage boys and girls walking together and having fun on their Saturday night out. I saw all of those teenagers enjoying their pleasurable lives together, while I was all alone. They were enjoying everything I couldn’t have. I was filled with intense anguish, and I quickly ran all the way back to father’s house with tears pouring down my cheeks. Once I got home I had a breakdown and cried for hours and hours into the night. Part 5 Hope and Hopelessness Age 17-19 When I woke up the next morning, I felt a bit calmer. Calmer enough to think clearly about what just happened. I couldn’t bear to have my life continue this way, so I tried to evaluate why I have had to suffer so much. I spent the whole day in calm meditation, deeply reviewing my life to see how I fell to this dark place. I concluded that I cannot just give up on having the life I want if I never try to get it. I realized that I was still only seventeen, and that there are many possibilities for me in the future. I wanted to give myself a new chance at life, despite all the odds that were against me. I wanted something to live for, something to look forward to in the future. This calm session of contemplation made me feel a lot better. I told my parents and my sister that I was willing to make a renewed effort to change. They seemed very happy with me. For once, in their eyes, I wasn’t being negative about life. I examined myself in the mirror and decided that if I want to make a fresh start, the first thing to do would be to change my appearance. I got a haircut, and then my mother and sister took me shopping at the Fallbrook mall for some new clothes. I knew nothing about fashion at the time, so I just chose a few new jeans. I hadn’t worn jeans since I was ten years old. For the first time in many years, I started to care about how I looked again. I spent a few more days calming myself down. I then started to feel something that has been lost to me for a long time: Hope. Without hope, I just couldn’t go on any longer. I needed to feel hope. Hope for the future, hope for a better life. Upon feeling this, I realized that perhaps it is possible for me to have the things I desire; to have a great social life again, to have a girlfriend, to have sex, to have all of the pleasures I’ve desperately craved for so long. It was refreshing. On the 4th of July, we went to a big party at the Lemelson’s. There, I had a heavy discussion with James about my revelation and goals. He seemed very glad that I had a newfound zest for life. He admitted that he was getting very worried about me, from the way I was going. James was in a similar situation as I was. He was a virgin like me, never having much interaction with girls in his life. The two of us talked for hours about our troubles and our hopes of overcoming them. It was nice to have such a good friend like James on my side, who could understand and relate to me. I made a new Facebook profile (which I still use to this day) in an effort to improve my social life. Having been so lost in my own world for the last four years, I didn’t know much about these new social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. The last time I was interested in such things was when I made an AIM account, but no one used that anymore. Once I fired up my profile, was able to reconnect with a few friends from Topanga Elementary. I talked to Philip over Facebook, and the two of us made plans to meet up later in the summer after not seeing each other for two years. I also attempted to reconnect with my old friends Charlie and John Jo, remembering all of the great experiences I had with them. I managed to speak with them on the phone a couple of times, but they didn’t seem keen on meeting up, and I subsequently abandoned the effort. I had a quiet 18th Birthday at a restaurant with my family. Soumaya was still in Morocco, so mother and father agreed to meet for it. It was one of the few times that I had dinner with both my mother and my father since their divorce. I received some birthday cards from relatives, wishing me a great year ahead. I took a vow that day to make this new year of my life a happy one, to turn my life around and fulfill all of my desires. And so began a period of great yearning. A great chase, so to speak. I will chase after a hope that I built for myself, only to have that hope shattered at every turn. 18 Years Old I was 18, a high school graduate, and summer was nearing its end. I had to think about continuing my education. I was eager to be as productive with my time as I could be. College represented a hope for me. I would be starting a new kind of school where there are lots of people and opportunities. I might possibly make friends, have interactions with girls, maybe even get a girlfriend! The thought filled me with enthusiasm. And so I enrolled at Pierce College, the first of a few colleges I would jump to in my many desperate attempts to find a desirable life. Pierce College is a large community college in Woodland Hills, not far from both my mother’s and father’s houses. When I looked through the list of classes, I saw that most of them were already full. The only class I was able to get was a computer class, and I settled with that. I could always spend time at the college even while not in class, I concluded. Having only one class would help me ease into college at a milder pace. I hadn’t been in a normal school system for three years. I feared I might get nervous. But then, after thinking about everything I had been through in the last few months, I knew I had the strength and courage to tackle it. My mother made the decision to move to a new apartment near Calabasas. She took me and my sister there to show it to us beforehand. The room that I would get would be smaller, and it wouldn’t have its own bathroom, but the apartment was located in a much better area. It was walking distance from my father’s house, the Mulholland shopping center, and the Calabasas Commons. I ended up persuading my mother to move there, as it would be much more convenient. On the first day at the new place, I took a long stroll around the nearby areas. Of course, those areas weren’t unfamiliar to me, as I had walked around there many times during father’s week. But this was the first time I went on a long walk since my breakdown, and it made me feel more confident. I met up with Philip Bloeser after not seeing him for two years. The last time I saw him was during the summer I turned 16. My mother dropped me off at this house, and I wasn’t surprised to find that he was still the exact same person; mature, reserved, a little awkward, and prone to random bouts of hyper energy. Jeffrey was also there, and he was still as wild and boisterous as ever, though he had changed a lot in appearance, no longer being the little kid I was so used to seeing him as. Philip already had his driver’s license, so the two of us went out in his car to meet Addison Altendorf, who had just moved back to the U.S. and was living with his mother in an apartment in Malibu. Philip and Addison have always been very close friends with each other, and the two of them go everywhere together. I hadn’t seen Addison since Topanga Elementary. At first glance, I didn’t know what to make of him. It was like meeting a whole new person. He had changed tremendously. With his mustache and hairstyle, he looked older than he was, cultivating a refined and sophisticated personality and wearing an elegant blazer coat. As I spent time with Addison that day, I started to enjoy talking to him about politics and the world. He was very intelligent and more informed than other people our age. I bought my first Lottery ticket when I went out shopping with my mother one day. We stopped at Ralph’s where I noticed the Lottery machine. I didn’t know anything about the Lottery, so I asked my mother about it. She told me how it works and taught me how to buy a ticket. Each ticket provides a very small chance of winning millions of dollars, and the jackpot could rise to the hundreds of millions. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know such a thing existed! After buying my ticket, I felt thrilled with the prospect of having a chance to become a multi-millionaire. That ticket, of course, didn’t win. And neither would any of the tickets I buy after it, but they would give me hope. I never thought nor cared about money before I turned 18, because I was still living like a child, with my parents handling the money and giving me the things I needed. However, the more older I grew, the more I realized how important money was, and the more obsessed I would become about getting rich. This obsession, which was barely taking root at the time, sparked a long relationship the Lottery that would only end in disappointment and despair. At father’s house, we watched the movie Alpha Dog after dinner one night. This movie depicts a lot of teenagers and young people partying and having sex with beautiful girls, living the life that I’ve desired for so long. The main character is a fifteen year old kid who has sex with two hot girls in a swimming pool. I was so envious that I delighted in his death at the end. I remember thinking that I would rather live his life than mine, even though he died. He had sex and I didn’t. The movie deeply affected me emotionally, and I would think about it for some time afterwards. I started my new semester at Pierce College. I still hadn’t obtained my driver’s license yet, so I was forced to take the public bus to school. This was an extremely unpleasant experience, but I was willing to bear with it just so I could go to college and improve my life. On my first day, I couldn’t help but feel nervous. The place reminded me of Taft, though the people seemed nicer and the environment was less intimidating. When I settled down into my class, I felt that things will turn out ok. Soumaya returned from Morocco, and she was very angry with me due to the way I acted while I was there. She effectively kicked me out of father’s house, and because I was eighteen, she was allowed to. Father didn’t do anything to stop her, being the weak man that he is. This is how it has always been. Father has always given Soumaya free reign to impose her rules on the household. He gave her all the power. This act officially ended the one week-one week arrangement, and mother’s house became my permanent living place. Not only did she kick me out of father’s house, but she forbade me to go there even for a short visit. And still, father didn’t do anything about it. Father kept saying that the house is her house as much as his, and that she has the right to kick me out. No! I am the eldest son! The house should be MY house before hers! This caused any respect I still had for my father to fade away completely. It was such a betrayal, to put his second wife before his eldest son. What kind of father would do that? The bitch must be really good to him in bed, I figured. What a weak man. Every day, I tried to make some effort to go out looking for ways to improve my life. I felt that staying in my room was a waste of time. I knew what I wanted, but I had no idea how to get it. I frequently went on walks around my mother’s neighborhood in the desperate hope that someone would befriend me or a girl would talk to me. Nothing of the sort ever happened. Sometimes I walked all the way up to the Overlook, as my mother’s apartment was just around the other side of it; And sometimes I walked to the Calabasas Commons, where I would hang out at Barnes & Noble, reading books, always with the hope that some young people would reach out and befriend me, but no one ever did. I kept hoping and hoping and hoping. Hope is what kept me alive. I continued seeing Philip and Addison, my only other social interaction besides James. I talked to Addison about my old political views, debating with him about what an ideal world would look like. I found out that he had some fascist views of his own, and it was nice to have a discussion with someone about things that would make most normal people run a mile. I frequently messaged Addison on Facebook, hoping to start up conversations when I felt lonely. He told me he was just starting his Twelfth Grade year at Malibu High School, and his goal was to fit in with the popular kids. Fitting in with popular kids at Malibu High School? I didn’t expect Addison to be successful in such a venture. Addison invited me to his birthday party. It was a small get-together on the beach in Point Dume, Malibu. I had a very hard time socializing with people, so I ended up drinking too much alcohol. Before Philip drove me home, I vomited outside Addison’s apartment, in front of his mother and everyone else. It was highly embarrassing and I put a lot of effort to block it from my mind afterwards. James came to my mother’s new apartment for a sleepover. We walked to the Calabasas Commons together. It was nice to show him all of my favorite spots there, like the window at Barnes & Noble that overlooks the whole area, and turtle ponds next to King’s restaurant. It was a great place to talk and contemplate. We had some deep conversations about our fantasies and our hopes for the future. When I was a child, Halloween used to be a fun and exciting experience, but ever since the last time I went trick-or-treating Halloween has been a time when I spent the whole night in my room while other teenagers were out having fun partying. On this Halloween, I was desperate to do something social. I just couldn’t sit in my room on such a night. I found out from stalking random people on Facebook that there was going to be a huge house party in West Hills. I decided to take a big leap forward and attend this house party, even though I wouldn’t know anybody there. I had nothing to lose, and it would give me more of a chance of meeting girls than if I stayed in my room all night. Because I couldn’t drive, I had to walk all the way there, and it took 45 minutes. When I got there, I was overcome by anxiety, but I couldn’t back out at that point. I paid the entry fee of $5 and walked right in. To my dismay, the party was smaller than I expected. All of the kids were smoking marijuana, and they all seemed to know each other. It would only be a matter of time before they detected that I was an outcast. I stood around awkwardly for a few minutes before giving up and walking home. On the way home, just as I was about to reach my mother’s house, a group of four young thugs drove by me in a pick-up truck and proceeded to throw eggs at me, laughing while they did it. They seemed intoxicated, and they missed me. I picked up one of the shells and threw it right back into their car. I was no longer a weak little kid who would take a hit without fighting back. I was stronger now. They got out of their car and tried to attack me, and they would have beaten me bloody if I didn’t pull out my trusty pocket knife, which I usually carried when I walked alone by myself. Thankfully, the thugs backed away and drove off. Perhaps it was the knife, or the look of extreme hatred in my eyes. I quickly ran home, terrified. It was an unsuccessful and misfortunate night. For a few days after Halloween, I kept thinking about that incident with the horrible thugs who almost attacked me. They must have seen me as a weakling who they could bully for their amusement. I didn’t want the world to view me as weak. This led to my new commitment to start exercising and lifting weights. I began working out at the gym in my mother’s apartment complex every other day. I hoped it would increase my confidence and make me appear a bit stronger. Maybe if I built muscles, girls will be attracted to me, I hopefully proclaimed to myself. I had never worked out or lifted weights in my life, so my body has always been very frail and delicate. This was a new experience, and it made me feel more productive. Soumaya’s grudge against me lessened after a couple of months, and she allowed me to go to father’s house for dinner occasionally. I was very angry with father, but I hid my anger. I still needed him. Father began teaching me how to drive once I received my driver’s permit, which was quite hard to get. I had to take a written test with many questions, and I failed it on my first try. On the second attempt, I managed to pass. My first experience driving was very scary. I’ve played a few racing video games in my life, but driving a car for real was much more intimidating. At first, I could barely even drive around my father’s quiet neighborhood. I was overcome by the fear that I will never be able to drive. I soon got more used to it during the next few sessions. Soon enough, I was able to drive a short distance up Topanga Canyon with ease. I still didn’t feel prepared to take my official driver’s test, though. Despite my attempts to improve my life, I was still feeling frustrated and angry. I was getting nothing out of my efforts. I still hadn’t made any friends at Pierce College, and I didn’t interact with any girls. My days at Pierce College grew more and more mundane and depressing. I went to my class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, taking the bus to the AMC and walking the rest of the way. In the classroom, I had a hard time socializing with anyone. Making friends seemed impossible. My mother was casually dating a very wealthy man named Jack at the time, though I wouldn’t find out they were dating until much later. When she first mentioned him, I thought he was just a friend. Jack gave mother the keys to his Malibu beach house, and we went to stay there for a few nights, though Jack wasn’t there. The house was a beautiful, white-colored mansion located right on a private beach. The backyard had a swimming pool and a hot tub, with a gate leading right onto the shoreline. Mother had a small get-together at the beach house, and she invited James and his family, along with some other friends. James didn’t show up, but his father Arte did. To my surprise, Maddy Humpreys and her mother came over. Seeing Maddy for the first time in six years was a very peculiar experience. The last time we saw each other, we were just kids. Now, she was a fully-grown teenage girl, and from looking through her Facebook pictures, I knew she was popular. She was a typical pretty girl who had lots of pretty friends. She was one of them, one of the popular kids. My first friend in America, someone I played with innocently as a child, had grown up to represent the type of people who have caused me so much pain in my life. I was very nervous talking to her, as I had no experience with talking to young girls, but I had to make the effort. She seemed weirded-out by my awkwardness. It was cringe-worthy. While staying at the beach house, I invited Philip and Addison over to hang out, as they were always in Malibu together. They came to pick me up, and while I was in the car with them, Addison kept talking about how successful he has been at mingling with the popular kids at Malibu High School. He kept talking about all of the parties he’s been to, and all of the pretty girls he has met. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Addison actually did it. He succeeded in becoming popular at his school. In such a short time, he was able to accomplish what I’ve been trying to do my whole life. I was extremely jealous. And that was not the worst of it. As I spent more time with them that night, I noticed that Addison’s new status amongst the popular Malibu crowd had changed his attitude. It made him very cocky and arrogant. He treated ME like a loser the whole time. Later that night, he ditched me and Philip to go to a party with some girls that he knew from Malibu. I was seething with rage. We then went to the Santa Monica pier with Philip’s friend Lenny, and I saw young couples everywhere. I used to love going to the Santa Monica pier as a child, but now it was a place of vileness. After putting up with Addison’s insulting behavior, this was too much. I became so upset that I tried my first cigarette. I would end up smoking a few times after that, though I would quit within a few weeks due to it having no effect on me. When Philip dropped me back to the beach house, I walked to the beach in the middle of the night and yelled out my anguish to the roiling ocean. After that last experience with Philip and Addison, my attitude changed. My newfound optimism about life subsided, and I began feeling intense anger and hatred towards the world again. The way Addison treated me made me realize what the world thinks of me. If I was one of those popular kids, Addison would have treated me with deference and respect, but I wasn’t. I was a complete loser in his eyes, and everyone else’s. No effort I made in the last few months changed the way the world saw me. The world still viewed me as a weak and undesirable loser, even though I changed my wardrobe and started working out. What was the point anymore? I asked myself. I couldn’t help but feel anger and hatred. Life was too unfair to me. I continued going on walks around mother’s house in the desperate hope that I might possibly cross paths with some pretty girl who would be attracted to me. I would have been satisfied with that. Sometimes I spent two or three hours wandering around the neighborhood. It was all I could do. I never met any girl. Each walk left me bitterly disappointed, and eventually I stopped doing it altogether. My time at Pierce College became more miserable each day I went there. I despised having to take the bus. It was embarrassing and stressful, and it sucked all of the pride out of me. And for what? To go to one class where I didn’t talk to anyone? There was no point in it anymore. I couldn’t stand the feeling of loneliness I had there. No one wanted to be my friend. It just wasn’t worth the trouble. I decided to drop my class. My mother got very angry that I dropped my class at Pierce, even though I thoroughly explained to her the reasons. This was when she started pressuring me to get a job. Getting a job is something I never thought about before in my life, and I soon realized that the older I became, the more it was expected of me if I didn’t go to college. To placate my mother, I started searching for jobs online every day, but I wasn’t able to find one that was suitable for me. I felt hatred and dissatisfaction with the world and society, but I didn’t want to hide away from it anymore. I needed to be as productive with my time as possible, and I had a lot of free time at this point. The best way to make use of this time, I concluded, was to spend it self-educating myself. Knowledge is power. I began a daily routine of walking to Barnes & Noble in Calabasas every day, where I would spend hours reading books that ranged from biographies of powerful leaders, histories of significant periods, self-help books, philosophy and psychology texts, and historical fiction novels. I sometimes even spent entire days there, from the time it opened to the time it closed. In the afternoons, to my extreme rage, I sometimes saw young couples strolling through the store. Sometimes they would even sit on the reading chairs, kissing and fondling each other. Whenever I saw this, I got so overcome by envy and heartbreak that I went to the bathroom to cry. The occasional couples didn’t stop me from going there, however, because it was the most beneficial thing for me to do at that moment. I still met up with Philip and Addison occasionally, even though I hated Addison. They provided me with a sense of a social life, and a way for me to vent about my troubles. Addison treated me like a lowlife every time I hung out with them, and he kept bragging about the girls he met at parties in Malibu. I indignantly accused him of lying, as that was what I wanted to believe. He was only amused by my envy. I then found that Addison deleted me from his Facebook friends list out of the blue. This was the last slight I would bear from him, and I subsequently sent him a hateful Facebook message in response. I then viewed Addison as a bitter enemy of mine. He truly was a disgusting and treacherous little bastard. Addison was once in the same position as I, but right when he succeeded in integrating with the popular kids, he betrayed me and treated me the same way the popular kids treated me, as if I’m lowlife scum. The world truly is a brutal place, where a man must fight a bitter struggle against all other men to reach the top. Humans are nothing but vicious beasts in a jungle. I delved more into learning as much as I could from books at Barnes & Noble. I expanded on the political and philosophical ideals I concocted when I was seventeen, and I soon became even more radical about them than I ever was before. It was all fueled by my wish to punish everyone who is sexually active, because I concluded that it wasn’t fair that other people were able to experience sex while I have been denied it all my life. I started to have the desire to create a world where no one is allowed to have sex or relationships. I again saw that as the perfect, fair world. Reproduction can be accomplished without sex, through artificial insemination. Sex is evil, as it gives too much pleasure to those who don’t deserve it. I shaped all of these ideals through learning and self-educating myself for hours every day. My personality became even more rigid, and I started to dress in very conservative attire. I went with my mother to the yearly Christmas party at the Lemelson’s. I spent most of the time with James, discussing with him further about my ideals. We also played a lot of video games with Noah and his friends. Noah was really interested in Nintendo games, and he had a lot of them. Playing games with them reminded me of a time, long ago in my past, when I played Nintendo 64 as a child, blissfully living life in a world that I thought was good. I longed to be a child again, to be in a bright place away from the cruel darkness of reality. I will always treasure those memories. I had to go Christmas shopping, and I decided to do it at the Calabasas Commons. I was always going there anyway. While walking around, I ran into Maddy, who was there with her boyfriend. For some strange reason, I have never had any sexual attraction towards Maddy, despite the fact that she’s a blonde girl and I’m obsessed with blondes. Perhaps it was because she used to be my friend when we were children, I don’t know. Because I wasn’t attracted to her, I didn’t find myself feeling as much jealousy as one might think I would in such a situation. It was still very awkward. I just said hello to her quickly and walked away. On New Year’s Eve of 2010, the day that marked the end of the decade, I caught a terrible illness and had to stay in bed for the whole afternoon as well as the next day. My mother was going to go to one of her friend’s houses, but she felt sorry for me and stayed at home. I spent the whole time lying in my bed, brooding about my life. I don’t know what was worse, the physical pain I felt from the sickness, or the emotional pain and rage I had towards the world. I would say the latter. When the illness had passed on the following afternoon, I thought about how it caused me to waste my New Year’s holiday in my room, but then I mused that I would have done the same thing anyway, whether I was sick or not, because I had no friends to celebrate New Year’s with. I checked Addison’s Facebook profile with one of my stalking accounts, and I saw that he went to a huge New Year’s party at a mansion with his popular Malibu friends. He took lots of pictures of himself posing with various girls. I hated him so much when I saw that. The level of hatred I felt was unreal. He was doing everything I wanted to do! Why him and not me? I cursed at the world. What was seen can never be unseen, and I will never forget it, nor will I forgive it. My hope that I will one day have a beautiful girlfriend and live the life I desire slowly faded away. I was in the same dark and miserable place I had been a year previously; lonely, unwanted, miserable, and seething with rage at the world. I kept thinking about how some boys were easily able to get girlfriends straight after they went through puberty. I couldn’t fathom how they did it, and I hated and despised them for it. I kept thinking about Leo Bubenheim, and how he kissed that girl Nicole at the Sagebrush Cantina when he was only twelve. Twelve! He was able to have an intimate experience with a girl when he was only twelve; and there I was at eighteen, still a kissless virgin. My envy of Leo became an obsession. I kept asking my sister for information about him, but she refused to tell me anything. I frightfully wondered if he had lost his virginity already, and he most likely had. He was a popular kid, and girls desired him. Leo was happily living his heavenly life with the knowledge that he’s worth something to the world, while I had to wallow in my misery and loneliness. Life is not fair. One can either accept that fact, keeling over in defeat; or one can harness the strength to fight against it. My destiny was to fight against the unfairness of the world. My mother carried on pressuring me to get a job, and she would never leave me alone about it. She was a bit frustrated that I wasn’t getting one. The two of us had a lot of arguments, and living with my mother became an extreme hassle. After signing me up to a program in the regional center, my mother found a life coach to counsel me and help me find a job. This life coach’s name was Tony, a boisterous 40 year old man who came to meet me every other week. I was open to going along with this. I had plenty of free time, and I was so lonely that any social interaction was welcome. For our meetings, Tony usually took me out to lunch somewhere in the Valley, where he gave me advice on socializing and self-improvement. I continued searching for a job, but I still wasn’t able to find one. I refused all of the jobs that Tony suggested to me. The problem was that most of the jobs that were available to me at the time were jobs I considered to be beneath me. My mother wanted me to get a simple retail job, and the thought of myself doing that was mortifying. It would be completely against my character. I am an intellectual who is destined for greatness. I would never perform a low-class service job. My father told me that I could work for his friend Karl Champley for a few weeks, to help him build a staircase in his new house. I knew Karl quite well, for he used to come over to father’s for dinner occasionally. Karl was just finishing up building his new house in Woodland Hills, just a few minutes away from father’s house, and he offered to hire me to help with the staircase. I agreed to take this job. Sure, construction work was lowly and laborious, but this was different. This was more like assisting a friend, and it would be in a private environment. It was the perfect temporary job opportunity, and it would most definitely get my mother off my back. I still wasn’t able to drive, so I rode my bicycle there from mother’s house every morning. The trip on the bicycle took 30 minutes. It was grueling to ride a bicycle up that steep winding road every day, but it provided good exercise, which I was in need of. I worked with Karl every weekday for about three weeks. It turned out to be quite a pleasant experience. Karl was very friendly and I enjoyed working with him. When we finished the staircase, which was a spiral staircase that led up to his roof-deck, we took a moment to admire the work we did. On my last day working for Karl, I decided to stop by at father’s house to have a drink. I was quite parched from the bicycle ride. I entered the house without knocking because I believed I had the right to. As the eldest son, the house should be my house after my father. Soumaya was surprised to see me, and she got angry that I didn’t knock. To teach me a lesson, she ordered me to go back outside and knock. I refused, telling her that she has no right to order me around anymore. I then helped myself to a glass of water. Soumaya knocked the glass of water out of my hand and it shattered on the floor. Father clamored angrily up the stairs from his office demanding to know what was going on. The three of us had a heated argument, and of course father took Soumaya’s side. They both kicked me out of the house, telling me that I’m not to return. I felt betrayed and humiliated as I furiously made my way back to mother’s house. At that very moment, I hated both of them, and I wouldn’t see either of them for many months. For those months, my father was dead to me. My mother was all I had left in this bleak world. During that same week, I had a climactic meeting with Philip and Addison where my noxious feud with Addison Altendorf reached a boiling point. We went on an outing to the Griffith Park Observatory, as we usually did when we got together. This time, my arguments with Addison were very intense. I tried to insult him as much as I could, in a petty attempt to get revenge at him for all the insults and slights he dealt to me. We went back and forth at each other for the whole evening, to the chagrin of poor Philip who had to put up with it. By the end of the night, Addison said something to me that was so offensive it will haunt me forever, and it rang true: “No girl in this whole world will ever want to fuck you.” I already felt that no girl in the world wanted to fuck me. I was a kissless virgin after all. That was the sole reason why I was suffering. But to hear it come from someone else, someone like Addison, really caused it to sink into core of my mentality and emotions. That whole night made for a very vile and wicked experience. I decided not to see Philip and Addison for a long time. Because I was no longer seeing Philip and Addison, James was once again my only friend. I frequently talked to him over Skype. Sometimes I would go over to his house, where the two of us went on our traditional walks around the Palisades town center. James still played WoW, and he was trying to get me back into it. I was quite tempted. After everything I had been through in the last few months, I did feel the urge to delve back into that void. Facing the world was tough, and it took its toll on me, especially since I’ve seen no results. I was still in the same position I had always been: Lonely, unwanted, and miserable. I found out that my mother was actually dating Jack, the wealthy man who owned the Malibu beach house. I always thought he was only her friend. My mother never told me or my sister about any men that she dated. She always kept that strictly private. I hadn’t even met Jack yet. He was worth well over $500 million, and he owned other mansions in Bel Air and Beverly Hills. When I found out about this, I started to harbor the hope that my mother will get married to this man, and I will be part of a rich family. That will definitely be a way out of my miserable and insignificant life. Money would solve everything. I started to frequently ask my mother to seek marriage with this man, or any wealthy man for that matter. She always adamantly refused, and demanded that I stopped talking about it. She told me that she never wanted to get married again after her experience with my father. I told her that she should sacrifice her well-being for the sake of my happiness, but this only offended her further. At the beginning of summer, I finally received my driver’s license. I had to take the driving test twice before I passed it. The first time, I took it at the Winnetka DMV, and I made a few mistakes at the end which caused me to fail it. After taking some lessons that my mother arranged for me, I gave the driving test another try at the Thousand Oaks DMV. This area was much easier to navigate around, so I managed to closely pass the test. Once my official driver’s license came in the mail, my mother told me some good news. She received a new car from Jack, which meant she could give her older car to me. I now had a car of my own to drive. To be able to drive to any place I wanted to go provided me with a new sense of freedom that I never felt before. I felt more like an adult rather than a kid. I realized that I could start college again, now that I had the ability to drive there. I registered for a summer class at Moorpark College. I read about Moorpark College online and found that it was a much better option than Pierce College. My mother and I drove up there to take a look. The campus was smaller in scale, and more aesthetically pleasing. It was located in the town of Moorpark, in a gorgeous mountain area near Thousand Oaks. I also saw a lot more beautiful girls there than I ever saw at Pierce. Everywhere I looked I saw beautiful blonde girls walking around. This college was just right for me. In the days leading up to my first day at Moorpark, I felt a renewed sense of hope. A new college provided a new start, and this college looked perfect in every way. I had the hope that I could make it there; that I could make friends, meet some girls, and eventually find a pretty girl to be my girlfriend. I pictured her in my mind all the time; her cascading blonde hair, her beautiful face, her sensual body… Everything. I imagined us walking hand in hand through the college, looking at the magnificent view of the mountains in the distance as the sun sets behind them. That would be heaven. That was what I wanted in life. Every single hate-fueled ideal, world-view, and philosophy I created in the past was a result of not being able to do that. I was very optimistic on the first day. When I walked onto the campus I breathed in the fresh mountain air and admired my surroundings. I was in a new environment with lots of new possibilities. The class I took was a world history class, and it began on a good note. The class was well-structured and the teacher was entertaining. After the class ended, I walked around the college for an hour to explore and ponder over how I can set my life right. Once again, I dared to hope that there could be a good future for me. My renewed hope gave me solace for a few days, but it did not last. Moorpark soon became a place of loneliness and despair, just like any other place I’ve attempted to thrive in. The breaking point was when I saw good looking couples walking along the area where I dreamed of walking with a girlfriend. To watch another boy experience it, with a beautiful girl who should be mine, was a living hell. I constantly asked myself what I did wrong in life, to be unable to have a beautiful girlfriend. It was no better inside the classroom. There was this one obnoxious jock with a buzz-cut who was taking the class with his gorgeous girlfriend. They always sat next to each other, talking and touching each other with affection. Every day I had to see this, and my envy grew and grew. I constantly glared at them with raw hatred. What did I do wrong that he did right? I yelled out to the universe on the way home. Why does he deserve the love of a beautiful girl, and not me? Why do girls hate me so? Questions and questions. All I could do was question why I was suffering so much injustice in life. My mother one day told me that I should become a writer, because I had some talent in writing. That was strange to hear. For my whole life I was never talented at anything I tried. I was too physically weak to play sports with other boys when I was little; I never became professional at skateboarding no matter how much I practiced; and I was never that skilled at any video games I played… even World of Warcraft. Steve and Mark were able to play their characters more skillfully that I ever did, and they started the game much later than me. Deep down, I’ve always known that I had no talents, and I’ve always tried not to think about it. Indeed, it was strange to hear my mother say that I could become a talented writer, but it did give me an idea. I started to wonder if I actually could become a writer. I could write an epic fantasy story that will be made into a movie, and I will become rich from it. Being rich will definitely make me attractive enough to have a beautiful girlfriend. It was not impossible, and working towards it would give me something to live for. I mulled it over in my mind for a while. We went to Jack’s beach house in Malibu to spend a couple of nights again. My mother called me on the phone to tell me the plan while I was at college. It was a lonely and depressing day at school, and I was glad to be able to have some respite at the lovely beach house. I immediately drove there from Moorpark after my class was finished. Mother had a few of her friends over, and she bought a lot of delicious food. After stuffing myself with portions from every dish and drinking multiple glasses of wine, I went on a long and peaceful walk on the beach, wishing that I had a girlfriend to walk beside me. Before I went to bed, I thought a lot more about the possibility of becoming rich. If I was a millionaire and owned a house like the one I was spending that night in, I could have any girl I want. Being in that position would make up for all of the misery I’ve had to go through in the past… and making up for it is my most important goal in life. My one wish is to feel satisfied for the way my life is. I seriously started to consider working towards writing an epic story. I was always creating stories in my mind to fuel my fantasies. Usually those stories depicted someone like myself rising to power after a life of being treated unfairly by the world. I mentally examined all of the stories I had developed, and focused on the few that I thought would become bestsellers. If I could get one of them made into a movie, I would definitely be a millionaire. It was the only solution to my problems. I saw myself as a highly intelligent and magnificent person who is meant for great things. This could be one of them. I spent the next couple of weeks focusing on writing for myself instead of working on my schoolwork. The class didn’t give much homework to do anyway. I wrote summaries for three different stories, and I think I showed two of them to my mother. She seemed to think that they would make good movies, and that increased my confidence. I either wanted to write a novel first, or go straight to making it a screenplay. I spent every afternoon for two weeks working on this goal. My time at college was miserable. I often cried on the way home because I was envious of so many couples walking around. I poured all of my energy into coming up with a way to make this goal work. My faith that I could write an epic story that would make me rich soon collapsed. I read so many articles online of the chances that a screenplay would be made into a movie. I also saw that most writers of even the highest budget films didn’t make as much as I thought they did… Definitely not enough to live on for the rest of their life. I also thought, with a lot of despair, of the time that it would take to achieve such a goal. Most bestselling authors or screenwriters didn’t become millionaires until they were well into their forties or fifties. I didn’t want to wait until I was forty years old to lose my virginity! The thought of spending the next twenty years working hard every day for a chance to make a million or two filled me with revulsion. By the time I’d become a millionaire from doing that, I wouldn’t even be able to get hot young girls because I’d be too old. I decided that writing was not my path to salvation, and I abandoned the idea completely. Of course, I would become tantalized with the idea a few more times in the future, but that would be due to the desperate, false hope that I often create for myself. I couldn’t stand seeing that damnable couple in my class anymore. I never understood what that pretty girl saw in her brute of a boyfriend. That guy was able to experience his college life with his beautiful girlfriend by his side, while I was all alone. It made me feel so inferior. I had to watch them together, every single day. The torture was unbearable. When I got home from college one day, I dropped my class in a rage. I didn’t think about how my mother would react to me dropping the class. I knew she would be very disappointed, and I couldn’t afford to have her be disappointed in me. I was relying on her for everything. What she gave to me, she could easily take away. I panicked and resolved to get a job in order to placate her. After asking Tony, my social skills counsellor, if I could get a job through the regional center, he called me back and told me that there was a job available for me. I didn’t get much information about it, but I decided to sign up for it right there and then. After this was secure, I was comfortable enough to tell my mother that I dropped my class at Moorpark. I could have lied to her and told her that I never dropped the class, but at that time I was too scared to lie to her. I started a day of working at this new job. It was located in an office building that was connected to an Airport in Los Angeles. To my horror and humiliation, the job turned out to be a menial custodial job, and I had to clean offices and even the bathrooms. There was no way I would ever degrade myself to such a level. I felt like utter shit from even considering working at such a place. I only worked for a few hours while I thought about how to handle this foul situation… and on the next day I called to announce that I was quitting. That was the second and last “job” I would ever have. I only worked there for less than a day. After I quit, I fell into an even worse state of panic than I was in after I dropped my Moorpark class. I rapidly pestered myself with the ultimate question: What am I to do now? I called up Karl Champley to see if he had another job for me at his house, but he told me that his house was almost finished and there was literally no work for me to do there. I was doomed. I thought that if my mother found out that I quit, she would kick me out of her household. My mother was taking a vacation in Hawaii with my sister during this time. I had a few days by myself to relax and plot my next move. I concluded that going to college and enduring the sight of couples walking around was better than having to resort to working a low-class job somewhere, and I had to pick one of the two in order to placate my mother. College was also more beneficial because I could learn and educate myself through it. I called up my mother and cried to her on the phone, explaining to her why I quit the job that I signed up for, and asked her if she would give me another chance. I told her I will register for more classes at Moorpark and pour all of my energy into studying hard. I also told her that I will continue with working on my writing. To my relief, she was very understanding, and she told me she would continue to support me if I did this. The temporary pressure I had to face that summer was eased, but after thinking about it, I supposed it was insignificant compared to the overall pressure that’s been on my shoulders ever since I hit puberty: My struggle against a society that looks down upon me… against the female gender for denying me sex and love. Addison Altendorf’s hurtful words kept haunting me all throughout the summer. I saw my future and I saw only more bleak loneliness. I will never have sex. I will never have love. Girls deem me unworthy of it, I thought to myself over and over again. I cried every day when I imagined how much fun and pleasure other teenagers were having as I languished in despair. My 19th birthday passed by sullenly, and it caused me to feel even more defeated. Nineteen and still a virgin, I miserably proclaimed on that day. My father didn’t even deign to give me a phone call. Instead, he sent me a letter wishing me happy birthday and telling me that he wanted me to apologize to Soumaya, which of course I refused to do. The laptop I received on my 17th birthday had become infected with viruses, so my mother bought me a new, even better laptop on my 19th birthday. I chose one that can handle video games very well, because I had just made the decision to start playing World of Warcraft again. I just couldn’t handle the anguish in my life anymore, and I needed a break, no matter how unhealthy and time-consuming WoW would be for me. 19 Years Old Upon setting up my new laptop, I immediately installed all of my WoW disks. I logged onto my account and took a look at all of my characters that I hadn’t touched for a year and a half. Right when I logged onto my main character, I was contacted by James, and he invited me to join an online group with him, Steve, and Mark. They all gave me a warm welcome back. And there I was, stuck in the void of hopelessness once again; in the exact same position as I had been when I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen and seventeen. For all the efforts I made to improve my life during my eighteenth year, I had nothing to show for it. No friends, no girls, no life. I started going to James’s house a lot more, since I was now able to drive and the two of us could play WoW together again. Seeing James was always pleasant in its own way. He was my comrade in virginity, for he too didn’t get any attention from girls, and I’m sure he suffered from it, but not as much as I did. I was very perplexed as to why he didn’t feel any anger towards girls for denying him sex. He should be just as angry as I am. I supposed he didn’t have a very high sex drive, or he was just a generally weak person. To be angry about the injustices one faces is a sign of strength. It is a sign that one has the will to fight back against those injustices, rather than bowing down and accepting it as fate. Both my friends James and Philip seem to be the weak, accepting type; whereas I am the fighter. I will never stand to be insulted, and I will eventually have my revenge against all those who insult me, no matter how long it takes. For the rest of the summer, I took it easy and played WoW with James, Steve, and Mark; just like old times. I also started reading a new book series called A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R.R. Martin. This medieval fantasy series was spectacular. The first book of the series was A Game of Thrones, and once I read the first chapter I just couldn’t put it down. It was like nothing I had ever read before, with a huge array of complex characters, a few of whom I could relate to. I found out that it was going to be adapted into an HBO television series, and I became very excited for that. Delving into fantasy stories like WoW and Game of Thrones didn’t make me forget about all of my troubles in life, but they did give me a temporary and relieving sense of escape, which I need from time to time. Life would be impossible to handle without those temporary respites. Rob Lemelson suggested to my mother that I join the karate class he practices in. Rob was an expert black-belt, and James was also taking the same class with him. They met up every Tuesday and Friday night, and I agreed to go on Fridays. Every Friday, I began the routine of driving up to James’s house, and then the two of us would go in James’s car to the karate class in Santa Monica. James got his first car a few months after I got mine, though his car was a lot older and worn out. Rob thought that starting karate would be healthy for me, as it is meant to increase confidence and build character. I was eager to see if I could benefit from it. The class was pleasant. It gave me a good work out and a sense of invigoration. There were usually six or seven other students, and I was particularly annoyed with this one twelve year old kid who seemed to think he was better than me because he was a brown belt and I was a novice white belt. I bet he thought he could beat me in a fight because of it… Hah! No chance in that. It was annoying, but I was amused at the same time. After the karate class, Rob would take us out to a nice restaurant for dinner if he had time. If Rob was busy that night, James and I would go to our usual dinner place in the palisades, and then we would go back to his house to hang out for a while. My new semester at Moorpark College began. I only managed to sign up for one class, but I promised my mother that I would do at least three classes in the next semester. Both of my grandma’s offered to send me some money to help me out with living expenses, and I wisely saved every check I received from them. One of my priorities was to start building up my money savings in case my life became too drastic. The class I started was a political science class. I figured I would gain some useful knowledge by taking it, though I disliked the teacher because he had the tendency to randomly call on me to answer questions. I was still terrified of speaking in front of the class, even if it was for one sentence. My social anxiety has always made my life so difficult, and no one ever understood it. I hated how everyone else seemed to have no anxiety at all. I was like a cripple compared to them. Their lives must be so much easier. Thankfully, there were no couples in this class, but I still had to see them when I walked through the school. The only thing I could do was keep my head down and pretend they didn’t exist. I still cried on the drive home every day. Grandma Jinx came to visit the United States in October, where she stayed at father’s house. This presented a difficult situation. She of course wanted to see me, her eldest grandson, but I wasn’t on speaking terms with my father and Soumaya. I was very resentful of my father for the way he treated me during that last incident, and I will never forgive him for it. My father effectively abandoned me at one of my most crucial points in my life. Though in fact, he was never really present in my life to abandon me in the first place. When I think about it, he was always absent from my life. When my whole world took a downward spiral into darkness after I hit puberty, he never made any effort to save me. He just didn’t care. I would never let what happened to me happen to a son of mine, if I had a son… though from the way things have been going, I’ll never have a chance to have a son, because girls don’t want to have sex me. I would make such a better father than my own father. Grandma Jinx pushed the both of us to reconcile. She insisted that I meet her and father at father’s house, where the three of us would set out to have lunch somewhere. I showed up and gave my grandma a hug. Father didn’t say a word to me, nor I to him. We went to our local Japanese restaurant. Father sat in silence while Grandma Jinx asked me lots of questions about my life. Eventually we got around to the subject that was hanging in the air. If it weren’t for my grandma, the conversation would have gotten nowhere. Father and I went back and forth at each other with accusations. Grandma Jinx persuaded the two of us to drop our grudges and move on. For her sake, we acquiesced. I shook hands with father as we agreed to put the past behind us. I went on a walk with Grandma Jinx after we returned to father’s house. I took her up to my old contemplation spot, the hilltop that overlooks father’s neighborhood, which I always called the Overlook. That place is one of the most special places in my life. I have memories of it stretching back all the way to when I was a joyful ten-year-old. I remember going up there to skateboard all the way down; I rode my bicycle up there during my middle school years; I hiked up there with Max when he was staying at father’s house as an exchange student; I languished there in despair when I went on my lonely walks at the age of seventeen and eighteen; and now I was showing it to my grandma. When the two of us reached the top, every memory came back to me, and I felt a bittersweet sense of nostalgia. After the walk, I didn’t want to enter father’s house. Soumaya was in there, and I hadn’t seen her since that dreadful day when she made father throw me out. Once again, my grandma forced the issue, and I agreed to go in for a talk. We all sat down at the kitchen table and agreed that arguing would get us nowhere. Father and Soumaya were willing to start over, and I agreed to give our relationship another chance. Before my grandma departed back to England, she made us promise to keep up the positive relations, and made sure that they would invite me over for dinner frequently. I soon went to one of those dinners at father’s house. It was an awkward experience, to have dinner with the two of them after all of that tension. We didn’t raise any issues and talked about pleasant things. It was nice to see my brother Jazz again. I was shocked by how much he had grown in the past several months. He was no longer a baby, but a five-year-old boy who was turning six soon. I could actually have full conversations with him. He was a very social boy, and quite boisterous… and that started to worry me. He could well turn into one of the people I have despised and envied so much. I felt a hint of jealousy that my five-year-old brother was so well versed in social skills at such a young age. I always suffered from shyness and social anxiety, but Jazz didn’t seem to have that problem. I put that worry at the back of my mind. He was my brother, and he really looked up to me. He was one of the few people who treated me the way I want to be treated, with respect and adoration. I enjoyed spending time with the boy. As I got more used to having a car of my own to drive, I frequently went on what I called “night drives” around my mother’s neighborhood. They almost replaced the long walks I used to take in the afternoons. Staying in my room all the time only increased my depression. It was suffocating. To ease this suffocation, I frequently got in my car at night, turned on the radio, and went on a drive with no particular destination. The song “Two Is Better Than One” always played on the radio when I went on those night drives. It made me feel sad, though it was soothing at the same time. That song will always remind me of the loneliness I felt during those experiences. I soon learned the hard way to not go on night drives on Fridays and Saturdays. That was when teenagers were out and about. Even in the peaceful residential neighborhood that my mother lived in, I frequently saw bands of teenagers roaming the streets. They were high schoolers, younger than me; mostly skateboarder punks or football jocks who had pretty girls beside them. The sight of them enraged me to no end. It reminded me of the life I missed out on. They were probably on their way to some house party, where they will get drunk and have sex and do all sorts of fun pleasurable things that I’ve never had the chance to do. Damn them all! My Autumn semester at Moorpark College flashed by like a subtle lightning bolt. It was as if it didn’t even exist in my life. Moorpark College was supposed to be a place of hope for me, but it turned into a place of despair, just like everything else. I was invisible there. Nobody knew I existed or cared who I was. At least this time I finished a class. The day of my final exam was December 7th, which was also the day the new expansion to World of Warcraft was released, called Cataclysm. I completed my final exam with ease, and thus I completed my first college class, in which I received the grade of a B. Afterwards, I rushed to Best Buy to purchase the new game. With new WoW expansions, some of those old feelings that I felt when I first played the game came back to me, and I wanted that feeling again. It was comforting, and the sense comfort was something I needed to cushion myself with. I also knew that I would beat James, Steve, and Mark to the next high level cap. I supposed it would provide a small sense of competitive satisfaction. Getting a character to the highest level the fastest was the only part of the game that I was truly good at, but I suppose that was due to the massive amounts of free time I had at my disposal. Since my college class was over and it was winter break, I could literally play the game for every waking minute. And so I did. My last stint in the World of Warcraft was an intense one. I reached the new level cap in less than two days, and once I was there I repeatedly took pleasure in killing James’s, Steve’s, and Mark’s characters as they tried to level up, as a petty form of revenge for them leaving me out of their group meetings years ago, and because I was jealous that Steve and Mark were more skilled at the game than I was. Being a higher level for those few days gave me the advantage I needed to even the score. But I digress. After two weeks of playing World of Warcraft nonstop, I once again came to the abrupt decision to quit. The new expansion was a major disappointment. Blizzard Entertainment, the creators of the game, made changes that I believe ruined everything that was fun about it. I won’t get into the details, as most of the people reading this won’t understand complicated video game terms anyway. But that was only a small part of the reason why I quit. The main reason was the disturbing new player-base. The game got bigger with every new expansion that was released, and as it got bigger, it brought in a vast amount of new players. I noticed that more and more “normal” people who had active and pleasurable social lives were starting to play the game, as the new changes catered to such a crowd. WoW no longer became a sanctuary where I could hide from the evils of the world, because the evils of the world had now followed me there. I saw people bragging online about their sexual experiences with girls… and they used the term “virgin” as an insult to people who were more immersed in the game than them. The insult stung, because it was true. Us virgins did tend to get more immersed in such things, because our real lives were lacking. I couldn’t stand to play WoW knowing that my enemies, the people I hate and envy so much for having sexual lives, were now playing the same game as me. There was no point anymore. I realized what a terrible mistake I made to turn my back on the world again. The world is brutal, and I need to fight for my place in it. My life was at a crucial turning point, and I couldn’t waste any more precious time. At the Lemelson’s Christmas party, I told James that I was quitting WoW again, and he told me he suspected I would very soon. It was just a matter of time. Even through playing with me over the internet, he could detect my anger and rage towards the world seeping through the computer screen. I questioned him about why he himself could go on living without feeling any sort of anger or resentment about his circumstances, which were similar to mine. He was, after all, a nineteen year old virgin just like I was. He just casually told me that didn’t pay attention to it, and focused on his strengths. What strengths do I have to focus on? I wondered. The world views me as a weakling. Perhaps I needed to prove the world wrong. On Christmas Day, father held a huge Christmas party at his house. I was invited, since I was back on speaking terms with them. I got a few new shirts for Christmas, so I decided to wear one for the occasion. I hadn’t seen any of father’s friends for a while, and it was nice to reunite with them. The Bubenheim’s weren’t there; father had recently got into a fight with Alex, abruptly ending their friendship. I suppose it was for the best. If Leo was at that party, I would have probably gotten into a nasty fight with him. My hatred of Leo was so volatile that I wanted to confront him. I wanted to hurt him. I couldn’t let him get away with the insults he dealt towards me in the past. A few family friends complimented my appearance, and that made me feel a bit better about myself. It is so peculiar how a simple smile or a compliment can completely change how I feel about the world for a few moments. During the remaining days of 2010, I joined my mother and sister at Jack’s beach house in Malibu to spend a few nights. They arrived there a few hours before me, and by the time I reached the house they had already invited a few guests for an afternoon get-together. To my outrage, I saw that mother had invited Maddy and her boyfriend. I was looking forward to having another respite at the beautiful Malibu mansion where I can indulge myself in opulence and forget about my depressing loneliness. Having a young couple lurking around only reminded me of my insignificance. I was extremely upset with my mother for inviting them. She should have been more considerate. If only I had a girlfriend of my own to take to that place. That beach house is the perfect place to take a girlfriend to. It had a swimming pool and a Jacuzzi, it was located on a private beach where we could walk arm in arm, and it even had a private movie theatre. Such an opportunity wasted, all because no girl would give me a chance. Instead, I was all alone, and I had to see another couple watch movies together in that very theatre. Thankfully, that couple only stayed for a few hours. Mother invited a few more guests, and we ordered our dinner to be delivered from a local restaurant. By the time dinner arrived, I had already consumed three glasses of wine, and I had a fourth glass with the meal. Everything’s better with some wine in the belly, as a famous character from Game of Thrones would say. I was left out of most of the conversations, like I always was, so I just sat there quietly, sipping my wine as I had to bear listening to Maddy talk about how awesome her life was. I excused myself as soon as I finished eating, and boy did I stuff myself on that meal. I then walked outside onto the beach. The wine had long since gone to my head, making me feel a sense of dizzy invigoration. I started walking along the shore, taking in the magnificence of the gentle, moonlit ocean. It was so… romantic. I kept walking and walking with no destination in mind. The romance of it all filled me with despair and longing. I wanted a girlfriend to experience that moment with me, but no girl wanted to be my girlfriend. The only thing I could do was imagine how heavenly it would be to have a beautiful girl by my side. It is such a shameful tragedy. I ended up walking for two hours, and at the end of it I was crying to myself because I felt so sad. When I returned to the house, Maddy and her boyfriend had left, and so did most of the guests. The only guests who remained were my mother’s friends Alan and Rebecca, and their sons, as they were spending the nights there with us. I spent the rest of my time there relaxing and watching movies in the theatre. We watched the entire Jurassic Park trilogy, which brought back fond memories of my childhood. I went on a few more walks on the beach during the daytime. That beach was always quiet and peaceful, since the only people who visited it were those who lived in homes on the beach. I took full advantage of this. I’ve always found beaches to be truly beautiful, but I could never go to public beaches because they are full of young couples walking around in their revealing bathing suits, the sight of which fills me with envious rage. On the private beach, I could enjoy the serenity of the environment without having to worry about young couples making me jealous. There were no young couples, only a few families and old couples here and there. I did, however, pass by one young girl, and she was like a goddess who came down from heaven. She was walking alone, in her bathing suit, with her luscious blonde hair blowing in the wind. I couldn’t help but slyly admire her beauty as we passed by each other. I was scared. I was scared that she might view me as nothing but an inferior insect who’s presence ruins her atmosphere. Her beauty was intoxicating! And then, just as we passed each other, she actually looked at me. She looked at me and smiled. Most girls never even deigned to look at me, and this one actually looked at me and smiled. I had never felt so euphoric in my life. One smile. One smile was all it took to brighten my entire day. The power that beautiful women have is unbelievable. They can temporarily turn a desperate boy’s whole world around just by smiling. That smile put me in a good, healthy mood for the rest of that walk, but it soon faded away as I realized that I could never actually have a girl as beautiful as that. She probably only smiled out of politeness. She would never go for me. And what is the point to life if I can’t have a girl of such beauty? Some men get to have beautiful girlfriends like that, and some don’t. I am among those who are denied such a pleasure, and that is why I hate life. After spending three days at the Malibu beach house, I was sad to leave it. I had a feeling I would never see the place again, and it was true. That was the last time I ever went there. Mother ended her relationship with Jack sometime within the following months, though she would never tell me directly about it. I spent New Year’s Eve alone and miserable, just like the previous year. And the year before that, for that matter. It was the last day my WoW account was active, and I logged onto WoW just for that occasion. I angrily had arguments with random people online who I saw bragging about their girlfriends. I spewed out all of my hatred towards them, but they were only amused. It was a very aggravating experience, and it made me glad that I cancelled my WoW account. There was nowhere I could hide anymore. Time was ticking, and a New Year was just beginning. I concluded that I had to put more effort into making better use of my time. I made a vow on New Year’s Day that I wouldn’t masturbate until I did something to successfully get one step further in life. Having a high sex drive, I usually masturbated at least every other day. I always fantasized about sex… and the fact that I was unable to have sex made me even more obsessed with it. To stop masturbating for more than three days was a big deal. I lasted seven days. On the seventh day my sexual urges became too overwhelming. My whole body was enveloped in it. I thought about girls every single second, and not having a girl to have sex with was unbearable. I could not even function anymore, so I had to break my commitment. The masturbation session I had after that seven-day dry spell was astounding. I did my usual fantasizing about having sex with a beautiful, tall blonde-haired girl; but this time I intensified it a lot, and made up a whole story in my mind just to make the experience seem more real. If only it could be real. Some men get to live that fantasy, whereas I could only dream of it. Life is not fair. I finished the fourth book of the Song of Ice and Fire series. The television adaptation, Game of Thrones was coming out in just a few months, and I was really looking forward to that. I was also looking forward to the fifth book of the series, which had a release date of July 12th. After finishing all four books, I had become a huge fan of the series. It depicted a much more exciting world than the one I lived in, with a large array of complex characters, a few of whom I could really relate to. As I was reading up about the release date for the fifth book, I found an online countdown that showed each day, hour, minute, and second that remained until July 12th. Since July 12th was so close to my 20th birthday, I used this countdown as the official countdown of my last days as a teenager. I made it my internet homepage, and hoped that it would motivate me to do everything I can to change my life during this crucial period. Since I was back in father’s good graces, my mother agreed to meet with him and me to talk about my life situation. We had dinner at a Japanese restaurant, where we had a long talk about what I was doing in my life, and what my college plans were. My mother and father both agreed that in order to change my life, I needed to remove myself from my current environment and start anew. Living at my mother’s apartment was becoming unhealthy, and they thought that things would improve if I had my own place. It was at this moment that we began to form the Santa Barbara plan, in which I would go to college in Santa Barbara and live amongst the students there. The Santa Barbara plan was formed on that night, but its roots stretch all the way back to when I just turned eighteen. It was all because I watched that movie Alpha Dog. The movie had a profound effect on me, because it depicted lots of good looking young people enjoying pleasurable sex lives. I thought about it for many months afterward, and I constantly read about the story online. I found out that it took place in Santa Barbara, which prompted me to read about college life in Santa Barbara. I found out about Isla Vista, the small town adjacent to UCSB where all of the college students live and have parties. When I found out about all this, I had the desperate hope that if I moved to that town I would be able to live that life too. That was the life I wanted. A life of pleasure and sex. I talked to my mother about the prospect of going to college in Santa Barbara a few times during my eighteenth year. She thought it was a good idea; it would certainly free her of the burden of living with me, but we never seriously considered it. Until that day. My mother proposed the plan to father, and father became very enthusiastic about it. We laid down the groundwork right then and there. Father was still suffering from his financial crisis, but he agreed to pay for my tuition and contribute five hundred dollars a month towards my living expenses, while my mother would pay for my apartment rent and continue to provide me with the car. I was to do one more semester at Moorpark for the time being, and then transfer to Santa Barbara City College in the summer. This was a very astonishing turn of events. I didn’t expect this, and I had no idea how to react. I was completely dumbfounded. I thought it was just going to be a casual dinner meeting where we would simply talk about my life, and we ended up making plans to drastically change my life. At that period of my life, I was on the verge of giving up all hope that I would ever live the life I want, but this changed everything. I now had the opportunity to start fresh, in a beautiful new town, at a new college, with my own living place. Of course, I would have to share an apartment with other college students, but that was part of the experience. It would give me more social credibility than living with my mother, that’s for sure. Deep down, I always wanted an opportunity like this; and now I had one, just at the time when I was about to give up on everything completely. It was very overwhelming, and I needed a few days to meditate and take it all in. It was such an unbelievable turn of events that I dismissed it from my mind in the following two months. It was still five months before I would start college in Santa Barbara, so I decided not to worry about it for the time being. At the present, I had to worry about my new semester at Moorpark that was just beginning. I was registered to take three classes for the Spring semester at Moorpark. The first was an early morning history class, followed by sociology and then psychology. They were all just as disastrous as I expected them to be. I had to drop the sociology class right on the first day, because there was this extremely hot blonde girl who took the class with her brute of a boyfriend. I couldn’t stand looking at them sitting together. I left the class mid-session because I couldn’t take it anymore. Dropping my sociology class left me with a huge gap of time in between my history and psychology classes. During this time I usually went to a quiet, secluded spot that had a few tables overlooking the view of the mountains. I spent a lot of time here, writing in my diary and contemplating my place in the world. My two remaining classes were not much better. In my history class, I had a crush on a really pretty girl, only to find out that she had a boyfriend, and in my psychology class there was this group of popular kids who acted obnoxious the whole time. One of them was a very pretty blonde girl, and she actually enjoyed associating with the obnoxious boys in her clique. The injustice! I hated them all. Everyone treated me like I was invisible. No one reached out to me, no one knew I existed. I was a ghost. It was agony, but I couldn’t drop all of my classes… I already felt guilty about dropping one of them, and I was afraid that my parents would somehow find out. I skipped class a lot, only going in for important lectures and tests, and spent a lot of time at my usual secluded area at the college. As I spent a lot of time contemplating, I realized that my life was repeating itself in a vicious circle of torment and injustice. Each new semester of college yielded the same lonely celibate life, devoid of girls or any social interaction. It was as if there was a curse of misfortune placed upon me. I wondered what the point was in attempting to start a new life in Santa Barbara. Hadn’t I done the same at Moorpark? I thought, with a shiver of dread running up my spine, about how horrible it would be if the same thing ends up happening after I make the big move to Santa Barbara. I didn’t even want to imagine how much of an epic defeat that would be. I wisely shut away all thoughts about it, and focused with intense determination on how I can change my life right at the current moment. My father gave me a book called The Secret after I had dinner at his house in February. He said it will help me develop a positive attitude. The book explained the fundamentals of a concept known as the Law of Attraction. I had never heard or read anything quite like this before, and I was intrigued. The theory stated that one’s thoughts were connected to a universal force that can shape the future of reality. Being one who always loved fantasy and magic, and who always wished that such things were real, I was swept up in a temporary wave of enthusiasm over this book. The prospect that I could change my future just by visualizing in my mind the life I wanted filled me with a surge of hope that my life could turn out happy. The idea was ridiculous, of course, but the world is such a ridiculous place already that I figured I might as well give it a try. In addition, I was so desperate for something to live for that I wanted to believe in the Law of Attraction, even if it was proven to me that it wasn’t real. Once I finished reading it, I drove all the way to Point Dume in Malibu and climbed out to the cliffs at the very edge. It was a windy day, and I could see the ocean roiling below me. As night fell, I looked out to the stars and proclaimed to the universe everything I wanted in life. I proclaimed how I wanted to be a millionaire, so I could live a luxurious life and finally be able to attract the beautiful girls I covet so much. I wished to make up for the years of youth that I wasted in bleak loneliness, and by doing so I would get revenge on everyone who thought they were better than me, just by becoming better than them through the accumulation of wealth. I believed that the only way for me to attain this wealth at the time was to win the Lottery, and that is what I visualized doing. I then descended the clifftop on Point Dume and walked along the Malibu ocean, just like I did a couple of months previously at the beach house. I saw a couple walking along the shore ahead of me; the man looked to be in his late 20’s or early 30’s, and the girl he was walking with looked like a supermodel. I assumed he was very rich and owned a nice house in Malibu. The two of them were walking hand in hand, and I saw him subtly place his hand on her ass every now and then. He was living the life. He was in heaven. I was envious, but since the man was older than me, it also gave me a twinge of hope, especially after my proclamation to the universe at the clifftop. If I become a multi-millionaire, I would be able to walk on the beach with a beautiful girlfriend too, and my life would be complete. That was what I wanted. That was what I wished for in my future. As I’ve always believed, I am destined for great things. Becoming a multi-millionaire at a young age is what I am meant for. My faith was soon broken, as I bought a few Megamillions Lottery tickets and visualized myself being the winner. I usually visualized it by meditating on the rooftop of my mother’s apartment right at the time of the drawing. A part of me knew it was impossible to will the universe to make me the winner just by wishing for it on a rooftop, but I was so desperate that I wanted to believe I could. I wanted to believe I had the POWER to do it. After failing to win when the jackpot reset because someone else won, I lost all faith in that book, and I almost ripped it apart in frustration. I desperately pondered if there was some other way I could make millions of dollars at my age, but I came up with nothing. I realized that my miserable, lonely virgin life was going to continue, and my only hope was to give Santa Barbara a try. I was still attending Karate class with James and Rob Lemelson every week. Most of the time, Rob couldn’t make it because he was busy with something, so it was mostly just James and I going together. It was a pleasant Friday night tradition that had lasted for the last several months, and I enjoyed the chance it gave to hang out with James and have some form of social interaction. But lately, things were starting to get tense. I was constantly annoyed at how I wasn’t getting better at my karate moves in the class, and that one little kid still treated me with disrespect because I was still a white belt, and he was a brown belt. I was also frustrated at how James was so much physically stronger than I was, and how he was so much more skilled at karate than me. During sparring sessions, the deep anger inside me that had accumulated over a life of pain and injustice would sometimes come out, and I used my anger to give me an advantage when I sparred with James and the other students. The karate teachers didn’t like this, and I was criticized. I found the anger to be quite euphoric when I used it to fight, and I enjoyed it in a bittersweet way. After our karate session, when me and James went to a restaurant in the Palisades to have dinner, I sometimes got very angry when I saw a group of teenagers, or a teenage couple. I constantly talked to James with vehement rage about my envy and anger at such people. I told him about how I wished I could make them all suffer. We had a lot of conversations about what we would do if we had all the power in the world, and I told him about all of the torturous acts of revenge I would carry out against all those who have insulted me or lived a better life than me. I thought that James would relate to me, since he was also a virgin who had no girls in his life, but some of the things I said began to disturb him. One night, he told me, with a lot of distress, that enough was enough. He didn’t want to hear it anymore. That was also the night that I decided to quit the karate class. I didn’t speak to James until the two of us attended Rob Lemelson’s birthday party in late Spring. It was celebrated at a very upper class restaurant in Los Angeles, and the Lemelson family rented a private room with seven tables for the occasion. The food was absolutely delicious, and the wine was exquisite. Each bottle was from 1985, and probably worth over a thousand dollars each. I was seated next to James at the “young person’s table”, and at that table I ran into none other than Julian Ritz-Barr! I hadn’t seen him since we were hanging out together with Charlie, John Jo, and Elijah… That was seven years ago. The oaf didn’t even remember who I was. I found out that his father was good friends with Rob. When I mentioned him earlier in the story, I talked about how much I would envy him, and this was the night when that happened. There were a few girls at our table, daughters of Rob’s friends. One of them was pretty, I believe she was the daughter of Pietro Scalia, a renowned film editor; she had very sexy eyes, and she was tall… I always had a thing for tall girls, and this one was almost taller than me. I had to suffer watching Julian sweet-talk all of the girls. He acted so confidently, and the way the pretty girl looked at him with those sexy eyes of hers… that was a look that no girl ever gave to me. I could tell that she was attracted to him. I became more enraged with each second I had to suffer through this. The girls treated me like I was invisible, but they all paid attention to Julian. What made it even worse was that Julian was a year younger than me, and he acted like an obnoxious prick, but the girls liked it! The more enraged I became, the more wine I drank. James was probably worried about how angry I was getting, and he tried to strike up random conversations with me to distract me from Julian. It was very hard to help myself from getting up and dumping my wine all over Julian’s stupid head. Perhaps I would have… if the birthday cake wasn’t presented so early. Everyone stood up to sing happy birthday to Rob, and then the meal was over. Some of the guests left, and James and I switched to a different table. By the time the party was over, I had consumed eight glasses of that 1985 wine. I was underage, but no one seemed to notice me drinking. I was literally stumbling out of the restaurant. I saw James again a couple of weeks later, and that would be the last time I see him for quite a while. It was at another dinner party of Rob’s that he held at his house in the Palisades, though for no special occasion. This time, another person who was a target of my extreme jealousy was there; his name was Roy, an Indonesian boy who was the son of Rob’s housemaid. He was four years younger than me and James, and he took pleasure in bragging to us about his success with girls. He kept showing us pictures of his supposed texting conversations with girls. James didn’t seem to mind it, to my outraged surprise. I, on the other hand, could barely tolerate the insolent little worm. At the party, James and I frequently went outside to have conversations about our fantasies. I wisely refrained from getting too extreme in what I said, but we came up with some interesting scenarios. For instance, we talked about what we would do if we discovered that we had certain magical powers, and it would escalate to us coming up with our own stories of the glory we would attain in such a situation. I talked about how I would use my powers to rule the world and set everything right, and James had similar ideas as well. We seemed to be getting along quite well, but after that night James would refuse to contact me for a couple of months. The first episode of my favorite television series of all time, Game of Thrones, was released in April. I watched it with profound excitement. Being a fan of the books, this was a very anticipated event for me. Seeing all of the characters that I knew so well on the television screen was spectacular. The show exceeded all of my expectations. Each week I looked forward to the next episode, and each episode gave me a small hint of joy in my otherwise bleak life. Towards the end of my Spring semester at Moorpark, I was so frustrated with my lonely status at the college that I refused to even drive up there in the last few weeks. I left my home in the mornings, pretending to my mother that I was going to college, but instead I went to Barnes & Noble and sat there until my mother left for work, and then I would go back home. I made sure to stay at Barnes & Noble for at least two hours, just in case my mother left later than usual. I have always ever been meticulously careful at everything I’ve done. On the last day, I went to my classes, quickly took my final exams, and left. When my classes lined up for the final exams, everyone had a group to socialize with while I stood on the side, alone. Everyone must have thought I was a complete loser. Thank goodness it was the last day. The people in those classes angered me to no end. That was the last time I would ever see that college. On the drive home, I cried to myself as I listened to music on the radio, as I always did. I failed to get the life I wanted at Moorpark. I had nothing going for me in my life, except for the prospect of starting a new life in Santa Barbara. That was my only hope, and it seemed very bleak. From the way things went at Moorpark, I feared the worst for how things might turn out in Santa Barbara, but I had to give it a try. I was desperate to have the life I know I deserve; a life of being wanted by attractive girls, a life of sex and love. Other men are able to have such a life… so why not me? I deserve it! I am magnificent, no matter how much the world treated me otherwise. I am destined for great things. At the end of Spring I had to commence with my summoning to jury service. I received the summons in the mail a few months prior, but I postponed it until May because I was too anguished to deal with such trivial matters at the time. The Courthouse was all the way in Santa Monica. As I sat in the waiting room before my interview with the judge, I saw a very pretty girl who looked about the same age as I was. She had a face that melted my heart. What I would give to hold her in my arms and kiss that pretty face of hers… I wanted to talk to her, but I just couldn’t. I felt too insecure. I was afraid she would think of me as a creep, as all other girls did. To my fury, another guy came in and struck up a conversation with her. They started talking comfortably, and he even made her laugh! I had to watch it all, and it broke my heart. I wanted to get out of there as soon as I could. I hoped that I could make an excuse to avoid having to do jury service. When I was called in for the interview, I requested to be excused due to the fact that I was moving to Santa Barbara soon. To my relief, the judge told me I can go and wished me good luck. As I drove out of the Courthouse parking lot, I saw the same pretty girl. She must have been excused as well. Again, I wished I could have said something to her. She would have made the perfect girlfriend for me, but she was probably already attracted to that other guy who sweet-talked her in the waiting room. Damn him! I felt so sad on the drive home. When I passed by the Palisades, I stopped by at a park that I used to play at with James when the two of us were little. I walked around for a bit and took a ride on the swing, reminiscing about happier times. At the very end of May, my mother gave me an unpleasant surprise by telling me that I had to move to Santa Barbara on June 4th, which was just in a few days. I wasn’t prepared to move so soon. I thought I would go there towards the end of June, right before I start my summer class. I wanted more time to emotionally and mentally prepare for such a huge undertaking. And it was a huge undertaking. For the first time in my life, I was moving out of my parent’s house; and on top of that, I had to move into an apartment with other college students. I had no idea what to expect, and of course I was very nervous. My mother and I found two apartment complexes in Isla Vista that I could potentially move into. I went with my mother and father on a day trip to Santa Barbara to take a look at them. We first had lunch at a restaurant on Cliff Drive, and while there I admired how beautiful Santa Barbara truly was. I found it to be like a mixture of Malibu and Santa Monica, depending on what part of it I was in. I was astounded when we toured through Isla Vista. It was a whole town of college students living together, right next to UCSB, and right next to the beach. I had never seen anything like it in my life. When I read about it online I thought it was too good to be true, but there it was. It was exactly as I expected it to be. There were hot blonde girls walking around everywhere. I always theorized that one of the main hindrances to me living the life I desire was my situation of living in my mother’s apartment. I thought to myself, as we explored more of this college town, that if I lived there, then there was no way I would have trouble getting a social life and losing my virginity. It was the perfect environment to do so. If I can’t get laid there, then there is no hope for me at all. The first apartment building we looked at was pleasant, but they only had shared rooms, and I wanted my own room. The second apartment building was called Capri Apartments, and they had a setup of many two-bedroom apartments shared between three college students, in which one occupies the single room and the other two occupy the shared room. The single rooms cost more, of course, but it wasn’t much. My parents and I sat down at a café to talk about it. We agreed that Capri Apartments was the best choice. My mother went back to their office to arrange a lease deal. Capri was a very popular apartment complex, so it was hard to get a spot there so late in the year. They didn’t have any Autumn semester apartment units ready until July, so it was arranged that I would stay in a temporary apartment unit for the first month, and then move to a permanent one in July once it was ready. The lease was signed and the deal was set. I was going to move to Santa Barbara on June 4th . My mother was very adamant that I move on that particular date. She said it was because she wanted me to go there and settle in before college started, but I knew the real reason. She always wanted me out of her house because she hated having to deal with me. The Santa Barbara plan would free her of me, and she wanted that so badly that she was willing to pay $900 a month for my apartment room rent. Basically, she was paying money to get rid of me. I realized that once I moved out, there was no going back. It will set a precedent, and the threshold will be crossed. My mother will never welcome me back to live with her permanently ever again. In the remaining days I had at my mother’s apartment, I spent a lot of time meditating about how I would deal with this huge change. I had to prepare myself as much as possible, so I did a lot of introspecting and evaluated myself in great detail. This move to Santa Barbara was the only chance I had of attaining the life I desire. I had to do my best to make this work, proclaiming to myself that this time, I will not fail. I exercised in the gym for many hours to boost my confidence as much as possible, and I went to the mall to shop for clothes. Last Christmas I got a few gift cards for Macy’s, and I spent them all on a few shirts that I thought I would look good in, as well as new shoes. After doing everything I could do to physically boost my confidence and appearance, I was ready. And so ends another era of my extraordinary and tragic life. I call it the era of Hope and Hopelessness, where I drifted and languished in lonely despair while I lived at my mother’s apartment and attended two colleges. At various intervals, something happened to give me a new hope for my life, only to have it shattered later on. My life had been moving in that same pattern for a long time now, and I was sick and tired of it. All while I was suffering this lonely existence, other boys my age lived their happy lives of pleasure and sex. I can never forgive such an injustice, and it was my bid to overcompensate for it in the future. I had to make up for all the years I lost in loneliness and isolation, through no fault of my own! It was society’s fault for rejecting me. It was women’s fault for refusing to have sex with me. The move to Santa Barbara is the endgame, the ultimate climax of everything. I saw it as a new chance that was given to me to finally have the things I want in life: love, sex, friends, fun, acceptance, a sense of belonging. But I could never forgive the world for denying me such things in the past. I was already turning twenty soon. I had already lost many years of my life. I deserve better than that. I am an intelligent gentleman, and I deserve the love of girls more than the other obnoxious boys of my age, and yet they get girls and I don’t. That is a crime that can never be forgotten, nor can it be forgiven. I always wanted to exact my revenge on humanity for forcing me to live such a life, but I’ve also always had the hope that if I can do things in life to make up for all my suffering, then that in itself would be a form of peaceful revenge. In truth, the move Santa Barbara was actually a chance that I was giving to the world, not the other way around! I was giving the world one last chance to give me the life that I know I’m entitled to, the life that other boys are able to live with ease. If I still have to suffer the same rejection and injustice even after I move to Santa Barbara, then that will be the last straw. I will have my vengeance. Part 6 Santa Barbara: Endgame Age 19-22 On Saturday, June 4th, 2011, I packed up all of my most important belongings into my car, said farewell to my mother, and drove off to face my destiny in the beautiful ocean-side town of Santa Barbara. It was raining as I arrived in the vicinity, and I felt a sense of ominous foreboding as I entered Isla Vista, my new home. My father met me outside my apartment; he came to help me move in. The two of us walked up to the leasing office where they gave me my new set of keys, and then one of the receptionists walked me to the apartment unit that I will be staying in for a month. I was introduced to two new housemates who would only be there for one week. One of them was named Artem, a quiet Russian student who went to UCSB; and the other, whose name I don’t remember, was a tall blonde surfer-type boy who went to SBCC. I was annoyed at how tall and attractive he was, though I didn’t show it. After I unpacked all of my belongings, father and I went out for a quick lunch before I said goodbye to him. And that was it. For the first time in my life, I was living independently, miles away from my parents, in a new town. I felt a sudden sense of anxiety, fear, and trepidation; but I also felt a sense of hope that my life could possibly change for the better. I exchanged small talk with my new housemates, and they seemed nice enough. It was hard to believe that I was actually living in an apartment with two other college students who I didn’t know until that day, especially for someone like me who has had very minimal social interaction with other young people. It felt so odd and peculiar. I was uncertain of what to expect, and the anxiety I felt from that uncertainty was overwhelming, but I knew I had to push through this. I knew this was the major turning point of my life. My life was finally changing, and I had to do my best to make that change a positive one. The very first night was traumatic and gave me a very bad taste about everything. Through my window I heard a lot of students partying outside, and I wondered, with a great amount of fear, how I would ever be able to join in on their fun. That was the reason I was there, after all. I didn’t think I was capable of it. Later in the night, I heard a boy and a girl having sex in the apartment above me. Just knowing that other young men get to enjoy the pleasures of sex while I get none of it has always filled me with envious rage, as well as bitter hatred towards the world; but to actually hear them doing it? That was even more traumatizing. I was prepared for this, however. I had done a lot of research about college life in the town of Isla Vista, and I knew that students had a lot of sex there. I had an inkling of a suspicion that I would eventually hear or even see people doing such things if I lived in that environment. Hell, the reason I moved there was because it was a sexually active place. I myself wanted to be sexually active. But when I heard that couple above me having sex, I couldn’t help feeling vile and miserable about it. I tried to calm myself down and convince myself that soon I will be doing the exact same thing. How wrong I was. My first week turned out to be very unpleasant, leaving a horrific first impression of my new life in Santa Barbara. My two housemates were nice, but they kept inviting over this friend of theirs named Chance. He was black boy who came over all the time, and I hated his cocksure attitude. Inevitably, a vile incident occurred between me and him. I was eating a meal in the kitchen when he came over and started bragging to my housemates about his success with girls. I couldn’t stand it, so I proceeded to ask them all if they were virgins. They all looked at me weirdly and said that they had lost their virginity long ago. I felt so inferior, as it reminded me of how much I have missed out in life. And then this black boy named Chance said that he lost his virginity when he was only thirteen! In addition, he said that the girl he lost his virginity to was a blonde white girl! I was so enraged that I almost splashed him with my orange juice. I indignantly told him that I did not believe him, and then I went to my room to cry. I cried and cried and cried, and then I called my mother and cried to her on the phone. How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves. I deserve it more. I tried not to believe his foul words, but they were already said, and it was hard to erase from my mind. If this is actually true, if this ugly black filth was able to have sex with a blonde white girl at the age of thirteen while I’ve had to suffer virginity all my life, then this just proves how ridiculous the female gender is. They would give themselves to this filthy scum, but they reject ME? The injustice! Females truly have something mentally wrong with them. Their minds are flawed, and at this point in my life I was beginning to see it. The more I explored my college town of Isla Vista, the more ridiculousness I witnessed. All of the hot, beautiful girls walked around with obnoxious, tough jock-type men who partied all the time and acted crazy. They should be going for intelligent gentlemen such as myself. Women are sexually attracted to the wrong type of man. This is a major flaw in the very foundation of humanity. It is completely and utterly wrong, in every sense of the word. As these truths fully dawned on me, I became deeply disturbed by them. Deeply disturbed, offended, and traumatized. Those two housemates moved out within a week. I was glad to see them go, after that horrible incident. I was then presented with two new housemates, who would be staying in the apartment for the rest of the month that I was there. Their names were Daniel Faynshell and Reed Mankins. Reed was a quiet Asian-American student who was studying biology at UCSB, and Daniel was a heavy-set Russian student who had a witty personality. Both of them were older than me by a couple of years. Daniel was very social and talkative. He often tried to start conversations with me, which I actually liked. Social interaction was always welcome in my lonely life, and I found him to be a very interesting person. It was nice to have someone reach out to me. Soon enough, my summer session at Santa Barbara City College began. I had enrolled for two classes, a history class and a geography class. The history class started at 8:00 in the morning. When my alarm rang, I enthusiastically put on one my new shirts as I got ready to start my first day of my new college. The weather was sunny and bright as I made the drive down the 101 Freeway. This was it. This was the moment of truth. My whole life has led to this. I was starting a new college, in a beautiful new town. This was my fresh start to attain the life I’ve been craving for so long. If I am unable to make it in this opportunistic environment, then I am doomed forever. I felt a surge of confidence as I ascended the flight of stairs that led up to the main campus. For my first class, which was history, I had to cross the iconic bridge to the west campus. I tried to feel as confident and sure of myself as possible, thinking that all of the girls I passed were attracted to my appearance. They should be. I spent a lot of time choosing out that shirt and doing my hair. When I reached the classroom, I saw some pretty girls waiting outside. My new classmates, I thought with excitement. I was a bit dismayed that they didn’t pay any attention to me. They didn’t even look at me. I was sure I had an attractive appearance that day, but those girls didn’t seem to notice it. Perhaps I was deluding myself. As all of the students started pouring in, a group of typical popular-type boys sat near me. Their overly social and obnoxious personalities offended me, and I felt like getting up and leaving. They somehow knew all of the pretty girls in the class, and it broke my heart to watch them chat up the girls. How could I compete with those popular kids? I hated them so much. I’ve wanted to be like them all my life, ever since elementary school, but they never accepted me. They have caused my life to be a living hell for so long. Right then, on the very first day of SBCC, I was going through the exact thing as I did at every other school I’ve been to; the feeling of being a lonely, unwanted outcast. That class was horrible, but I didn’t want to give up so soon. I couldn’t! My whole life depended on my success in Santa Barbara. I attended my geography class next. This class was much more interesting, and more relaxed, but it didn’t have any pretty girls in it. After lunch I walked over to the cafeteria area, and I saw so many pretty blonde girls sitting around. I wished I had the courage to go up to them and ask one on a date, but they would have seen me as a creep. Girls are so cruel. After I left the campus I drove around downtown Santa Barbara to explore new areas. I went up and down State Street, the main common area of the city where everyone frequents. Countless restaurants and shops lined a magnificently designed street with wide walkways. It was absolutely beautiful… a true paradise, for those who were thriving there. I can only imagine how heavenly it would be to walk with a beautiful girlfriend down that street. My life would be complete if I get to do that. It would be the epitome of gratifying perfection. To have a beautiful blonde girl by my side, to feel her hand clasping my own as we walk everywhere together, to feel her love! That is what I want in life. Instead, I had to watch other men experience my idea of heaven while I rot in bitter loneliness. And there were a lot of young couples on State Street. The whole area was full of young people enjoying their pleasurable little lives. I saw groups of good looking popular boys and girls gleefully walking together. It reminded me of that fateful night, years ago, when I walked through the Calabasas Commons and saw the same thing. And there I was, over two years later, still in the exact same position. It was very hard to deal with. I quickly drove back to my apartment and cried to myself, soaking my pillow in the tears of my agony. So far, Santa Barbara was not working. I dreaded how horrible it would be to continue suffering my miserable, lonely, celibate life in such a beautiful city where everyone else experienced the pleasures of sex and love. That would be the darkest hell. And that was exactly what was in store for me. After a couple of days I decided to drop my history class. I couldn’t stand watching those obnoxious popular boys talk to all of the pretty girls in the class. The girls actually liked them! I should be the one they pay attention to, but they treated me like I was invisible. I didn’t want to torture myself any longer. I felt a sense of guilt as I did it, because I made a bid to make the best of my time in Santa Barbara. Once the class was dropped, I felt a sense of relief. I was still enrolled in the geography class, and it was only the summer session. I had plenty of time to make up for it. I spent the rest of my first month trying as hard as I could to put myself out in the social environment of Isla Vista. Daniel was twenty three years old, so I asked him to purchase some alcohol for me, a bottle of vodka in particular. In that college town, everyone went out with at least a little alcohol in their system. I wasn’t an alcoholic, but drinking alcohol always helped me with being more confident and sociable. On weekend nights, I took a few shots from my vodka bottle and set out on walks around the town, desperately hoping that I would stumble across some opportunity to make friends. I often ended up sitting alone at some café, hoping girls would talk to me before I sobered up. No girl ever did. I then went back home to lie in my bed alone. On one such night I got drunk enough to introduce myself to some other students who lived in the same apartment complex. They were sitting in the common area of the apartment, and I went up to their group and sat down with them. They weren’t hostile towards me, and I was able to exchange some form of small talk with them. After a while though, I ended up just sitting there awkwardly, and they eventually questioned why I was so quiet. I hated when people did that… no one ever understands the troubles of someone who suffers from social anxiety. They offered me a few beers, which I gladly accepted. I ended up getting so drunk that I completely blacked out. I stumbled back to my apartment and vomited on the floor, just like I did on that embarrassing night at Addison Altendorf’s birthday party. The next morning, I didn’t even remember that I vomited. Daniel informed me of what happened, with an amused grin on his face. I felt so ashamed, but at least I did something more social than anything else I’ve done in the last few years. That was some progress, I supposed. Due to living in an entirely new environment, with lots of new experiences to come with it, the first month in Santa Barbara went by very slowly. I was relieved when July arrived, and I was able to visit home for a weekend. When I arrived back in Woodland Hills, I felt like I hadn’t been there for ages. It was a pleasant feeling, as it gave me the subconscious impression that my life was finally moving forward instead of staying stagnant. When I arrived back at my mother’s apartment, she was away at work, and Georgia was at school. I took a moment to relax after going through so much trauma and unrest, catching up on all of the Game of Thrones episodes that I missed, including the Season 1 finale. Later that night, I met my mother and father at an upscale restaurant near Warner Center, and they both seemed very proud of me. I wasn’t proud of myself, as I barely met my expectations in my first month in Santa Barbara. I had an exquisite meal at the restaurant, and while there I saw a pretty girl walk in with her family. I glanced at her and she glanced at me. I desperately wondered if she thought I was attractive, and I tried to convince myself that she was attracted to me, in an effort to feel better about myself. Whether she was attracted to me or not is a question I will never know the answer to. There was no school on the following Monday, due to the 4th of July Holiday. I went with my mother to the annual 4th of July party at the Lemelson’s. There, I saw James for the first time in a while. It felt good to see him again. He had been ignoring me in the last couple of months, but the two of us reignited our good friendship at the party. I told him that I was now going to college in Santa Barbara, and he seemed happy for me. As I ate dinner with him, Noah, and a few of Noah’s friends at a table outside, I filmed a funny video that I still have on my phone to this day. On the next morning, I made my drive back to Santa Barbara to finish the second half of my summer session. I prayed that I would have a better experience from then on. When I got back to Capri Apartments it was time for me to transfer to my permanent apartment unit, the apartment unit that I was set to stay in for the whole year. I loaded all of my belongings into my car and said goodbye to Daniel and Reed. I enjoyed my stay with them. They made for excellent college housemates. Before I left, Daniel told me that I should come to visit in the future. My new apartment was in another Capri Apartments building. The main building was on Seville Road, in the center of Isla Vista. The other building that I was meant to stay at was on Abrego Road, a few blocks away, towards the edge of the town. At first I was unsure of the location, though it was still walking distance from all of the action. It was definitely quieter in that area, so that was a positive. One of the receptionists showed me to my new bedroom. The apartment unit was empty. My new housemates wouldn’t be moving in until August, so I would have the whole apartment to myself for the month of July. I quite liked that. It would provide me with the comfort to settle into the place. I had no idea who my new housemates were going to be, and I was hoping they would be people I could be friends with to help improve my social life. All of the rooms were randomly assigned at Capri Apartments, so I had no control over who I would end up with. I could only hope that they would be at least tolerable, because they were to be my housemates for the whole year. My father drove up to Santa Barbara to meet me a few days later. The two of us went to have lunch at a restaurant in the Camino Real Marketplace, an area that I often frequented. When we sat down at our table, I saw a young couple sitting a few tables down the row. The sight of them enraged me to no end, especially because it was a dark-skinned Mexican guy dating a hot blonde white girl. I regarded it as a great insult to my dignity. How could an inferior Mexican guy be able to date a white blonde girl, while I was still suffering as a lonely virgin? I was ashamed to be in such an inferior position in front my father. When I saw the two of them kissing, I could barely contain my rage. I stood up in anger, and I was about to walk up to them and pour my glass of soda all over their heads. I probably would have, if father wasn’t there. I was seething with envious rage, and my father was there to watch it all. It was so humiliating. I wasn’t the son I wanted to present to my father. I should be the one with the hot blonde girl, making my father proud. Instead, my father had to watch me suffer in a pathetic position. Life is so cruel to me. When I said my farewell to father before he drove home, I felt absolutely miserable. I then went back to my room and sulked for hours. Another incident happened on the following day, near the same location. I went to the Starbucks at the Camino Real Marketplace by myself, like I usually did every morning. I ordered my coffee and sat down on one of their chairs to relax. A few moments later, when I looked up from my drink, I saw a young couple standing in line. The two of them were kissing passionately. The boy looked like an obnoxious punk; he was tall and wore baggy pants. The girl was a pretty blonde! They looked like they were in the throes of passionate sexual attraction to each other, rubbing their bodies together and tongue kissing in front of everyone. I was absolutely livid with envious hatred. When they left the store I followed them to their car and splashed my coffee all over them. The boy yelled at me and I quickly ran away in fear. I was panicking as I got into my car and drove off, shaking with rage-fueled excitement. I drove all the way to the Vons at the Fairview Plaza and spent three hours in my car trying to contain my tumultuous emotions. I had never struck back at my enemies before, and I felt a small sense of spiteful gratification for doing so. I hated them so much. Even though I splashed them with my coffee, he was still the winner. He was going home to have passionate heavenly sex with his beautiful girlfriend, and I was going home to my lonely room to sleep alone in my lonely bed. I had never felt so miserable and mistreated in my life. I cursed the world for condemning me to such suffering. I wanted to do horrible things to that couple. I wanted to inflict pain on all young couples. It was around this point in my life that I realized I was capable of doing such things. I would happily do such things. I was capable of killing them, and I wanted to. I wanted to kill them slowly, to strip the skins off their flesh. They deserve it. The males deserve it for taking the females away from me, and the females deserve it for choosing those males instead of me. Ever since I was seventeen, I often fantasized about becoming powerful and inflicting suffering upon everyone who has wronged me in the past, but I never thought I would actually do it. At this point, after going through so much suffering and injustice, all of my innocence had been swept away. The world had been cruel to me, and it molded me to become strong enough to actually have the capability of returning that cruelness to the world. I had never been a violent person in nature, but after building up so much hatred over the years, I realized that I wouldn’t hesitate to kill or even torture my hated enemies if I was given the opportunity. I spent the next five days in my room, trying to forget about the horrific experiences I had to go through. But even in my room, I couldn’t escape from being reminded of my worthlessness. Every time I looked out my window to the courtyard, I saw young people socializing. Obnoxious drunk boys were chatting up pretty girls, and I wondered with great panic if they would be having sex together in the night. I often fantasized about barging into their rooms while they had sex and slashing them to death with my knife. Before I knew it, it was July 12th and the countdown on my internet homepage was up. The new Song of Ice and Fire book, A Dance with Dragons, was released. I emailed my mother to order me the book from Amazon. The countdown was ultimately over, and I had nothing to show for it. I was still a virgin, even after a month of living in a town full of college kids who had sex all the time. I realized that I had only twelve more days as a teenager! I was going to turn twenty very soon. One of my hopes was to at least lose my virginity before my time as a teenager was over. Being a virgin at the age of twenty would make me feel very defeated. I made a bid to do everything I could to lose my virginity in those few remaining days I had. With a tremendous amount of panic, I wondered what I could possible do. The only thing I could think of was to go out to the common areas of Isla Vista as much as possible. I had to put myself out there, even if it only increased my chances of having sex by one percent. One percent was still better than zero. For those crucial twelve days I had left as a teenager, I walked over to the center of Isla Vista every day and sat at one of the tables outside Domino’s Pizza, hoping against hope that a girl would come up and talk to me. Why wouldn’t they? I looked good enough, didn’t I? Or did I not look good enough? Such thoughts flew through my head in frantic waves. For dinner, I always walked over to the healthy restaurant called Silvergreen’s. There were always hot girls there, but none of them deigned to even look at me. On every one of those nights, I walked home alone, with my head down in defeat. I made no progress in school either. My geography class had no pretty girls in it, so I had no hope there. I spent a lot of time sitting in the cafeteria area, but all of the beautiful girls I saw intimidated me too much. One time, as I was walking across the huge bridge that connected the two campuses, I passed by a girl I thought was pretty and said “Hi” as we neared each other. She kept on walking and didn’t even have the grace to respond to me. How dare she! That foul bitch. I felt so humiliated that I went to one of the school bathrooms, locked myself in a toilet stall, and cried for an hour. On one of my very last days as a teenager, as I was sitting at my usual place at the food court outside Domino’s, I saw a sight that shattered my heart to pieces. A tall, blonde, jock-type guy walked into one of the restaurants, and at his side was one of the sexiest girls I had ever seen. She too was tall and blonde. They were both taller than me, and they kissed each other passionately. They made me feel so inferior and worthless and small. I glared at them with intense hatred as I sat by myself in my lonely misery. I could never have a girl like that. The sight was burned into my memory, and it caused a scar that will haunt me forever. When they walked away, I followed them in my car for a few minutes, and when they entered a less inhabited area I opened my window and splashed my iced tea all over them. It was all I could do at the time, but at least it was something. At least I made some effort to fight back against the injustice. I felt sick with hatred that night. The hatred boiled inside me with burning vitriol. My summer session ended with no positive effect on my life. After I completed my final exam, on which I received the grade of a B, I drove back to my hometown feeling defeated. Shortly after, my 20th birthday finally came. Soumaya and Jazz were away in Morocco for the summer, so father met up with me, my mother, and my sister at an upscale restaurant in Encino. My parents didn’t show any concern for how miserable I felt about being a twenty-year-old virgin. They treated it as if it was any normal birthday. They didn’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation, which annoyed me immensely. The restaurant had an “all-you-can eat” buffet system, and I greatly stuffed myself that night. Delicious food was the only vice I was able to enjoy, since I was deprived of sex. I had a very fast metabolism, so I could eat as much as I wanted without getting fat. I suppose that was one advantage in my rather disadvantageous life. When I got back to my mother’s apartment, she let me have a bottle of wine, and I truly drank my fill. “Everything’s better with some wine in the belly.” I spent the rest of the night pondering over what was in store for me at that point in life. I was no longer a teenager, and I’ll never be able to experience having sex as a teenager. My teenage years were completely denied to me by the cruelness of women. The only way I could make up for it was if I could have an extraordinary sex life in my twenties. I would have to have a profoundly amazing decade in my twenties to compensate for all the misery I experienced in my teens. If I fail to do that, then I have nothing to live for. Sadly, I will only experience the opposite in my early twenties, and it will destroy me. 20 Years Old I stayed in my hometown for a week. One of my birthday presents was a gift card to Nordstrom. I spent it on a couple of new polo shirts that made me feel a little more confident. Buying new clothes would always give me a temporary boost of confidence, and I practiced it as if it was a drug. Before I left for Santa Barbara, I reunited with Philip and Addison after a very long period of not seeing them. The three of us met up at the Calabasas Commons, and then we went in Philip’s car to Malibu for a few adventures. We ended up settling down at Starbucks and had a few insightful conversations. Addison had changed and matured tremendously, and he was no longer associating with the popular Malibu high school kids. This didn’t change my resentment towards him, and I kept confronting him the whole time about the insulting way he treated me over a year ago. After a lot of debating, we agreed to resolve our conflict with each other. This didn’t mean I forgot all of the slights he dealt to me in the past, however. I never forget. I never forgive. One day I’ll show him how superior I am. On the day after I saw Philip and Addison, I went over to James’s house. I hadn’t been there for ages, and the two of us relived our traditional walks around the Palisades town center, just like old times. It felt strange and nostalgic to experience it after so long, especially after going through so many changes in Santa Barbara. I told James about my turmoil of being a twenty-year-old virgin, and my desperate hope that things will get better once I start my Autumn semester at my new college. I talked about all the beautiful blonde girls I saw walking around my college, and my deep wish that I will have one day have one as a girlfriend. James sympathized with me greatly, for he was also going through similar troubles in life. He seemed glad that I was finally taking some steps to bring changes to my life. I drove back to Santa Barbara in a slightly better mood than I was in when I left it. I had a month until the new semester started, and I could use that time to prepare and recuperate. My new housemates were meant to move into the second bedroom of my apartment on August 5th. I had an anxious feeling of anticipation for what they will be like. August 5 th came quickly, and I prepared myself to be in a pleasant mood to meet them. Their names were Ryan and Angel, and to my dismay they were of Hispanic race. In addition, the two of them were already friends with each other, which meant that they could possibly gang up against me if any conflicts were to arise. They also seemed like rowdy, low-class types. My first impression of them soured me, but I tried to be pleasant and not show it. The two of them acted cordial to me on the first day, but after observing them for a bit, I had a bad feeling that they would be trouble to live with… And they were to be my housemates for a whole year! When I was alone in my room, I panicked to myself at how dire a situation this was. This was extremely disappointing. I was hoping I would get decent, mature, clean-cut housemates. Instead I got low-class scum. On the second day, they started inviting their equally rowdy friends into my apartment, and we exchanged more small talk. To my indignant surprise, they asked me the question I always dreaded answering: “Are you a virgin?” I admitted that I was a virgin. I always admitted the truth about this. It was my life struggle, and I couldn’t lie about such a thing. They then had the audacity to tell me that they lost their virginity long ago, bragging about all the girls they had slept with. I particularly hated Angel because of his ugly pig-face. How could such an ugly animal have had sexual experiences with girls, and yet I haven’t? What was wrong with this world? I got so angry that I went to my room and punched the wall. They heard me and started laughing. It was almost a repeat of what I experienced with that black boy named Chance in the old apartment, except this time it was worse because these were my housemates for the year! On the day after, I almost got into a physical fight with Angel. The ugly pig kept acting as if girls thought he was more attractive than me. Hah! I am a beautiful, magnificent gentleman and he is a lowclass, pig-faced thug. I had enough of his cocksure attitude, and I started to call him exactly what he was. I tried to insult him as much as I could, telling him how superior I am to him, and saying that he was lowclass. He tried to attack me, but Ryan, being the more mellow of the two, held him back. A pity, I was itching for a chance to hurt that obnoxious little animal. Though I suppose it was for the best… My life was too important to risk doing anything rash. In a panic, I immediately called my mother as soon as I could and told her of the dire situation. There was no way I could live with those two imbeciles for the whole college year. They already ruined my weekend. My mother agreed that I needed to get out of there, so I went to the leasing office and explained to the manager everything that happened. He told me that there was another room available for me to transfer to, but it would cost one hundred more dollars a month, because it was a larger two bedroom unit and I would only be sharing it with one housemate, who would occupy the other room. I called my mother and she gave me permission to go through with it. I signed the new lease, arranging to transfer when the room became available in September. I would have to bear living with them for the rest of the month until then. To help get through the month, my mother let me come home every weekend until I was able to transfer to the new apartment. I would only stay in Santa Barbara during the weekdays, but on those weekdays Angel and Ryan went out of their way to make my life a living hell. Every time they went out they kept yelling to me how they’re going to sleep with hot girls that night. I knew they were just lying to make me jealous. They always made fun of me for being a virgin. At night, they frequently made noise to wake me up. I was literally being bullied, and it was truly horrific. I wanted to kill them both, but of course I was smart enough not to go through with that desire. All I could do was remember every single insult, so I can get revenge in a more efficient way in the future. That is who I am. I don’t act stupidly or rashly. I remember every insult, and I wait until the time is right to strike. When that time comes, I will crush all of my enemies in the most devastating and catastrophic way possible, and the results will be beautiful. On one of the weekends in which I went home during August, my mother moved out of the Versailles apartment complex, and moved into the Summit Townhomes, near Warner Center. It was an abrupt decision to move there. I helped her pack everything and watched as the movers transported all of our belongings to the new place. The Summit was much nicer looking than her old apartment; I’ll say that for it. It was a townhome with an upstairs room that I would occupy whenever I visit home. I was glad that she moved to a better place, but I would have much rather she got married to a wealthy man and moved into his mansion. Even though she was no longer seeing Jack, she dated other men of high class. She had a special way of charming them. I continued to pester her to get married so that I can be part of an upper class family and enjoy all the benefits that would come with that, but she always refused, claiming that she never wants to get married due to her unpleasant experiences with my father. I told her that she should suffer through any negative aspects of marriage just for my sake, because it would completely save my life, but she still refused. I went over to James’s house during my visit home. The two of us chatted online a lot, and when I told him that I was in town, he seemed eager to see me. I was eager to see him too, as he was my closest friend and I had a lot to talk to him about. I drove up Topanga Canyon to his house, not knowing that it will be the last time I ever visit him. The two of us did what we usually did. We walked out to the Palisade’s Bluff’s where we discussed our hopes and dreams. We then went to the Palisades town center to have dinner. This time we chose to eat at Panda Express. While we were eating, some high school kids walked in. James saw them first, and right when he saw them he said the words “We’re fucked”. James knew I would have trouble with them. They were popular boys who had a flock of pretty girls with them. One of them sat down with two of the girls, putting his leg up on another chair with a cocky smirk on his face. I was livid with rage, and I wanted to pour my drink all over his head. James knew exactly what I was planning to do; we had been through similar incidents before. He made a lot of effort to try to dissuade me from acting on my anger, pointing out that there was a security guard nearby. I did the only other thing I could do; I packed up my dinner and left the restaurant, fleeing in defeat and shame. James soon followed, and we decided to finish our meal at his house. A dark and ominous aura clouded over our friendship that day. When the two of us got back to James’s house, I was still seething with rage. I didn’t understand why James wasn’t angry like me. The sight that we just witnessed was horrible to watch. To see another male be successful with females is torture for males like us who have no success with females. I was so angry that I told James of all of the acts of revenge I wanted to exact on those popular boys. I told him my desire to flay them alive, to strip the skins off their flesh and make them scream in agony as punishment for living a better life than me. James became deeply disturbed by my anger. I wished that he wasn’t disturbed. I wished he could be a friend that felt the same way about the world that I did. But he wasn’t that kind of person. He was a weakling. Once I had calmed down, the two of us had a long conversation in his room, and I ended up crying in front of him as I explained how hopeless I felt about life. Soon after that, I left his house, never to return there again. He will never invite me over after that incident, and our friendship will slowly fade to dust. During the last few days that I had to endure living with those barbaric housemates, I often walked out to Isla Vista hoping that I could meet a girl and take her home with me. I wanted to prove to them all that girls liked me, to see the look on their faces when they see a girl by my side. But of course, I had nothing to prove because girls didn’t like me. Every time I tried to go out and meet a girl, I ended up walking home alone in anger. On one of these nights, I crossed paths with a boy who was walking with two pretty girls. I got so envious that I cursed at them, and then I followed them for a few minutes. They just laughed at me, and one of the girls kissed the boy on the lips. I’m assuming she was his girlfriend. That was one of the worst experiences of torture from girls that I’ve had to endure, and it will be a scar in my memory forever, to remind me that girls think I’m unworthy compared to other boys. I ran home with tears pouring down my cheeks, hoping that my horrible housemates wouldn’t be there to witness my shame. I tried to spark a positive attitude on the first day of my Autumn semester at Santa Barbara City College. I was registered for three classes; history, astronomy, and math. My history and astronomy classes were in the morning, and my math class was late in the afternoon, so on school days I had to spend the entire day at the college. I figured this would be beneficial, because it would keep me out of my room and in a place where possible opportunities might come my way. I had to wait a couple of hours before my math class started, and I spent those hours roaming around the college or sitting in the library, looking at all of the hot girls and wishing I could have one as a girlfriend. I was like a starving man surrounded by a feast that I was prohibited to eat. All of my classes left me feeling hopeless and depressed. Not only was I unable to meet any girls, and there were a lot of pretty ones, but I also had a hard time making any friends. I’ve always had a hard time making friends… I’m not the type of person that can fit in with a group of outgoing people; the last time I did such a thing was when I was twelve. I had to make friends. Having a social circle will provide me with more opportunities to meet girls, and it was the only way to get invited to all of those exciting college parties. But no one even wanted to be my friend. I actually tried to initiate small talk with guys who sat next to me, but it never went far. I had a horrible feeling that I was in for a very miserable time in Santa Barbara. I did make one friend through spending time in my apartment’s courtyard. This friend’s name was Andy Chan; he was a foreign student from China. Andy shared the same eagerness as I did to experience college life in Isla Vista to the fullest; and unlike most people my age, I found him to have some intelligence and substance. The two of us walked out to Del Playa Street in Isla Vista a few times, the place where all the parties happen, but nothing ever came of it. I still felt like an outcast, even though I had a friend with me; and I still felt inferior compared to all of those guys who walked around with beautiful girls. On September 5th, I was finally able to move into my new permanent apartment unit. I felt relieved that I would never have to deal with the likes of Ryan and Angel ever again, though I did worry that I will eventually run into them again because my new unit was still in the same apartment complex. Once I was given the keys, I quickly transported all of my belongings to the new place. I was supposed to have only one housemate who would live in the other room of the unit, but he hadn’t moved in yet. I had no idea who my new housemate would be, but I was told that he was an older student who attended the University. That knowledge made me feel assured that he would be tolerable to live with. He was set to arrive in two weeks, so I had the place to myself until then. I unpacked all of my things and set up my new room. Once I was done, I looked at it and thought to myself that this was it; this was my new living place in the college town of Isla Vista, and if I could finally have the life I wanted, then this may well be the room where I lose my virginity! How wrong I was. It would only be another room where I suffer miserable loneliness. No girl will ever step foot in it. Santa Barbara was not going well for me. I was already months into my twentieth year and I had nothing to show for it. As I spent the first weeks of September in my new room, all alone, I fully realized how much I was failing at life. Santa Barbara was supposed to be a place of hope, a place where I could start a new, happy life. I couldn’t believe how wrong everything was turning out. Instead of finally getting a chance to live a life of sex and love like other young people did, I only experienced worse rejection and humiliation than I had ever experienced before. This was unbelievable and unforgivable. If humanity continued to insult me with such cruelty, then there really was no hope for happiness in my life. At Santa Barbara City College, I had exactly the same experience that I had at Moorpark. I had to watch beautiful young people enjoying their lives together as I languished in loneliness and despair, because no one accepted me. I dropped my math class – I just couldn’t bear having to be at the college all day long, sitting in the library watching couples kiss each other. I retained my two morning classes only because there was still some small inkling of desperate home inside me. My usual day went as follows: I woke up alone in my bed, with no girl beside me, and did a few minutes of exercise before I showered and got ready for college; I then drove to Starbucks to have my morning latte and felt envious whenever I saw a young couple there; I would then attend my two classes where no one said a word to me, having to endure the torment of watching other guys talking to the girls I liked; And then I would go home alone, open the door to my lonely room, and feel absolutely miserable. The loneliness was suffocating. I could barely breathe. If only one pretty girl had at least given me a chance and tried to get to know me, everything would have turned out differently, but girls continued to treat me with disdain. The loneliness was torturing me so intensely that I even started up my WoW account and played the game constantly for the month of September. James still played WoW, and the two of us played together online for a few days, but he treated me very coldly the whole time. I could tell that the kind of friendship we had for so many years no longer existed. That last incident in the Palisades stabbed our friendship deeply, and it was in the process of bleeding away. At the time, I felt offended by his attitude towards me, so I called him out on it. This sparked a long argument between us that resulted in James refusing to talk to me online anymore. A few days after that, I deactivated my account again. My new housemate arrived in the middle of September. His name was Spencer Horowitz; a short, chubby UCSB student who was about a year older than me. He seemed like a friendly, mature sort of person; definitely a pleasant contrast from the housemates I had to suffer through in the previous month. I didn’t expect to have any problems with him. However, I was a disappointed due to the fact that I was hoping my new housemate would be someone I could relate to… someone who could be my friend and help me integrate with the social life in Santa Barbara. I didn’t see Spencer as the type of person I would become friends with. We could get along, but we had nothing in common. In addition, I was a bit shocked when Spencer told me that he used to have a girlfriend. It was a casual comment that came out of a conversation we had. I didn’t understand how a chubby and unattractive guy like Spencer would have been able to get a girlfriend, while I’ve never had the chance to. The guy was three inches shorter than me, and even I am considered short for my age. I could not fathom how such a thing was possible, and I concluded to myself that this former “girlfriend” of his that he mentioned must have been just as unattractive as he was. There was no need for me to be jealous. After a few weeks of living with him, I realized that I had a psychological problem with his presence in my apartment. Even though there was no trouble between us, I hated having someone constantly in my vicinity to judge how pathetic my life was. I could hide the details of my lonely, celibate life from the rest of the world, but I could not hide it from Spencer. The fact that I never had any girls over to my room was clear enough that I was an undesirable outcast, and I hated it when people knew this about me and judged me for it. Spencer was there to witness it all, and I would eventually come to hate him just because of that. During the months of October and November, I made another desperate bid to improve my social life as best as I could. I failed in making any friends in my two college classes, and I didn’t have any interactions with girls at my school. I was an invisible ghost, just like I had always been. I continued to see Andy, the one friend that I made. We often met up to have dinner at a restaurant somewhere. He soon introduced me to a few friends of his. One of them was named Stan, a European from Holland whom I particularly got along with. I enjoyed having conversations with Stan about a wide variety of subjects, including politics, history, business, and architecture. I wisely refrained from revealing any of my political views, of which disturbed most people. During the month of October I went out with Andy, Stan, and some of their friends quite often. We did things like walk around State Street or Isla Vista, or went to the movie theatres together. I soon found that even having these few acquaintances to hang out with didn’t make me feel any better. I still felt inferior whenever I saw other guys walking with beautiful girls. At the movie theatres, I felt just as pathetic about walking in there with a group of friends as I did years ago when I went to the movies with my parents… It was that pathetic feeling of not having a hot girlfriend on my arm while some other boys in the theatre did. What I truly wanted… what I truly NEEDED, was a girlfriend. I needed a girl’s love. I needed to feel worthy as a male. For so long I have felt worthless, and it’s all girls’ fault. No girl wanted to be my girlfriend. Halloween weekend in the college town of Isla Vista is a renowned event. Young people pour in from all over the county to attend the raucous parties there. My experience during this weekend is just what one would have expected it to be, a miserable disaster. When I was a child, I used to love Halloween. It was a holiday of fun and excitement where I went trick-or-treating, going from house to house collecting candy with my friends and family. For young adults, Halloween is a very different sort of holiday, of which one is supposed to dress up in sexually explicit costumes, attend wild drinking parties, and have sexual experiences with girls. For other young people, who are able to do such things, Halloween must be a blast. But I am unable to do such things. I wasn’t invited to ANY party, and girls don’t want to have sex with me. As a teenager and a young adult, Halloween has been a holiday of torment and depression because of this. In Isla Vista, this was greatly intensified. I tried my best to put myself out there on the Halloween weekend. I made many laps around Isla Vista, trying to bolster up the courage to talk to a girl or walk into a party, but I just couldn’t. I knew they would all reject me. What I saw during those walks shook me to the very core. Girls dressed up in extremely revealing outfits, and the sight of them filled my sex-starved self with hunger and desire that I knew I could never quench. On the last night of the Halloween weekend, I went out there with Andy and Stan and a few others. It made absolutely no difference. We didn’t get into any parties, and just walked around the streets like losers. Being friends with them wasn’t benefitting me at all. If only I had a beautiful girlfriend to experience such an event with! I would have even dressed up in a costume with her. It would have been so blissful and euphoric, to walk around in all of that excitement with a beautiful girl on my arm, to attend every single party because anyone would admit a beautiful girl into it, to make passionate love to her in my room at the end of the night, to snuggle next to her sexy warm body as we drift off to sleep together. THAT is the life I should have lived. So many other guys are able to experience that, and just thinking about if filled me with extreme agony. Life is not fair. In November, my brief friendship with Andy, Stan, and their group faded away. I often saw on Facebook that they did things together without even inviting me, which is the same thing I’ve had to experience with other groups of friends that I’ve had in the past. I was always an outcast, even among people I knew. I grew tired of their lack of consideration for me, so I stopped calling them. They weren’t even popular anyway, and I wasn’t benefitting at all from their friendship. I still continued to meet with Andy at restaurants on occasion, however. Every day that I spent at my college, the more inferior and invisible I felt. I felt like such an inferior mouse whenever I saw guys walking with beautiful girls. I hated having to endure it, but I had already worked so hard on my two classes that I couldn’t quit just then. The only way that I could gain a boost in to my self-esteem was to buy better looking clothes. My mother gave me a few more gift cards to Nordstrom, and I spent them on $200 dollar designer Jeans. When I wore these to school, I saw that I was wearing better Jeans than most other guys, and that made me have a slightly higher sense of self-worth. I also bought a few more shirts, and a pair of new Hugo Boss sneakers. Doing this started a new obsession for me. I became more and more obsessed with my appearance. Because my mother, father, and grandmother constantly paid me extra money now that I was living in Santa Barbara, I had saved up enough to indulge in this obsession. Familiarizing myself with all of the top designer brands, I bought new clothes every time I visited my hometown. My favorite brands were Hugo Boss and Armani. I always stopped by at the Camarillo shopping center on my way back to Santa Barbara. I loved it there – they had a store for almost every brand. One time, as I was shopping at the Calvin Klein store in Camarillo, I saw such a sexy-looking blonde girl with perfectly tanned skin. She looked so beautiful and sexy that I had an erection instantly. Oh, the heavenly things I wanted to do to her… And then I saw her hunk of a boyfriend. My entire being was filled with anguish and despair. I could only imagine how amazing and pleasurable that guy’s life was. They were older than me – probably mid-twenties – and I thought with desperate hope that when I’m that man’s age I would be worthy enough to have such a girlfriend by my side, to shop with her at that same shopping mall in heavenly bliss. My life was a life of starvation and yearning. I visited home for Thanksgiving, and went with my mother to Rob Lemelson’s house for a small Thanksgiving get-together. James was there… And the last time I spoke to him since then was when we had our bitter argument online. The one person who has been my friend through all of my hardship didn’t even want to speak to me during Thanksgiving. I tried to ask him why he was overreacting about an argument we had two months previously, but he just glared at me coldly and told me to “keep my proximity”. I was highly offended. After a few hours, the Thanksgiving feast was served. To my profound annoyance, Julian Ritz-Barr and his equally obnoxious older brother Leon Ritz-Barr also came for the dinner. I remembered the extreme envy I felt for Julian months ago, and I tried to ignore them as much as possible, which proved to be difficult because they talked loudly all the time. I was seated next to James for the dinner, and after awkwardly sitting next to each other for a few moments, he decided to warm up to me again. As the two of us caught up with each other about our lives, a small inkling of our old friendship ignited like a weak flitter of flame in a candle. It was nice, for the brief moment that it lasted. The two of us talked about our usual fantasy scenarios, and joked about how stupid and obnoxious the Ritz-Barr brothers were acting. On that same weekend that I went home, I got together with Philip and Addison. The three of us went out to a restaurant in L.A., and then we headed to the Griffith Park Observatory, just like old times. The last time I was there with the two of them was on that horrible night when Addison told me that “No girl will ever want to fuck me.” The words were still embedded in my mind, and going to Griffith Park reminded me of that night. The three of us took a few pictures of us posing at various spots at the Observatory, some of which were uploaded onto Facebook, and then we went to the Calabasas Commons to hang out at Barnes & Noble, where I had a few insightful conversations with Addison. Despite our past hostilities, I considered Addison to be one of the most interesting people I knew. I went back to Santa Barbara for a couple of weeks to finish off my two classes. In my history class, I kept feeling weak with inferiority as I watched this tall, handsome blonde jock constantly sit and talk with two beautiful girls. There was no way that I couldn’t watch it; they were in the middle of the class. I hated that class so much, and I decided to stop attending it until the final exam. Once I took the final exams, I felt glad to be done with those horrifically frustrating college classes. It was just as I had feared. My first actual semester at Santa Barbara City College was an absolute, brutal failure. I didn’t even have one girl’s phone number in my cell phone. Was I going to be a virgin forever? I franticly wondered as I drove away from my school after taking my exams. I felt like my whole life was over. If I couldn’t make it in such a beautiful and opportunistic place like Santa Barbara, then I was doomed to misery and dissatisfaction. I knew that I would rather die than suffer such a fate, and I knew that if it came to that, I would do everything I can to exact revenge before I die. I didn’t want it to resort to that! Some part of me still clung to hope. I didn’t want to give up so soon. As I made the long scenic drive back to my hometown for the Holidays, I made a vow to give it all another try when I start my new semester in the Spring, and to use the time I had during the winter break to prepare for it as much as I could. My mother told me that she had made plans for me, my sister, and her to go to England for a week. Upon hearing this, I said I didn’t want to go. I felt so dissatisfied and defeated, and I didn’t want to appear that way to my relatives in England. There was nothing about me that they could be proud of. I felt ashamed of having to face them the way I was. After some persuasion, I agreed to go. I figured that if anything, it would give me a respite from all the pain society has dealt to me, just like our old visits to Jack’s beach house in Malibu. Before we left for England, we attended the annual Christmas party at the Lemelson’s. I had recently bought a flashy new shirt from Armani Exchange that made me feel particularly fabulous, so I decided to wear it for the party. I loved admiring how awesome I looked in the mirror as I wore it. Wearing flashy new clothes made me feel like a new person. I found it to be a very efficient way to boost my confidence. When I entered the party, I felt gratified when Sue Lemelson, Rob’s ex-wife, complimented me on how good I looked. My mother pointed out that it was unusual for Sue to compliment anyone, so I must have made a good impression. James was at the party, of course. He didn’t act outwardly cold toward me this time, but there was still a distance between us. During the course of the event, I had my fill of multiple glasses of wine as I casually chatted with James about my insights and life problems. We interacted as if we were still friends, but I could tell that things were very different between us. The friendship that we have had for so long was dying. When I said goodbye to him that night, it was the last time I ever saw him. After having a quick Christmas celebration at father’s house, I took off for England with my mother and sister. We flew Business Class on Virgin Atlantic, and since they followed the laws of the U.K., I was allowed to drink alcohol on the flight. I took delight in sipping the wine that was served while I enjoyed the relaxing journey. The last time I had been on an airplane since then was the disastrous trip to Morocco when I was seventeen, and this made for a pleasant contrast. When we landed in England I felt the sense of wonder that came with being in another country. I hadn’t been to my home country of England for almost a decade, and I couldn’t believe I was there once again. The decision to go on the trip came so quickly. We stayed at a very nice hotel in the town of Colchester, near where my relatives on my mother’s side live, including my grandma Ah Mah. After we unpacked all of our belongings, we went to their house for dinner. I hadn’t seen those relatives since our trip to Malaysia. It felt peculiar to see them all again. They were exactly the same as I remembered. It was very heartwarming to see that grandma Ah Mah had baked her delicious peanut cookies that I loved so much as a child; she had them ready and waiting for me. We visited them again on Christmas Day. They prepared an exquisite lunch, and afterward we exchanged our gifts. I got a bit drunk on that day, as it was the only thing I could do to pass the time. I tried to relax and forget about all of the pain I had experienced in Santa Barbara. I wished there was something I could talk to my relatives about that would make them proud, but there was nothing interesting or impressive about my life to talk about. I wished that I could show my grandma that I was thriving in Santa Barbara; that I had a girlfriend and I was enjoying a full and healthy life. But no, that is something I was never able to do. I felt so ashamed of myself. My grandma, Ah Mah, gave me a gift of great value. After we exchanged all of the presents with the relatives, Ah Mah presented me with a 22 karat golden necklace. It was very extravagant, and it had been in her possession for a long time. Now it was mine. I wore it instantly and took a great liking to it. From then on, I would wear it in every waking moment. I could have sold it for well over a thousand dollars, but I never did. It was special to me. My favorite part of the trip was the breakfasts at the hotel. The hotel we stayed at was quite luxurious, even by my standards. And the breakfasts… they were absolutely delicious. Every morning there was a buffet full of delectable choices, such as crispy pork sausage, croissants, bacon, ham, roast potatoes, all kinds of fruit, and much more. On every one of those mornings, I stuffed myself like there was no tomorrow. I was deprived of sex all my life, so the only vice that I could derive a sense of pleasure from was eating delicious food. I took full advantage of that on this trip. My high metabolism prevented me from getting fat from it. Before the trip was over, we all went on a tour through London. We were supposed to visit grandma Jinx in Smarden on that same day, but grandma Jinx was in France at the time. We rented a comfortable Mercedes van that could fit eight people and made a long drive through the English countryside to the capital city of London. I didn’t remember much of the city from my previous visits, so it was kind of like a new experience for me. I found the city to be very ugly in most areas, but in contrast there were some attractive parts that were awash with beautiful architecture and a cultural atmosphere. Once we parked our van we set out on foot, and sometimes took the Underground subway, to explore all of the main attractions of the city. It was cold, dreadfully cold, but I bore it without much concern. Walking through the streets of London at night, especially in Trafalgar Square and the area around Harrods was truly breathtaking, or it would have been if I had a beautiful girlfriend by my side to experience it with me. It was the sort of place that one would go with a girlfriend, and I had none. I saw other men being able to experience it with their girlfriends, and the sight soured my whole experience. When we had dinner at a restaurant, I scoffed a big meal and imbibed two glasses of wine to make myself feel better during the rest of our tour. My favorite part was walking through the store Harrods. Harrods is a gigantic, renowned luxury designer clothing store. Every facet of it exuded beauty and excessive opulence. It was my type of place. I wished I was rich enough to buy anything I wanted at the store – there were so many choices of fabulous clothing – but alas, I had to settle with buying only one Giorgio Armani shirt. If my mother had been wise enough to marry one of those wealthy men she dated, perhaps then I would have been rich enough. Such a pity. At the end of the night of our London tour, I felt cold and miserable. Walking through that exciting, cultural city made me realize that the world was full of wonders to explore, but if I had to do it alone while other men were able to do it with their girlfriends, then what was the point? My life was so mundane and wasteful compared to the lives all those other men lived. They were in heaven and I was in hell. When we took off on the airplane for the journey home, I wondered how my life would have turned out if we never moved to the United States. I saw a lot of beautiful blonde girls in England, just like there were in California. Would I have lived a completely different type of life? Would I have been able to have a girlfriend in England? Would girls in England have been more accepting of a guy like me? Those are questions I will never know the answer to. I spent a few hours recovering from jet lag after we arrived home. On the day after that, it was New Year’s Eve. I didn’t want a repeat of the previous New Year’s, when I spent them alone and miserable in my room, so I decided to go with my father and Soumaya to a party and Antje Twinn’s house. My father was still friends with them, despite not being friends with the Bubenheim’s anymore. I wanted to wear something new for the party, in order to boost my sense of self-confidence, so I went to Nordstrom and bought a new, flashy Hugo Boss shirt, decorated with different hues of blue. I didn’t have dinner before the party, because I expected dinner to be served there. When we got there, I saw that they didn’t offer dinner, only a few party snacks; but there was lots and lots of wine. I heard from Antje that Vincent was in town, but he was attending a party at Leo Bubenheim’s house, with all of Leo’s popular teenage friends. The mere mention of Leo put me in a bad mood. I couldn’t believe that Vincent, too, was now experiencing the pleasures of partying with young people while I sat all alone at the adult’s party, sipping my wine in lonely depression. I should be partying with my own friends, and my own girlfriends, but I had NONE. After I had already gotten quite drunk from having so much wine on an empty stomach, I overheard Antje talking to her friend about how Vincent now had a beautiful girlfriend. She was so proud of her son. That is something my mother was never able to tell her friends about me. I had never had a girlfriend in my WHOLE LIFE! I remember when Vincent used to be a little nine-year-old boy while I was thirteen. He used to look up to me, and he always watched me play my online games on father’s laptop. Now, he was sixteen and I was twenty. He had the pleasure of having a girlfriend, while I’ve never had one. I was four years older than him, but he surpassed me. The envy, rage, and feeling of inferiority I felt almost made me explode with rage right there at the party, but instead I went to the bathroom and vented to myself in the mirror of how much I hate Vincent and wanted to kill him. I drank a lot more wine that night, pouring myself glass after glass. By the time Vincent arrived after his party at Leo’s, I greeted him with drunken contempt, and drank even more wine. I drank too much. On the next morning, I thanked the heavens that at the end of the party I had the sense to go to the bathroom to vomit instead of vomiting in front of everyone. That would have been extremely embarrassing. I spent a week at my mother’s house before I went back to Santa Barbara to give my life there another try. During this week, I once again met up with Philip and Addison. This outing was much longer than the last. I decided to wear the same Hugo Boss shirt that I wore for New Year’s. First, we went on a hike up to the Hollywood sign and watched the glorious sunset. Afterwards, we visited the Getty Museum to admire the brilliant scenery and architecture. While there, I overheard Philip telling Addison that some girls were checking him out. Feeling jealous, I asked Philip if any of those girls checked me out, and he had the audacity to say no, none of them did. I felt so heartbroken that I left the two of them and cried to myself, ruining my whole experience at the museum. How could girls check out Addison but not me? I asked myself repeatedly as I tried to hide my tears from people who walked by me. I walked out to the edge of the grand terrace of the museum, looking out at the city lights of Los Angeles as well as the stars above. In that moment, I fell into a sort of despair-ridden trance, contemplating my reason for existing in this universe and what was in store for my future. It was a very ominous and surreal experience. I calmed down when we left the museum and acted cordial to both of them. I didn’t want to spoil the night with my emotional problems. We toured around Hollywood for a bit, and while there I saw lots of young people out and about with their attractive cliques of friends. The sight enraged me for the rest of the night. We decided to have dinner at a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. At the restaurant, there were three hot model-like girls who sat a few tables down from us. Their bodies looked so sexy and tantalizing that Philip had to go to the bathroom to masturbate. I was itching to do exactly the same thing, but I didn’t want to look like a fool in front of Addison. When I got home, I began to cry because of all the emotions I experienced that night. My mother heard me and showed some concern, as she always did. She was used to me crying a lot, but she never understood why I was so miserable. I always had to explain it to her – that I was a lonely, miserable, unwanted virgin who women treated with disdain – but she could never grasp how severe this was to me. After all, how could she? She was a woman herself. I arrived back in Santa Barbara with a renewed, carefully constructed sense of confidence, especially because of the new collection of designer clothes I had bought over the winter break. I tried to adopt a sophisticated and suave persona, and made my accent sound more eloquent. I did this out of the hope that girls would find something attractive about it. It was the only persona that truly fit me. I was incapable of being an outgoing, boisterous jock, and I didn’t want to be one. I was disgusted by such people, and I was disgusted at how girls were attracted to such filth. I wanted them to be attracted to me. That is how it should be, and I deserved it. During the few weeks I had before my first day of class, I couldn’t really do anything to improve my social situation. I had a fear of going out to Isla Vista without any friends, and I was hoping to make those friends once college started. Because of this, I became depressed again from all of the loneliness. Even though Spencer was there, I felt completely and utterly alone, as the two of us never talked that much. So far, Spencer and I had gotten along quite well despite the fact that we never talked much. An incident happened at the end of January that changed all of this. I one day discovered that Spencer had a girl in this room. I couldn’t believe it. The short, chubby guy was able to get a girl into his room before I did! I was so shocked and outraged that I waited outside his room until the girl left, so I could get a glimpse of how she looked. To my relief, she wasn’t that attractive. What made me even more angry is that Spencer gave me a smug look when I saw the girl, even though she was ugly. He had the nerve to feel like he was better than me, just because he managed to get a girl over to the apartment before I did! I confronted him in the kitchen on that same night, telling him that he is foolish to feel proud about having an ugly whore in his room. This made him angry and offended, which is what I wanted. I wanted to offend him as punishment for his insolence. After that incident, the two of us became more and more hostile towards each other. In the beginning of February, my Spring semester at Santa Barbara City College began. The classes I registered for were Sociology, Math, Film Studies, and English. My English class was an online class, but the other three were normal classes that I attended at the college. Sociology and math were on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and my film class was on Friday mornings. It made for a convenient setup. This was the last chance. I had already failed to change my life in the last semester. I must not fail again. I remembered how hard it was to keep up those two classes in the Autumn. The people in them made me feel so miserable. I knew that if the same thing happens in the coming semester, I would end up dropping all of my classes, and if that happened, all of my hope would be doomed. On the morning of the first day, I donned my fabulous Armani Exchange shirt and put on my new Gucci sunglasses that my mother gave me. I admired myself in the mirror for a few moments, and began to feel a surge of enthusiasm. I wanted everyone to see me looking like that. I was hopeful that some girls would admire me. I said to myself that there was no way I could possibly have trouble with getting girls now. I stopped by at Starbucks to buy a latte and set off for my college with the confidence that I would appear as a superior gentleman to all of the students there. I was a superior gentleman. That was what I was born to be, and it was now time to show it to the world. It was a bright, sunny day as I as ascended the familiar steps up to the beautiful college campus of SBCC. I immediately went to the restroom to look at myself in the mirror a few times, just so that I can feel more assured of myself. Yes, I thought. I am the image of beauty ad supremacy. I kept saying it over and over again, as if it was a mantra. When I crossed the renowned bridge that connected the two halves of the campus, I felt as if everyone was admiring me. As I passed by groups of girls, I pretended to imagine that they secretly adored and wanted me. After all, that was how it was meant to be. The more I walked around the campus, the more I tried to convince myself that that was the case. My first class was sociology, and I waited until everyone was seated before I walked in. I came in through the front entrance so that everyone could look at my fabulous self. To my utter dismay, I saw that no one turned their head to look at me at all. No girl tilted a head or lifted a pretty little eyebrow at my approach. After all that effort, I was still being treated like I was invisible. The sociology class flew by like a breeze, and my next class was math. In this class, I saw one of the prettiest girls I had ever seen in my life. She was the only pretty girl in the class, and she was absolutely stunning. Of course, she didn’t even notice me as I walked in. Her beauty was so intimidating that I couldn’t bring myself to sit near her, out of fear of her judgment. As the lecture proceeded, I couldn’t help myself from constantly glancing at her, admiring every inch of her enticing body, from her silky blonde hair to her smooth, skinny, lightly tanned legs. The most beautiful thing about her was her face. It was a face that broke my heart the second I laid eyes on it. I wanted her with so much intensity, and I constantly fantasized about her during my masturbation sessions. This was the kind of girl who was always meant to be my girlfriend. This was the girl that I was meant to go through college in Santa Barbara with. My life would only have meaning if I could go through college with a girlfriend like her. As I made my way back from school one day during the first week, I was stopped at a stoplight in Isla Vista when I saw two hot blonde girls waiting at the bus stop. I was dressed in one of my nice shirts, so I looked at them and smiled. They looked at me, but they didn’t even deign to smile back. They just looked away as if I was a fool. As I drove away I became very infuriated. It was such an insult. This was the way all girls treated me, and I was sick and tired of it. In a rage, I made a U-turn, pulled up to their bus stop and splashed my Starbucks latte all over them. I felt a feeling a spiteful satisfaction as I saw it stain their jeans. I then quickly speeded away before they could catch my license plate number. How dare those girls snub me in such a fashion! How dare they insult me so! I raged to myself repeatedly. They deserved the punishment I gave them. It was such a pity that my latte wasn’t hot enough to burn them. Those girls deserved to be dumped in boiling water for the crime of not giving me the attention and adoration I so rightfully deserve! This incident soured my first week of college, but for the sake of all of my hopes and dreams, I tried to forget about it. For the month of February, I continued with the trend of attending my college classes and trying to make the most of it. With each passing day, my confidence about how I appeared to everyone started to wane. I still didn’t make any friends, and I still didn’t talk to any girls. By the end of the month, I began to question what I was doing so wrong. I saw obnoxious slobs who dressed in basketball shorts and T-shirts walking with hot girls. And there I was, decked out in Armani, all by myself. It was preposterous! I should have been the one walking with the hot girls! I soon realized that no one cared at all about how well I dressed. No girls admired me. No girls even gave me a second look. I soon found out the name of the beautiful girl in my math class. Her name was Brittany Story. Being the obsessed stalker that I was, I looked her up on Facebook, and what I found shattered my already wounded heart to pieces. She had a boyfriend. Not only that, but her boyfriend was the type of boy I have always hated and despised: a tall, muscular surfer-jock with a buzz cut. As I looked at all the pictures of the two of them together, I shivered with pure hatred. I could physically feel the hatred burn through my entire body. I wanted to kill both of them, and I was capable of doing it. Brittany Story should have been mine, and if can’t have her, no one should! I fantasized about capturing the two of them and stripping the skin off her boyfriend’s flesh while making her watch. Why must my life be so full of torment and hatred? I questioned to the universe with turmoil roiling inside me. I screamed and cried with anguish that day. My housemate Spencer heard it all, but I didn’t care. I dropped my math class immediately after learning that Brittany had a boyfriend. I couldn’t look at her beauty anymore, knowing that some punk was able to enjoy having sex with her every day. I can only imagine how heavenly that guy’s life must be. He was in heaven and I was in hell. Shortly after dropping my math class, I decided to drop all of my other classes in a rage. There was no point to it anymore. No matter how hard I tried, girls were not attracted to me. What was the point of going through college, getting a degree, and finding some mundane professional job afterwards if I could never experience the pleasure of girls along the way? I didn’t want to torture myself with going to college and looking at all of those beautiful girls I could never have. Nothing beneficial came out of it. There was no hope for me to ever have a desirable college life. My life was devoid of friends, devoid of girls, devoid of sex, and devoid of love. I realized that I will never be able to look back on my youth, the time that I should be having a blast, and feel satisfied about all of the happy memories I have. There were no happy memories; only misery, loneliness, rejection, and pain. The only thing I could do was even the score. I wanted to make everyone else suffer just as they made me suffer. I wanted revenge. When I dropped my college classes, I crossed a threshold that I knew existed, but never actually believed I would cross. It completely ended all hope I had of living a desirable life in Santa Barbara. I realized that I would be a virgin forever, condemned to suffer rejection and humiliation at the hands of women because they don’t fancy me, because their sexual attractions are flawed. They are attracted to the wrong type of male. I always mused to myself that I would rather die than suffer such an existence, and I knew that if it came to that, I would exact my revenge upon the world in the most catastrophic way possible. At least then, I could die knowing that I fought back against the injustice that has been dealt to me. Ever since my life took a very dark turn at the age of seventeen, I often had fantasies of how malevolently satisfying it would be to punish all of the popular kids and young couples for the crime of having a better life than me. I dreamed of how sweet it would be to torture or kill every single young couple I saw. However, as I said previously in this story, I never thought I would actually go through with these drastic desires. I had hope inside me that I could one day have a happy life. It was only when I first moved to Santa Barbara that I started considering the possibility of having to carry out a violent act of revenge, as the final solution to dealing with all of the injustices I’ve had to face at the hands of women and society. I came up with a name for this after I saw all of the good looking young couples walking around my college and in the town of Isla Vista. I named it the Day of Retribution. It would be a day in which I exact my ultimate retribution and revenge on all of the hedonistic scum who enjoyed lives of pleasure that they don’t deserve. If I can’t have it, I will destroy it. I will destroy all women because I can never have them. I will make them all suffer for rejecting me. I will arm myself with deadly weapons and wage a war against all women and the men they are attracted to. And I will slaughter them like the animals they are. If they won’t accept me among them, then they are my enemies. They showed me no mercy, and in turn I will show them no mercy. The prospect will be so sweet, and justice will ultimately be served. And of course, I would have to die in the act to avoid going to prison. That is when I realized that this threshold existed, and if I crossed it, I will have to carry out this Day of Retribution. It has remained stagnant in the back of my mind ever since, until this point. After dropping my Spring classes at Santa Barbara City College, I knew that the Day of Retribution was now very possible. I even wrote about it in my diary, but I later tore out the pages because I feared someone might find them. A shiver ran through me, realizing how twisted my world had become, that I would have to resort to doing something that I would consider unthinkable a few years ago. I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to live. Thinking about the Day of Retribution made me feel trapped. I wanted a way out. After some deep contemplation, I had the revelation that the Day of Retribution wasn’t the only way I could make up for all of the suffering I’ve had to experience. If I could somehow become a multimillionaire at a young age, then my lifestyle would instantly become better than most people my age. I would be able to get revenge on my enemies just by living above them and lording over them. That was a form of happy, peaceful revenge, and it became my only hope. Once again, I started to desperately ponder over ways that I could become extremely wealthy at a young age. It was my only way out. This is when I realized that wealth was the only way I could lose my virginity, the only way I could have the beautiful girlfriend I know I deserve. Due to all of my past experiences with girls, it is evident that girls are not attracted to me as a person. They are repulsed by me. The only way I could possible become worthy of their love and attraction is if I become wealthy. In the beginning of March, I went home in a sullen and disturbed mood. I did my best to hide it from my parents. I also had to hide the fact that I dropped all of my college classes, and I kept up the pretense that I was still attending college, talking to my father about my lectures and so forth. The weekend that I visited home was quite an eventful one, and I had been looking forward to it for some time. On Sunday, March 11th 2012, I went with my mother and sister to a private, exclusive Katy Perry concert; and on March 12th 2012 I went with my father and Soumaya to the red carpet premiere of the Hunger Games. The invitation to the private Katy Perry concert was actually meant for Rob Lemelson, as the concert was held for extremely wealthy people who were clients of Net Jets, a private jet company. Rob had no interest in such things, so he gave the tickets to my mother. I was eager to go, because I loved attending exclusive events; it made me feel special. For most of the time spent at the concert, I just walked around at ate food at the buffet tables while everyone waited for Katy Perry to perform. There was upbeat music playing the entire time, and a lot of wealthy families with their kids attended. Every family there must have had a net worth of at least twenty million, to be able to hire private jets. I tried to pretend as if I was part of a wealthy family. I should be. That was the life I was meant to live. I WOULD BE! If only my damnable mother had married into wealth instead of being selfish. If only my failure of a father had made better decisions with his directing career instead wasting his money on that stupid documentary. I couldn’t help but feel a bitter form of envy at all of the rich kids at the concert. They grew up in lavish mansions, indulged in excessive opulence, and will never have to worry about anything in their pleasurable, hedonistic lives. I would take great pleasure in watching all of those rich families burn alive. Looking at all of them really drilled in my mind the importance of wealth. Wealth is one of the most important defining factors of self-worth and superiority. I hated and envied all of those kids for being born into wealth, while I had to struggle to find a way to claim wealth for myself. I had to be ruthless, and do whatever it takes to attain such wealth. After all, it was my only hope of ever being worthy of getting a girlfriend and living the life of gratification that I desire. The red carpet premiere of the Hunger Games was an even more exclusive event. The reason we got in was because my father was friends with the director, Gary Ross. My father even contributed to the film as a second unit director. Gary Ross had been coming over to father’s house for dinner quite frequently in the past few months. When he told me about the Hunger Games, I had never heard about it before, so I decided to read the books that the movie would be based on. It was quite an enjoyable story and I became a fan. At the same time, my step mother Soumaya was in the process of filming a French reality T.V. series, called Les Vraies Housewives. Her status as a reality T.V. star, coupled with my father’s important association with Gary Ross, enabled us all to attain VIP tickets to the red carpet premiere, including admittance to walk on the red carpet itself, which was actually a black carpet, in a literal sense. I didn’t own any suits, but I wore my extravagant Hugo Boss shirt, which I thought looked elegant enough to walk on the black carpet. As we were lining up for our walk on the black carpet, some dumb bitch of a security guard had the audacity to question “who the hell are these people”. This made me so enraged that I almost said “we are people who are more important than you, you ugly cunt”, but Soumaya’s publicist calmly informed her of our invitation. We then proceeded to walk across the long black carpet as cameras flashed at us from one side, and a crowd of pathetic fans who reminded me of sheep cheered from the other side. I felt extremely gratified at walking on the black carpet with father and Soumaya, and I cockily smiled at all of the stupid fans who had to remain on the side, rubbing it right in their faces. There were some actors and celebrities on the carpet with us, and the paparazzi yelled at me a few times to get out of the way as they were taking pictures of some cunt actress. I discreetly gave those paparazzi pigs my middle finger. Elliot Rodger will not move aside for a stupid, good-for-nothing, over-glorified actress, whoever the fuck she was. I didn’t see. We walked through all the chaos until we finally reached the theatre where the movie was being screened, called the Nokia Theatre. It was one of the biggest theatres I had ever seen, able to see hundreds of people. At the entrance, father and I greeted Jack Ross, the son of Gary Ross. He was a spoiled brat of a sixteen year old, and to my embarrassment he stood taller than me. I immediately hated him on sight. He was living the life I should be living, if only my father had become as successful a director as Gary Ross. I equally hated his repugnant friends, who ended up sitting in front of me and partially blocking my view for the entire movie. Throughout the whole film, I had to fight the urge not to splash my drink all over the little shitheads in a vehement rage. They spoiled it for me, and it was quite a good movie too. The movie was entertaining, but my favorite part of this premiere was the after party. Yes, we were invited to the after party, where only the most important guests could attend. I felt so special as I handed my VIP tickets to the guards outside, gaining admittance. The party was extravagant, with buffet tables set up in every corner serving exquisite delicacies. I excitedly went from plate to plate, helping myself to all of the food. Father and Soumaya went off to socialize with Gary Ross and his entourage of producers. I didn’t know anyone there, of course, so I just spent time with my sister Georgia. A few moments into the party, I ran into an old face. He noticed me first and called out my name, saying “Is your name Elliot?” He was none other than Ashton Moio from Pinecrest Middle School! I hadn’t seen him since 8th grade. He was now in the process of starting a career in acting, and he had a small part in the movie. I actually read about this beforehand, but I didn’t expect I would run into him at the after party. Ashton’s sister, Monette Moio was nowhere to be seen. I suppose the bitch wasn’t invited, hah. I remembered all of the pain she caused me during my 8th grade year at Pinecrest. I tried to act as cool and confident as I possibly could with Ashton, though I felt intimidated. He was one of the most popular kids at Pinecrest, and now he was becoming an actor, one of the most attractive careers a man can have. I assumed he had probably slept with countless beautiful girls. Damn him. I had a brief conversation with him before trying to leave his presence as fast as I could. I didn’t want him to find out how pathetic my life was. While roaming around the after party, I bore witness to many successful young men who pranced in with their hot model girlfriends. Some of them were even actors my own age, stars of the movie. I had a particular burning hatred for the actor Alexander Ludwig, who I saw sitting arrogantly on a couch as people crowded around him in adoration. I hated everything about him; his golden blonde hair; his tall, muscular frame; his cocky, masculine face. That boy could get any girl he wanted. His life was completely opposite from my own. If only I could get a taste of how he lived for just one day… As I saw all of these successful young men with their beautiful dates, I became even more convinced about how important money and status was in attaining a desirable life of love and sex. It made me even more obsessed with my goal of becoming wealthy at a very young age. That was the only way to live life. The whole premiere, from the red carpet to the film to the after party, was an extraordinary experience, and I will never forget it. I still felt very bitter that I wasn’t able to bring a girl with me as a date. The majority of men at the event had a date with them, and I felt so pathetic for not having a date. If only a girl at my collage had been attracted to me; I would have gladly brought her to the premiere as my date. When I returned to Santa Barbara, I realized that I had absolutely no obligations. Since I had dropped all of my college classes, I had all the time in the world. I wanted to make use of that time as much as I could. Franticly, I tried to come up with ways to find some sort of idea to make millions of dollars. Some would say this was folly, but it has been done before! Many people have succeeded in coming up with an idea and making millions, or even billions, instantly. I was an extraordinary, magnificent person destined for great things. If other people could do it, why not me? It was my destiny, my whole purpose on this world. For the next week or so, I spent time meditating in my room, trying to come up with ways to get rich. I could either invent something, start a great business idea, or go back to my original idea I had of writing an epic fantasy story that could be made into a movie. That reminded me of the reason why I gave up on that idea in the first place… the amount of time it would take to achieve success from such a prospect. I was so desperate and I needed to do something right there and then. It was a matter of life and death. If I couldn’t make it, then I had nothing to live for. After a lot of deep thinking, I couldn’t come up with anything. Was I doomed to fail at everything? I began to feel hopeless, until I saw the current jackpot for the Megemillions Lottery. It was rising very high in the month of March. I had saved up a lot of money at the time, so I had enough to spare on lottery tickets, so long as I didn’t go under $5000 dollars, which I wanted to keep as my minimum amount of savings just in case of an emergency, or in case I would have to carry out the Day of Retribution. As it so happened, I had well over $6000 saved up at the time, from all of the allowance, Christmas money, and birthday money that my parents and grandmothers had been sending me. For the first time since moving to Santa Barbara, I began to take a serious interest in playing the Lottery again. I believed that it was destiny for me to win the Megamillions Lottery, particularly this very jackpot. People win the lottery every single month, so why not me? I was meant to live a life of significance and extravagance. I was meant to win this jackpot. It was destiny. For the first few drawings I played, I spent $50 to $100 on tickets, but to my profound frustration I still didn’t win, and the jackpot kept rising. This only increased my enthusiasm. I started to picture a whole new, perfect life for myself after I won. I imagined buying a beautiful, opulent mansion with an extravagant view, and acquiring a collection of supercars which I would use specifically to attract beautiful girls into my life. I planned to go back to college once I had bolstered myself with all this wealth, and lord myself over all the other students there, finally fulfilling my dream of being the coolest and most popular kid at school. As I sat meditating in my room, I imagined the ecstasy I would feel as scores of beautiful girls look at me with admiration as I drive up to college in a Lamborghini. Such an experience would make up for everything. I had to win this jackpot. As the jackpot reached over $200 Million, I spent more of my saved money on lottery tickets, but I still didn’t win. I knew that the more I spent on tickets, the higher chance I had of winning. I was so desperate to live a satisfying life that I spent $400 dollars on tickets when the jackpot hit $290 Million. When I failed to win that, I spent $500 dollars on tickets when it reached $363 million, and I still didn’t win it on that one… And then the jackpot reached a number that I never imagined it would… $656 Million. I was astounded and filled with a feverish enthusiasm of hope and desire. This was the highest lottery jackpot in history. I knew I was always destined for great things. This must be it! I was destined to be the winner of the highest lottery jackpot in existence. I knew right then and there that this jackpot was meant for me. Who else deserved such a victory? I had been through so much rejection, suffering, and injustice in my life, and this was to be my salvation. With my whole body filled with feverish hope, I spent $700 dollars on lottery tickets for this drawing. As I spent this money, I imagined all the amazing sex I would have with a beautiful model girlfriend I would have once I become a man of wealth. After the ultimate and fateful drawing, I waited three days to check the result. I was too anxious about what I will see. The result would determine the fate of my whole life. For those three days, I meditated alone in my room, trying to convince myself that I was the winner. I held all of the tickets in my hand, excitedly pondering over which one was the true winning ticket. There were many times during this period where I was about to check the result, but cancelled the webpage in the last second out of fear of what I might see. The prospect of finding out that I lost was devastating. On the fourth day, I decided to just go through with it. The result was already decided, and the amount of time it took for me to check it wouldn’t change anything. I had to see the truth. My heart was beating rapidly as I loaded up the webpage to the Megamillions website. What I saw crushed all of my hope completely. My whole body shivered with horrific agony. I didn’t win. Three people won that jackpot, and it was split between them. But none of those three people were me. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was certain I would be the winner. It was destiny… fate. But no, the world continued to give me no justice or salvation whatsoever. I sank into one of the worst depressions of my life. It was Spring Break, and while all other young boys my age were going off to vacation with their attractive friends, I was feeling miserable and alone in my room because I failed to win the lottery jackpot that would enable me to rise above them ALL! I was so depressed that even when my mother came up to Santa Barbara with my sister and her friends for a short day trip, I refused to see them. For the next month, I barely left my room. I was completely and utterly at the end of all hope. My life is over, I thought. Without that wealth, what was there to live for in the future? I still couldn’t believe I didn’t win. I kept thinking about the heavenly life I would be living if I had won. I was certain of my victory, right at the moment of the drawing. Instead, it turned to a crushing defeat, just like everything else in my life. Everything I had tried to do in the past, ever since childhood, had been a failure. It was very hard to feel good about myself anymore. I spent all of my time drifting aimlessly, doing nothing with my time except brooding over my fate. I didn’t want to think about anything. I could barely breathe from the stifling loneliness. All of my energy had been sapped out of me. In the month of April, James Ellis officially ended the friendship between us. James hadn’t contacted me at all since the Lemelson’s Christmas party, and I felt extremely offended by this. For the first few months of 2012, I had been trying to contact him, demanding to know why he continued to act so cold and distant to me. I thought that after we spoke with each other at the Lemelson’s, things would get better between us. I was dead wrong. I got hold of him on the phone in February, and he said a few words to me before quickly making an excuse to hang up. A month later I messaged him on Facebook to tell him how rude he was on the phone, and in April I received a response from him. He blatantly said he didn’t want to be friends anymore. He didn’t even deign to tell me why. After he said the fateful words, he refused to talk to me ever again. That was the last time I ever spoke to him. It was the ultimate betrayal. I thought he was the one friend I had in the whole world who truly understood me, who truly understood my views and the reasons why I thought the way I did about the world. I confided everything to him, because I thought we were on the same page. To be betrayed in such a manner wounded me deeply, though I never admitted it to anyone. On the day of the betrayal, I thought back on our entire friendship. James Ellis was my oldest friend. I remembered the first time I met him, as we kicked dust together as First Graders at Topanga Elementary school. I remembered all of the good times I spent at his various houses in the Palisades, trading Pokemon cards when we were little, our brief interest in skateboarding, playing World of Warcraft together as teenagers, all of our walks through the Palisades town center… He was a big part of my life. And now he was gone, faded away into memory. I didn’t have any friends left anymore. No friends in the entire world. I didn’t want to see Philip and Addison after I cried in front of them at the Getty museum. I was completely and utterly alone, in the darkest pit of despair. And in that pit I withered in agony. My deep depression lasted well into the summer. My life stayed stagnant and miserable, and my hatred towards everyone, especially women, for depriving me of a happy life only grew stronger. I questioned myself over and over about what was going to happen to me now. I didn’t want it to resort to having to exact ultimate vengeance. I didn’t want to die. I wanted something to live for. There had to be a way for me to become wealthy. I continued to see it was the only way I would ever have a beautiful girlfriend and lose my virginity. My ultimate dream was to experience the pleasures of love and sex with girls once I become rich enough to be worthy of them, and then I would settle down with a beautiful girlfriend and have beautiful children with her, whom I would raise up to live a much better life than the one I’ve had to suffer through. That would be the most satisfying vengeance against all those young people who thought they were better than me. If I could show them that I lived such a life, my purpose on this world would be complete. To see the look on all of their faces once I’ve risen above them… I couldn’t imagine anything sweeter. I so happened to come across a book called the Power of Your Subconscious Mind, by Joseph Murphy. This book would fill me with hope for the next few months. It was very similar to The Secret, the book I read over a year ago, and it had the same effect on me. It gave an even more in-depth view on the law of attraction. A year previously, I had given up on believing in such a concept, but when I read through this book thoroughly, I desperately convinced myself to give it a try. I wanted to believe the theory could work. I needed something to live for. I began to visualize myself winning the lottery. I did this all throughout the month of June. After continuous analyzing and contemplation, I concluded that winning the lottery was the only way I could become wealthy at a young age, and thus it was the only way to enjoy the rest of my youth. If I didn’t have a satisfying youth, I would be bitter and miserable for the rest of my life, but of course that would never happen. If it came to that, then I would have to carry out the Day of Retribution. Indeed, it was the only way I could attain any sort of wealth at my age. I had no talents, so it was impossible for me to become a professional actor, musician, or athlete; and those were usually the ways that young people acquired such money. I could invent something, or start a business just like Mark Zuckerberg did with Facebook, but the chances of me achieving such a thing were the same chances I had of winning the lottery anyway. I didn’t even have the skills of a computer programmer. After reading this book, I wanted to believe that there was some sort of supernatural power that I could harness to change reality as I saw fit. For the months of June and July, I took frequent walks around Girsh Park in Goleta, dreaming and visualizing about winning the lottery. I affirmed that once the jackpot rose to over $100 million, I would buy a ticket and that ticket would be the winner. For all of the months of summer, people kept winning the lottery, and the jackpot kept resetting, but I was so desperate that I still clung to my faith that I would soon win. On one of the days in July, when I was roaming around Girsh Park, a group of popular college kids arrived to play kickball in the fields. They all looked like typical fraternity jocks, tall and muscular. The kind of guys I’ve hated and envied all my life. With them came a flock of beautiful blonde girls, and they looked like they were having so much fun playing together. One of the girls did a handstand in the grass, and her sexy bare stomach showed as her shirt hung down. All of the girls were scantily clad. Rage boiled inside me as I watched those people who thought they were better than me enjoying their pleasurable little lives together. The rage was so intense that I couldn’t take it. I was insulted too much. I couldn’t leave them without getting some form of revenge, so I drove to the nearby K-mart, bought a super-soaker, filled it up with orange juice that I bought at the same store, and drove back to the park. They were still there, having the time of their lives, and I wanted to ruin it for them. I wanted to ruin their fun just like they ruined mine, as they would never accept me among them. I screamed at them with rage as I sprayed them with my super soaker. When the boys started to yell and chase after me, I quickly got into my car and drove away. I was giddy with ecstatic, hate-fueled excitement. I wished I could spray boiling oil at the foul beasts. They deserved to die horrible, painful deaths just for the crime of enjoying a better life than me. I drove to a secluded are of the parking lot at the Camino Real Marketplace nearby, my heart beating rapidly. After I had calmed down, I was overcome with the worry and fear that I would get in trouble for it. I wondered with panic if there were any cameras at the park that could have caught me in the act. The worry lasted for a few days, but eventually I became relieved that no trouble came out of it. My mother and sister came up to Santa Barbara for my 21st Birthday. I didn’t want them to come up, but they came anyway. I suppose my mother felt sorry for me, that I would be alone on my 21st Birthday. And it’s true, I would have been alone. Isn’t that such a sad thing to contemplate? Being alone on my 21st Birthday. Most other men have huge drinking parties with their friends and girlfriends to mark their passing over the legal age limit to drink alcohol. I’ve read stories online of how exciting other men’s 21st birthdays are. I had absolutely no one to celebrate mine with. Having no friends, the only people who even wished me a happy birthday were my immediate family members. When my mother and sister arrived in Santa Barbara, they wanted to meet up at a restaurant in State Street, but that prospect horrified me. State Street was filled with young couples walking around arm in arm as they went out on their blissful dates. I was already tortured at the fact that I was now a 21-yearold virgin. I didn’t want to torture myself anymore. I looked online for a quieter restaurant that we could meet at, a place where young couples most likely wouldn’t know about. I came across a secluded Japanese restaurant in Montecito named Sakana. I suggested this to mother, and since it was my birthday, she gave me the choice of where to eat. I met the two of them outside the restaurant as they were waiting to be seated. I was in a sullen and depressed mood. Turning 21 as a kissless virgin was indeed a dark day. How pathetic it was, to be 21 and still a virgin while kids were having sex at the age of 14? The unfairness of life on this world is staggeringly horrific! The restaurant Sakana turned out to be a very good choice. They served the most delicious Japanese food I had ever tasted in my life. They had so many creative dishes to try, and I ordered so many meals that the bill reached over $200. I eagerly devoured all of it, compensating for my sorrows with delectable food. My mother loved the restaurant as well. She had been to all of the best Japanese restaurants in L.A. with her various wealthy boyfriends, and she proclaimed that Sakana topped all of them. From this point onwards, it would become a tradition for us to eat here whenever my mother came up to visit me. After dinner, we went to the Starbucks in Montecito, and I washed the exquisite meal down with a nice warm latte. I never explored much of Montecito before, and I found it to be a lovely, beautiful place. It reminded me of Calabasas, though much quieter and more conservative. I figured I would be spending a lot more time there in the future. 21 Years Old In August, I continued to build up my faith that I am destined to win the Megamillions jackpot. It is the future that was meant for me; the perfect, happy conclusion to the tragic life I’ve had to experience in the past. I couldn’t wait to rub my status as a wealthy man right in the faces of all the people who looked down on me, and all of the girls who thought of me as unworthy. I mused that once I become wealthy, I would finally be worthy enough to all of the beautiful girls. I spent the whole month meditating in my room or roaming around the park, visualizing the final outcome of my victory. Through the power of the law of attraction, which I had studied so intensely with the new book I found, I felt certain that I would become the winner. I looked forward to it with profound eagerness. This was also the last month I had at the apartment unit I was staying in. I was set to transfer to a room in the main complex of Capri Apartments for the next school year. The conflict between Spencer and I had calmed down over the summer. He brought a few girls to his apartment, but they were all ugly, so I tried not to get jealous. I still hated him for the fact that he was able to witness how lonely and miserable my life was. I had spent an entire year in Isla Vista, Santa Barbara, and I had not had a single girl into my apartment. The pure rage and hatred I felt over that fact was enough, but to have someone like Spencer in my vicinity to judge me on it was salt on the wound. I made plans to track Spencer down once I become wealthy and arrogantly show off my new life to him. That would be the only way to get even. I wanted to show to Spencer, to show to the whole WORLD, that I had worth. I didn’t think much about my imminent move to a new room, nor did I think much about who my new housemates would be. I firmly believed that I would win the lottery before then. I would then go back to my mother’s house, show her my ticket, and buy a mansion of my own to begin a new life of heavenly bliss. One could say that I was being delusional, but my desperation for happiness was so intense that I wanted to believe that this was true. I wanted to believe that I had the POWER to invoke this into my reality. I have craved power and significance all my life, and I will stop at nothing to find ways of attaining it. Before I knew it, my lease at my current room ended, and on September 5th, I transferred to the new room. Spencer and I didn’t deign to say goodbye to each other, we despised each other that much. I knew I would see him again, when I track him down to show off my wealth that I firmly believed I would attain. I found out that my new apartment in the main complex of Capri was the same exact apartment unit that I stayed in for the first month I had in Santa Barbara: apartment #7 on Seville Street. When I moved all of my belongings in, it was all empty. The manager told me that two housemates would be moving into the second bedroom within two weeks hence. I trusted that the manager had the sense to pair me with mature people, knowing my experiences with those two barbaric housemates I had to deal with a year previously. By the time I moved in, the jackpot had finally risen over $100 million. This was the moment of truth. I had been waiting all summer for this to happen. Overcome with trepidation, I spent the next week in my new room, meditating and visualizing winning the lottery very soon. I could feel the excitement I would feel once I see the six numbers on my ticket match the numbers that would be drawn. I imagined myself jumping up and down with joy once my victory was confirmed. On September 11th, the drawing for a jackpot worth $120 million commenced. I bought a five dollar ticket and proclaimed that this had to be mine. When I saw that the winner was from California, my heart beat like a drum. This was it. Fate was being decided right at that moment. I didn’t win. I looked at my ticket over and over again, and then at the winning numbers. No match. It was just like what happened in March, except this was worse because I had built up anticipation for the entire summer. The winner was some guy from Riverside. He took MY money. What a waste. What an injustice. I was so certain that the universe would finally grant me salvation after a life of torture and suffering. I then looked at my small, cramped room and realized that my lonely, depressing life of virginity will continue on mercilessly. That night, I threw a wild tantrum, screaming and crying for hours on end. I had the whole apartment to myself, so there was no one there to hear me. I raged at the entire world, thrashing at my bed with my wooden practice sword and slashing at the air with my pocket knife. I even downed an entire bottle of wine, and got so drunk that I spilled my wine all over my laptop, permanently destroying it. I soaked my pillow with tears as I drifted off to sleep in my lonely bed. On the next morning, I felt so drained and depressed. I then realized that I destroyed my laptop, so I called my mother, begging her to buy me a new one. I made up the story that the laptop randomly died and I had no control over it. After some persuading, I managed to make her agree to buy me a new one. I quickly drove to Best Buy to look for a new laptop, and decided to choose a newer, updated version of the Asus laptop I had previously. As it turned out, the Best Buy in Santa Barbara didn’t have one in stock, so I had to drive all the way to Oxnard to pick one up. I paid the $1500 dollars for it, with the assurance that my mother will drive up to bring me a reimbursement in a few days. I had to wait a few hours for them to prepare the laptop for me, and while I waited I decided to go to the shooting range in Oxnard. I had the knowledge, in the back of my mind, that the Day of Retribution was very possible now. Going to the shooting range while I waited for my laptop gave me the perfect opportunity to gain some initial training in shooting guns, which will be the main weapons I use as vengeance against my enemies when the Day of Retribution ultimately comes to pass. I walked into the range, rented a handgun from the ugly old redneck cashier, and started to practice shooting at paper targets. As I fired my first few rounds, I felt so sick to the stomach. I questioned my whole life, and I looked at the gun in front of me and asked myself “What am I doing here? How could things have led to this?” I couldn’t believe my life was actually turning out this way. There I was, practicing shooting with real guns because I had a plan to carry out a massacre. Why did things have to be this way, I silently questioned myself as I looked at the handgun I was holding in front of me. I paid my fee and left the range within minutes, feeling as if I was going to be sick. I spent the rest of the waiting period at the Coffee Bean in Oxnard, where I sat by myself feeling absolutely disgusted. My whole world was twisted. Within the following days, I spent a lot of time at the park, watching the wind blow through the trees and the children playing in the fields. I questioned the very fabric of reality. Why did this all exist? I wondered. How did life come to be? What was the nature of reality? What was my place in all of it? There was no point to my life anymore. I was never going to lose my virginity. I was never going to get a girlfriend. Because girls are repulsed by me, I was never going to have children and pass on my genes. The only way that I could have been worthy enough to beautiful girls is if I become wealthy at a young age, and the faith I had in that happened had just been crushed. There was no hope left. The life I could have had ceased to exist. I will never have sex, never have love, never have children. I will never be a creator, but I could be a destroyer. Life had been cruel to me. The human species had rejected me all my life, despite the fact that I am the ideal, magnificent gentleman. Life itself is twisted and disgusting, I mused. Humans are brutal animals. If I cannot thrive among them, then I will destroy them all. I didn’t want things to turn out this way. I wanted a happy, healthy life of love and sex. But if I’m unable to have such a life, then I will have no choice but to exact revenge on the society that denied it to me. My new housemates moved into the other room of my apartment at the end of September. They didn’t know each other before they moved in, which was better for me because then they wouldn’t gang up on me. Not like they would do such a thing anyway, since my two new housemates were both timid, geeky types. One of them was a funny-looking curly haired boy named Chris Rugg, and the other was an Asian American named Jon. After the first few days of their stay, I felt content with these new housemates. They were quiet, respectful, and very friendly. And best of all, they never invited any friends over. I doubt they even had any friends. All they did was stay in their room and played video games all day. Of course, I had no desire to be friends with them, because they had absolutely nothing to offer, but I knew I would have no problems with them in my apartment, and that was the best I could hope for. On Halloween weekend, I made the wise decision to go home to my mother’s house. There was no way I was going to torture myself by staying alone in my room while the entire town of Isla Vista erupted in raucous debauchery. All of the tall, hunky jocks that girls love so much will be having all of the sex and all of the fun, while an unwanted outcast like myself would rot in loneliness. I imagined that some attractive guys who only visited Isla Vista for the Halloween event will be getting laid that weekend. They’d be getting sex from just one night in Isla Vista, while I’m still a virgin after living there for over a year. It was too unfair. I wanted to punish them all. I imagined how sweet it would be to slaughter all of those evil, slutty bitches who rejected me, along with the fraternity jocks they throw themselves at. To see them all running from me in fear as I kill them left and right, that would be the ultimate retribution. Only then would I have all the power. They treated me like an insignificant little mouse, but on the Day of Retribution, I would be a God to them. They will be the mice, and I will be the predator. I considered setting the date for the Day of Retribution to be the next Halloween of 2013. That would give me a year to prepare, but I soon dismissed it. If the Day of Retribution were to happen, it would have to be on a normal weekend. There would be too many cops walking around during an event like Halloween, and cops are the only ones who could hinder my plans. I spent the time at mother’s house relaxing and trying to forget about Halloween. I drank some of my mother’s delicious wine until I was too buzzed to think about how much fun everyone else my age was having on that night. I didn’t even bother to register for college classes that semester. There was no point. I believed that I would either fulfill my dream of becoming wealthy at a young age in order to be worthy enough to attract beautiful women, or exact my revenge upon the world and die in the process to escape punishment. There was no other path for me. Of course, I “registered” for some classes, but only to keep up the pretense to my parents that I was still attending college. If they somehow found out that I had dropped my classes right after registering for them, they would have stopped all of their support for me, and my life would have to end right then and there. Thankfully, I was a good liar. During the Autumn of 2012, I had all the time in the world to figure out how I was going to triumph against the society that was torturing me. I spent a lot of time at the library in Goleta, just a few miles away from Isla Vista. At the library, I read countless books on history, business, and philosophy, learning as much as I could. It was better than staying at home in my room. Besides, I didn’t want my housemates to find out that I wasn’t going to college. That would be embarrassing, and I always cared about what others thought about me, even my nerdy housemates. I continued to visit the website of the Megamillions lottery. I still clung to the hope that it may rise above $100 million again and I would be the winner. So far, I saw that as my only way out of my horrible situation. My situation was indeed horrible. I couldn’t leave the house without seeing a young couple walking around somewhere. Everywhere I went, I was all by myself, while other young people had friends and girlfriends. I was ashamed to show myself to the world. Even though I wore expensive designer clothes, what was the point if girl’s still weren’t attracted to me? No one respects a man who is unable to get a woman. A man wearing shorts and a T-shirt would be seen as superior to me if he walks into a store with a beautiful girl on his arm and I walk in all alone. A man having a beautiful girl by his side shows the world that he is worth something, because obviously that beautiful girl sees some sort of worth in him. If a man is all alone, people get the impression that girls are repulsed by him, and therefore he is a worthless loser. I saw winning the lottery as the only way out, and I became so frustrated when the Megamillions jackpot kept resetting. In the end of November, the jackpot was very close to getting high enough, but then it sank to the bottom once again. It was at this point that I learned about the Powerball lottery. The Powerball hadn’t yet come to California, so I knew nothing about it before. I looked at the website and saw that the jackpot was over $500 million! California didn’t have a Powerball lottery, so in order to buy a ticket, I would have to drive all the way to Arizona. Earlier in that day, as I drove through Isla Vista, I saw this one particular young couple that stood out from the rest only because the girl looked absolutely perfect. She was tall, blonde, and sexy. She would have towered over me in height, and her boyfriend of course towered over her. They were both wearing beach gear, and the girl was in her bikini, showing off to everyone her sensual, erection-causing body. Her blonde hair was wet from swimming in the ocean, and it only made her look more arousing. The two of them were holding hands, and it was clear that they were in love. I saw the boyfriend place his hand on the girl’s ass, and when he did this the girl looked at him and smiled with delight. That guy was in heaven. I can only imagine how amazing it must be to have sex with a girl like that. I had to witness everything I wanted but could not have. It made me feel dizzy with anguish. I immediately thought about that couple, and how impossible it was for me to have the same experience as that guy. Impossible, as I was at that point. But it would be possible for me to get a tall, blonde, sexy girlfriend if I was a multi-millionaire! Oh yes, it would be very possible. Becoming a multimillionaire is the ONLY way I could have such an experience, and winning the lottery was the ONLY way I could become a multi-millionaire at my age. As I stared at the Powerball jackpot that was over $500 million, I knew that I HAD to win it. It was midnight when I had this revelation, and the drawing was on the following day. The only way I could get a ticket before the drawing was if I left for Arizona right then and there. And so that is exactly what I did. I quickly looked up the best route on Google Maps, packed some food into my backpack, and took off. The sun rose as I crossed the long stretch of desert in between Palm Springs and the border of Arizona. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. When I saw the sun creeping up before me in the horizon, igniting the clouds with its orange glow, I proclaimed that sunrise as the sunrise of my destiny. I was riding towards my destiny, to obtain the record-breaking Powerball ticket of $500 million! As I drove, I thought about every event in my life that led up to that journey. I considered that journey as the ultimate culmination of the tragic suffering and sexual starvation I had to go through for so long. That Powerball jackpot was meant for me. Once I won it, I’d be able to have my beautiful blonde girlfriend, I’d be able to show the world that girls consider me worthy, I’d be able to show the world how superior I am. And of course, I would be able to live above everyone who has wronged me, and rub it all in their faces as a form of gratifying vengeance. That was my ultimate purpose in life, my reason for living. I didn’t win. It was almost the same scenario that I suffered through in March, except this one was twice as devastating. When I finally arrived home from the long trip, I immediately went to bed after not sleeping for so long. It was very difficult to stay awake on the road, but I managed to do it due to the severe importance of the journey. The Powerball drawing occurred while I slept, and my last thought before drifting off to sleep was that when I woke up, I would be a multi-millionaire, and my life would be saved. I slept for a very long time, and when I awakened it was already the morning after the drawing. I was overcome with anxiety. I was so confident and certain that I would win before the drawing occurred, but once that point in time had passed, I feared the result. I feared that I might not have won. I spent the next three days in my room, trying to garner enough courage to check the winning numbers that would determine my fate. After realizing how much time I was wasting, I visited the Powerball website to see the result. At the very first second of viewing the webpage, I caught a brief glimpse of it before closing it out of fear and panic. In that brief glimpse, I saw that there were three winning tickets, and one of them was in Arizona! My heart started beating rapidly. That had to be me! I thought, with hope and excitement welling up inside my whole body. There was an Arizona winner, and I had bought my ticket in Arizona. After that long, emotional journey; driving toward the sunrise in the middle of the desert, fighting off sleep just to get there in time, visualizing my whole future before me, with a beautiful blonde girlfriend and the children I would have with her… After all that, who else could the winner be but me? It was meant for me. It was fate, destiny. I took out my tickets, of which I had purchased fifty, and sifted through them to find the one that matched the winning numbers. I felt dizzy and ecstatic as I did it, feeling so certain that my victory will be confirmed. When I reached the end of my stack of tickets, I didn’t find any that matched. For the first few moments, I couldn’t even believe what was happening. I looked through all of my tickets again and again and again, and still, nothing. I didn’t win. I sat very quiet and still in my desk chair for a long time, all of the emotion swept out of me. I didn’t react with rage or anguish. I just sat there, cold and dead, mentally trying to contemplate what I had just done. I had driven all the way to Arizona just to buy lottery tickets, because I was so desperate for a happy life in which girls would be attracted to me; I was so certain I would win, building up all that hope, only to have it shattered right before me at just that moment. I then drove out of my apartment and made my way to the Girsh Park. I had to be somewhere peaceful. Along the way, I saw couples strolling along the streets of Isla Vista, walking arm in arm; I saw groups of good looking young people walking together, laughing and enjoying each other’s company. I felt completely dead inside, and torment racked my entire body, as I realized that I now had no chance to rise above them. I lost. When I got to the park I sat in my car for hours, crying and crying and crying. I wailed with agony. My tears streamed down my face and stained my collar. I couldn’t take it anymore. Feeling the need to talk to someone, I called the only people I had in my life: My parents. I called them both, first my mother and then my father, and I told them both how much I was suffering from my loneliness, and my utter realization that I had no hope of ever having a happy life. I told them that they must be ashamed of me, that I was a 21 year old virgin who is unable to get a girlfriend or making any friends whatsoever. I was not the son any parent would want. My tantrum to my parents on the phone deeply disturbed them, and they arranged for me to see my psychiatrist, Dr. Charles Sophy, when I return home for the winter break. As the phrase that I had coined goes: If I cannot join them, I will rise above them; and if I cannot rise above them, I will destroy them. I’ve been trying to join and be accepted among the beautiful, popular people all my life, but it was to no avail. They have always treated me like scum. Girls have always deemed me unworthy of their love and sex. I tried to overthrow them by gaining wealth at a young age, from trying to come up with invention ideas, to contemplating writing an epic story, and finally to trying to win the lottery. At this point, the prospect of overthrowing them seemed hopeless. The final solution to triumph over my enemies was to destroy them, to carry out my Day of Retribution, to exact my ultimate and devastating vengeance against all of the popular young people who never accepted me, and against all women for rejecting me and starving me of love and sex. At this point, it fully dawned on me that the possibility of having to resort to exacting this Retribution was more real than ever before. Without the prospect of becoming wealthy at a young age, I had nothing to live for now. I was going to be a virgin outcast forever. I realized that I had to start planning and preparing for the Day of Retribution, even though I hadn’t yet had any idea of what day that would be. My first act of preparation was the purchase my first handgun. I did this quickly and hastily, at a local gun shop called Goleta Gun and Supply. I had already done some research on handguns, and I decided to purchase the Glock 34 semiautomatic pistol, an efficient and highly accurate weapon. I signed all of the papers and was told that my pickup day was in mid-December. That fell in nicely, because that was when I was planning on staying in Santa Barbara till. After I picked up the handgun, I brought it back to my room and felt a new sense of power. I was now armed. Who’s the alpha male now, bitches? I thought to myself, regarding all of the girls who’ve looked down on me in the past. I quickly admired my new weapon before locking it up in my safe and preparing to go back to my hometown for the winter break. I didn’t attend the Lemelson’s Christmas party that year, nor would I ever again. The only person I ever really hung out with at those parties was James, and James was no longer my friend. It would have been extremely awkward to be there while James is there, knowing that the two of us, who used to be old friends since first grade, would be avoiding each other. It would be a foul and bitter experience, and I had already gone through enough anguish in the last few months. A few days before Christmas, I took off with my mother and sister for another vacation in England. She had called me a month previously to tell me about it. At first, I didn’t want to go, knowing that I will feel miserable about going on a vacation without a girlfriend to experience it with me, along with the shame of having to once again appear to my relatives in a fashion that I was unsatisfied with. A year had passed since the last trip, and I was in exactly the same position in life. I had nothing for my grandmothers to be proud of. No girlfriend, no future prospects, no life at all to talk about. The one thing that persuaded me to go was the fact that my mother planned to have us travel on Virgin Atlantic Upper Class, the highest form of travel the airline offers. I hadn’t traveled First Class for a long time, and I just couldn’t refuse such an offer. I have always had a penchant for luxury, opulence, and prestige; and traveling on Virgin Atlantic Upper Class would give me that experience, if only for a short time. After all of the anguish I had been through, I figured I needed a sense of respite by going on this luxurious vacation. For just this one brief period of my life, since I speculated that my life could very well be ending soon, I decided to try my best to forget about everything and indulge myself in every way I could on this trip to England. Before we took off, we spent some time at the exclusive Upper Class lounge at the LAX airport. There was a buffet with all sorts of goodies for me to pick at, and I had my fill of smoked salmon and champagne. While there, I had a discussion with my mother about whether I had any more hope in my life, and what I could possibly do to get what I want in life. As holders of First Class tickets, we skipped to the front of the line as we boarded the plane, and I took great satisfaction as I passed by all of the other people who flew economy, giving all of the younger passengers a cocky little smirk whenever they looked at me. Once I had settled in my big, luxurious bedseat in the First Class cabin, I had even more champagne, followed by an exquisite dinner of steak and potatoes, and some red wine to wash it all down. I ordered glass after glass of red wine during the whole ride, and became quite drunk as I watched a few movies, one of them being the new Ice Age movie which I found quite funny. When we arrived, we were chauffeured in a limousine to our hotel in Colchester. This time, we stayed at the Holiday Inn, which was very similar to the hotel on the last trip. Our relatives, even Ah Mah who rarely left the house in her old age, came to our hotel to greet us. We then went to their house, where Aunt Min had cooked a nice dinner for us. I felt so amazed to be back in England again. It had been a whole year since the last trip, but I felt as if nothing had happened. Nothing had improved in my life, that’s for sure. I was in the exact same position as I had been on the year before, and a year before that… and so on. I was now a 21-year-old virgin, still suffering the same injustices of the world. I tried not to think about it, for the sake of enjoying my trip, but the angst was too overwhelming. Our hotel served the same type of exquisite breakfast buffet as the hotel we stayed in last year, and once again I took delight in indulging in the endless amounts of pork sausages, croissants, ham, bacon, and every other delectable treat at the buffet; every single morning. For this vacation, I mostly stayed at the hotel, relaxing and trying to establish a sense of peace and serenity. When my family went on a tour through London, I refused to go. There was no point. I would just be miserable from having to be alone while other men walked around there with girlfriends. I proclaimed to them all that I will never go for a night out in London unless I had a beautiful girlfriend on my arm. While they were in London, I stayed at the relative’s house with my grandma Ah Mah. Ah Mah cooked me a delicious dinner, just like she did when I was a little child living in the Old Rectory in England. I drank a whole bottle of wine that night, and I was quite drunk by the time they came back from London. We did manage to visit grandma Jinx during this trip. Before we left back to America, uncle Andrew drove us to Smarden, Kent to visit her at her house. I hadn’t been to grandma Jinx’s house since I was ten years old, and it looked exactly the same. Grandma Jinx asked me a lot of questions about my life, as she always did. I had to stiffly pretend that everything was going well, and it pained me that I had nothing going for me to boast about. I hated being the shameful grandson. I bet cousin George was living a better life than me. I’m sure he had a lot to say that made grandma Jinx proud. All in all, it was a relaxing, peaceful, and luxurious trip. I didn’t regret going. From the way my life was going, I needed something like that to fill in as one my last few enjoyments. On the way home, we spent time at the Upper Class lounge at Heathrow Airport, and this lounge was even more impressive than the one in LAX. They had all sorts of luxury food, and a whole bar full of every drink one could imagine. On the way home, I had multiple glasses of red wine again before drifting off to a nice, drunken sleep. As we were about to land in L.A., our plane hovered around the city for a while, waiting for the traffic on the runway to clear up below. While the plane hovered, I filmed a few videos of the entire city of L.A. It was quite an experience, to look down upon such a city. Everything looked so small, and the people and cars looked like little insects. I briefly fantasized about being a god as I looked down upon them all. I imagined having the power to destroy everything below with destructive, supernatural powers. It made for a fine scenario, worthy of being discussed with James Ellis, if only he were still my friend. On New Year’s Eve, I stayed at my mother’s house, feeling lonely and miserable. I believe father and Soumaya went to Antje Twinn’s house again. There was no way I would go there again after the incident that occurred the year before. I found it quite hilarious that everything during this holiday was playing out just the same way as it played out in the previous year; the trip to England, father and Soumaya attending the same party at the Twinn’s house, my same miserable, lonely, virgin status. Indeed, my life was moving in vicious circle of torment with no way out. The only thing that got me through it all was my hope that there was a way out, and that hope had been shattered too many times. I couldn’t live like this anymore. I knew that if things continue to be the same, I would have to carry out my ultimate Retribution and die in the process. I didn’t want to die. I fear death, but death is better than living such a miserable, insignificant life. I remained in my hometown for a couple of weeks, and then I went back to Santa Barbara, the place of beauty and romance that I’ve had to suffer in lonely hell. I only signed up for online classes for the Spring semester, but that was only to placate my parents. I didn’t see the point in even bothering with college anymore. Having to walk through SBCC with all of those beautiful girls strutting around in their revealing shorts, showing off their sexy legs… It is torture, because I know that they would all reject me. There are so many beautiful girls in Santa Barbara, but not one of them ever wanted to be my girlfriend. Life would have been so perfect there if only girls were attracted to me. For the month of January 2013, I stayed in my room all the time, assessing my situation. I brooded and contemplated about everything. I could hear all of those happy young people partying and enjoying themselves as the new semester came to a start. I mused that I should be out there, experiencing a happy, healthy college life with a group of friends, meeting up with girls and sleeping with them, just like all other guys did in college. I thought about how it was almost two years since I had moved to Santa Barbara, and that only made my rage and frustration grow. As I listened to all of those young people having so much fun right outside my window, my hatred of them all for not accepting me only festered and boiled inside me, filling me with immense pain. At one point, I looked out my window and saw couples strolling around the street, on their way to some party. They probably slept with each other that night. The sight made me feel so inferior, like a little mouse. I felt like I was at the bottom of the food chain. I couldn’t fathom how I had to endure such a painful life. On that same night, I looked at the Powerball again, and saw that the jackpot had risen to over $100 million. This prompted me to drive to Arizona again, in another desperate attempt to become instantly wealthy so that I could attract beautiful girls and live the life I want. After all of the rejection and mistreatment I’ve experienced at the hands of women, I knew that becoming wealthy was the only way I could become worthy of them, and so my obsession with becoming wealthy at a young age came back in full force for the first few months of 2013. By the month of April, I had driven to Arizona three more times, making a total of four trips to Arizona in my lifetime, just to buy lottery tickets out of intense desperation, believing it to be my only hope of attaining the life I desire, the life I know I’m worthy of. I kept dreaming of the life I would have once I won; the beautiful blonde girlfriend, the luxurious mansion with a magnificent view, all of the exotic cars I would drive to impress girls. It gave me hope. It gave me something to live for. That hope was shattered after each attempt. None of the tickets I bought on those trips fulfilled my dreams. The reason I kept going, even after I didn’t win, was because I truly believed I was supposed to win. I wanted to believe it because I wanted something to live for. I needed to have hope. I knew that if I lost all of my hope, I would have nothing to live for but revenge. Any chance of having a happy life would be doomed. At the end of March, when I checked my last set of tickets that I had bought from my last trip to Arizona, and saw that I didn’t win, any hope I had of becoming wealthy at a young age was finally and indefinitely shattered. It fully dawned on me that the life I had envisioned for myself would never come to pass. The children I would have in the future with a beautiful blonde girlfriend ceased to exist, as if they were murdered. There won’t be any beautiful blonde girlfriend for me now. No girl would be my girlfriend unless I had great wealth… I learned that from my life of being rejected. I was doomed to a life of lonely virginity. In April, the Powerball lottery was introduced in the state of California, so if I ever wanted to play it again I would no longer have to drive to Arizona. However, I was so shaken by not winning in the last few months that I gave up on it for a while, but eventually I would have episodes of little surges of hope in which I’d buy a few tickets, just to have something to hope for as I endure the last few months of my torturous life. All of those little surges of hope, of course, would be shattered as well. During this Spring of 2013, I began to seriously think about planning the Day of Retribution. My next step towards planning for it was to buy my second handgun, a Sig Sauer P226. It is of a much higher quality than the Glock, and a lot more efficient. In turn, it was also a lot more expensive. My Glock 34 was around $700 dollars, whereas my new Sig Sauer P226 was $1100. These prices were of no concern to me, however. When I first moved to Santa Barbara and experienced all of those horrible revelations about the nature of humanity, I knew that something like the Day of Retribution could very well happen if the world continued to mistreat me. I began to carefully save up all of the money that my parent’s and grandmothers were sending me. It was an ample amount to live on, leaving me with a lot left over to build up in my bank account. When I hit the $5000 dollar mark, which was fairly soon after my move to Santa Barbara, I decided never to go under it, deeming that $5000 was enough to buy all of the supplies and equipment I would need if I had to do something like this. The Day of Retribution had always been in the back of my mind as a final solution if all else failed in my life, ever since I had moved to Santa Barbara. As it so happened, all else did indeed fail. Women continued to reject me and mistreat me, and I remained an unwanted virgin. For the last months of Spring, I went home a lot because the loneliness in Santa Barbara was too stifling. Going home to visit my parents was always an emotional refuge for me. During these trips home, I spent a lot of time with my little brother Jazz. My father let me drive his Mercedes SUV while I was in town, and I often took Jazz on outings with it. On these outings, I began to really bond with the boy. We went to places like Barnes & Noble, the playground at the park, and local cafés where I treated him to coffee and pastries. The parks I took him to were Serrania Park and the Woodland Hills recreation center. I like to watch him play in the playground at these parks, because those were the exact same playgrounds I played in when I was his age… When my life as actually happy. As I watched him, I dreamed about that happy life I used to live, before my whole world turned to darkness. I realized how much different my brother Jazz was from me at that age. While I was shy, short, and physically weak; Jazz was tall for his age and very social. He had no problem going up to other boys at the playground and making instant friends. I began to form a bitter envy towards him, though I hid it really well. My little brother had all the potential to grow up to be a popular kid and live the life I was never able to live. I cursed the world for granting my little brother Jazz so many more advantages than me. I tried not to let this ruin my relationship with him. My little brother really looked up to me. He was one of the few people who treated me with adoration, and that made me feel at least a small twinge of self-worth. It was quite surprising that he respected me so much, since I had nothing in my life to boast about to him. He even asked me once if I had ever had a girlfriend, and I angrily told him that the matter was none of his concern. I didn’t want to admit to him that girl’s thought I was a loser. If he found out about that, he would respect me less. In order to boost his high opinion of me, I often sugarcoated all of my early accomplishments, such as telling him that I was an expert skateboarder and video game player. People having a high opinion of me is what I’ve always wanted in life. It has always been of the utmost importance. This is why my life has been so miserable, because no one has ever had a high opinion of me. My little brother Jazz was the only one who had such an opinion, and that is why I enjoyed spending so much time with him, despite my envy of his social advantages. During one of my frequent visits home in late Spring, I reunited with my old friends Philip and Addison. I hadn’t seen them since the night I emotionally cried in front of them at the Getty museum in the beginning of 2012. This reunion was sparked by the political and philosophic conversations I had been having with Addison over Facebook. I decided to meet them at Philip’s house, where we would make plans for an outing around Malibu and L.A. I brought my father’s Mercedes SUV to use as our mode of transportation. First, we went to Point Dume in Malibu, where Addison used to live. Going there brought back bitter memories of my previous conflict with Addison. The three of us hiked to the very tip of Point Dume, where there was a cliff that overlooked the beach. After Malibu, we decided to have dinner at the BOA Steakhouse in Santa Monica. Driving through Santa Monica was an extremely infuriating experience, just like it had always been. There were so many good looking young couples walking about, enjoying the pretty night life that the attractive city had to offer. Groups of young people walked about in their little cliques. It reminded me to State Street in Santa Barbara, as well as Isla Vista. As I watched all of those obnoxious boys walking around with their beautiful blonde girlfriends, I wanted to run them all over with my father’s Mercedes SUV. I fantasized about how delightful that would be. To literally crush their lives to a pulp, just like they had crushed mine. I tried as hard as I could to hide my envy-fueled rage from Philip and Addison. Philip was easy to fool, but Addison could tell how enraged I was. Addison knew me all too well. In Santa Barbara, I spent almost all of my time in my room, brooding. I began building on all of my philosophical views and theories about the world. I had to question why things were the way they were. The world is so twisted, and I wanted answers. I hated all of those obnoxious, boisterous men who were able to enjoy pleasurable sex lives with beautiful girls, but I hated the girl’s even more, because they were the ones who chose those men instead of me. It was their choice. They are the ones who deprived me of love and sex. My hatred and rage towards all women festered inside me like a plague. Their very existence is the cause of all of my torture, pain and suffering throughout my life. My life turned into a living hell after I started desiring them when I hit puberty. I desire them intensely, but I could never have them. I could never have the experience of holding hands with a beautiful girl and walking on a moonlit beach, I could never embrace a girlfriend and feel her warmth and love, I could never have passionate sex with a girl and drift off to sleep with her sexy body beside me. Women deemed me unworthy of having them, and so they deprived me of an enjoyable youth, while giving their love and sex to other boys. In all of those years I suffered a life of sexual starvation and unfulfilled desires. I will never get those years back. My life has been wasted, all because women hate me so much. All I had ever wanted was to love women, but their behavior has only earned my hatred. I want to have sex with them, and make them feel good, but they would be disgusted at the prospect. They have no sexual attraction towards me. It is such an injustice, and I vehemently questioned why things had to be this way. Why do women behave like vicious, stupid, cruel animals who take delight in my suffering and starvation? Why do they have a perverted sexual attraction for the most brutish of men instead of gentlemen of intelligence? I concluded that women are flawed. There is something mentally wrong with the way their brains are wired, as if they haven’t evolved from animal-like thinking. They are incapable of reason or thinking rationally. They are like animals, completely controlled by their primal, depraved emotions and impulses. That is why they are attracted to barbaric, wild, beast-like men. They are beasts themselves. Beasts should not be able to have any rights in a civilized society. If their wickedness is not contained, the whole of humanity will be held back from advancement to a more civilized state. Women should not have the right to choose who to mate with. That choice should be made for them by civilized men of intelligence. If women had the freedom to choose which men to mate with, like they do today, they would breed with stupid, degenerate men, which would only produce stupid, degenerate offspring. This in turn would hinder the advancement of humanity. Not only hinder it, but devolve humanity completely. Women are like a plague that must be quarantined. When I came to this brilliant, perfect revelation, I felt like everything was now clear to me, in a bitter, twisted way. I am one of the few people on this world who has the intelligence to see this. I am like a god, and my purpose is to exact ultimate Retribution on all of the impurities I see in the world. The Spring of 2013 was also the time when I came across the website PUAHate.com. It is a forum full of men who are starved of sex, just like me. Many of them have their own theories of what women are attracted to, and many of them share my hatred of women, though unlike me they would be too cowardly to act on it. Reading the posts on that website only confirmed many of the theories I had about how wicked and degenerate women really are. Most of the people on that website have extremely stupid opinions that I found very frustrating, but I found a few to be quite insightful. The website PUAHate is very depressing. It shows just how bleak and cruel the world is due of the evilness of women. I tried to show it to my parents, to give them some sort dose of reality as to why I am so miserable. They never understood why I am so miserable. They have always had the delusion that everything is going well for me, especially my father. When I sent the link of PUAHate.com to my parents, none of them even bothered to look at the posts on there. After a Spring season spent in absolute despair while other young people lived healthy lives of sexual pleasure, summer arrived. Summer is even worse than Spring, especially in Santa Barbara. Flocks of hot, young girls go out in their shorts and bikini’s, further tantalizing my sex-starved body every time I look at them. Knowing that they gleefully show off their desirable forms, yet they would never give me a chance to be their boyfriend only increased my already boiling hatred towards all women. I could not leave my apartment without seeing at least a few of them. The only place I could go where I could be at peace was the Lake Park in Goleta. I spent a lot of time there, trying to establish a sense peace and serenity whenever my loneliness in Isla Vista became too unbearable. As I looked at all of the beautiful trees around me, and the towering mountains in the background, I wondered how a world so beautiful can be such a dark and cruel place. Indeed, a beautiful environment is the darkest hell if you have to experience it all alone, while other men get to enjoy the company of women. I had nothing left to live for but revenge. Women must be punished for their crimes of rejecting such a magnificent gentleman as myself. All of those popular boys must be punished for enjoying heavenly lives and having sex with all the girls while I had to suffer in lonely virginity. It was already June, and I had been living in Santa Barbara for two years. Two whole years. I lived in a college town full of young, attractive students who partied and had sex all the time, and I didn’t get to experience any of it. No one invited me to any parties, and in all the times I went out by myself to Isla Vista, none of the beautiful blonde girls showed any interest in having sex with me. Not one girl. These are crimes than cannot go unpunished. The more I thought about all these injustices that were dealt to me, the more eager I became for revenge. It’s all I had left. I didn’t want to die, but I knew that I had to kill myself after I exacted my revenge to avoid getting captured and imprisoned. For a while, I had been deciding on whether I would exact my Retribution in Isla Vista or at Santa Barbara City College. In both places, I had suffered greatly at the hands of everyone there. I have seen attractive young couples walking around in both places, and those were my targets. I wanted to kill as many attractive young couples as I possibly could. After a lot of thinking, I came to the conclusion that the Day of Retribution will take place in Isla Vista. On weekend nights, the streets of Isla Vista are always flooded with young couples and good-looking popular kids walking to their parties. What better place is there to exact my Retribution on my enemies? Every time I walked around Isla Vista, trying to meet girls or fit in with popular kids, I’ve only been treated with disdain, as if I’m an inferior mouse. On the Day of Retribution, the tables will indeed turn, I mused to myself. I will be a god, and they will all be animals that I can slaughter. They are animals… They behave like animals, and I will slaughter them like the animals they are. It came to a point where I had to set a date for the Day of Retribution. I originally considered doing it on the Halloween of 2013. That is when the entire town erupts in raucous partying. There would literally be thousands of people crowded together who I could kill with ease, and the goal was to kill everyone in Isla Vista, to utterly destroy that wretched town. But then, after seeing footage of previous Halloween events on Youtube, I saw that there were too many cops walking around. It would be too risky. One gunshot from a cop will end everything. The Day of Retribution would have to be on a normal party weekend, so I set it for some time during November of 2013. This goal would give me five months to plan and prepare. Five more months of life, but then again I wouldn’t even call it life. The existence I’ve had on this world during the last eight years is anything but life. A feeling of overwhelming dizziness and anxiety swept over me. I was actually going to die. I couldn’t believe it. Then I realized that my life was already over anyway. I was never going to lose my virginity; I was never going to experience love and sex; I was never going to have children. This final act of Retribution is the only thing I could do. It was very hard to come to terms with this fact. I felt very trapped and lost. I hated the feeling of being trapped and lost. I wanted a way out, but I saw none. I had already spent two years in Santa Barbara, and I was still a virgin. There was no way I could ever attract a girl without becoming extremely wealthy, and all of my prospects of becoming wealthy at a young age seemed impossible now. In the beginning of summer, I went on a few walks around Isla Vista during daylight hours. While on these walks, I saw so many attractive young people walking around in their little groups, having the time of their lives. Some of the guys in those groups weren’t even good looking, while I am good looking. I couldn’t understand how they could be accepted, while I wasn’t. I furiously questioned why I haven’t been able to have such experiences after living in Isla Vista for two years. It was unfathomable. I wanted answers. I wanted to know why it had to come to this. If only one pretty girl had shown some form of attraction to me, the Day of Retribution would never happen. I’d never even consider it. The Day of Retribution is mainly my war against women for rejecting me and depriving me of sex and love. If only one girl had given me a chance, tried to get to know me, let me take her out on a date… None of this would have to happen. It was so hard to accept that things would have to resort to me having to perform this act of Retribution I was planning. While I visited home, my parents, along with my psychiatrist Dr. Charles Sophy, arranged for a counsellor to meet me frequently and help me out with my life. His name was Gavin Linderman, a cleancut twenty five-year-old. He had a similar role to Tony, my old counsellor from the regional center back when I was nineteen, except Gavin was much younger and acted more like a friend who could take me out to places. Every time I went back to visit my parents, I would meet up with Gavin once. We usually met up at a restaurant somewhere, or went on a hike. I told him about all of my problems with girls, and all of the hardships I’ve had to face in Santa Barbara. Being familiar with Isla Vista himself, since he spent a great deal of time there when he was younger, he confirmed to me that yes, the girls in Isla Vista prefer tall, muscular, rowdy jock-type men. Gavin was the only young person I really interacted with at the time, besides the occasional meetings with Philip and Addison. He was a good-looking guy, with a chiseled jaw and bright blonde hair. Whenever we went out to a restaurant, or anywhere that had girls, I got extremely jealous when I saw that girls were checking him out instead of me. This one girl at a restaurant in Santa Monica was staring at him the whole time we were sitting there. No girl had ever done that to me. This only made me more aware that girls did not consider me physically attractive. My hatred of the female gender could grow no stronger. It was too much. On Father’s Day, I went with my family to the Four Season’s Resort in Westlake Village. The Four Season’s held their annual Father’s Day buffet. The place was very beautiful and opulent, and there was delicious food of all kinds to choose from. I always looked forward to events like this. Since I had no access to sex, food was my only vice. As with all buffets that I had attended, I stuffed myself tremendously, trying to sample every single thing they offered. There was pork sausage, bacon, smoked salmon, sushi, filet mignon, roast chicken, roast potatoes… And I took pleasure in eating as much as I could. I filled my plate three times and devoured all of them. As I enjoyed my exquisite meal, I took in the scenery all around me; the perfectly built architecture of the building, the pretty flowers in the gardens, the luxurious furniture and décor, the cascading fountains. It truly made me feel good, a welcome respite from all of my suffering in Santa Barbara. Respites like these make me more aware that there are so many good and beautiful things in this world to enjoy. If my status in life were better, I would think this world to be a magnificent place, and I could truly enjoy life. If I was satisfied with my circumstances in life, I would be able to enjoy this beautiful world to its fullest. I can’t be satisfied with life if I’m a virgin and girls are repulsed by me. It’s such a tragedy. I realized that I didn’t want to give up on life in this world. I wanted to live a happy life, a life in which I could have a beautiful girlfriend and experience this amazing world with her. I decided that since my plans for the Day of Retribution wouldn’t be taking place until November, I could use the time I had during the summer to give life another chance; one last chance before the end, one last ditch effort to attain happiness. In late June, my mother moved out of the Summit Town Homes and bought a house in West Hills. It was the first time my mother bought a house, as she had only rented in the past. The house had recently undergone a renovation, so it was practically brand new. The house had a swimming pool and was located in a nice enough area, though I would have still preferred it if my mother had gotten married to a wealthy man and moved into a mansion. I still continued to pester her to do this, and she still stubbornly refused. I will always resent my mother for refusing to do this. If not for her sake, she should have done it for mine. Joining a family of great wealth would have truly saved my life. I would have a high enough status to attract beautiful girlfriends and live above all of my enemies. All of my horrific troubles would have been eased instantly. It is very selfish of my mother to not consider this. With the help of Gavin, my parents arranged for me to have a couple of social skills counsellors to work with me in Santa Barbara. They would have a similar role that Gavin did, providing someone to take me out and help me practice socializing. They would be like hired friends. Of course, I did need something like this, and I should have signed up for it when I first moved to Santa Barbara. It was a little too late at this point, I feared, but I went along with it anyway. I was so lonely in Santa Barbara, and in my loneliness I always craved having someone to talk to. The first counsellor was a very easy going man named Karlin, who was the same age as Gavin. On my first night of meeting Karlin, he took me out to Isla Vista, but nothing came out of it. We just ended up walking around until his time was up. During our walk, I asked him if he had ever had sex with girls in Isla Vista, and he told me he had sex with four girls! I was very jealous. Karlin was half Hawaiian and half Mexican, and he wasn’t that good looking. How on earth could he have managed to sleep with four girls in Isla Vista, while I had been there for two years and had none? It seemed absolutely preposterous. I didn’t want to see him at all after I found this out. The second counsellor that was assigned to help me was a girl named Sasha. She was only a year older than me. Sasha was the first young girl I had interacted with in the entire time I stayed in Santa Barbara, and she was only hired to talk to me. How pathetic is that? At first, I didn’t want to have a female counsellor, but when I was introduced to her, I saw that she was quite a pretty looking blonde. I couldn’t refuse the opportunity to hang out with a blonde girl, despite the fact that she was a hired friend. It was the only time in my life that I had the experience of spending time with a girl my age, and even though it was all fake, I really enjoyed it. I felt so much better about life after each time we met. But then, I thought about how unfair it was that I could only get a fake little taste of such an experience, while other men get to do such a thing every single day with their girlfriends. Eventually, Sasha had to move out of Santa Barbara, and I decided not to have any more female counsellors. It has the same effect as hiring a prostitute, I imagine. It temporarily feels good for the moment, but afterward it makes one feel like a pathetic loser for having to hire a girl when other men could get the experience for free. In July, I spent a lot of time exercising in my room in a final effort to appear as attractive as possible to girls. I proposed that after two weeks of rigorous exercising, I will try my hardest to go out in Isla Vista and do everything I can to meet a girl and lose my virginity. It had been a long time since I went out to Isla Vista by myself, but I knew that I had to do it. I had nothing to lose, and my whole life was on the line. Before would set the definite decision to plan the Day of Retribution, I wanted to give women and humanity one more chance to accept me and give me a chance to have a pleasurable youth. I resolved that if I go out to Isla Vista for this final time, and I still end up going back to my room as a lonely virgin, I will have no choice but to plan my Retribution. I even attended college at SBCC again. I signed up for a summer sociology class and attended it for a week, before dropping it out of the familiar frustration of girls talking to other boys instead of me. This last ditch effort of desperation to once again try to live an enjoyable college life in Isla Vista came to an ultimate and devastating culmination on Saturday night, July 20th, just a few days before my 22nd Birthday. It was the day that I decided to go out in Isla Vista in an attempt to lose my virginity before I turned 22. That was the only thing that could have saved me. I was giving the female gender one last chance to provide me with the pleasures I deserved from them. I was too nervous to go out there sober, so I bought a bottle of vodka and took a few shots to garner enough courage to walk out at such an hour. I had taken one too many, for by the time I reached Del Playa Street, my head was clouded with drunkenness. At the start, it benefited me greatly. I saw lots of good looking popular kids socializing in groups all over the place, and if I wasn’t drunk it would have intimidated me too much. I was so drunk that I walked right into a wild house party that was taking place on Del Playa. They had a DJ playing annoying hip hop music that all the young people liked these days, and there was a ping pong table set up where lots of popular kids were playing “beer pong”, a crude drinking game. There were about one hundred people at that party, and everyone was socializing with a group of friends except for me. I walked around in my drunken confidence for a few moments, helped myself to the beer they had, and tried to act like a normal party-goer. I soon became frustrated that no one was paying any attention to me, particularly the girls. I saw girls talking to other guys who looked like obnoxious slobs, but none of them showed any interest in me. As my frustration grew, so did my anger. I came across this Asian guy who was talking to a white girl. The sight of that filled me with rage. I always felt as if white girls thought less of me because I was half-Asian, but then I see this white girl at the party talking to a full-blooded Asian. I never had that kind of attention from a white girl! And white girls are the only girls I’m attracted to, especially the blondes. How could an ugly Asian attract the attention of a white girl, while a beautiful Eurasian like myself never had any attention from them? I thought with rage. I glared at them for a bit, and then decided I had been insulted enough. I angrily walked toward them and bumped the Asian guy aside, trying to act cocky and arrogant to both the boy and the girl. My drunken state got the better of me, and I almost fell over to the floor after a few minutes of this. They said something along the lines that I was very drunk and that I needed to get some water, so I angrily left them and went out to the front yard, where the main partying happened. Rage fumed inside me as I realized that I just walked away from that confrontation, so I rushed back into the house and spitefully insulted the Asian before walking outside again. I stood awkwardly in the front yard for a bit, realizing how pathetic I looked all by myself when everyone was partying around me. To calm down, I climbed up onto a wooden ledge that bordered the street and plunged down on one of the chairs there. Isla Vista was at its wildest state at that time, and I saw lots of guys walking around with hot blonde girls on their arm. It fueled me with rage, as it always had. I should be one of those guys, but no blonde girls gave me that chance. I looked down at all of them, and in my drunken carelessness, extended my arm out and pretended to shoot them all, laughing giddily as I did it. Eventually, some partiers climbed up onto the ledge. They were all obnoxious, rowdy boys whom I’ve always despised. A couple of pretty girls came up and talked to them, but not to me. They all started socializing right next to me, and none of the girls paid any attention to me. I rose from my chair and tried to act arrogant and cocky toward them, throwing insults at everyone. They only laughed at me and started insulting me back. That was the last straw, I had taken enough insults that night. A dark, hate-fueled rage overcame my entire being, and I tried to push as many of them as I could from the 10-foot ledge. My main target was the girls. I wanted to punish them for talking to the obnoxious boys instead of me. It was one of the most foolish and rash things I ever did, and I almost risked everything in doing it, but I was so drunk with rage that I didn’t care. I failed to push any of them from the ledge, and the boys started to push me, which resulted in me being the one to fall onto the street. When I landed, I felt a snap in my ankle, followed by a stinging pain. I slowly got up and found that I couldn’t even walk. I had to stumble, and stumble I did. I tried to get away from there as fast as I could. As I stumbled a few yards down Del Playa with my shattered leg, I realized that someone had stolen my Gucci sunglasses that my mother had given me. I loved those sunglasses, and had to get them back. I vehemently turned around and staggered back towards the party. At that point, I was so drunk that I forgot where the party was, and ended up walking onto the front yard of the house next to it, demanding to know who took my sunglasses. The people in this house must have been friends with the ones I previously fought with, for they greeted me with vicious hostility. They called me names like “faggot” and “pussy”, typical things those types of scumbags would say. A whole group of the obnoxious brutes came up and dragged me onto their driveway, pushing and hitting me. I wanted to fight and kill them all. I managed to throw one punch toward the main attacker, but that only caused them to beat me even more. I fell to the ground where they started kicking me and punching me in the face. Eventually, some other people from the street broke up the fight. I managed to have the strength to stand up and stagger away. It was the first time in my life that I had been truly beaten up physically to the point where my face was bruised up. I had suffered a lot of bullying in my life, but most of it wasn’t physical. I had never been beaten and humiliated that badly. Everyone in Isla Vista saw what happened, and it was truly horrific. The worst part of this whole ordeal was not getting beaten up, oh no. It was the fact that no one showed any concern. There was only one group who helped me to the end of Del Playa, but after that they abandoned me. Not one girl offered to help me as I stumbled home with a broken leg, beaten and bloody. If girls had been attracted to me, they would have offered to walk me to my room and take care of me. They would have even offered to sleep with me to make me feel better. But no, not one girl showed an ounce of concern for me. They didn’t care. No one cared about me. I was all alone. As I got to my room, I was so traumatized that I called the only people in the world I knew, my parents and my sister. Yes, I even called my sister, someone I never got along with. I sulked for a long time, and then I reached up to my neck to feel my special golden necklace, and I felt nothing there. In the midst of the fight, one of those horrible punks had snatched off my special golden necklace that my grandma Ah Mah had given me! That necklace was one of the most special items I had, and now one of those evil, wretched thugs will be selling it to buy drugs. I broke down in anguish and wailed in agony, crying and crying until I passed out in my bed, all alone. When I woke up the next morning, my leg was in absolute agony. It was purple and swollen, and I could not even stumble anymore. I had to crawl. Being fully sober, all of my anxiety came back. It became very clear to me what had happened. I felt enraged by everything, but also fearful that I might get in trouble. I did try to push girls off of a ledge and threatened to kill all of those people, which could implicate me. I had to concoct a fairly altered story to explain to the police, who would inevitably have to interview me once I got to the hospital and reported my injury. My father drove up to Santa Barbara to bring me to the hospital. Two police did interview me, and I told them that those boys deliberately pushed me off of the ledge after I acted “cocky” towards them. I didn’t mention the girls at all. I expressed to the police of my wishes that they should all be punished for this. The police then went to interview them, and they had their own version of the story. Since there was no actual evidence, the whole case was shortly dismissed. The physician at the hospital put me in a temporary cast and gave me crutches. On top of all other things in the world that made me feel inferior, I was now a cripple. I felt so defeated and broken. To my horror, the physician said that I would have to be in crutches for the next six weeks, and I might have to get surgery. The leg that broke was my left leg, so I was still able to drive. Shortly after the incident, I drove home to spend the rest of the summer recovering. It was a depressing drive. I had never felt so defeated and wronged in my life. I had actually gone out to a party in Isla Vista, hoping that I would be walking back to my room in triumph with a beautiful girl on my arm, but instead I stumbled back to my room with a shattered leg and shattered hopes. My 22nd Birthday was a miserable experience. I sat around at my mother’s house, staring at my broken leg, feeling so pathetic for being a cripple, as well as a 22-year-old virgin. My mother bought me a new golden necklace to replace the one that was stolen from me, as she knew how heartbroken I was about losing it. 22 Years Old The highly unjust experience of being beaten and humiliated in front of everyone in Isla Vista, and their subsequent lack of concern for my well-being, was the last and final straw. I actually gave them all one last chance to accept me, to give me a reason not to hate them, and they devastatingly blew it back in my face. I gave the world too many chances. It was time for Retribution. I went into surgery in the beginning of August. After visiting the local orthopedist, he recommended that I have my broken ankle surgically screwed in place instead of waiting for it to heal by itself. I decided to go through with it, just so I could be out of crutches sooner. My mother drove me to the hospital early in the morning, and I was wrought with fear. I had never been through such a thing in my life. They put me to sleep with anesthesia, and when I woke up my leg burned with pain, though the pain medication they injected in me afterward helped ease this. A new cast was placed on my leg. I didn’t even want to think about what it looked like underneath. I was told that they screwed in a titanium plate to hold the fractured bone in place, and it required six screws. I rested in the hospital for a few hours before I was allowed to go home, under the instructions that I would have to keep my leg raised at all times for the next week. Shortly after my surgery, my mother and sister went on a vacation to Hawaii. They had been planning this for a long time, and of course I refused to go with them when they initially asked me months before. My mother didn’t want me to stay in her house all alone in the crippled state that I was in. Taking care of the house in such a condition would be too difficult, and there would be no one there to provide immediate assistance in case of an emergency. I asked father if I could stay at his house, but Soumaya was having some of her relatives staying for the summer, so she refused to let me stay there because it would be “too much for her to handle”, despite the fact that father’s house had six bedrooms and plenty of space for me to occupy. Father, of course, gave in to Soumaya’s rules as he always had. My respect for him was already so low that it couldn’t get any lower because of this. Due to this little difficulty, my mother booked me a hotel room at Extended Stay America in Woodland Hills. I was content with this. The hotel was comfortable enough, and my mother stocked me with a lot of food for the week that I would be there. It provided a nice atmosphere to recover from the horrific experiences I had just recently endured. The only thing I disliked about this hotel was that it was located right across the street from Taft High School, so whenever I looked out the window I saw a place that had caused me great suffering in the distant past. I thought about the bullying I received at Taft, and in a way my experience there was quite similar to what had just happened to me on that fateful night in Isla Vista. I was bullied by thugs, and the girls adored the bullies instead of me. Indeed, a very similar scenario. Only now, I was ready and capable of fighting back against the cruelty of women. Back when I was a weak and timid boy at Taft High School, I was powerless and frightened, having to resort to hiding in a life of playing video games. All of the suffering, loneliness, rejection, and humiliation I had to experience since then had strengthened me. The hatred that festered inside me in all of those years leading up to this point had empowered me in a dark, twisted way. I was now armed with weapons, possessed great intelligence and philosophical insight, with the willpower to exact the most catastrophic act of vengeance the world will ever see. I spent the next week in that hotel room brooding about the injustices of life and my place in the world. It fully dawned on me that I would now have to bring about the Day of Retribution. There was no other hope. I mused that once I descend upon Isla Vista, armed with my weapons and my burning hatred, I would definitely make sure to target the people who lived in that house I was attacked in. The plan was to destroy the entirety of Isla Vista, and kill every single person in it, or at least kill as many popular young people I could before the police arrive and I’d have to kill myself. I felt so shocked and overwhelmed upon realizing that it was definitely going to resort to this. I was going to die soon, and that in itself was hard to accept. I didn’t want to die, but I would have no choice. Vengeance is the only path; all other paths had been closed shut. I thought it to be such a tragedy that I was actually going to wage war against women and all of humanity. But then again, women’s rejection of me was a declaration of war. They insulted me by deeming me inferior of their love and sex. They hate me, and I will return that hatred one-thousand fold. I will inflict suffering on everyone in Isla Vista, just like they have made me suffer. In the past, I have always been at their mercy, and I was given none. On the Day of Retribution, everyone will be at my mercy, and in turn I will show them no mercy at all. My Retribution will be so devastating that it will shake the very foundations of the world. My broken leg was a setback, of course. Even with surgery, I’d have to be in crutches for six weeks, and even after that it would take a while to be able to walk normally again. I figured I won’t be walking normally until October. There was no way I’d be well enough to prepare for the Day of Retribution by November. There was too little time. I made a new plan to set the ultimate and final date for the Day of Retribution to be at the end of the Spring of 2014. This would give me plenty of time to prepare. The Day of Retribution was now my whole reason for living. It’s all I have to live for. This act of deadly vengeance against the people who have wronged me is my sole purpose on this world. I needed as much time as possible in order to plan it efficiently. Postponing the Day of Retribution also gave me a few more months of life. Perhaps I would also use that time to look for a way out. I have always been itching for a way out of this, and even with the recent events that had occurred, a small part of me still clung to that inkling of hope. Gavin came to visit me at the hotel, and he was welcome company. It was really getting lonely there, though it was definitely better than being lonely in Isla Vista. The two of us sat down for three hours in my hotel room to have an important conversation. I explained to him my finely altered version of everything that happened on that night in Isla Vista. He didn’t seem surprised. When he was my age, he used to go up to Isla Vista quite often. He told me that the kind of brutal, rowdy atmosphere I’ve witnessed was part of the culture there. The boisterous, wild frat boys get all of the beautiful girls, and everyone is looking for a fight, like the vicious animals they are. He said it was a truth I had to accept, advising me to move out of there. I couldn’t accept this truth, because it was unjust. I couldn’t let such evil exist, and I will not run away from it by moving out of there. I will either thrive there, or destroy the place utterly. Since I failed to thrive there, I had no choice but to plan my Retribution. When my mother came back from Hawaii, I went to stay at her house for the next month, until my leg healed enough for me to lose the crutches. I didn’t want to go back to Santa Barbara while still in crutches, it would be too humiliating, and I had felt humiliated enough there already. For the first week after surgery, my leg suffered intense searing pain, though that searing pain was nothing compared to the hatred that burned in my heart. During that time, I could barely leave my bed, because whenever I did, the blood rushed to my leg and triggered the pain. For the entire time that I was in the hotel, I stayed in my bed like a vegetable. After that initial week, the pain subsided, and I was able to move about on my crutches with greater ease. I often did laps around my mother’s backyard as a way of venting my anger, sometimes swinging my crutches around as if they were swords, slashing at all of the enemies who had wronged me in life. The month that I spent at mother’s house was very relaxing, and I tried my best to calm myself down as time passed. I spent a lot of time watching movies, reading books, introspecting, and contemplating about life. I stayed in the house all the time, for I despised having to go out and be seen as a cripple. I already felt insecure enough about myself for being a lonely virgin. Being seen as a cripple was too much salt on the wound. Gavin came to visit me again, and this time we sat in my mother’s dining room to have yet another important conversation about my life and where I was going. He tried to advise me again to move out of Isla Vista, but I refused to hear it. I moved to Isla Vista with the goal of losing my virginity and attaining the life I desire. If I’m unable to have it, I will destroy it. I will never run away in defeat. My parents arranged for us to have a conference with my Psychiatrist, Dr. Charles Sophy. I set out with my mother to meet father outside Dr. Sophy’s house in Beverly Hills, and when we got there we were surprised to see that Soumaya had come for the conference too. This presented a conflict, because Soumaya and my mother had recently had an argument due to Soumaya refusing to let me stay at father’s house during my mother’s trip to Hawaii. For more than half of the conversation, the doctor spent time resolving this petty conflict instead of addressing the troubles that I was going through. When we finally did get to my situation, Dr. Sophy ended up giving me the same useless advice that every other psychiatrist, psychologist, and counsellor had given me in the past. I don’t know why my parents wasted money on therapy, as it will never help me in my struggle against such a cruel and unjust world. The doctor ended up dismissing it by prescribing me a controversial medication, Risperidone. After researching this medication, I found that it was the absolute wrong thing for me to take. I refused to take it, and I never saw Dr. Sophy again after that. Towards the end of the month, my mother invited Maddy and Mo Humpreys over for dinner. Mother had recently been reconnecting with her old friend Mo. Maddy had just graduated from USC, a university renowned for its abundance of spoiled, bratty students who partied all the time, very similar to UCSB. I often call USC the “University of Spoiled Cunts”, just like I call UCSB the “University of California’s Spoiled Brats”. Brilliant, fitting nicknames! Before Maddy came, I stalked her Facebook for a bit, and I saw that she was the exact image of everything I hated in women. She was a popular, spoiled USC girl who partied with her hot, beautiful blonde-haired clique of friends. All of them looked like absolute cunts, and my hatred for them all grew from each picture I saw on her profile. They were the kind of beautiful, popular people who lived pleasurable lives and would look down on me as inferior scum, never accepting me as one of them. They were my enemies. They represented everything that was wrong with this world. Maddy was my first friend in America. As a child, I played with her as an equal. Now she was my enemy. I would take great delight in torturing and flaying her and every single one of her spoiled, obnoxious evil friends. When she and her mother came to eat dinner with us, I had to keep calm as I hobbled out of my room on my crutches to greet them. That relaxing month at mother’s was like the comfort before the storm. Once I go back to Santa Barbara, fully recovered, the final dark chapter of my life will commence. I dreaded what will come of it. After six weeks of hobbling about on crutches whenever I had to go somewhere, I visited my orthopedist, asking if it was finally time for me to walk without them. After examining my leg, he agreed that I can proceed to a “walking cast”. This would enable me to limp around, without crutches, though I would have to use a cane. Though uncomfortable, it was much, much better than having to go about on those damnable crutches. When I got home, I delightedly practiced moving around with this new setup. Before long, my mother said I was now well enough to return to Santa Barbara. My new college classes were starting soon anyway, though she didn’t know that I had only signed up for online classes for the Autumn semester out of fear that I might have to start college while still crippled. She had grown tired of having to deal with me, as she always was in the past. I spent a few more days at mother’s with my walking cast and cane before she made me go back to Santa Barbara, telling me I can return to visit in two weeks. I made my ominous drive back to Santa Barbara, and as I drove I thought about all of the injustices I had to face in the last two years I had spent there. Injustices that had never been set right. Now was the time to set them right. Now was the time for Retribution. When I got back to my apartment, I saw that my housemates Chris and Jon had moved out. A pity, as they were the most pleasant housemates I could have hoped for. I feared what my new ones would be like, and I was told they would be coming in a few weeks. I had the place to myself for that period, which suited me well. I refused to leave my room at all until I was able to at least lose my walking cast. I spent the time doing the same thing I did at mother’s house. I watched a lot of movies, and sat around contemplating my future. Upon my visit home, I went to see my orthopedist for one last time, and he told me I can finally walk without any cast around my leg, though I would need the cane for a few more weeks. I was content with this, as I didn’t mind the cane that much. It had a peculiar elegance about it. On that same weekend, I met up with Philip and Addison. We had been planning to meet during the summer, but I had to postpone it because of my terrible injury. I took them out in my father’s Mercedes SUV, and we went on another one of our adventures around Los Angeles. First, we went to an exquisite Japanese restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. I was thankful I didn’t see any young couples my age there, most of them were older than us. Afterwards, we went to Griffith Park Observatory, under Philip’s suggestion. Going there brought back memories, both good and bad. It was ever a tradition for the three of us to go there, as we had been so many times. The place provided an expansive view of the city of L.A. At night it was absolutely exquisite. The Griffith Park Observatory was truly a wondrous place to admire the beauty of the world… but the whole experience was ruined, of course, by the sight of so many young couples kissing there, right under the stars. Those boys must have been in heaven, to experience such a place with their beautiful girlfriends. Seeing all of those young couples at Griffith Park filled me with rage for the rest of the night. It reminded me of the injustices I have to face in life, and my war against it all. When I drove down the hill from the Observatory, I saw more young couples walking around, and I had the desire to run them over with the Mercedes as a sweet act of revenge. I already planned to use the Mercedes SUV as one of my weapons on the Day of Retribution, since Isla Vista on weekend nights was always filled with my enemies walking right in the middle of the road. They would be easy targets. After the disastrous experience at Griffith Park, we decided to take a late night trip all the way to Palos Verdes, just to admire the scenery. I had never been down there, and Addison told me it was a peaceful, quiet, and exquisite place that provided an extraordinary view. When we arrived at a beach park in Palos Verdes that overlooked the ocean, Philip had fallen asleep, so it was just me and Addison who went out to walk around. I took an instant liking to the place, and explored it as much as I could, even though I was still limping with my cane. As the two of us looked up at the stars, we had a few insightful conversations. Addison told me more about his experiences among the popular kids of Malibu, in which I still envied him greatly for. I told him about all of my newfound philosophical views regarding women, and how I believe they are mentally flawed and need to be contained. He didn’t show any hint of how he felt about this. Addison told me that I was a person of high intelligence, and that I shouldn’t waste it by doing something “rash”. I believe he had a suspicion that I was indeed planning on massacring my enemies and then killing myself. Of course he would have that suspicion… In a way I think he knew me better than anyone else. I am indeed an intelligent person, but the cruelty of this world gives me no choice but to exact my Retribution. I tactfully told Addison that I had no intentions of “doing anything stupid”. That was my last conversation with him. It was also the last time I ever saw Philip and Addison. I also went to meet with my father’s friend Dale Launer on that weekend. Dale Launer is a successful Hollywood screenwriter and producer who owns a nice house in the Pacific Palisades. Dale and my father have been friends for many years. When I was a child, father sometimes took me to dinner parties at his house. I hadn’t seen Dale since I was a child, but within the last few months I began to have email conversations with him after he found out I was having trouble with girls. He wanted to help me overcome my troubles because he is a so-called expert with women. He even showed me pictures of all of the gorgeous women he has dated in his life, and there were a lot of them. This man truly lived. A few men who are successful with women have offered me help and advice about this in the past, but nothing ever came of it. I suppose they want to help because it would be a boost to their already big egos, and also because they feel sorry for me. People should feel sorry for me. My life is so pathetic, and I hate the world for forcing me to suffer it. I feel sorry for myself. In truth, there is nothing men like Dale can really do to help me attract girls and lose my virginity. They can’t mind-control girls to be attracted to me. It’s all girls’ fault for not having any sexual attraction towards me. My brief friendship with Dale would, however, spark a few more interesting email conversations where I confide to him about how cruel I think women are by nature. He would only be amused by this. Of course he would be amused. Women were never cruel to him. They gave him sex and love all his life. I had an argument with Soumaya while I was visiting father’s house. It started when she began to boast that my brother Jazz was recently signed by an agent to act in T.V. commercials. She said that by the time he is my age, he will be a successful actor. I talked about how Jazz was already so socially savvy for his age, and how I’ve always envied him for it. She told me he will never have any problems with girls, and will lose his virginity while he’s young. I had to sit there and listen to the bitch tell me that my little brother will grow up enjoying the life I’ve always craved for, but missed out on. It is very unfair how some boys are able to live such pleasurable lives while I never had any taste of it, and now it has been confirmed to me that my little brother will become one of them. He will become a popular kid who gets all the girls. Girls will love him. He will become one of my enemies. That was the day that I decided I would have to kill him on the Day of Retribution. I will not allow the boy to surpass me at everything, to live the life I’ve always wanted. It’s not fair that he has the chance to have a pleasurable life while I’ve been denied it. It will be a hard thing to do, because I had really bonded with my little brother in the last year, and he respected and looked up to me. But I would have to do it. If I can’t live a pleasurable life, then neither will he! I will not let him put my legacy to shame. In order to kill Jazz, I would have to kill Soumaya too, but that will be easy. All I would need to do is think about all of the hurtful things she had said to me in that past as I plunge my knife into her neck. But what if father is in the house to stop me? Would I have to kill him too? That would be too much. I remember, when I was a child, I had dreams about my father dying, and I woke up crying to my mother, in which she would comfort me and tell me that it was just a dream. How could my life have resorted to the point where I am the one to kill my own father? I felt sick to my stomach. I concluded that I would have to set the Day of Retribution during a time when my father is out of the country, on one of his business trips. It would be too risky to try to kill him. I might hesitate at the last second. When I thought about all of this, I truly did feel sick. I felt a shiver run through me. My whole world had become so twisted and wrong. I didn’t want it to come to this. I desperately wanted a way out. To make me feel more confident, my mother provided me with a better car to drive in Santa Barbara, a BMW 3 series Coupe. I had always wanted this, since I cared a lot about my appearance. I had been asking my parents for a more upper-class car ever since I found out that there was a car hierarchy, and that some students at my college drove better cars than others. Now I was one of the students with a better, high-class car. Having a nicer car than most other students my age did indeed make me feel more confident. Mother should have bought this car for me when I first moved to Santa Barbara. It made me feel better about going out more while I was there. This, coupled with my newly healed leg, gave me one last twinge of hope as the remaining months of 2013 passed. For those last remaining months, my extreme desperation and desire for happiness took hold of me, knowing full well how my life will turn out if I don’t get what I want. I went out every single day, just to put myself out there in the world in order to see what opportunities arise. I explored the entirety of Santa Barbara and Montecito, and it fully dawned on me what a beautiful environment I had been living in. However, a beautiful environment is the darkest hell if I have to experience it all alone. That fact that I had wasted the last two years in such a beautiful place filled me with anguish. I thought about what an enjoyable life I could have had, if only girls were attracted to me. Two new housemates moved into my apartment for the Autumn semester. They were two foreign Asian students who attended UCSB. These were the biggest nerds I had ever seen, and they were both very ugly with annoying voices. My last two housemates, Chris and Jon, were nerds as well, but at least they were friendly and pleasant. These two new ones were utterly repulsive, and one of them had a very rebellious demeanor about him. He went out of his way to start arguments with me whenever I raised the issue of the noise he made. Hell, even living with Spencer was more pleasant than these two idiots. I knew that when the Day of Retribution came, I would have to kill my housemates to get them out of the way. If they were pleasant to live with, I would regret having to kill them, but due to their behavior I now had no regrets about such a prospect. In fact, I’d even enjoy stabbing them both to death while they slept. I was assigned a new counsellor to meet with me every week in Santa Barbara, since Karlin and Sasha no longer worked for that company. My new counsellor was named Robert, a UCSB student who is one year older than me. I had coffee with him a few times, and we went volunteering together twice, in an effort to get me out of my room and doing activities. Nothing conducive to attaining the life I desire came out of these meetings, but the social interaction he provided was pleasant, and it gave me an outlet to express myself. I visited my mother’s house quite often in the Autumn. To my extreme rage, I discovered that my sister now had a boyfriend, and that she had lost her virginity. She had casually “dated” boys in the past, but never to the serious extent that she did with this one. This one was a half White, half Mexican named Samuel, and I immediately took an intense disliking to him when I was first introduced to him. He seemed like the typical obnoxious slob that most young girls are sexually attracted to. Georgia invited him to my mother’s house all the time, and it angered me to watch him lurking about, eating my mother’s food and drinks, and making use of my mother’s house. He was freeloading off my mother, and she didn’t even realize it. I eventually grew to hate him after I heard him having sex with my sister. I arrived at the house one day, my mother being at work, and heard the sounds of Samuel plunging his penis into my sister’s vagina through her closed room door, along with my sister’s moans. I stood there and listened to it all. So my sister, who was four years younger than me, managed to lose her virginity before I did. It reminded me of how pathetic I was, that at the age of twenty-two, I was still a virgin. I hated her boyfriend as well. My sister said that he’s been with other girls before her, and I’m sure he lost his virginity at a much younger age. It is such an injustice. The slob doesn’t even have a car, and he is able to get girlfriends, while I drive a BMW and get no attention from any girls whatsoever. My sister even showed me a picture of one of his ex-girlfriends, a pretty brunette white girl. My hatred towards him only intensified after that. I refused to speak to him whenever he came over, and I constantly pestered my mother to ban him from the house, but she refused to heed my demands. Even worse, she constantly talked about him admiringly. He reminded me of Leo Bubenheim, a typical obnoxious boy who has been able to experience a great sex life from a young age. An enemy had now infiltrated the household of my mother, the one place in the whole world where I’ve always sought refuge from injustice. Things were getting too out of hand. Grandma Jinx came to visit father’s house in late October. When she last visited, she resolved an intense conflict between me, my father, and Soumaya. In a way, this recent visit paralleled the last one, since I was having conflicts with Soumaya this time as well, just not to the same extreme. I went over to father’s house to see my grandmother. She suggested that I take her out for a coffee, and I knew just the place. I took her to Barnes & Noble at the Calabasas Commons, a place of great significance in my past. While there, I showed her all of the spots I had spent time at years ago. Afterward, before I said my goodbye, a feeling of sadness swept over me, as I knew that was most likely the final farewell. On Halloween, I found it hard to believe how fast time had gone by. I remember how on the last Halloween I had considered exacting my Retribution on this very day. Time indeed will inevitably pass, and soon enough my fate will have to be decided. I went home to my mother’s on Halloween, of course. I wouldn’t be able to stand being alone in my Isla Vista room while all of that partying happened around me. It was the exact same scenario as last year. In the afternoon, I saw a new psychologist, Dr. Randy Gold. In truth, he was my old psychologist whom I visited briefly when I was only thirteen. That was back when my life was just starting to fall into this dark path, and now I was still in the same position, except that the dark path was soon going to reach its climactic end. After my therapy session, I got drunk in my mother’s hot tub, trying not to think about all of the fun and sex that other young people were having that night. Nothing came out of my desperate outings in Santa Barbara during the last months of 2013. Girls still didn’t show any interest in me. I drove to SBCC a lot, even though I was only signed up for online classes. While there, I saw other boys who had inferior cars driving around with hot girls in their passenger seats. I have a BMW and never had any hot girl in my passenger seat. Not once. It only made me fume with rage. Santa Barbara was such a beautiful town, but I could go nowhere without being insulted by my enemies. The mere sight of them enjoying their happy lives was an insult to me, because I deserve it more than them. One place of refuge I often went to was the Coffee Bean in Montecito. It was located in a beautiful little town center, and most of the couples there were older than me. It provided a quiet and peaceful place for me to contemplate and brood. On the eve of my last day in Santa Barbara, before I went home for the winter break, I went to the Sandpiper Golf Course in Goleta to watch the sunset. It was my usual sunset spot, and on that evening the shape of the clouds on the horizon made it exceptionally beautiful. I basked in its radiance as I stood there, wondering with despair how a world so beautiful could be so cruel. And then, one final insult came along, as if the world was taking one last spiteful lash at me. A young couple came and stood near me, making out with each other as they watched the very same sunset. There were lots of other people there as well, for it was quite a unique sunset. All of them must have had thoughts of admiration towards the couple, and thoughts of contempt towards me because I was all alone and unwanted. I have lived such an unnatural life, devoid of love, sex, and pleasure. Watching sunsets was one of the few joys I had left, and now that too was taken from me. How can I enjoy a sunset anymore, knowing that other men get to enjoy them with their beautiful girlfriends at their side? There was no more life for me to live. During the winter break, I was able to experience one final respite before 2014 came, the year my sad story will at last come to its tragic end. My mother and sister planned another trip to England at the end of December, this time for two weeks. For those two weeks, I stayed at my mother’s house by myself, taking advantage of the time to have one last period of relaxation and peace. They decided to take my sister’s boyfriend Samuel to England with them, and upon hearing this I became very infuriated. Samuel was my enemy, someone who has enjoyed a happy life of sex while I have starved for years. And now my own mother was paying for his ticket to England, something he doesn’t deserve. I felt so betrayed by my mother because of this. She should have been more considerate for how I would feel. I am her son, and she should be on my side. But then again, my mother is a woman, and women are all mentally ill. There was no way she could possibly understand my point of view. I attended my father’s Christmas party during this winter break. At the party, I ran into Karl Champley. I hadn’t seen him since he hired me to work on his house years ago, and it was nice to speak with him again. I felt very bitter and ashamed, having to appear to all of my father’s friends as the same awkward, unwanted outcast I had always been. Some of them asked me about my life in Santa Barbara, and a few even asked if I had a girlfriend. I had to suffer having to tell them that no, I don’t have a girlfriend because girls are not attracted to me. I wished I could tell them all that I had an amazing life there, with a girlfriend who would be with me at that very party. I wish I could have made them all proud of me, but of course, I had nothing about me to be proud of. The only solace I had for that shame was the knowledge that I will soon rectify everything on the Day of Retribution. My mother told me that I can have one bottle of wine from her pantry while she was away, and on New Year’s Eve I chose to open the best one in the lot, a fine vintage that I slowly sipped throughout the night as I stayed at my mother’s house, all alone. I knew that other young popular people were having the time of their lives that night, partying the night away. As I sipped my wine alone, in the moonlit darkness of my mother’s backyard, I assured myself that soon I will have my revenge on all of those young popular people. Soon… After a restless sleep, I arose from my bed early on New Year’s Day, 2014. This was the final year. This was the year in which everything will come to a close. In this year, I will finally have my closure, my vengeance, my retribution! My whole tragic life had led to this, and I was ready. I had been rejected, insulted, humiliated, cast out, bullied, starved, tortured, and ridiculed for far too long. Humanity is a cruel and brutal species, and the only thing I could do to even the score was to return that cruelty one-thousand fold. Women’s rejection of me is a declaration of war, and if it’s war they want, then war they shall have. It will be a war that will result in their complete and utter annihilation. I will deliver a blow to my enemies that will be so catastrophic it will redefine the very essence of human nature. It was time to plot exactly what I will do on the Day of Retribution. I will be a god, punishing women and all of humanity for their depravity. I will finely deliver to them all of the pain and suffering they’ve dealt to me for so long. The first thing I had to consider was the exact date it will take place. Valentine’s Day would have been very fitting, since it was the holiday that made me feel the most miserable and insulted, the holiday in which young couples celebrated their happy lives together. The problem was that Valentine’s Day was only a month away. I needed more time than that. Also, on Valentine’s Day most young couples will be spread out in various restaurants in the city instead of being packed together at parties in Isla Vista. Another option was Deltopia, a day in which many young people pour in from all over the state to have a spring break party on Del Playa Street. I figured this would be the perfect day to attack Isla Vista, but after watching Youtube videos of previous Deltopia parties, I saw that there were way too many cops walking around on such an event. It would be impossible to kill enough of my enemies before being dispatched by those damnable cops. I wanted to set an exact date, on a normal Isla Vista party weekend, and once I set that date I will never change it. After a lot of thinking and consideration, I concluded to bring about the Day of Retribution on Saturday, April 26, 2014. In the first months of 2014, which are the last months of my life, I tried to make the most out of every day. There was no a single day where I stayed in my room. Every morning, I set out in my BMW to go on adventures around the vicinity of Santa Barbara and Montecito, and I wouldn’t return until late in the night. I went on hikes in the mountains of Montecito, wandered around aimlessly in beautiful parks, took strolls along the beach, sipped lattes at various cafes, and watched the sunset at my many contemplation spots, staying there until the stars lit up the night sky. Every time I did this though, there was no escaping the sight of young couples doing the exact same thing together. It made me even more eager for the Day of Retribution to come. My life was a living hell, and that hell needed to come to an end. I had enough extra money saved up to live comfortably and indulgently before I die. I didn’t spend all of it though, for I still needed supplies that were vital to my plans. First, I needed to buy a third handgun, just in case one of them jams. I needed two working handguns at the same time, as that was how I planned to commit suicide; with two simultaneous shots to the head. I also needed to buy magazine clips and ammunition, as well as knives and carrying cases for my equipment. Even in the first months of 2014, leading up to the tragic day in April, the little twinge of hope inside me never faded. It remained, as if it were tiny, flickering flame of a candle in a dark room. I suppose that little flame is what prompted me to actually attend the two Spring Semester classes I registered for at SBCC. That lasted a good two weeks, before I realized how pointless it was and dropped them. There was no hope now, and I had to accept it. After going through every single fantasy I had about how I would punish my enemies, I started to detail all of my exact plans for how the Day of Retribution will play out. On the day before the Day of Retribution, I will start the First Phase of my vengeance: Silently killing as many people as I can around Isla Vista by luring them into my apartment through some form of trickery. The first people I would have to kill are my two housemates, to secure the entire apartment for myself as my personal torture and killing chamber. After that, I will start luring people into my apartment, knock them out with a hammer, and slit their throats. I will torture some of the good looking people before I kill them, assuming that the good looking ones had the best sex lives. All of that pleasure they had in life, I will punish by bringing them pain and suffering. I have lived a life of pain and suffering, and it was time to bring that pain to people who actually deserve it. I will cut them, flay them, strip all the skin off their flesh, and pour boiling water all over them while they are still alive, as well as any other form of torture I could possibly think of. When they are dead, I will behead them and keep their heads in a bag, for their heads will play a major role in the final phase. This First Phase will represent my vengeance against all of the men who have had pleasurable sex lives while I’ve had to suffer. Things will be fair once I make them suffer as I did. I will finally even the score. The Second Phase will take place on the Day of Retribution itself, just before the climactic massacre. The Second Phase will represent my War on Women. I will punish all females for the crime of depriving me of sex. They have starved me of sex for my entire youth, and gave that pleasure to other men. In doing so, they took many years of my life away. I cannot kill every single female on earth, but I can deliver a devastating blow that will shake all of them to the core of their wicked hearts. I will attack the very girls who represent everything I hate in the female gender: The hottest sorority of UCSB. After doing a lot of extensive research within the last year, I found out that the sorority with the most beautiful girls is Alpha Phi Sorority. I know exactly where their house is, and I’ve sat outside it in my car to stalk them many times. Alpha Phi sorority is full of hot, beautiful blonde girls; the kind of girls I’ve always desired but was never able to have because they all look down on me. They are all spoiled, heartless, wicked bitches. They think they are superior to me, and if I ever tried to ask one on a date, they would reject me cruelly. I will sneak into their house at around 9:00 p.m. on the Day of Retribution, just before all of the partying starts, and slaughter every single one of them with my guns and knives. If I have time, I will set their whole house on fire. Then we shall see who the superior one really is! The Final Phase of the Day of Retribution will be my ultimate showdown in the streets of Isla Vista. On the morning before, I will drive down to my father’s house to kill my little brother, denying him of the chance to grow up to surpass me, along with my stepmother Soumaya, as she will be in the way. My father will be away on one of his business trips, so thankfully I won’t have to deal with him. If he didn’t go away on that trip, I might even have to postpone the whole plan because of my fear that I might hesitate if I have to kill him. Once I’ve taken care of my brother and stepmother, I will switch over to the Mercedes SUV, and drive it back up to Isla Vista. I will use it as one of my killing machines against my enemies. An SUV will cause a lot more damage than my BMW coupe. After I have killed all of the sorority girls at the Alpha Phi House, I will quickly get into the the SUV before the police arrive, assuming they would arrive within 3 minutes. I will then make my way to Del Playa, splattering as many of my enemies as I can with the SUV, and shooting anyone I don’t splatter. I can only imagine how sweet it will be to ram the SUV into all of those groups of popular young people who I’ve always witnessed walking right in the middle of the road as if they are better than everyone else. When they are writhing in pain, their bodies broken and dying after I splatter them, they will fully realize their crimes. Once I reach Del Playa Street, I will dump the bag of severed heads I had saved from my previous victims, proclaiming to everyone how much I’ve made them all suffer. Once they see all of their friend’s heads roll onto the street, everyone will fear me as the powerful god I am. I will then start massacring everyone on Del Playa Street. I will pull up next to a house party and fire bullets at everyone partying on the front yard. I will specifically target the good looking people, and all of the couples. After I have destroyed a house party, I will continue down Del Playa, destroying everything and everyone. When I see the first police car come to their rescue, I will drive away as fast as I can, shooting and ramming anyone in my path until I find a suitable place to finally end my life. To end my life, I will quickly swallow all of the Xanax and Vicodin pills I have left, along with an ample amount of hard liquor. Immediately after imbibing this mixture, I will shoot myself in the head with two of my handguns simultaneously. If the gunshots don’t kill me, the deadly drug mixture eventually will. I will not suffer being captured and sent to prison. I must plan this very efficiently. Nothing can go wrong. It needs to be perfect. This is now my sole purpose on this world. My plans will come to fruition, and I mustn’t let anyone stop me. On the week leading up to date I set for the Day of Retribution, I uploaded several videos onto Youtube in order to express my views and feelings to the world, though I don’t plan on uploading my ultimate video until minutes before the attack, because on that video I will talk about exactly why I’m doing this. I titled one of the videos I uploaded “Why do girls hate me so much?” in which I ask the entire population of women the question I’ve wanted to ask them for so many years. Why do they hate me so much? Why have they never fancied me? Why do they give their love and sex to other men, but not me, even though I deserve them more? In the video, I show that I am the perfect, magnificent gentleman, worthy of having a beautiful girlfriend, making the world see how unreasonable it is that I’ve had to struggle all my life to get a girlfriend. It is my attempt to reason with the female gender, to ask them why they have mistreated me. I was hoping I would get some sort of answer from girls. In fact, a small part of me was even hoping that a girl would see the video and contact me to give me a chance to go on a date. That alone would have prevented the Day of Retribution, if one girl had just given me one chance. But no… As expected, I got absolutely no response from any girls. The only responses I got were from other men who called me names and made fun of me. Women don’t care about me at all. They won’t even deign to tell my why they’ve mistreated me. This just shows how evil and sadistic they are. Oh well, they will realize the gravity of their crimes when I slaughter them all on the Day of Retribution. How dare they reject a magnificent gentleman like me! As April 26th drew ever closer, I prepared myself to the fullest extent. All I had left to do was finish writing this story and film my final video. But then, on Thursday, April 24th, I woke up with a terrible cold. I rarely ever get colds! I’ve always had a strong immune system. It was as if fate itself was trying to stop me from doing it. But what other reason do I have for living? Alas, there was no way I could carry out my plans if I had a cold. Everything had to be perfect. In addition, I found out that father had arrived home two days earlier than he originally said he would, so if I had indeed went forth with my plans, I would have had to kill my father, which I wouldn’t be mentally prepared for. I hastily decided to postpone it to Saturday, May 24th, 2014. I would definitely be fully recovered from my cold by then. This will also give me a few more weeks of life, and more time to prepare. A few days earlier, I felt so ready to finally strike back at women and humanity, with all my rage and hatred. I was profoundly eager to do it! But for some strange reason, having a few more weeks of life made me feel relieved. I took in a deep breath and relaxed. Coupled with my hate-fueled eagerness to carry out my act of revenge, there was also an extreme sense of fear inside me. Part of me still didn’t want to do it. It will mean my death, and I have always been afraid of death. I didn’t want to be in Isla Vista on April 26th, the day I previously planned on carrying out my plans. Hearing all of my enemies partying and having a good time on the day I was supposed to kill them all would be too much to bear. I immediately called my mother and asked her if I can stay at her house for the whole weekend, exaggerating my illness so that she would let me. While there, I visited the doctor to ask about the condition of my cold, and spent the weekend in deep, peaceful contemplation. Upon my return to Santa Barbara, I assured to myself that this was it. May 24th, 2014 was the final date. There is no postponing it anymore, no backing out. If I don’t do this, then I only have a future filled with more loneliness and rejection ahead of me, devoid of sex, love, and enjoyment. I have to do it. It’s the only thing I can do. May 24th , is the absolute last weekend in the Spring semester in which I can carry out this plan efficiently. After May 24th, the Spring semester at SBCC will end, and all of the SBCC students will go back to their hometowns, which means less enemies to kill in Isla Vista. Sure, UCSB would still be in session, but I want to kill both UCSB and SBCC students. The Day of Retribution is my sole purpose on this world, and I am ready. After only a week passed since I uploaded those videos on Youtube, I heard a knock on my apartment door. I opened it to see about seven police officers asking for me. As soon as I saw those cops, the biggest fear I had ever felt in my life overcame me. I had the striking and devastating fear that someone had somehow discovered what I was planning to do, and reported me for it. If that was the case, the police would have searched my room, found all of my guns and weapons, along with my writings about what I plan to do with them. I would have been thrown in jail, denied of the chance to exact revenge on my enemies. I can’t imagine a hell darker than that. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case, but it was so close. Apparently, someone saw my videos and became instantly suspicious of me. They called some sort of health agency, who called the police to check up on me. The police told me it was my mother who called them, but my mother told me it was the health agency. My mother had watched the videos and was very disturbed by them. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know the full truth of who called the police on me. The police interrogated me outside for a few minutes, asking me if I had suicidal thoughts. I tactfully told them that it was all a misunderstanding, and they finally left. If they had demanded to search my room… That would have ended everything. For a few horrible seconds I thought it was all over. When they left, the biggest wave of relief swept over me. It was so scary. It was all because of the videos. I must have expressed too much anger in them. I immediately took most of them off of Youtube, and planned to reupload them a few days before the Day of Retribution. This incident made me realize that I needed to be extra careful. I can’t let anyone become suspicious of me. All it takes is for one person to call the police and tell them that they think I’m going to perpetrate a shooting, and the police will be coming to my door again, demanding to search my room. For the next few days, I felt extremely fearful that they could show up anytime. I kept one of my handguns with a few loaded magazines near me just in case such a thing did happen. If they did show up, I would have to try to quickly shoot them all and escape out the back window. I would then have to perform a hasty mockery of my plans, with the police on my tail. That will ruin everything. Thankfully, all suspicion of me was dropped after I took down the videos from Youtube, and the police never came back. During the last few weeks of my life, I continued my daily adventures around town, trying to experience as much of the world as I could before I die. Upon doing this, I realized that the only world I can possibly ever experience is a twisted world of constant suffering. No matter where I go, I have to face all of the same injustices. Young couples are everywhere! They constantly remind me of what I have lacked all my life. I cannot go out of my room without seeing a young couple that would make me feel envious and enraged. How dare those girls give their love and sex to those other men and not me, I constantly think when I see young couples. There is nowhere in the world I can go anymore. There is no more life to live. The Day of Retribution is all I have. It is the final solution to all of the injustices of this twisted world. By doing this, I will set right all of the wrongs I’ve had to face in my sorry excuse of a life. Every single time I’ve seen a guy walk around with his beautiful girlfriend, I’ve always wanted to kill them both in the most painful way possible. They deserve it. They must be punished. The males deserve to be punished for living a better and more pleasurable life than me, and the females deserve to be punished for giving that pleasurable life to those males instead of me. On the Day of Retribution, I will finally be able to punish them ALL. When I think about the amazing and blissful life I could have lived if only females were sexually attracted to me, my entire being burns with hatred. They denied me a happy life, and in return I will take away all of their lives. It is only fair. I am not part of the human race. Humanity has rejected me. The females of the human species have never wanted to mate with me, so how could I possibly consider myself part of humanity? Humanity has never accepted me among them, and now I know why. I am more than human. I am superior to them all. I am Elliot Rodger… Magnificent, glorious, supreme, eminent… Divine! I am the closest thing there is to a living god. Humanity is a disgusting, depraved, and evil species. It is my purpose to punish them all. I will purify the world of everything that is wrong with it. On the Day of Retribution, I will truly be a powerful god, punishing everyone I deem to be impure and depraved. Epilogue And that is how my tragic life ends. Who would have thought my life will turn out this way? I didn’t. There was a time when I thought this world was a good and happy place. As a child, my whole world was innocent. It wasn’t until I went through puberty and started desiring girls that my whole life turned into a living hell. I desired girls, but girls never desired me back. There is something very wrong with that. It is an injustice that cannot go unpunished. There is no way I could live a happy life with such a scenario. Not only did I have to waste my entire youth suffering in loneliness and unfulfilled desire, but I had to live with the knowledge that other boys my age were able to have all of the experiences I craved for. It is absolutely unfair and unjust. In addition, I had to suffer the shame of other boys respecting me less because I didn’t get any girls. Everyone knew I was a virgin. Everyone knew how undesirable I was to girls, and I hated everyone just for knowing it. I want people to think that girls adore me. I want to feel worthy. There is no pride in living as a lonely, unwanted outcast. I wouldn’t even call it living. I am not meant to live such a pathetic, miserable life. That is not my place in this world. I will not bow down and accept such a horrific fate. If humanity will not give me a worthy place among them, then I will destroy them all. I am better than all of them. I am a god. Exacting my Retribution is my way of proving my true worth to the world. In the midst of my suffering, I have been able to see the world much clearer than others. I have vision that other people lack. Through my suffering, I have been able to see just how twisted and wrong this world really is. The current state of humanity is what makes it wrong. I look at the human race and I see only vileness and depravity, all because of an act known as… sexuality… Sex is by far the most evil concept in existence. The fact that life itself exists through sex just proves that life is flawed. The act of sex gives human beings a tremendous amount of pleasure. Pleasure they don’t deserve. No one deserves to experience so much pleasure, especially since some humans get to experience it while some are denied it. When a man has sex with a beautiful woman, he probably feels like he is in heaven. But the world is not supposed to be heaven. For some humans to actually be able to feel such heights of heavenly pleasure is selfish and hedonistic. The ultimate evil behind sexuality is the human female. They are the main instigators of sex. They control which men get it and which men don’t. Women are flawed creatures, and my mistreatment at their hands has made me realize this sad truth. There is something very twisted and wrong with the way their brains are wired. They think like beasts, and in truth, they are beasts. Women are incapable of having morals or thinking rationally. They are completely controlled by their depraved emotions and vile sexual impulses. Because of this, the men who do get to experience the pleasures of sex and the privilege of breeding are the men who women are sexually attracted to… the stupid, degenerate, obnoxious men. I have observed this all my life. The most beautiful of women choose to mate with the most brutal of men, instead of magnificent gentlemen like myself. Women should not have the right to choose who to mate and breed with. That decision should be made for them by rational men of intelligence. If women continue to have rights, they will only hinder the advancement of the human race by breeding with degenerate men and creating stupid, degenerate offspring. This will cause humanity to become even more depraved with each generation. Women have more power in human society than they deserve, all because of sex. There is no creature more evil and depraved than the human female. Women are like a plague. They don’t deserve to have any rights. Their wickedness must be contained in order prevent future generations from falling to degeneracy. Women are vicious, evil, barbaric animals, and they need to be treated as such. In fully realizing these truths about the world, I have created the ultimate and perfect ideology of how a fair and pure world would work. In an ideal world, sexuality would not exist. It must be outlawed. In a world without sex, humanity will be pure and civilized. Men will grow up healthily, without having to worry about such a barbaric act. All men will grow up fair and equal, because no man will be able to experience the pleasures of sex while others are denied it. The human race will evolve to an entirely new level of civilization, completely devoid of all the impurity and degeneracy that exists today. In order to completely abolish sex, women themselves would have to be abolished. All women must be quarantined like the plague they are, so that they can be used in a manner that actually benefits a civilized society. In order carry this out, there must exist a new and powerful type of government, under the control of one divine ruler, such as myself. The ruler that establishes this new order would have complete control over every aspect of society, in order to direct it towards a good and pure place. At the disposal of this government, there needs to be a highly trained army of fanatically loyal troops, in order to enforce such revolutionary laws. The first strike against women will be to quarantine all of them in concentration camps. At these camps, the vast majority of the female population will be deliberately starved to death. That would be an efficient and fitting way to kill them all off. I would take great pleasure and satisfaction in condemning every single woman on earth to starve to death. I would have an enormous tower built just for myself, where I can oversee the entire concentration camp and gleefully watch them all die. If I can’t have them, no one will, I’d imagine thinking to myself as I oversee this. Women represent everything that is unfair with this world, and in order to make the world a fair place, they must all be eradicated. A few women would be spared, however, for the sake of reproduction. These women would be kept and bred in secret labs. There, they will be artificially inseminated with sperm samples in order to produce offspring. Their depraved nature will slowly be bred out of them in time. Future generations of men would be oblivious to these remaining women’s existence, and that is for the best. If a man grows up without knowing of the existence of women, there will be no desire for sex. Sexuality will completely cease to exist. Love will cease to exist. There will no longer be any imprint of such concepts in the human psyche. It is the only way to purify the world. In such a pure world, the man’s mind can develop to greater heights than ever before. Future generations will live their lives free of having to worry about the barbarity of sex and women, which will enable them to expand their intelligence and advance the human race to a state of perfect civilization. It is such a shameful pity that my ideal world cannot be created. I realized long ago that there is no way I could possibly rise to such a level of power in my lifetime, with the way the world is now. Such a thing will never become a reality for me, but it did give me something to fantasize about as I burned with hatred towards all women for rejecting me throughout the years. This whole viewpoint and ideology of abolishing sex stems from being deprived of it all my life. If I cannot have it, I will do everything I can to DESTROY IT. My orchestration of the Day of Retribution is my attempt to do everything, in my power, to destroy everything I cannot have. All of those beautiful girls I’ve desired so much in my life, but can never have because they despise and loathe me, I will destroy. All of those popular people who live hedonistic lives of pleasure, I will destroy, because they never accepted me as one of them. I will kill them all and make them suffer, just as they have made me suffer. It is only fair. Why do things have to be this way? I’m sure that is the question everyone will be asking after the Day of Retribution is over. They will all be asking why. Indeed, why? That is the question I’ve had for everyone throughout all my years of suffering. Why was I condemned to live a life of misery and worthlessness while other men were able to experience the pleasures of sex and love with women? Why do things have to be this way? I ask all of you. All I ever wanted was to love women, and in turn to be loved by them back. Their behavior towards me has only earned my hatred, and rightfully so! I am the true victim in all of this. I am the good guy. Humanity struck at me first by condemning me to experience so much suffering. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want this. I didn’t start this war… I wasn’t the one who struck first… But I will finish it by striking back. I will punish everyone. And it will be beautiful. Finally, at long last, I can show the world my true worth.
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The Marian reforms of 107 BC were a group of military reforms initiated by Gaius Marius, a statesman and general of the Roman Republic.

Roman army before the Marian reforms
Up until the last decade of the 2nd century BC, the eligibility requirements to become a Roman soldier in the service of the Republic were very strict:

  • He had to be a member of the fifth census class or higher (the adsidui, or "tax-payers").
  • He had to own property worth 3,500 sesterces in value.
  • He had to supply his own armaments.
In particular, It produced a division among Roman census classes (distinct from the usual plebeian/patrician divide), in which four standardized unit types (based on how much money the soldier could spend on his own arms and armor) comprised each legion:

  • Velites - The poorest (5th class proletarii) and often the youngest citizens, who could not afford a gladius, a shield, a helmet or armor. They were unarmored javelin-throwing skirmishers, who ran forward at the head of the Roman line of battle, expended their missiles to distract the enemy while the hastati advanced, and then quickly retreated through the lines to the rear. They were not expected or equipped to hold any portion of the battle line.
  • Hastati - 4th class citizens who could afford basic armor, a small shield and a gladius. The first rank of heavy (technically medium) infantry in the pre-Marian legion, the hastati were expected to hold the front of the line in the center of the battle and were usually young and aggressive men of middle to lower-middle class. Due to their lesser armor and position in the front ranks, they inevitably took the highest casualties in any battle, but good performance (and survival) meant promotion to the principes and upward social mobility in peace.
  • Principes - 3rd class citizens, who could afford a full set of high-quality armor, a large shield and a bronze helmet in addition to their sword. Considered the core of the pre-Marian legion, the principes were the pre-Marian unit that most closely resembled the standardized legionary that the Marian reforms would eventually produce. They stood directly behind the hastati and relieved them in the front line if they were unable to break the enemy formation by themselves, which was common. Allowing the enemy to wear themselves out on the lighter hastati before facing the principes usually proved to be a decisively successful strategy.
  • Triarii - The final infantry unit, the triarii, was restricted to experienced veterans of the principes, and anchored the entire Roman battle line. Fighting in the manner of the hoplites at the rear of the formation, the triarii were considered the elite infantry of the pre-Marian legion and were not usually needed, but were used as a last resort if the hastati and principes could not break the enemy line and were forced to retreat. The Roman idiom ad triarios redisse ("to fall back on the triarii") was used to refer to a final, mighty attempt to salvage a desperate situation.
  • Equites - rich citizens of the equestrian order who could afford a horse, the equites were light cavalry who carried a one-handed light spear. They usually advanced along the flanks of the infantry line, and were intended to break up enemy skirmisher and missile units and pursue forces that had been routed by the infantry. They were also the legion's primary reconnaissance force.
When war threatened, the consuls of the day would be charged with the duty of recruiting an army from the eligible citizenry of the Republic. As a rule, one of the consuls would lead this mainly volunteer army into battle. As can be imagined, not all elected consuls were adept at leading an army. For example, in the year 113 BC the consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo was defeated at the Battle of Noreia by invading tribes of the Cimbri and the Teutons. This disaster was followed by a protracted war in Africa against King Jugurtha of Numidia. The consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus was sent to defeat Jugurtha. Metellus never lost any armies and did win some battles but after two years had not achieved total victory. Gaius Marius, one of hislegates, requested Metellus to release him from his duties so he could return to Rome and run for consul at the end of 108 BC. But when Marius became junior consul in 107 BC and was appointed the task of concluding the war with Jugurtha, he had no army. The army Metellus had commanded in Africa was assigned to the senior consul Lucius Cassius Longinus to expel the Cimbri who were once again encroaching on the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul (Gallia Transalpina). Marius had no troops with which to conduct the war in Africa as the eligible citizenry from whom he could recruit an army was severely depleted due to previous military disasters and the expansion of the latifundia at the expense of small landowners. To overcome this problem he introduced a number of reforms.

Marian reforms
The foremost of the Marian reforms was the inclusion of the Roman landless masses, the capite censi, men who had no property to be assessed in the census. Instead they were "counted by the head". These men were now among the ranks of those who could be recruited even though they owned no significant property. Because these poor citizens could not afford to purchase their own weapons and armor, Marius arranged for the state to supply them with arms. He thus offered the disenfranchised masses permanent employment for pay as professional soldiers, and the opportunity to gain spoils on campaign. With little hope of gaining status in other ways, the masses flocked to join Marius in his new army. These professional soldiers were recruited for an enlistment term of 16 years, later to rise to 20 years' full service and 5 years as evocati under the reforms of Augustus.

The second important reform implemented by Marius was the formation of a standing army. Marius was able to standardize training and equipment throughout the Roman legions. Drilling and training took place all year round, even in times of peace, not just when war threatened.

Marius organized the legions as follows. The total number of men in a full strength legion was about 6,000, of whom 4,800 were actual soldiers. The rest were classified as non-combatants. The internal organization of a legion consisted of 10 cohorts of 6 centuries each. The century consisted of 100 men, 80 legionaries and 20 non-combatants. However, the first cohort was irregular and consisted of 5 double strength centuries (containing 160 men). Each century was divided again into 10 contubernia led by a decanus. The contubernium contained 8 legionaries and 2 non-combatant servants who tented and messed together. The century fought as a unit, marched as a unit and camped as a unit. The century carried with it all the arms and accoutrements required to feed and maintain it as a fighting unit. Each man was responsible for carrying his own supplies, weapons, and several days' worth of rations. This change drastically reduced the size of the baggage train required as support and made the army much more mobile. Between 2 and 6 legions clubbed together constituted an army. The legions were kept in peak physical condition and discipline by constant training, one of the best in the ancient world.

The third reform that Marius was able to introduce was legislation that offered retirement benefits in the form of land grants. Members of the head count who had completed their term of service would be given a pension by their general and a plot of land in the conquered region on which to retire. Officers and commanders were given monetary rewards that were 10–25 times greater than that of a common foot soldier.

Finally, Marius granted citizens of the Italian allies (Etruria, Picenum etc.) full Roman citizenship if they fought for Rome and completed a period of service in the Roman army.

Impact of Marian reforms
The first, and most obvious result, was the improvement in the military capability of the army. No longer, when war threatened the Republic, did a general have to hastily recruit a citizen army, train it to fight and obey military commands and discipline, then march it off to do battle, raw and un-blooded. This fact alone was instrumental in the growth and success of the Roman military machine and resulted in the continued success of the Romans on the battlefield.

Another benefit of the reforms was the settlement of retired legionaries in conquered land. This helped to integrate the region into a Roman province and "Romanise" its citizens, reducing unrest and revolt against Roman rule.

However, loyalty of the legions shifted away from the Roman state, i.e. the Senate and People of Rome, and towards the generals who led the army. It became alarmingly common for a general to prolong his Imperium by using the army to influence the senate and consolidate his power. Some even went as far as to declare war on their enemies (see Roman civil wars).

This led ultimately to the destruction of the Republic and its transformation into an Empire under the rule of an Emperor.

Subsequent modifications
The cohort legions of the late republic and early empire are often called Marian legions. Following the Battle of Vercellae in 101 BC Marius granted all Italian soldiers Roman citizenship. He justified this action to the Senate by saying in the din of battle he could not distinguish Roman from ally. This effectively eliminated the notion of allied legions; henceforth all Italian legions would be regarded as Roman Legions. Thus the three different types of heavy infantry (the Hastati, the Principes and the Triarii, which composed the pre-Marian Roman armies) were replaced by a single, standard type of legionary based on the Principes.

The role of allied legions would eventually be taken up by contingents of allied/auxiliary troops, called Auxilia. Each legion had a same size or near same size Auxilia (auxiliary), which contained specialist units, engineers and pioneers, artillerymen and siege craftsmen, service and support units plus units made up of non-citizens (who were granted Roman citizenship upon discharge) and undesirables. These were usually formed into complete units such as light cavalry, light infantry or velites, and laborers. There was also a reconnaissance squad of 10 or more light, mounted infantry called speculatores who could also serve as messengers or even as an early form of military intelligence service.

During these reforms, the legions were also organized into permanent cohorts for the first time. Prior to this cohorts had been temporary administrative units or tactical task forces of several maniples, even more transitory than that of the legions of the early republic themselves. Now the cohorts were six to ten permanent units, composed of five to eight centuries each led by a centurion assisted by an Optio, a soldier who could read and write. These came to form the basic tactical unit of the legions. The senior centurion of the legion was called the primus pilus, a career soldier and adviser to the legate; he was generally 50 years of age or older. There were also additional officers assigned to each legion, an Aquilifer, Imaginifer (Imperial Rome only), a Tesserarius, and a Cornicen. The aquilifer was in charge of the legion standard, so there was only one per legion. The imaginifer carried an image of the deified emperor (whichever one was in power at the time). The tesserarius was in charge of the guard outposts for each century. The cornicen was crucial in the heat of battle, as he blew the formation, attack, withdrawal, and many other notes. This was the only way legionaries and their officers could hear or issue orders in the din of battle.

Every legion had a baggage train of 500–550 mules, or about 1 mule for every 10 legionaries. To keep these baggage trains from becoming too large, Marius had each man carry as much of his own equipment as he could, including his own armor, weapons and 15 days' rations or about 50–60 pounds (22.5–27 kg) of load total. To make this easier, he issued each legionary a forked stick to carry his load on his shoulders. The soldiers were nicknamed Marius' Mules (muli mariani in Latin) due to the amount of gear they had to carry themselves.

A typical legion of this period had around 5,000-6,000 legionaries as well as a large number of camp followers, servants and slaves. Legions could contain as many as 6,000 fighting men divided among several cohorts. Numbers would also vary depending on casualties suffered during a campaign; Julius Caesar's legions during his campaign in Gaul often only had around 3,500 men and on one occasion during his civil war against Pompey the Great he had to join two of his battle-reduced legions together to achieve the strength of one conventional legion.

Hundreds of years later, under the Emperor Diocletian and his successors, new legions raised for the field armies, as opposed to those stationed along the frontiers, were recruited to only about 1,000 men and were, therefore, the size of military auxiliary cohorts. This was a response to the logistical needs of the late Empire: the smaller units were more easily dispatched as needed to trouble spots than were the older, larger units, and they were no longer made up exclusively of fully armored heavy infantry. Instead, they often consisted of light infantry or archers. Except with regard to Roman citizenship (and even then not always), they were, in fact, no longer sharply distinguished, if distinguished at all, from auxiliary units raised from barbarians within and without the Empire. These later legions (comitatenses) should not be confused with the legions of heavy infantry of the earlier empire.
 
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The Marian reforms of 107 BC were a group of military reforms initiated by Gaius Marius, a statesman and general of the Roman Republic.

Roman army before the Marian reforms
Up until the last decade of the 2nd century BC, the eligibility requirements to become a Roman soldier in the service of the Republic were very strict:

  • He had to be a member of the fifth census class or higher (the adsidui, or "tax-payers").
  • He had to own property worth 3,500 sesterces in value.
  • He had to supply his own armaments.
In particular, It produced a division among Roman census classes (distinct from the usual plebeian/patrician divide), in which four standardized unit types (based on how much money the soldier could spend on his own arms and armor) comprised each legion:

  • Velites - The poorest (5th class proletarii) and often the youngest citizens, who could not afford a gladius, a shield, a helmet or armor. They were unarmored javelin-throwing skirmishers, who ran forward at the head of the Roman line of battle, expended their missiles to distract the enemy while the hastati advanced, and then quickly retreated through the lines to the rear. They were not expected or equipped to hold any portion of the battle line.
  • Hastati - 4th class citizens who could afford basic armor, a small shield and a gladius. The first rank of heavy (technically medium) infantry in the pre-Marian legion, the hastati were expected to hold the front of the line in the center of the battle and were usually young and aggressive men of middle to lower-middle class. Due to their lesser armor and position in the front ranks, they inevitably took the highest casualties in any battle, but good performance (and survival) meant promotion to the principes and upward social mobility in peace.
  • Principes - 3rd class citizens, who could afford a full set of high-quality armor, a large shield and a bronze helmet in addition to their sword. Considered the core of the pre-Marian legion, the principes were the pre-Marian unit that most closely resembled the standardized legionary that the Marian reforms would eventually produce. They stood directly behind the hastati and relieved them in the front line if they were unable to break the enemy formation by themselves, which was common. Allowing the enemy to wear themselves out on the lighter hastati before facing the principes usually proved to be a decisively successful strategy.
  • Triarii - The final infantry unit, the triarii, was restricted to experienced veterans of the principes, and anchored the entire Roman battle line. Fighting in the manner of the hoplites at the rear of the formation, the triarii were considered the elite infantry of the pre-Marian legion and were not usually needed, but were used as a last resort if the hastati and principes could not break the enemy line and were forced to retreat. The Roman idiom ad triarios redisse ("to fall back on the triarii") was used to refer to a final, mighty attempt to salvage a desperate situation.
  • Equites - rich citizens of the equestrian order who could afford a horse, the equites were light cavalry who carried a one-handed light spear. They usually advanced along the flanks of the infantry line, and were intended to break up enemy skirmisher and missile units and pursue forces that had been routed by the infantry. They were also the legion's primary reconnaissance force.
When war threatened, the consuls of the day would be charged with the duty of recruiting an army from the eligible citizenry of the Republic. As a rule, one of the consuls would lead this mainly volunteer army into battle. As can be imagined, not all elected consuls were adept at leading an army. For example, in the year 113 BC the consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo was defeated at the Battle of Noreia by invading tribes of the Cimbri and the Teutons. This disaster was followed by a protracted war in Africa against King Jugurtha of Numidia. The consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus was sent to defeat Jugurtha. Metellus never lost any armies and did win some battles but after two years had not achieved total victory. Gaius Marius, one of hislegates, requested Metellus to release him from his duties so he could return to Rome and run for consul at the end of 108 BC. But when Marius became junior consul in 107 BC and was appointed the task of concluding the war with Jugurtha, he had no army. The army Metellus had commanded in Africa was assigned to the senior consul Lucius Cassius Longinus to expel the Cimbri who were once again encroaching on the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul (Gallia Transalpina). Marius had no troops with which to conduct the war in Africa as the eligible citizenry from whom he could recruit an army was severely depleted due to previous military disasters and the expansion of the latifundia at the expense of small landowners. To overcome this problem he introduced a number of reforms.

Marian reforms
The foremost of the Marian reforms was the inclusion of the Roman landless masses, the capite censi, men who had no property to be assessed in the census. Instead they were "counted by the head". These men were now among the ranks of those who could be recruited even though they owned no significant property. Because these poor citizens could not afford to purchase their own weapons and armor, Marius arranged for the state to supply them with arms. He thus offered the disenfranchised masses permanent employment for pay as professional soldiers, and the opportunity to gain spoils on campaign. With little hope of gaining status in other ways, the masses flocked to join Marius in his new army. These professional soldiers were recruited for an enlistment term of 16 years, later to rise to 20 years' full service and 5 years as evocati under the reforms of Augustus.

The second important reform implemented by Marius was the formation of a standing army. Marius was able to standardize training and equipment throughout the Roman legions. Drilling and training took place all year round, even in times of peace, not just when war threatened.

Marius organized the legions as follows. The total number of men in a full strength legion was about 6,000, of whom 4,800 were actual soldiers. The rest were classified as non-combatants. The internal organization of a legion consisted of 10 cohorts of 6 centuries each. The century consisted of 100 men, 80 legionaries and 20 non-combatants. However, the first cohort was irregular and consisted of 5 double strength centuries (containing 160 men). Each century was divided again into 10 contubernia led by a decanus. The contubernium contained 8 legionaries and 2 non-combatant servants who tented and messed together. The century fought as a unit, marched as a unit and camped as a unit. The century carried with it all the arms and accoutrements required to feed and maintain it as a fighting unit. Each man was responsible for carrying his own supplies, weapons, and several days' worth of rations. This change drastically reduced the size of the baggage train required as support and made the army much more mobile. Between 2 and 6 legions clubbed together constituted an army. The legions were kept in peak physical condition and discipline by constant training, one of the best in the ancient world.

The third reform that Marius was able to introduce was legislation that offered retirement benefits in the form of land grants. Members of the head count who had completed their term of service would be given a pension by their general and a plot of land in the conquered region on which to retire. Officers and commanders were given monetary rewards that were 10–25 times greater than that of a common foot soldier.

Finally, Marius granted citizens of the Italian allies (Etruria, Picenum etc.) full Roman citizenship if they fought for Rome and completed a period of service in the Roman army.

Impact of Marian reforms
The first, and most obvious result, was the improvement in the military capability of the army. No longer, when war threatened the Republic, did a general have to hastily recruit a citizen army, train it to fight and obey military commands and discipline, then march it off to do battle, raw and un-blooded. This fact alone was instrumental in the growth and success of the Roman military machine and resulted in the continued success of the Romans on the battlefield.

Another benefit of the reforms was the settlement of retired legionaries in conquered land. This helped to integrate the region into a Roman province and "Romanise" its citizens, reducing unrest and revolt against Roman rule.

However, loyalty of the legions shifted away from the Roman state, i.e. the Senate and People of Rome, and towards the generals who led the army. It became alarmingly common for a general to prolong his Imperium by using the army to influence the senate and consolidate his power. Some even went as far as to declare war on their enemies (see Roman civil wars).

This led ultimately to the destruction of the Republic and its transformation into an Empire under the rule of an Emperor.

Subsequent modifications
The cohort legions of the late republic and early empire are often called Marian legions. Following the Battle of Vercellae in 101 BC Marius granted all Italian soldiers Roman citizenship. He justified this action to the Senate by saying in the din of battle he could not distinguish Roman from ally. This effectively eliminated the notion of allied legions; henceforth all Italian legions would be regarded as Roman Legions. Thus the three different types of heavy infantry (the Hastati, the Principes and the Triarii, which composed the pre-Marian Roman armies) were replaced by a single, standard type of legionary based on the Principes.

The role of allied legions would eventually be taken up by contingents of allied/auxiliary troops, called Auxilia. Each legion had a same size or near same size Auxilia (auxiliary), which contained specialist units, engineers and pioneers, artillerymen and siege craftsmen, service and support units plus units made up of non-citizens (who were granted Roman citizenship upon discharge) and undesirables. These were usually formed into complete units such as light cavalry, light infantry or velites, and laborers. There was also a reconnaissance squad of 10 or more light, mounted infantry called speculatores who could also serve as messengers or even as an early form of military intelligence service.

During these reforms, the legions were also organized into permanent cohorts for the first time. Prior to this cohorts had been temporary administrative units or tactical task forces of several maniples, even more transitory than that of the legions of the early republic themselves. Now the cohorts were six to ten permanent units, composed of five to eight centuries each led by a centurion assisted by an Optio, a soldier who could read and write. These came to form the basic tactical unit of the legions. The senior centurion of the legion was called the primus pilus, a career soldier and adviser to the legate; he was generally 50 years of age or older. There were also additional officers assigned to each legion, an Aquilifer, Imaginifer (Imperial Rome only), a Tesserarius, and a Cornicen. The aquilifer was in charge of the legion standard, so there was only one per legion. The imaginifer carried an image of the deified emperor (whichever one was in power at the time). The tesserarius was in charge of the guard outposts for each century. The cornicen was crucial in the heat of battle, as he blew the formation, attack, withdrawal, and many other notes. This was the only way legionaries and their officers could hear or issue orders in the din of battle.

Every legion had a baggage train of 500–550 mules, or about 1 mule for every 10 legionaries. To keep these baggage trains from becoming too large, Marius had each man carry as much of his own equipment as he could, including his own armor, weapons and 15 days' rations or about 50–60 pounds (22.5–27 kg) of load total. To make this easier, he issued each legionary a forked stick to carry his load on his shoulders. The soldiers were nicknamed Marius' Mules (muli mariani in Latin) due to the amount of gear they had to carry themselves.

A typical legion of this period had around 5,000-6,000 legionaries as well as a large number of camp followers, servants and slaves. Legions could contain as many as 6,000 fighting men divided among several cohorts. Numbers would also vary depending on casualties suffered during a campaign; Julius Caesar's legions during his campaign in Gaul often only had around 3,500 men and on one occasion during his civil war against Pompey the Great he had to join two of his battle-reduced legions together to achieve the strength of one conventional legion.

Hundreds of years later, under the Emperor Diocletian and his successors, new legions raised for the field armies, as opposed to those stationed along the frontiers, were recruited to only about 1,000 men and were, therefore, the size of military auxiliary cohorts. This was a response to the logistical needs of the late Empire: the smaller units were more easily dispatched as needed to trouble spots than were the older, larger units, and they were no longer made up exclusively of fully armored heavy infantry. Instead, they often consisted of light infantry or archers. Except with regard to Roman citizenship (and even then not always), they were, in fact, no longer sharply distinguished, if distinguished at all, from auxiliary units raised from barbarians within and without the Empire. These later legions (comitatenses) should not be confused with the legions of heavy infantry of the earlier empire.
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Like all sound political conceptions, Fascism is action and it is thought; action in which doctrine is immanent, and doctrine arising from a given system of historical forces in which it is inserted, and working on them from within (1). It has therefore a form correlated to contingencies of time and space; but it has also an ideal content which makes it an expression of truth in the higher region of the history of thought (2). There is no way of exercising a spiritual influence in the world as a human will dominating the will of others, unless one has a conception both of the transient and the specific reality on which that action is to be exercised, and of the permanent and universal reality in which the transient dwells and has its being. To know men one must know man; and to know man one must be acquainted with reality and its laws. There can be no conception of the State which is not fundamentally a conception of life: philosophy or intuition, system of ideas evolving within the framework of logic or concentrated in a vision or a faith, but always, at least potentially, an organic conception of the world.

SPIRITUAL VIEW OF LIFE



Thus many of the practical expressions of Fascism such as party organization, system of education, and discipline can only be understood when considered in relation to its general attitude toward life. A spiritual attitude (3). Fascism sees in the world not only those superficial, material aspects in which man appears as an individual, standing by himself, self-centered, subject to natural law, which instinctively urges him toward a life of selfish momentary pleasure; it sees not only the individual but the nation and the country; individuals and generations bound together by a moral law, with common traditions and a mission which suppressing the instinct for life closed in a brief circle of pleasure, builds up a higher life, founded on duty, a life free from the limitations of time and space, in which the individual, by self-sacrifice, the renunciation of self-interest, by death itself, can achieve that purely spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists.


The conception is therefore a spiritual one, arising from the general reaction of the century against the materialistic positivism of the XIXth century. Anti-positivistic but positive; neither skeptical nor agnostic; neither pessimistic nor supinely optimistic as are, generally speaking, the doctrines (all negative) which place the center of life outside man; whereas, by the exercise of his free will, man can and must create his own world.


Fascism wants man to be active and to engage in action with all his energies; it wants him to be manfully aware of the difficulties besetting him and ready to face them. It conceives of life as a struggle in which it behooves a man to win for himself a really worthy place, first of all by fitting himself (physically, morally, intellectually) to become the implement required for winning it. As for the individual, so for the nation, and so for mankind (4). Hence the high value of culture in all its forms (artistic, religious, scientific) (5) and the outstanding importance of education. Hence also the essential value of work, by which man subjugates nature and creates the human world (economic, political, ethical, and intellectual).


This positive conception of life is obviously an ethical one. It invests the whole field of reality as well as the human activities which master it. No action is exempt from moral judgment; no activity can be despoiled of the value which a moral purpose confers on all things. Therefore life, as conceived of by the Fascist, is serious, austere, and religious; all its manifestations are poised in a world sustained by moral forces and subject to spiritual responsibilities. The Fascist disdains an “easy" life (6).


The Fascist conception of life is a religious one (7), in which man is viewed in his immanent relation to a higher law, endowed with an objective will transcending the individual and raising him to conscious membership of a spiritual society. "Those who perceive nothing beyond opportunistic considerations in the religious policy of the Fascist regime fail to realize that Fascism is not only a system of government but also and above all a system of thought.
THE IMPORTANCE OF TRADITION

In the Fascist conception of history, man is man only by virtue of the spiritual process to which he contributes as a member of the family, the social group, the nation, and in function of history to which all nations bring their contribution. Hence the great value of tradition in records, in language, in customs, in the rules of social life (8). Outside history man is a nonentity.

REJECTION OF INDIVIDUALISM AND THE IMPORTANCE OF THE STATE

Fascism is therefore opposed to all individualistic abstractions based on eighteenth century materialism; and it is opposed to all Jacobinistic utopias and innovations. It does not believe in the possibility of "happiness" on earth as conceived by the economistic literature of the XVIIIth century, and it therefore rejects the theological notion that at some future time the human family will secure a final settlement of all its difficulties. This notion runs counter to experience which teaches that life is in continual flux and in process of evolution. In politics Fascism aims at realism; in practice it desires to deal only with those problems which are the spontaneous product of historic conditions and which find or suggest their own solutions (9). Only by entering in to the process of reality and taking possession of the forces at work within it, can man act on man and on nature (10).

Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of man as a historic entity (11). It is opposed to classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual (12). And if liberty is to he the attribute of living men and not of abstract dummies invented by individualistic liberalism, then Fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State (13). The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism, is totalitarian, and the Fascist State - a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values - interprets, develops, and potentates the whole life of a people (14).

No individuals or groups (political parties, cultural associations, economic unions, social classes) outside the State (15). Fascism is therefore opposed to Socialism to which unity within the State (which amalgamates classes into a single economic and ethical reality) is unknown, and which sees in history nothing but the class struggle. Fascism is likewise opposed to trade unionism as a class weapon. But when brought within the orbit of the State, Fascism recognizes the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State (16).


Grouped according to their several interests, individuals form classes; they form trade-unions when organized according to their several economic activities; but first and foremost they form the State, which is no mere matter of numbers, the suns of the individuals forming the majority. Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number (17); but it is the purest form of democracy if the nation be considered as it should be from the point of view of quality rather than quantity, as an idea, the mightiest because the most ethical, the most coherent, the truest, expressing itself in a people as the conscience and will of the few, if not, indeed, of one, and ending to express itself in the conscience and the will of the mass, of the whole group ethnically molded by natural and historical conditions into a nation, advancing, as one conscience and one will, along the self same line of development and spiritual formation (18). Not a race, nor a geographically defined region, but a people, historically perpetuating itself; a multitude unified by an idea and imbued with the will to live, the will to power, self-consciousness, personality (19).


In so far as it is embodied in a State, this higher personality becomes a nation. It is not the nation which generates the State; that is an antiquated naturalistic concept which afforded a basis for XIXth century publicity in favor of national governments. Rather is it the State which creates the nation, conferring volition and therefore real life on a people made aware of their moral unity.


The right to national independence does not arise from any merely literary and idealistic form of self-consciousness; still less from a more or less passive and unconscious de facto situation, but from an active, self-conscious, political will expressing itself in action and ready to prove its rights. It arises, in short, from the existence, at least in fieri, of a State. Indeed, it is the State which, as the expression of a universal ethical will, creates the right to national independence (20).


A nation, as expressed in the State, is a living, ethical entity only in so far as it is active. Inactivity is death. Therefore the State is not only Authority which governs and confers legal form and spiritual value on individual wills, but it is also Power which makes its will felt and respected beyond its own frontiers, thus affording practical proof of the universal character of the decisions necessary to ensure its development. This implies organization and expansion, potential if not actual. Thus the State equates itself to the will of man, whose development cannot he checked by obstacles and which, by achieving self-expression, demonstrates its infinity (21).


FASCIST STATE AS A SPIRITUAL FORCE

The Fascist State, as a higher and more powerful expression of personality, is a force, but a spiritual one. It sums up all the manifestations of the moral and intellectual life of man. Its functions cannot therefore be limited to those of enforcing order and keeping the peace, as the liberal doctrine had it. It is no mere mechanical device for defining the sphere within which the individual may duly exercise his supposed rights. The Fascist State is an inwardly accepted standard and rule of conduct, a discipline of the whole person; it permeates the will no less than the intellect. It stands for a principle which becomes the central motive of man as a member of civilized society, sinking deep down into his personality; it dwells in the heart of the man of action and of the thinker, of the artist and of the man of science: soul of the soul (22).

Fascism, in short, is not only a law-giver and a founder of institutions, but an educator and a promoter of spiritual life. It aims at refashioning not only the forms of life but their content - man, his character, and his faith. To achieve this propose it enforces discipline and uses authority, entering into the soul and ruling with undisputed sway. Therefore it has chosen as its emblem the Lictor’s rods, the symbol of unity, strength, and justice.

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DOCTRINE - EVOLUTION FROM SOCIALISM

When in the now distant March of 1919, speaking through the columns of the Popolo d'Italia I summoned to Milan the surviving interventionists who had intervened, and who had followed me ever since the foundation of the Fasci of revolutionary action in January 1915, I had in mind no specific doctrinal program. The only doctrine of which I had practical experience was that of socialism, from until the winter of 1914 - nearly a decade. My experience was that both of a follower and a leader but it was not doctrinal experience. My doctrine during that period had been the doctrine of action. A uniform, universally accepted doctrine of Socialism had not existed since 1905, when the revisionist movement, headed by Bernstein, arose in Germany, countered by the formation, in the see-saw of tendencies, of a left revolutionary movement which in Italy never quitted the field of phrases, whereas, in the case of Russian socialism, it became the prelude to Bolshevism.

Reformism, revolutionism, centrism, the very echo of that terminology is dead, while in the great river of Fascism one can trace currents which had their source in Sorel, Peguy, Lagardelle of the Movement Socialists, and in the cohort of Italian syndicalist who from 1904 to 1914 brought a new note into the Italian socialist environment - previously emasculated and chloroformed by fornicating with Giolitti's party - a note sounded in Olivetti's Pagine Libere, Orano's Lupa, Enrico Leone's Divenirs Socials.


When the war ended in 1919 Socialism, as a doctrine, was already dead; it continued to exist only as a grudge, especially in Italy where its only chance lay in inciting to reprisals against the men who had willed the war and who were to be made to pay for it.




The Popolo d'Italia described itself in its subtitle as the daily organ of fighters and producers. The word producer was already the expression of a mental trend. Fascism was not the nursling of a doctrine previously drafted at a desk; it was born of the need of action, and was action; it was not a party but, in the first two years, an anti-party and a movement. The name I gave the organization fixed its character.

Yet if anyone cares to reread the now crumpled sheets of those days giving an account of the meeting at which the Italian Fasci di combattimento were founded, he will find not a doctrine but a series of pointers, forecasts, hints which, when freed from the inevitable matrix of contingencies, were to develop in a few years time into a series of doctrinal positions entitling Fascism to rank as a political doctrine differing from all others, past or present.


“If the bourgeoisie - I then said - believe that they have found in us their lightening-conductors, they arc mistaken. We must go towards the people... We wish the working classes to accustom themselves to the responsibilities of management so that they may realize that it is no easy matter to run a business... We will fight both technical and spiritual rear-guirdism... Now that the succession of the regime is open we must not be fainthearted. We must rush forward; if the present regime is to be superseded we must take its place. The right of succession is ours, for we urged the country to enter the war and we led it to victory... The existing forms of political representation cannot satisfy us; we want direst representation of the several interests... It may be objected that this program implies a return to the guilds (corporazioni). No matter!. I therefore hope this assembly will accept the economic claims advanced by national syndicalism …


Is it not strange that from the very first day, at Piazza San Sepolcro, the word "guild" (corporazione) was pronounced, a word which, as the Revolution developed, was to express one of the basic legislative and social creations of the regime?




The years preceding the march on Rome cover a period during which the need of action forbade delay and careful doctrinal elaborations. Fighting was going on in the towns and villages. There were discussions but... there was something more sacred and more important... death... Fascists knew how to die. A doctrine - fully elaborated, divided up into chapters and paragraphs with annotations, may have been lacking, but it was replaced by something far more decisive, - by a faith. All the same, if with the help of books, articles, resolutions passed at congresses, major and minor speeches, anyone should care to revive the memory of those days, he will find, provided he knows how to seek and select, that the doctrinal foundations were laid while the battle was still raging. Indeed, it was during those years that Fascist thought armed, refined itself, and proceeded ahead with its organization. The problems of the individual and the State; the problems of authority and liberty; political, social, and more especially national problems were discussed; the conflict with liberal, democratic, socialistic, Masonic doctrines and with those of the Partito Popolare, was carried on at the same time as the punitive expeditions. Nevertheless, the lack of a formal system was used by disingenuous adversaries as an argument for proclaiming Fascism incapable of elaborating a doctrine at the very time when that doctrine was being formulated - no matter how tumultuously, - first, as is the case with all new ideas, in the guise of violent dogmatic negations; then in the more positive guise of constructive theories, subsequently incorporated, in 1926, 1927, and 1928, in the laws and institutions of the regime.


Fascism is now clearly defined not only as a regime but as a doctrine. This means that Fascism, exercising its critical faculties on itself and on others, has studied from its own special standpoint and judged by its own standards all the problems affecting the material and intellectual interests now causing such grave anxiety to the nations of the world, and is ready to deal with them by its own policies.
REJECTION OF PACIFISM

First of all, as regards the future development of mankind, and quite apart from all present political considerations. Fascism does not, generally speaking, believe in the possibility or utility of perpetual peace. It therefore discards pacifism as a cloak for cowardly supine renunciation in contradistinction to self-sacrifice. War alone keys up all human energies to their maximum tension and sets the seal of nobility on those peoples who have the courage to face it. All other tests are substitutes which never place a man face to face with himself before the alternative of life or death. Therefore all doctrines which postulate peace at all costs are incompatible with Fascism. Equally foreign to the spirit of Fascism, even if accepted as useful in meeting special political situations -- are all internationalistic or League superstructures which, as history shows, crumble to the ground whenever the heart of nations is deeply stirred by sentimental, idealistic or practical considerations. Fascism carries this anti-pacifistic attitude into the life of the individual. " I don't care a damn „ (me ne frego) - the proud motto of the fighting squads scrawled by a wounded man on his bandages, is not only an act of philosophic stoicism, it sums up a doctrine which is not merely political: it is evidence of a fighting spirit which accepts all risks. It signifies new style of Italian life. The Fascist accepts and loves life; he rejects and despises suicide as cowardly. Life as he understands it means duty, elevation, conquest; life must be lofty and full, it must be lived for oneself but above all for others, both near bye and far off, present and future.

The population policy of the regime is the consequence of these premises. The Fascist loves his neighbor, but the word neighbor does not stand for some vague and unseizable conception. Love of one's neighbor does not exclude necessary educational severity; still less does it exclude differentiation and rank. Fascism will have nothing to do with universal embraces; as a member of the community of nations it looks other peoples straight in the eyes; it is vigilant and on its guard; it follows others in all their manifestations and notes any changes in their interests; and it does not allow itself to be deceived by mutable and fallacious appearances.


REJECTION OF MARXISM

Such a conception of life makes Fascism the resolute negation of the doctrine underlying so-called scientific and Marxian socialism, the doctrine of historic materialism which would explain the history of mankind in terms of the class struggle and by changes in the processes and instruments of production, to the exclusion of all else.

That the vicissitudes of economic life - discoveries of raw materials, new technical processes, and scientific inventions - have their importance, no one denies; but that they suffice to explain human history to the exclusion of other factors is absurd. Fascism believes now and always in sanctity and heroism, that is to say in acts in which no economic motive - remote or immediate - is at work. Having denied historic materialism, which sees in men mere puppets on the surface of history, appearing and disappearing on the crest of the waves while in the depths the real directing forces move and work, Fascism also denies the immutable and irreparable character of the class struggle which is the natural outcome of this economic conception of history; above all it denies that the class struggle is the preponderating agent in social transformations. Having thus struck a blow at socialism in the two main points of its doctrine, all that remains of it is the sentimental aspiration, old as humanity itself-toward social relations in which the sufferings and sorrows of the humbler folk will be alleviated. But here again Fascism rejects the economic interpretation of felicity as something to be secured socialistically, almost automatically, at a given stage of economic evolution when all will be assured a maximum of material comfort. Fascism denies the materialistic conception of happiness as a possibility, and abandons it to the economists of the mid-eighteenth century. This means that Fascism denies the equation: well-being = happiness, which sees in men mere animals, content when they can feed and fatten, thus reducing them to a vegetative existence pure and simple.


REJECTION OF PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY AS A SHAM AND A FRAUD

After socialism, Fascism trains its guns on the whole block of democratic ideologies, and rejects both their premises and their practical applications and implements. Fascism denies that numbers, as such, can be the determining factor in human society; it denies the right of numbers to govern by means of periodical consultations; it asserts the irremediable and fertile and beneficent inequality of men who cannot be leveled by any such mechanical and extrinsic device as universal suffrage. Democratic regimes may be described as those under which the people are, from time to time, deluded into the belief that they exercise sovereignty, while all the time real sovereignty resides in and is exercised by other and sometimes irresponsible and secret forces. Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical, and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant. This explains why Fascism - although, for contingent reasons, it was republican in tendency prior to 1922 - abandoned that stand before the March on Rome, convinced that the form of government is no longer a matter of preeminent importance, and because the study of past and present monarchies and past and present republics shows that neither monarchy nor republic can be judged sub specie aeternitatis, but that each stands for a form of government expressing the political evolution, the history, the traditions, and the psychology of a given country.

Fascism has outgrown the dilemma: monarchy v. republic, over which democratic regimes too long dallied, attributing all insufficiencies to the former and proning the latter as a regime of perfection, whereas experience teaches that some republics are inherently reactionary and absolutist while some monarchies accept the most daring political and social experiments.


In one of his philosophic Meditations Renan - who had prefascist intuitions remarks, "Reason and science are the products of mankind, but it is chimerical to seek reason directly for the people and through the people. It is not essential to the existence of reason that all should be familiar with it; and even if all had to be initiated, this could not be achieved through democracy which seems fated to lead to the extinction of all arduous forms of culture and all highest forms of learning. The maxim that society exists only for the well-being and freedom of the individuals composing it does not seem to be in conformity with nature's plans, which care only for the species and seem ready to sacrifice the individual. It is much to be feared that the last word of democracy thus understood (and let me hasten to add that it is susceptible of a different interpretation) would be a form of society in which a degenerate mass would have no thought beyond that of enjoying the ignoble pleasures of the vulgar."


REJECTION OF EGALITARIANISM

In rejecting democracy, Fascism rejects the absurd conventional lie of political equalitarianism, the habit of collective irresponsibility, the myth of felicity and indefinite progress.

DEFINITION OF FASCISM AS REAL DEMOCRACY

But if democracy be understood as meaning a regime in which the masses are not driven back to the margin of the State, and then the writer of these pages has already defined Fascism as an organized, centralized, authoritarian democracy.

REJECTION OF ECONOMIC LIBERALISM - ADMIRATION OF BISMARCK

Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political and the economic sphere. The importance of liberalism in the XIXth century should not be exaggerated for present day polemical purposes, nor should we make of one of the many doctrines which flourished in that century a religion for mankind for the present and for all time to come. Liberalism really flourished for fifteen years only. It arose in 1830 as a reaction to the Holy Alliance which tried to force Europe to recede further back than 1789; it touched its zenith in 1848 when even Pius IXth was a liberal. Its decline began immediately after that year. If 1848 was a year of light and poetry, 1849 was a year of darkness and tragedy. The Roman Republic was killed by a sister republic, that of France. In that same year Marx, in his famous Communist Manifesto, launched the gospel of socialism.

In 1851 Napoleon III made his illiberal coup d'etat and ruled France until 1870 when he was turned out by a popular rising following one of the severest military defeats known to history. The victor was Bismarck who never even knew the whereabouts of liberalism and its prophets. It is symptomatic that throughout the XIXth century the religion of liberalism was completely unknown to so highly civilized a people as the Germans but for one parenthesis which has been described as the “ridiculous parliament of Frankfort " which lasted just one season. Germany attained her national unity outside liberalism and in opposition to liberalism, a doctrine which seems foreign to the German temperament, essentially monarchical, whereas liberalism is the historic and logical anteroom to anarchy. The three stages in the making of German unity were the three wars of 1864, 1866, and 1870, led by such "liberals" as Moltke and Bismarck. And in the upbuilding of Italian unity liberalism played a very minor part when compared to the contribution made by Mazzini and Garibaldi who were not liberals. But for the intervention of the illiberal Napoleon III we should not have had Lombardy, and without that of the illiberal Bismarck at Sadowa and at Sedan very probably we should not have had Venetia in 1866 and in 1870 we should not have entered Rome. The years going from 1870 to 1915 cover a period which marked, even in the opinion of the high priests of the new creed, the twilight of their religion, attacked by decadentism in literature and by activism in practice. Activism: that is to say nationalism, futurism, fascism.
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The liberal century, after piling up innumerable Gordian Knots, tried to cut them with the sword of the world war. Never has any religion claimed so cruel a sacrifice. Were the Gods of liberalism thirsting for blood?

Now liberalism is preparing to close the doors of its temples, deserted by the peoples who feel that the agnosticism it professed in the sphere of economics and the indifferentism of which it has given proof in the sphere of politics and morals, would lead the world to ruin in the future as they have done in the past.

This explains why all the political experiments of our day are anti-liberal, and it is supremely ridiculous to endeavor on this account to put them outside the pale of history, as though history were a preserve set aside for liberalism and its adepts; as though liberalism were the last word in civilization beyond which no one can go.


THE FASCIST TOTALITARIAN VISION OF THE FUTURE



The Fascist negation of socialism, democracy, liberalism, should not, however, be interpreted as implying a desire to drive the world backwards to positions occupied prior to 1789, a year commonly referred to as that which opened the demo-liberal century. History does not travel backwards. The Fascist doctrine has not taken De Maistre as its prophet. Monarchical absolutism is of the past, and so is ecclesiolatry. Dead and done for are feudal privileges and the division of society into closed, uncommunicating castes. Neither has the Fascist conception of authority anything in common with that of a police ridden State.


A party governing a nation “totalitarianly" is a new departure in history. There are no points of reference nor of comparison. From beneath the ruins of liberal, socialist, and democratic doctrines, Fascism extracts those elements which are still vital. It preserves what may be described as "the acquired facts" of history; it rejects all else. That is to say, it rejects the idea of a doctrine suited to all times and to all people. Granted that the XIXth century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the XXth century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the " right ", a Fascist century. If the XIXth century was the century of the individual (liberalism implies individualism) we are free to believe that this is the "collective" century, and therefore the century of the State. It is quite logical for a new doctrine to make use of the still vital elements of other doctrines. No doctrine was ever born quite new and bright and unheard of. No doctrine can boast absolute originality. It is always connected, it only historically, with those which preceded it and those which will follow it. Thus the scientific socialism of Marx links up to the utopian socialism of the Fouriers, the Owens, the Saint-Simons ; thus the liberalism of the XIXth century traces its origin back to the illuministic movement of the XVIIIth, and the doctrines of democracy to those of the Encyclopaedists. All doctrines aim at directing the activities of men towards a given objective; but these activities in their turn react on the doctrine, modifying and adjusting it to new needs, or outstripping it. A doctrine must therefore be a vital act and not a verbal display. Hence the pragmatic strain in Fascism, it’s will to power, its will to live, its attitude toward violence, and its value.
THE ABSOLUTE PRIMACY OF THE STATE

The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative. Individuals and groups are admissible in so far as they come within the State. Instead of directing the game and guiding the material and moral progress of the community, the liberal State restricts its activities to recording results. The Fascist State is wide awake and has a will of its own. For this reason it can be described as " ethical ".

At the first quinquennial assembly of the regime, in 1929, I said “The Fascist State is not a night watchman, solicitous only of the personal safety of the citizens; not is it organized exclusively for the purpose of guarantying a certain degree of material prosperity and relatively peaceful conditions of life, a board of directors would do as much. Neither is it exclusively political, divorced from practical realities and holding itself aloof from the multifarious activities of the citizens and the nation. The State, as conceived and realized by Fascism, is a spiritual and ethical entity for securing the political, juridical, and economic organization of the nation, an organization which in its origin and growth is a manifestation of the spirit. The State guarantees the internal and external safety of the country, but it also safeguards and transmits the spirit of the people, elaborated down the ages in its language, its customs, its faith. The State is not only the present; it is also the past and above all the future. Transcending the individual's brief spell of life, the State stands for the immanent conscience of the nation. The forms in which it finds expression change, but the need for it remains. The State educates the citizens to civism, makes them aware of their mission, urges them to unity; its justice harmonizes their divergent interests; it transmits to future generations the conquests of the mind in the fields of science, art, law, human solidarity; it leads men up from primitive tribal life to that highest manifestation of human power, imperial rule.


The State hands down to future generations the memory of those who laid down their lives to ensure its safety or to obey its laws; it sets up as examples and records for future ages the names of the captains who enlarged its territory and of the men of genius who have made it famous. Whenever respect for the State declines and the disintegrating and centrifugal tendencies of individuals and groups prevail, nations are headed for decay". Since 1929 economic and political development have everywhere emphasized these truths. The importance of the State is rapidly growing. The so-called crisis can only be settled by State action and within the orbit of the State. Where are the shades of the Jules Simons who, in the early days of liberalism proclaimed that the "State should endeavor to render itself useless and prepare to hand in its resignation "? Or of the MacCullochs who, in the second half of last century, urged that the State should desist from governing too much? And what of the English Bentham who considered that all industry asked of government was to be left alone, and of the German Humbolt who expressed the opinion that the best government was a lazy " one? What would they say now to the unceasing, inevitable, and urgently requested interventions of government in business? It is true that the second generation of economists was less uncompromising in this respect than the first, and that even Adam Smith left the door ajar - however cautiously - for government intervention in business.

If liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government.




The Fascist State is, however, a unique and original creation. It is not reactionary but revolutionary, for it anticipates the solution of certain universal problems which have been raised elsewhere, in the political field by the splitting up of parties, the usurpation of power by parliaments, the irresponsibility of assemblies; in the economic field by the increasingly numerous and important functions discharged by trade unions and trade associations with their disputes and ententes, affecting both capital and labor; in the ethical field by the need felt for order, discipline, obedience to the moral dictates of patriotism.

Fascism desires the State to be strong and organic, based on broad foundations of popular support. The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporative, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organized in their respective associations, circulate within the State. A State based on millions of individuals who recognize its authority, feel its action, and are ready to serve its ends is not the tyrannical state of a mediaeval lordling. It has nothing in common with the despotic States existing prior to or subsequent to 1789.


Far from crushing the individual, the Fascist State multiplies his energies, just as in a regiment a soldier is not diminished but multiplied by the number of his fellow soldiers. The Fascist State organizes the nation, but it leaves the individual adequate elbow room. It has curtailed useless or harmful liberties while preserving those which are essential. In such matters the individual cannot be the judge, but the State only. The Fascist

State is not indifferent to religious phenomena in general nor does it maintain an attitude of indifference to Roman Catholicism, the special, positive religion of Italians. The State has not got a theology but it has a moral code. The Fascist State sees in religion one of the deepest of spiritual manifestations and for this reason it not only respects religion but defends and protects it. The Fascist State does not attempt, as did Robespierre at the height of the revolutionary delirium of the Convention, to set up a "god” of its own; nor does it vainly seek, as does Bolshevism, to efface God from the soul of man.


Fascism respects the God of ascetics, saints, and heroes, and it also respects God as conceived by the ingenuous and primitive heart of the people, the God to whom their prayers are raised.

The Fascist State expresses the will to exercise power and to command. Here the Roman tradition is embodied in a conception of strength. Imperial power, as understood by the Fascist doctrine, is not only territorial, or military, or commercial; it is also spiritual and ethical. An imperial nation, that is to say a nation a which directly or indirectly is a leader of others, can exist without the need of conquering a single square mile of territory. Fascism sees in the imperialistic spirit -- i.e. in the tendency of nations to expand - a manifestation of their vitality. In the opposite tendency, which would limit their interests to the home country, it sees a symptom of decadence. Peoples who rise or rearise are imperialistic; renunciation is characteristic of dying peoples. The Fascist doctrine is that best suited to the tendencies and feelings of a people which, like the Italian, after lying fallow during centuries of foreign servitude, are now reasserting itself in the world.


But imperialism implies discipline, the coordination of efforts, a deep sense of duty and a spirit of self-sacrifice. This explains many aspects of the practical activity of the regime, and the direction taken by many of the forces of the State, as also the severity which has to be exercised towards those who would oppose this spontaneous and inevitable movement of XXth century Italy by agitating outgrown ideologies of the XIXth century, ideologies rejected wherever great experiments in political and social transformations are being dared.


Never before have the peoples thirsted for authority, direction, order, as they do now. If each age has its doctrine, then innumerable symptoms indicate that the doctrine of our age is the Fascist. That it is vital is shown by the fact that it has aroused a faith; that this faith has conquered souls is shown by the fact that Fascism can point to its fallen heroes and its martyrs.


Fascism has now acquired throughout the world that universally which belongs to all doctrines which by achieving self-expression represent a moment in the history of human thought.


APPENDIX FOOTNOTES



1. Philosophic conception

(1) If Fascism does not wish to die or, worse still, commit suicide, it must now provide itself with a doctrine. Yet this shall not and must not be a robe of Nessus clinging to us for all eternity, for tomorrow is some thing mysterious and unforeseen. This doctrine shall be a norm to guide political and individual action in our daily life.

I who have I dictated this doctrine, am the first to realize that the modest tables of our laws and program the theoretical and practical guidance of Fascism should be revised, corrected, enlarged, developed, because already in parts they have suffered injury at the hand of time. I believe the essence and fundamentals of the doctrine are still to be found in the postulates which throughout two years have acted as a call to arms for the recruits of Italian Fascism. However, in taking those first fundamental assumptions for a starting point, we must proceed to carry our program into a vaster field. Italian Fascists, one and all, should cooperate in this task, one of vital importance to Fascism, and more especially those who belong to regions where with and without agreement peaceful coexistence has been achieved between two antagonistic movements.

The word I am about to use is a great one, but indeed I do wish that during the two months which are still to elapse before our National Assembly meets, the philosophy of Fascism could be created. Milan is already contributing with the first Fascist school of propaganda. It is not merely a question of gathering elements for a program, to be used as a solid foundation for the constitution of a party which must inevitably arise from the Fascist movement; it is also a question of denying the silly tale that Fascism is all made up of violent men. In point of fact among Fascists there are many men who belong to the restless but meditative class.



The new course taken by Fascist activity will in no way diminish the fighting spirit typical of Fascism. To furnish the mind with doctrines and creeds does not mean to disarm, rather it signifies to strengthen our power of action, and make us ever more conscious of our work. Soldiers who fight fully conscious of the cause make the best of warriors. Fascism takes for its own the twofold device of Mazzini : Thought and Action u. (Letter to Michele Bianchi, written on August 27, 1921, for the opening of the School of Fascist Culture and Propaganda in Milan, in Messaggi e Proclami, Milano, Libreria d'Italia, 1929, P. 39).

Fascists must be placed in contact with one another; their activity must be an activity of doctrine, an activity of the spirit and of thought. Had our adversaries been present at our meeting, they would have been convinced that Fascism is not only action, but thought as well (Speech before the National Council of the Fascist Party, August 8, 1924, in La Nuova Politica dell'Italia, Milano, Alpes, 1928, p. 267).




(2) Today I hold that Fascism as an idea, a doctrine, a realization, is universal; it is Italian in its particular institutions, but it is universal in the spirit, nor could it be otherwise. The spirit is universal by reason of its nature. Therefore anyone may foresee a Fascist Europe. Drawing inspiration for her institutions from the doctrine and practice of Fascism; Europe , in other words, giving a Fascist turn to the solution of problems which beset the modern State, the Twentieth Century State which is very different from the States existing before 1789, and the States formed immediately after. Today Fascism fills universal requirements; Fascism solves the threefold problem of relations between State and individual, between State and associations, between associations and organized associations. (Message for the year 1 October 27, 1930, in Discorsi del 1930, Milano, Alpes, 1931, p. 211).



2. Spiritualized conception

(3) This political process is flanked by a philosophic process. If it be true that matter was on the altars for one century, today it is the spirit which takes its place. All manifestations peculiar to the democratic spirit are consequently repudiated: easygoingness, improvisation, the lack of a personal sense of responsibility, the exaltation of numbers and of that mysterious divinity called n The People a. All creations of the spirit starting with that religious are coming to the fore, and nobody dare keep up the attitude of anticlericalism which, for several decades, was a favorite with Democracy in the Western world. By saying that God is returning, we mean that spiritual values are returning. (Da the parte va it mondo, in Tempi della Rivoluzione Fascista, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 34).

There is a field reserved more to meditation upon the supreme ends of life than to a research of these ends. Consequently science starts from experience, but breaks out fatally into philosophy and, in my opinion, philosophy alone can enlighten science and lead to the universal idea. (To the Congress of Science at Bologna , October 31, 19,26, in Discorsidel 1926. Milano, Alpes, 1927, p. 268).



In order to understand the Fascist movement one must first appreciate the underlying spiritual phenomenon in all its vastness and depth. The manifestations of the movement have been of a powerful and decisive nature, but one should go further. In point of fact Italian Fascism has not only been a political revolt against weak and incapable governments who had allowed State authority to decay and were threatening to arrest the progress of the country, but also a spiritual revolt against old ideas which had corrupted the sacred principles of religion, of faith, of country. Fascism, therefore, has been a revolt of the people. (Message to the British people; January 5, 1924, in Messaggi e Proclami, Milano, Libreria d' Italia, 1929, p. 107).

3. Positive conception of life as a struggle

(4) Struggle is at the origin of all things, for life is full of contrasts: there is love and hatred, white and black, day and night, good and evil; and until these contrasts achieve balance, struggle fatefully remains at the root of human nature. However, it is good for it to be so. Today we can indulge in wars, economic battles, conflicts of ideas, but if a day came to pass when struggle ceased to exist, that day would be tinged with melancholy; it would be a day of ruin, the day of ending. But thaver discloses new horizons. By attempting to restore calm, peace, tranquility, or. A would be fighting the tendencies of the present period of dynamism. Ore must be prepared for other struggles and for other surprises. Peace will only come when people surrender to a Christian dream of universal brotherhood, when they can hold out hands across the ocean and over the mountains. Personally I do not believe very much in these idealisms, but I do not exclude them for I exclude nothing. (At the Politeama Rossetti, Trieste, September 20, 1920 in Discorsi Politici, Milano, Stab. Tipografico del « Popolo d' Italia » , 1921, p. 107).



(5) For me the honor of nations consists in the contribution they have severally made to human civilization. (E. Ludwig, Talks with Mussolini, London, Allen and Unwin, 1932, p. 199)

4. Ethical conception

I called the organization Fasci Italiani Di Combatimento. This hard metallic name compromised the whole program of Fascism as I dreamed it. Comrades, this is still our program: fight. Life for the Fascist is a continuous, ceaseless fight, which we accept with ease, with great courage, with the necessary intrepidity. (On the VIIth anniversary of the Foundation of the Fasci, March 28, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 7, p.98 You touch the core of Fascist philosophy. When recently a Finnish philosopher asked me to expound to him the significance of Fascism in one sentence, I wrote in German: ((We are against the “easy life"! (E. Ludwig: Talks with Mussolini, London, Allen and Unwin, 1932, p. 190).




5. Religious conception


(7) If Fascism were not a creed, how could it endow its followers with courage and stoicism only a creed which has soared to the heights of religion can inspire such words as passed the lips, now lifeless alas, of Federico Florio. (Legami di Sangue, in Diuturna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 256).

6. Historical and realistic conception

(8) Tradition certainly is one of the greatest spiritual forces of a people, inasmuch as it is a successive and constant creation of their soul. (Breve Preludio, in Tempi della Rivoluzione Fascista, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 13)

(9) Our temperament leads us to appraise the concrete aspect of problems, rather than their ideological or mystical sublimation. Therefore we easily regain our balance. (Aspetti del Dramma, in Diuturna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 86).

Our battle is an ungrateful one, yet it is a beautiful battle since it compels us to count only upon our own forces. Revealed truths we have torn to shreds, dogmas we have spat upon, we have rejected all theories of paradise, we have baffled charlatans white, red, black charlatans who placed miraculous drugs on the market to give a happiness n to mankind. We do not believe in program, in plans, in saints or apostles, above all we believe not in happiness, in salvation, in the Promised Land. (Diuturna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 223).


We do not believe in a single solution, be it economical, political or moral, a linear solution of the problems of life, because of illustrious choristers from all the sacristies life is not linear and can never be reduced to a segment traced by primordial needs. (Navigare necesse, in Diuturna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 233).


(10) We are not and do not wish to be motionless mummies, with faces perpetually turned towards the same horizon, nor do we wish to shut ourselves up within the narrow hedges of subversive bigotry, where formulas, like prayers of a professed religion, are muttered mechanically. We are men, living men, who wish to give our contribution, however 'modest, to the creation of history. (Audacia, in Diu turna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p.233)

We uphold moral and traditional values which Socialism neglects or despises; but, above all, Fascism has a horror of anything implying an arbitrary mortgage on the mysterious future. (Dopo due anni, in Diuturna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 242).

In spite of the theories of conservation and renovation, of tradition and progress expounded by the right and the left, we do not cling desperately to the past as to a last board of salvation: yet we do not dash headlong into the seductive mists of the future. (Breve preludio, in Diuturna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 14) Negation, eternal immobility, mean damnation. I am all for motion. I am, one who marches on (E. Ludwig, Talks with Mussolini, Lot Jon, Allen and Unwin, 1932, p. 203).


7. The individual and liberty

(11) We were the first to state, in the face of demo liberal individualism, that the individual exists only in so far as he is within the State and subjected to the requirements of the state and that, as civilization assumes aspects which grow more and more complicated, individual freedom becomes more and more restricted. (To the General staff Conference of Fascism, in Discorsi del 1929, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 280).

The sense of the state grows within the consciousness of Italians, for they feel that the state alone is the irreplaceable safeguard of their unit and independence; that the state alone represents continuity into the future of their stock and their history. (Message on the VIIth all anniversary, October 25, 1929, Discorsi del 1929, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 300).

If, in the course of the past eight years, we have made such astounding progress, you may well think suppose and foresee that in the course of the next fifty or eighty years the onward trend of Italy, of this Italy we feel to be so powerful, so full of vital fluid, will really be grandiose. It will be so especially if concord lasts among citizens, if the State continues to be sole arbitrator in political and social conflicts, if all remains within the state and nothing outside the State, because it is impossible to conceive any individual existing outside the State unless he be a savage whose home is in the solitude of she sandy desert. (Speech before the Senate, May 12, 1928, in Discorsi del 1928, Milano, Alpes, 1929, p. 109).

Fascism has restored to the State its sovereign functions by claiming its absolute ethical meaning, against the egotism of classes and categories; to the Government of the state, which was reduced to a mere instrument of electoral assemblies, it has restored dignity, as representing the personality of the state and its power of Empire. It has rescued State administration from the weight of factions and party interests (To the council of state, December 22, 1928, in Discorsi Del 1928, Milano, Alpes, 1929 p.328).

(12) Let no one think of denying the moral character of Fascism. For I should be ashamed to speak from this tribune if I did not feel that I represent the moral and spiritual powers of the state. What would the state be if it did not possess a spirit of its own, and a morality of its own, which lend power to the laws in virtue of which the state is obeyed by its citizens?

The Fascist state claims its ethical character: it is Catholic but above all it is Fascist, in fact it is exclusively and essentially Fascist. Catholicism completes Fascism, and this we openly declare, but let no one think they can turn the tables on us, under cover of metaphysics or philosophy. (To the Chamber of Deputies, May 13, 1929, in Discorsi del 1929, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 182).


A State which is fully aware of its mission and represents a people which are marching on; a state which necessarily transforms the people even in their physical aspect. In order to be something more than a mere administrator, the State must utter great words, expound great ideas and place great problems before this people (Di scorsi del 1929, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 183).

(13) The concept of freedom is not absolute because nothing is ever absolute in life. Freedom is not a right, it is a duty. It is not a gift, it is a conquest; it is not equality, it is a privilege. The concept of freedom changes with the passing of time. There is a freedom in times of peace which is not the freedom of times of war. There is a freedom in times of prosperity which is not a freedom to be allowed in times of poverty. (Fifth anniversary of the foundation of the Fasci di Combattimento, March 24, 1924, in La nuova politica dell'Italia, vol. III, Milano, Alpes, 1925, p. 30).


In our state the individual is not deprived of freedom. In fact, he has greater liberty than an isolated man, because the state protects him and he is part of the State. Isolated man is without defence. (E. Ludwig, Talks with Mussolini, London, Allen and Unwin, 1932, p. 129).

(14) Today we may tell the world of the creation of the powerful united State of Italy, ranging from the Alps to Sicily; this State is expressed by a well-organized, centralized, unitarian democracy, where people circulate at case. Indeed, gentlemen, you admit the people into the citadel of the State and the people will defend it, if you close them out, the people will assault it. (speech before the Chamber of Deputies, May 26, 1927, in Discorsi del 1927, Milano, Alpes, 1928, p. 159).


In the Fascist regime the unity of classes, the political, social and coral unity of the Italian people is realized within the state, and only within the Fascist state. (speech before the Chamber of Deputies,


December 9, 1928, in Discorsi del 1928, Milano, Alpes, 1929, p. 333).

8. Conception of a corporative state

(15) We have created the united state of Italy remember that since the Empire Italy had not been a united state. Here I wish to reaffirm solemnly our doctrine of the State. Here I wish to reaffirm with no weaker energy, the formula I expounded at the scala in Milan everything in the state, nothing against the State, nothing outside the state. (speech before the Chamber of Deputies, May 26, 1927, Discorsi del 1927, Milano, Alpes, 1928, p. 157).

(16) We are, in other words, a state which controls all forces acting in nature. We control political forces, we control moral forces we control economic forces, therefore we are a full-blown Corporative state. We stand for a new principle in the world, we stand for sheer, categorical, definitive antithesis to the world of democracy, plutocracy, free-masonry, to the world which still abides by the fundamental principles laid down in 1789. (Speech before the new National Directory of the Party, April 7, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 1927, p. 120).

The Ministry of Corporations is not a bureaucratic organ, nor does it wish to exercise the functions of syndical organizations which are necessarily independent, since they aim at organizing, selecting and improving the members of syndicates. The Ministry of Corporations is an institution in virtue of which, in the centre and outside, integral corporation becomes an accomplished fact, where balance is achieved between interests and forces of the economic world. Such a glance is only possible within the sphere of the state, because the state alone transcends the contrasting interests of groups and individuals, in view of co-coordinating them to achieve higher aims. The achievement of these aims is speeded up by the fact that all economic organizations, acknowledged, safeguarded and supported by the Corporative State, exist within the orbit of Fascism; in other terms they accept the conception of Fascism in theory and in practice. (speech at the opening of the Ministry of Corporations, July 31, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 1927, p. 250).


We have constituted a Corporative and Fascist state, the state of national society, a State which concentrates, controls, harmonizes and tempers the interests of all social classes, which are thereby protected in equal measure. Whereas, during the years of demo-liberal regime, labour looked with diffidence upon the state, was, in fact, outside the State and against the state, and considered the state an enemy of every day and every hour, there is not one working Italian today who does not seek a place in his Corporation or federation, who does not wish to be a living atom of that great, immense, living organization which is the national Corporate State of Fascism. (On the Fourth Anniversary of the March on Rome, October 28, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 1927, p. 340).


9. Democracy

(17) The war was revolutionary, in the sense that with streams of blood it did away with the century of Democracy, the century of number, the century of majorities and of quantities. (Da che parte va il Mondo, in Tempi della Rivoluzione Fascista, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 37)

(18) Cf. note 13.


(19) Race: it is a feeling and not a reality; 95 %, a feeling. (E. Ludwig, Talks with Mussolini, London, Allen and Unwin, 1932, p. 75).


10. Conception of the state

(20) A nation exists inasmuch as it is a people. A people rise inasmuch as they are numerous, hard working and well regulated. Power is the outcome of this threefold principle. (To the General Assembly of the Party, March lo, 1929, in Discorsi del 1929, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 24).

Fascism does not deny the State; Fascism maintains that a civic society, national or imperial, cannot be conceived unless in the form of a State (Stab, anti-Slato, Fascismo, in Tempi della Rivoluzione Fascista, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 94).


For us the Nation is mainly spirit and not only territory. There are States which owned immense territories and yet left no trace in the history of mankind. Neither is it a question of number, because there have been, in history, small, microscopic States, which left immortal, imperishable documents in art and philosophy. The greatness of a nation is the compound of all these virtues and conditions. A nation is great when the power of the spirit is translated into reality. (Speech at Naples, October 24, 1922, in Discorsi della Rivoluzione, Milano, Alpes, 1928, p. 103). We wish to unity the nation within the sovereign State, which is above everyone rid can afford to be against everyone, since it represents the moral continuity of the nation in history. Without the State there is no nation. There are, merely. human aggregations. subject to all the disintegration's which history may inflict upon them. (Speech before the National Council of the Fascist Party, August 8, 1924, in La Nuova Politica dell'Italia, vol. III; Milano, Alpes, 1928, p. 269).


11. Dynamic reality

(21) I believe that if a people wish to live, they should develop a will to power, otherwise they vegetate, live miserably and become prey to a stronger people, in whom this will to power is developed to a higher degree. (Speech to the Senate, May 28, 1926).

(22) It is Fascism which has refashioned the character of the Italians, removing impurity from our souls, tempering us to all sacrifices, restoring the true aspect of strength and beauty to our Italian face. (Speech delivered at Pisa ,

May 25, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 1927, p. 193).


It is not out of place to illustrate the intrinsic character and profound significance of the Fascist Levy. It is not merely a ceremony, but a very important stage in the system of education and integral preparation of Italian men which the Fascist revolution considers one of the fundamental duties of the State: fundamental indeed, for if the State does not fulfill this duty or in any way accepts to place it under discussion, the State merely and simply forfeits its right to exist. (Speech before the Chamber of Deputies, May 28, 1928, in Discorsi del 1928, Milano, Alpes, 1929, p. 68).
 
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autisticdragonkin said:
Like all sound political conceptions, Fascism is action and it is thought; action in which doctrine is immanent, and doctrine arising from a given system of historical forces in which it is inserted, and working on them from within (1). It has therefore a form correlated to contingencies of time and space; but it has also an ideal content which makes it an expression of truth in the higher region of the history of thought (2). There is no way of exercising a spiritual influence in the world as a human will dominating the will of others, unless one has a conception both of the transient and the specific reality on which that action is to be exercised, and of the permanent and universal reality in which the transient dwells and has its being. To know men one must know man; and to know man one must be acquainted with reality and its laws. There can be no conception of the State which is not fundamentally a conception of life: philosophy or intuition, system of ideas evolving within the framework of logic or concentrated in a vision or a faith, but always, at least potentially, an organic conception of the world.

SPIRITUAL VIEW OF LIFE



Thus many of the practical expressions of Fascism such as party organization, system of education, and discipline can only be understood when considered in relation to its general attitude toward life. A spiritual attitude (3). Fascism sees in the world not only those superficial, material aspects in which man appears as an individual, standing by himself, self-centered, subject to natural law, which instinctively urges him toward a life of selfish momentary pleasure; it sees not only the individual but the nation and the country; individuals and generations bound together by a moral law, with common traditions and a mission which suppressing the instinct for life closed in a brief circle of pleasure, builds up a higher life, founded on duty, a life free from the limitations of time and space, in which the individual, by self-sacrifice, the renunciation of self-interest, by death itself, can achieve that purely spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists.


The conception is therefore a spiritual one, arising from the general reaction of the century against the materialistic positivism of the XIXth century. Anti-positivistic but positive; neither skeptical nor agnostic; neither pessimistic nor supinely optimistic as are, generally speaking, the doctrines (all negative) which place the center of life outside man; whereas, by the exercise of his free will, man can and must create his own world.


Fascism wants man to be active and to engage in action with all his energies; it wants him to be manfully aware of the difficulties besetting him and ready to face them. It conceives of life as a struggle in which it behooves a man to win for himself a really worthy place, first of all by fitting himself (physically, morally, intellectually) to become the implement required for winning it. As for the individual, so for the nation, and so for mankind (4). Hence the high value of culture in all its forms (artistic, religious, scientific) (5) and the outstanding importance of education. Hence also the essential value of work, by which man subjugates nature and creates the human world (economic, political, ethical, and intellectual).


This positive conception of life is obviously an ethical one. It invests the whole field of reality as well as the human activities which master it. No action is exempt from moral judgment; no activity can be despoiled of the value which a moral purpose confers on all things. Therefore life, as conceived of by the Fascist, is serious, austere, and religious; all its manifestations are poised in a world sustained by moral forces and subject to spiritual responsibilities. The Fascist disdains an “easy" life (6).


The Fascist conception of life is a religious one (7), in which man is viewed in his immanent relation to a higher law, endowed with an objective will transcending the individual and raising him to conscious membership of a spiritual society. "Those who perceive nothing beyond opportunistic considerations in the religious policy of the Fascist regime fail to realize that Fascism is not only a system of government but also and above all a system of thought.
THE IMPORTANCE OF TRADITION

In the Fascist conception of history, man is man only by virtue of the spiritual process to which he contributes as a member of the family, the social group, the nation, and in function of history to which all nations bring their contribution. Hence the great value of tradition in records, in language, in customs, in the rules of social life (8). Outside history man is a nonentity.

REJECTION OF INDIVIDUALISM AND THE IMPORTANCE OF THE STATE

Fascism is therefore opposed to all individualistic abstractions based on eighteenth century materialism; and it is opposed to all Jacobinistic utopias and innovations. It does not believe in the possibility of "happiness" on earth as conceived by the economistic literature of the XVIIIth century, and it therefore rejects the theological notion that at some future time the human family will secure a final settlement of all its difficulties. This notion runs counter to experience which teaches that life is in continual flux and in process of evolution. In politics Fascism aims at realism; in practice it desires to deal only with those problems which are the spontaneous product of historic conditions and which find or suggest their own solutions (9). Only by entering in to the process of reality and taking possession of the forces at work within it, can man act on man and on nature (10).

Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of man as a historic entity (11). It is opposed to classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual (12). And if liberty is to he the attribute of living men and not of abstract dummies invented by individualistic liberalism, then Fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State (13). The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism, is totalitarian, and the Fascist State - a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values - interprets, develops, and potentates the whole life of a people (14).

No individuals or groups (political parties, cultural associations, economic unions, social classes) outside the State (15). Fascism is therefore opposed to Socialism to which unity within the State (which amalgamates classes into a single economic and ethical reality) is unknown, and which sees in history nothing but the class struggle. Fascism is likewise opposed to trade unionism as a class weapon. But when brought within the orbit of the State, Fascism recognizes the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State (16).


Grouped according to their several interests, individuals form classes; they form trade-unions when organized according to their several economic activities; but first and foremost they form the State, which is no mere matter of numbers, the suns of the individuals forming the majority. Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number (17); but it is the purest form of democracy if the nation be considered as it should be from the point of view of quality rather than quantity, as an idea, the mightiest because the most ethical, the most coherent, the truest, expressing itself in a people as the conscience and will of the few, if not, indeed, of one, and ending to express itself in the conscience and the will of the mass, of the whole group ethnically molded by natural and historical conditions into a nation, advancing, as one conscience and one will, along the self same line of development and spiritual formation (18). Not a race, nor a geographically defined region, but a people, historically perpetuating itself; a multitude unified by an idea and imbued with the will to live, the will to power, self-consciousness, personality (19).


In so far as it is embodied in a State, this higher personality becomes a nation. It is not the nation which generates the State; that is an antiquated naturalistic concept which afforded a basis for XIXth century publicity in favor of national governments. Rather is it the State which creates the nation, conferring volition and therefore real life on a people made aware of their moral unity.


The right to national independence does not arise from any merely literary and idealistic form of self-consciousness; still less from a more or less passive and unconscious de facto situation, but from an active, self-conscious, political will expressing itself in action and ready to prove its rights. It arises, in short, from the existence, at least in fieri, of a State. Indeed, it is the State which, as the expression of a universal ethical will, creates the right to national independence (20).


A nation, as expressed in the State, is a living, ethical entity only in so far as it is active. Inactivity is death. Therefore the State is not only Authority which governs and confers legal form and spiritual value on individual wills, but it is also Power which makes its will felt and respected beyond its own frontiers, thus affording practical proof of the universal character of the decisions necessary to ensure its development. This implies organization and expansion, potential if not actual. Thus the State equates itself to the will of man, whose development cannot he checked by obstacles and which, by achieving self-expression, demonstrates its infinity (21).


FASCIST STATE AS A SPIRITUAL FORCE

The Fascist State, as a higher and more powerful expression of personality, is a force, but a spiritual one. It sums up all the manifestations of the moral and intellectual life of man. Its functions cannot therefore be limited to those of enforcing order and keeping the peace, as the liberal doctrine had it. It is no mere mechanical device for defining the sphere within which the individual may duly exercise his supposed rights. The Fascist State is an inwardly accepted standard and rule of conduct, a discipline of the whole person; it permeates the will no less than the intellect. It stands for a principle which becomes the central motive of man as a member of civilized society, sinking deep down into his personality; it dwells in the heart of the man of action and of the thinker, of the artist and of the man of science: soul of the soul (22).

Fascism, in short, is not only a law-giver and a founder of institutions, but an educator and a promoter of spiritual life. It aims at refashioning not only the forms of life but their content - man, his character, and his faith. To achieve this propose it enforces discipline and uses authority, entering into the soul and ruling with undisputed sway. Therefore it has chosen as its emblem the Lictor’s rods, the symbol of unity, strength, and justice.

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DOCTRINE - EVOLUTION FROM SOCIALISM

When in the now distant March of 1919, speaking through the columns of the Popolo d'Italia I summoned to Milan the surviving interventionists who had intervened, and who had followed me ever since the foundation of the Fasci of revolutionary action in January 1915, I had in mind no specific doctrinal program. The only doctrine of which I had practical experience was that of socialism, from until the winter of 1914 - nearly a decade. My experience was that both of a follower and a leader but it was not doctrinal experience. My doctrine during that period had been the doctrine of action. A uniform, universally accepted doctrine of Socialism had not existed since 1905, when the revisionist movement, headed by Bernstein, arose in Germany, countered by the formation, in the see-saw of tendencies, of a left revolutionary movement which in Italy never quitted the field of phrases, whereas, in the case of Russian socialism, it became the prelude to Bolshevism.

Reformism, revolutionism, centrism, the very echo of that terminology is dead, while in the great river of Fascism one can trace currents which had their source in Sorel, Peguy, Lagardelle of the Movement Socialists, and in the cohort of Italian syndicalist who from 1904 to 1914 brought a new note into the Italian socialist environment - previously emasculated and chloroformed by fornicating with Giolitti's party - a note sounded in Olivetti's Pagine Libere, Orano's Lupa, Enrico Leone's Divenirs Socials.


When the war ended in 1919 Socialism, as a doctrine, was already dead; it continued to exist only as a grudge, especially in Italy where its only chance lay in inciting to reprisals against the men who had willed the war and who were to be made to pay for it.




The Popolo d'Italia described itself in its subtitle as the daily organ of fighters and producers. The word producer was already the expression of a mental trend. Fascism was not the nursling of a doctrine previously drafted at a desk; it was born of the need of action, and was action; it was not a party but, in the first two years, an anti-party and a movement. The name I gave the organization fixed its character.

Yet if anyone cares to reread the now crumpled sheets of those days giving an account of the meeting at which the Italian Fasci di combattimento were founded, he will find not a doctrine but a series of pointers, forecasts, hints which, when freed from the inevitable matrix of contingencies, were to develop in a few years time into a series of doctrinal positions entitling Fascism to rank as a political doctrine differing from all others, past or present.


“If the bourgeoisie - I then said - believe that they have found in us their lightening-conductors, they arc mistaken. We must go towards the people... We wish the working classes to accustom themselves to the responsibilities of management so that they may realize that it is no easy matter to run a business... We will fight both technical and spiritual rear-guirdism... Now that the succession of the regime is open we must not be fainthearted. We must rush forward; if the present regime is to be superseded we must take its place. The right of succession is ours, for we urged the country to enter the war and we led it to victory... The existing forms of political representation cannot satisfy us; we want direst representation of the several interests... It may be objected that this program implies a return to the guilds (corporazioni). No matter!. I therefore hope this assembly will accept the economic claims advanced by national syndicalism …


Is it not strange that from the very first day, at Piazza San Sepolcro, the word "guild" (corporazione) was pronounced, a word which, as the Revolution developed, was to express one of the basic legislative and social creations of the regime?




The years preceding the march on Rome cover a period during which the need of action forbade delay and careful doctrinal elaborations. Fighting was going on in the towns and villages. There were discussions but... there was something more sacred and more important... death... Fascists knew how to die. A doctrine - fully elaborated, divided up into chapters and paragraphs with annotations, may have been lacking, but it was replaced by something far more decisive, - by a faith. All the same, if with the help of books, articles, resolutions passed at congresses, major and minor speeches, anyone should care to revive the memory of those days, he will find, provided he knows how to seek and select, that the doctrinal foundations were laid while the battle was still raging. Indeed, it was during those years that Fascist thought armed, refined itself, and proceeded ahead with its organization. The problems of the individual and the State; the problems of authority and liberty; political, social, and more especially national problems were discussed; the conflict with liberal, democratic, socialistic, Masonic doctrines and with those of the Partito Popolare, was carried on at the same time as the punitive expeditions. Nevertheless, the lack of a formal system was used by disingenuous adversaries as an argument for proclaiming Fascism incapable of elaborating a doctrine at the very time when that doctrine was being formulated - no matter how tumultuously, - first, as is the case with all new ideas, in the guise of violent dogmatic negations; then in the more positive guise of constructive theories, subsequently incorporated, in 1926, 1927, and 1928, in the laws and institutions of the regime.


Fascism is now clearly defined not only as a regime but as a doctrine. This means that Fascism, exercising its critical faculties on itself and on others, has studied from its own special standpoint and judged by its own standards all the problems affecting the material and intellectual interests now causing such grave anxiety to the nations of the world, and is ready to deal with them by its own policies.
REJECTION OF PACIFISM

First of all, as regards the future development of mankind, and quite apart from all present political considerations. Fascism does not, generally speaking, believe in the possibility or utility of perpetual peace. It therefore discards pacifism as a cloak for cowardly supine renunciation in contradistinction to self-sacrifice. War alone keys up all human energies to their maximum tension and sets the seal of nobility on those peoples who have the courage to face it. All other tests are substitutes which never place a man face to face with himself before the alternative of life or death. Therefore all doctrines which postulate peace at all costs are incompatible with Fascism. Equally foreign to the spirit of Fascism, even if accepted as useful in meeting special political situations -- are all internationalistic or League superstructures which, as history shows, crumble to the ground whenever the heart of nations is deeply stirred by sentimental, idealistic or practical considerations. Fascism carries this anti-pacifistic attitude into the life of the individual. " I don't care a damn „ (me ne frego) - the proud motto of the fighting squads scrawled by a wounded man on his bandages, is not only an act of philosophic stoicism, it sums up a doctrine which is not merely political: it is evidence of a fighting spirit which accepts all risks. It signifies new style of Italian life. The Fascist accepts and loves life; he rejects and despises suicide as cowardly. Life as he understands it means duty, elevation, conquest; life must be lofty and full, it must be lived for oneself but above all for others, both near bye and far off, present and future.

The population policy of the regime is the consequence of these premises. The Fascist loves his neighbor, but the word neighbor does not stand for some vague and unseizable conception. Love of one's neighbor does not exclude necessary educational severity; still less does it exclude differentiation and rank. Fascism will have nothing to do with universal embraces; as a member of the community of nations it looks other peoples straight in the eyes; it is vigilant and on its guard; it follows others in all their manifestations and notes any changes in their interests; and it does not allow itself to be deceived by mutable and fallacious appearances.


REJECTION OF MARXISM

Such a conception of life makes Fascism the resolute negation of the doctrine underlying so-called scientific and Marxian socialism, the doctrine of historic materialism which would explain the history of mankind in terms of the class struggle and by changes in the processes and instruments of production, to the exclusion of all else.

That the vicissitudes of economic life - discoveries of raw materials, new technical processes, and scientific inventions - have their importance, no one denies; but that they suffice to explain human history to the exclusion of other factors is absurd. Fascism believes now and always in sanctity and heroism, that is to say in acts in which no economic motive - remote or immediate - is at work. Having denied historic materialism, which sees in men mere puppets on the surface of history, appearing and disappearing on the crest of the waves while in the depths the real directing forces move and work, Fascism also denies the immutable and irreparable character of the class struggle which is the natural outcome of this economic conception of history; above all it denies that the class struggle is the preponderating agent in social transformations. Having thus struck a blow at socialism in the two main points of its doctrine, all that remains of it is the sentimental aspiration, old as humanity itself-toward social relations in which the sufferings and sorrows of the humbler folk will be alleviated. But here again Fascism rejects the economic interpretation of felicity as something to be secured socialistically, almost automatically, at a given stage of economic evolution when all will be assured a maximum of material comfort. Fascism denies the materialistic conception of happiness as a possibility, and abandons it to the economists of the mid-eighteenth century. This means that Fascism denies the equation: well-being = happiness, which sees in men mere animals, content when they can feed and fatten, thus reducing them to a vegetative existence pure and simple.


REJECTION OF PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY AS A SHAM AND A FRAUD

After socialism, Fascism trains its guns on the whole block of democratic ideologies, and rejects both their premises and their practical applications and implements. Fascism denies that numbers, as such, can be the determining factor in human society; it denies the right of numbers to govern by means of periodical consultations; it asserts the irremediable and fertile and beneficent inequality of men who cannot be leveled by any such mechanical and extrinsic device as universal suffrage. Democratic regimes may be described as those under which the people are, from time to time, deluded into the belief that they exercise sovereignty, while all the time real sovereignty resides in and is exercised by other and sometimes irresponsible and secret forces. Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical, and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant. This explains why Fascism - although, for contingent reasons, it was republican in tendency prior to 1922 - abandoned that stand before the March on Rome, convinced that the form of government is no longer a matter of preeminent importance, and because the study of past and present monarchies and past and present republics shows that neither monarchy nor republic can be judged sub specie aeternitatis, but that each stands for a form of government expressing the political evolution, the history, the traditions, and the psychology of a given country.

Fascism has outgrown the dilemma: monarchy v. republic, over which democratic regimes too long dallied, attributing all insufficiencies to the former and proning the latter as a regime of perfection, whereas experience teaches that some republics are inherently reactionary and absolutist while some monarchies accept the most daring political and social experiments.


In one of his philosophic Meditations Renan - who had prefascist intuitions remarks, "Reason and science are the products of mankind, but it is chimerical to seek reason directly for the people and through the people. It is not essential to the existence of reason that all should be familiar with it; and even if all had to be initiated, this could not be achieved through democracy which seems fated to lead to the extinction of all arduous forms of culture and all highest forms of learning. The maxim that society exists only for the well-being and freedom of the individuals composing it does not seem to be in conformity with nature's plans, which care only for the species and seem ready to sacrifice the individual. It is much to be feared that the last word of democracy thus understood (and let me hasten to add that it is susceptible of a different interpretation) would be a form of society in which a degenerate mass would have no thought beyond that of enjoying the ignoble pleasures of the vulgar."


REJECTION OF EGALITARIANISM

In rejecting democracy, Fascism rejects the absurd conventional lie of political equalitarianism, the habit of collective irresponsibility, the myth of felicity and indefinite progress.

DEFINITION OF FASCISM AS REAL DEMOCRACY

But if democracy be understood as meaning a regime in which the masses are not driven back to the margin of the State, and then the writer of these pages has already defined Fascism as an organized, centralized, authoritarian democracy.

REJECTION OF ECONOMIC LIBERALISM - ADMIRATION OF BISMARCK

Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political and the economic sphere. The importance of liberalism in the XIXth century should not be exaggerated for present day polemical purposes, nor should we make of one of the many doctrines which flourished in that century a religion for mankind for the present and for all time to come. Liberalism really flourished for fifteen years only. It arose in 1830 as a reaction to the Holy Alliance which tried to force Europe to recede further back than 1789; it touched its zenith in 1848 when even Pius IXth was a liberal. Its decline began immediately after that year. If 1848 was a year of light and poetry, 1849 was a year of darkness and tragedy. The Roman Republic was killed by a sister republic, that of France. In that same year Marx, in his famous Communist Manifesto, launched the gospel of socialism.

In 1851 Napoleon III made his illiberal coup d'etat and ruled France until 1870 when he was turned out by a popular rising following one of the severest military defeats known to history. The victor was Bismarck who never even knew the whereabouts of liberalism and its prophets. It is symptomatic that throughout the XIXth century the religion of liberalism was completely unknown to so highly civilized a people as the Germans but for one parenthesis which has been described as the “ridiculous parliament of Frankfort " which lasted just one season. Germany attained her national unity outside liberalism and in opposition to liberalism, a doctrine which seems foreign to the German temperament, essentially monarchical, whereas liberalism is the historic and logical anteroom to anarchy. The three stages in the making of German unity were the three wars of 1864, 1866, and 1870, led by such "liberals" as Moltke and Bismarck. And in the upbuilding of Italian unity liberalism played a very minor part when compared to the contribution made by Mazzini and Garibaldi who were not liberals. But for the intervention of the illiberal Napoleon III we should not have had Lombardy, and without that of the illiberal Bismarck at Sadowa and at Sedan very probably we should not have had Venetia in 1866 and in 1870 we should not have entered Rome. The years going from 1870 to 1915 cover a period which marked, even in the opinion of the high priests of the new creed, the twilight of their religion, attacked by decadentism in literature and by activism in practice. Activism: that is to say nationalism, futurism, fascism.
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The liberal century, after piling up innumerable Gordian Knots, tried to cut them with the sword of the world war. Never has any religion claimed so cruel a sacrifice. Were the Gods of liberalism thirsting for blood?

Now liberalism is preparing to close the doors of its temples, deserted by the peoples who feel that the agnosticism it professed in the sphere of economics and the indifferentism of which it has given proof in the sphere of politics and morals, would lead the world to ruin in the future as they have done in the past.

This explains why all the political experiments of our day are anti-liberal, and it is supremely ridiculous to endeavor on this account to put them outside the pale of history, as though history were a preserve set aside for liberalism and its adepts; as though liberalism were the last word in civilization beyond which no one can go.


THE FASCIST TOTALITARIAN VISION OF THE FUTURE



The Fascist negation of socialism, democracy, liberalism, should not, however, be interpreted as implying a desire to drive the world backwards to positions occupied prior to 1789, a year commonly referred to as that which opened the demo-liberal century. History does not travel backwards. The Fascist doctrine has not taken De Maistre as its prophet. Monarchical absolutism is of the past, and so is ecclesiolatry. Dead and done for are feudal privileges and the division of society into closed, uncommunicating castes. Neither has the Fascist conception of authority anything in common with that of a police ridden State.


A party governing a nation “totalitarianly" is a new departure in history. There are no points of reference nor of comparison. From beneath the ruins of liberal, socialist, and democratic doctrines, Fascism extracts those elements which are still vital. It preserves what may be described as "the acquired facts" of history; it rejects all else. That is to say, it rejects the idea of a doctrine suited to all times and to all people. Granted that the XIXth century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the XXth century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the " right ", a Fascist century. If the XIXth century was the century of the individual (liberalism implies individualism) we are free to believe that this is the "collective" century, and therefore the century of the State. It is quite logical for a new doctrine to make use of the still vital elements of other doctrines. No doctrine was ever born quite new and bright and unheard of. No doctrine can boast absolute originality. It is always connected, it only historically, with those which preceded it and those which will follow it. Thus the scientific socialism of Marx links up to the utopian socialism of the Fouriers, the Owens, the Saint-Simons ; thus the liberalism of the XIXth century traces its origin back to the illuministic movement of the XVIIIth, and the doctrines of democracy to those of the Encyclopaedists. All doctrines aim at directing the activities of men towards a given objective; but these activities in their turn react on the doctrine, modifying and adjusting it to new needs, or outstripping it. A doctrine must therefore be a vital act and not a verbal display. Hence the pragmatic strain in Fascism, it’s will to power, its will to live, its attitude toward violence, and its value.
THE ABSOLUTE PRIMACY OF THE STATE

The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative. Individuals and groups are admissible in so far as they come within the State. Instead of directing the game and guiding the material and moral progress of the community, the liberal State restricts its activities to recording results. The Fascist State is wide awake and has a will of its own. For this reason it can be described as " ethical ".

At the first quinquennial assembly of the regime, in 1929, I said “The Fascist State is not a night watchman, solicitous only of the personal safety of the citizens; not is it organized exclusively for the purpose of guarantying a certain degree of material prosperity and relatively peaceful conditions of life, a board of directors would do as much. Neither is it exclusively political, divorced from practical realities and holding itself aloof from the multifarious activities of the citizens and the nation. The State, as conceived and realized by Fascism, is a spiritual and ethical entity for securing the political, juridical, and economic organization of the nation, an organization which in its origin and growth is a manifestation of the spirit. The State guarantees the internal and external safety of the country, but it also safeguards and transmits the spirit of the people, elaborated down the ages in its language, its customs, its faith. The State is not only the present; it is also the past and above all the future. Transcending the individual's brief spell of life, the State stands for the immanent conscience of the nation. The forms in which it finds expression change, but the need for it remains. The State educates the citizens to civism, makes them aware of their mission, urges them to unity; its justice harmonizes their divergent interests; it transmits to future generations the conquests of the mind in the fields of science, art, law, human solidarity; it leads men up from primitive tribal life to that highest manifestation of human power, imperial rule.


The State hands down to future generations the memory of those who laid down their lives to ensure its safety or to obey its laws; it sets up as examples and records for future ages the names of the captains who enlarged its territory and of the men of genius who have made it famous. Whenever respect for the State declines and the disintegrating and centrifugal tendencies of individuals and groups prevail, nations are headed for decay". Since 1929 economic and political development have everywhere emphasized these truths. The importance of the State is rapidly growing. The so-called crisis can only be settled by State action and within the orbit of the State. Where are the shades of the Jules Simons who, in the early days of liberalism proclaimed that the "State should endeavor to render itself useless and prepare to hand in its resignation "? Or of the MacCullochs who, in the second half of last century, urged that the State should desist from governing too much? And what of the English Bentham who considered that all industry asked of government was to be left alone, and of the German Humbolt who expressed the opinion that the best government was a lazy " one? What would they say now to the unceasing, inevitable, and urgently requested interventions of government in business? It is true that the second generation of economists was less uncompromising in this respect than the first, and that even Adam Smith left the door ajar - however cautiously - for government intervention in business.

If liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government.




The Fascist State is, however, a unique and original creation. It is not reactionary but revolutionary, for it anticipates the solution of certain universal problems which have been raised elsewhere, in the political field by the splitting up of parties, the usurpation of power by parliaments, the irresponsibility of assemblies; in the economic field by the increasingly numerous and important functions discharged by trade unions and trade associations with their disputes and ententes, affecting both capital and labor; in the ethical field by the need felt for order, discipline, obedience to the moral dictates of patriotism.

Fascism desires the State to be strong and organic, based on broad foundations of popular support. The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporative, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organized in their respective associations, circulate within the State. A State based on millions of individuals who recognize its authority, feel its action, and are ready to serve its ends is not the tyrannical state of a mediaeval lordling. It has nothing in common with the despotic States existing prior to or subsequent to 1789.


Far from crushing the individual, the Fascist State multiplies his energies, just as in a regiment a soldier is not diminished but multiplied by the number of his fellow soldiers. The Fascist State organizes the nation, but it leaves the individual adequate elbow room. It has curtailed useless or harmful liberties while preserving those which are essential. In such matters the individual cannot be the judge, but the State only. The Fascist

State is not indifferent to religious phenomena in general nor does it maintain an attitude of indifference to Roman Catholicism, the special, positive religion of Italians. The State has not got a theology but it has a moral code. The Fascist State sees in religion one of the deepest of spiritual manifestations and for this reason it not only respects religion but defends and protects it. The Fascist State does not attempt, as did Robespierre at the height of the revolutionary delirium of the Convention, to set up a "god” of its own; nor does it vainly seek, as does Bolshevism, to efface God from the soul of man.


Fascism respects the God of ascetics, saints, and heroes, and it also respects God as conceived by the ingenuous and primitive heart of the people, the God to whom their prayers are raised.

The Fascist State expresses the will to exercise power and to command. Here the Roman tradition is embodied in a conception of strength. Imperial power, as understood by the Fascist doctrine, is not only territorial, or military, or commercial; it is also spiritual and ethical. An imperial nation, that is to say a nation a which directly or indirectly is a leader of others, can exist without the need of conquering a single square mile of territory. Fascism sees in the imperialistic spirit -- i.e. in the tendency of nations to expand - a manifestation of their vitality. In the opposite tendency, which would limit their interests to the home country, it sees a symptom of decadence. Peoples who rise or rearise are imperialistic; renunciation is characteristic of dying peoples. The Fascist doctrine is that best suited to the tendencies and feelings of a people which, like the Italian, after lying fallow during centuries of foreign servitude, are now reasserting itself in the world.


But imperialism implies discipline, the coordination of efforts, a deep sense of duty and a spirit of self-sacrifice. This explains many aspects of the practical activity of the regime, and the direction taken by many of the forces of the State, as also the severity which has to be exercised towards those who would oppose this spontaneous and inevitable movement of XXth century Italy by agitating outgrown ideologies of the XIXth century, ideologies rejected wherever great experiments in political and social transformations are being dared.


Never before have the peoples thirsted for authority, direction, order, as they do now. If each age has its doctrine, then innumerable symptoms indicate that the doctrine of our age is the Fascist. That it is vital is shown by the fact that it has aroused a faith; that this faith has conquered souls is shown by the fact that Fascism can point to its fallen heroes and its martyrs.


Fascism has now acquired throughout the world that universally which belongs to all doctrines which by achieving self-expression represent a moment in the history of human thought.


APPENDIX FOOTNOTES



1. Philosophic conception

(1) If Fascism does not wish to die or, worse still, commit suicide, it must now provide itself with a doctrine. Yet this shall not and must not be a robe of Nessus clinging to us for all eternity, for tomorrow is some thing mysterious and unforeseen. This doctrine shall be a norm to guide political and individual action in our daily life.

I who have I dictated this doctrine, am the first to realize that the modest tables of our laws and program the theoretical and practical guidance of Fascism should be revised, corrected, enlarged, developed, because already in parts they have suffered injury at the hand of time. I believe the essence and fundamentals of the doctrine are still to be found in the postulates which throughout two years have acted as a call to arms for the recruits of Italian Fascism. However, in taking those first fundamental assumptions for a starting point, we must proceed to carry our program into a vaster field. Italian Fascists, one and all, should cooperate in this task, one of vital importance to Fascism, and more especially those who belong to regions where with and without agreement peaceful coexistence has been achieved between two antagonistic movements.

The word I am about to use is a great one, but indeed I do wish that during the two months which are still to elapse before our National Assembly meets, the philosophy of Fascism could be created. Milan is already contributing with the first Fascist school of propaganda. It is not merely a question of gathering elements for a program, to be used as a solid foundation for the constitution of a party which must inevitably arise from the Fascist movement; it is also a question of denying the silly tale that Fascism is all made up of violent men. In point of fact among Fascists there are many men who belong to the restless but meditative class.



The new course taken by Fascist activity will in no way diminish the fighting spirit typical of Fascism. To furnish the mind with doctrines and creeds does not mean to disarm, rather it signifies to strengthen our power of action, and make us ever more conscious of our work. Soldiers who fight fully conscious of the cause make the best of warriors. Fascism takes for its own the twofold device of Mazzini : Thought and Action u. (Letter to Michele Bianchi, written on August 27, 1921, for the opening of the School of Fascist Culture and Propaganda in Milan, in Messaggi e Proclami, Milano, Libreria d'Italia, 1929, P. 39).

Fascists must be placed in contact with one another; their activity must be an activity of doctrine, an activity of the spirit and of thought. Had our adversaries been present at our meeting, they would have been convinced that Fascism is not only action, but thought as well (Speech before the National Council of the Fascist Party, August 8, 1924, in La Nuova Politica dell'Italia, Milano, Alpes, 1928, p. 267).




(2) Today I hold that Fascism as an idea, a doctrine, a realization, is universal; it is Italian in its particular institutions, but it is universal in the spirit, nor could it be otherwise. The spirit is universal by reason of its nature. Therefore anyone may foresee a Fascist Europe. Drawing inspiration for her institutions from the doctrine and practice of Fascism; Europe , in other words, giving a Fascist turn to the solution of problems which beset the modern State, the Twentieth Century State which is very different from the States existing before 1789, and the States formed immediately after. Today Fascism fills universal requirements; Fascism solves the threefold problem of relations between State and individual, between State and associations, between associations and organized associations. (Message for the year 1 October 27, 1930, in Discorsi del 1930, Milano, Alpes, 1931, p. 211).



2. Spiritualized conception

(3) This political process is flanked by a philosophic process. If it be true that matter was on the altars for one century, today it is the spirit which takes its place. All manifestations peculiar to the democratic spirit are consequently repudiated: easygoingness, improvisation, the lack of a personal sense of responsibility, the exaltation of numbers and of that mysterious divinity called n The People a. All creations of the spirit starting with that religious are coming to the fore, and nobody dare keep up the attitude of anticlericalism which, for several decades, was a favorite with Democracy in the Western world. By saying that God is returning, we mean that spiritual values are returning. (Da the parte va it mondo, in Tempi della Rivoluzione Fascista, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 34).

There is a field reserved more to meditation upon the supreme ends of life than to a research of these ends. Consequently science starts from experience, but breaks out fatally into philosophy and, in my opinion, philosophy alone can enlighten science and lead to the universal idea. (To the Congress of Science at Bologna , October 31, 19,26, in Discorsidel 1926. Milano, Alpes, 1927, p. 268).



In order to understand the Fascist movement one must first appreciate the underlying spiritual phenomenon in all its vastness and depth. The manifestations of the movement have been of a powerful and decisive nature, but one should go further. In point of fact Italian Fascism has not only been a political revolt against weak and incapable governments who had allowed State authority to decay and were threatening to arrest the progress of the country, but also a spiritual revolt against old ideas which had corrupted the sacred principles of religion, of faith, of country. Fascism, therefore, has been a revolt of the people. (Message to the British people; January 5, 1924, in Messaggi e Proclami, Milano, Libreria d' Italia, 1929, p. 107).

3. Positive conception of life as a struggle

(4) Struggle is at the origin of all things, for life is full of contrasts: there is love and hatred, white and black, day and night, good and evil; and until these contrasts achieve balance, struggle fatefully remains at the root of human nature. However, it is good for it to be so. Today we can indulge in wars, economic battles, conflicts of ideas, but if a day came to pass when struggle ceased to exist, that day would be tinged with melancholy; it would be a day of ruin, the day of ending. But thaver discloses new horizons. By attempting to restore calm, peace, tranquility, or. A would be fighting the tendencies of the present period of dynamism. Ore must be prepared for other struggles and for other surprises. Peace will only come when people surrender to a Christian dream of universal brotherhood, when they can hold out hands across the ocean and over the mountains. Personally I do not believe very much in these idealisms, but I do not exclude them for I exclude nothing. (At the Politeama Rossetti, Trieste, September 20, 1920 in Discorsi Politici, Milano, Stab. Tipografico del « Popolo d' Italia » , 1921, p. 107).



(5) For me the honor of nations consists in the contribution they have severally made to human civilization. (E. Ludwig, Talks with Mussolini, London, Allen and Unwin, 1932, p. 199)

4. Ethical conception

I called the organization Fasci Italiani Di Combatimento. This hard metallic name compromised the whole program of Fascism as I dreamed it. Comrades, this is still our program: fight. Life for the Fascist is a continuous, ceaseless fight, which we accept with ease, with great courage, with the necessary intrepidity. (On the VIIth anniversary of the Foundation of the Fasci, March 28, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 7, p.98 You touch the core of Fascist philosophy. When recently a Finnish philosopher asked me to expound to him the significance of Fascism in one sentence, I wrote in German: ((We are against the “easy life"! (E. Ludwig: Talks with Mussolini, London, Allen and Unwin, 1932, p. 190).




5. Religious conception


(7) If Fascism were not a creed, how could it endow its followers with courage and stoicism only a creed which has soared to the heights of religion can inspire such words as passed the lips, now lifeless alas, of Federico Florio. (Legami di Sangue, in Diuturna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 256).

6. Historical and realistic conception

(8) Tradition certainly is one of the greatest spiritual forces of a people, inasmuch as it is a successive and constant creation of their soul. (Breve Preludio, in Tempi della Rivoluzione Fascista, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 13)

(9) Our temperament leads us to appraise the concrete aspect of problems, rather than their ideological or mystical sublimation. Therefore we easily regain our balance. (Aspetti del Dramma, in Diuturna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 86).

Our battle is an ungrateful one, yet it is a beautiful battle since it compels us to count only upon our own forces. Revealed truths we have torn to shreds, dogmas we have spat upon, we have rejected all theories of paradise, we have baffled charlatans white, red, black charlatans who placed miraculous drugs on the market to give a happiness n to mankind. We do not believe in program, in plans, in saints or apostles, above all we believe not in happiness, in salvation, in the Promised Land. (Diuturna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 223).


We do not believe in a single solution, be it economical, political or moral, a linear solution of the problems of life, because of illustrious choristers from all the sacristies life is not linear and can never be reduced to a segment traced by primordial needs. (Navigare necesse, in Diuturna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 233).


(10) We are not and do not wish to be motionless mummies, with faces perpetually turned towards the same horizon, nor do we wish to shut ourselves up within the narrow hedges of subversive bigotry, where formulas, like prayers of a professed religion, are muttered mechanically. We are men, living men, who wish to give our contribution, however 'modest, to the creation of history. (Audacia, in Diu turna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p.233)

We uphold moral and traditional values which Socialism neglects or despises; but, above all, Fascism has a horror of anything implying an arbitrary mortgage on the mysterious future. (Dopo due anni, in Diuturna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 242).

In spite of the theories of conservation and renovation, of tradition and progress expounded by the right and the left, we do not cling desperately to the past as to a last board of salvation: yet we do not dash headlong into the seductive mists of the future. (Breve preludio, in Diuturna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 14) Negation, eternal immobility, mean damnation. I am all for motion. I am, one who marches on (E. Ludwig, Talks with Mussolini, Lot Jon, Allen and Unwin, 1932, p. 203).


7. The individual and liberty

(11) We were the first to state, in the face of demo liberal individualism, that the individual exists only in so far as he is within the State and subjected to the requirements of the state and that, as civilization assumes aspects which grow more and more complicated, individual freedom becomes more and more restricted. (To the General staff Conference of Fascism, in Discorsi del 1929, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 280).

The sense of the state grows within the consciousness of Italians, for they feel that the state alone is the irreplaceable safeguard of their unit and independence; that the state alone represents continuity into the future of their stock and their history. (Message on the VIIth all anniversary, October 25, 1929, Discorsi del 1929, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 300).

If, in the course of the past eight years, we have made such astounding progress, you may well think suppose and foresee that in the course of the next fifty or eighty years the onward trend of Italy, of this Italy we feel to be so powerful, so full of vital fluid, will really be grandiose. It will be so especially if concord lasts among citizens, if the State continues to be sole arbitrator in political and social conflicts, if all remains within the state and nothing outside the State, because it is impossible to conceive any individual existing outside the State unless he be a savage whose home is in the solitude of she sandy desert. (Speech before the Senate, May 12, 1928, in Discorsi del 1928, Milano, Alpes, 1929, p. 109).

Fascism has restored to the State its sovereign functions by claiming its absolute ethical meaning, against the egotism of classes and categories; to the Government of the state, which was reduced to a mere instrument of electoral assemblies, it has restored dignity, as representing the personality of the state and its power of Empire. It has rescued State administration from the weight of factions and party interests (To the council of state, December 22, 1928, in Discorsi Del 1928, Milano, Alpes, 1929 p.328).

(12) Let no one think of denying the moral character of Fascism. For I should be ashamed to speak from this tribune if I did not feel that I represent the moral and spiritual powers of the state. What would the state be if it did not possess a spirit of its own, and a morality of its own, which lend power to the laws in virtue of which the state is obeyed by its citizens?

The Fascist state claims its ethical character: it is Catholic but above all it is Fascist, in fact it is exclusively and essentially Fascist. Catholicism completes Fascism, and this we openly declare, but let no one think they can turn the tables on us, under cover of metaphysics or philosophy. (To the Chamber of Deputies, May 13, 1929, in Discorsi del 1929, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 182).


A State which is fully aware of its mission and represents a people which are marching on; a state which necessarily transforms the people even in their physical aspect. In order to be something more than a mere administrator, the State must utter great words, expound great ideas and place great problems before this people (Di scorsi del 1929, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 183).

(13) The concept of freedom is not absolute because nothing is ever absolute in life. Freedom is not a right, it is a duty. It is not a gift, it is a conquest; it is not equality, it is a privilege. The concept of freedom changes with the passing of time. There is a freedom in times of peace which is not the freedom of times of war. There is a freedom in times of prosperity which is not a freedom to be allowed in times of poverty. (Fifth anniversary of the foundation of the Fasci di Combattimento, March 24, 1924, in La nuova politica dell'Italia, vol. III, Milano, Alpes, 1925, p. 30).


In our state the individual is not deprived of freedom. In fact, he has greater liberty than an isolated man, because the state protects him and he is part of the State. Isolated man is without defence. (E. Ludwig, Talks with Mussolini, London, Allen and Unwin, 1932, p. 129).

(14) Today we may tell the world of the creation of the powerful united State of Italy, ranging from the Alps to Sicily; this State is expressed by a well-organized, centralized, unitarian democracy, where people circulate at case. Indeed, gentlemen, you admit the people into the citadel of the State and the people will defend it, if you close them out, the people will assault it. (speech before the Chamber of Deputies, May 26, 1927, in Discorsi del 1927, Milano, Alpes, 1928, p. 159).


In the Fascist regime the unity of classes, the political, social and coral unity of the Italian people is realized within the state, and only within the Fascist state. (speech before the Chamber of Deputies,


December 9, 1928, in Discorsi del 1928, Milano, Alpes, 1929, p. 333).

8. Conception of a corporative state

(15) We have created the united state of Italy remember that since the Empire Italy had not been a united state. Here I wish to reaffirm solemnly our doctrine of the State. Here I wish to reaffirm with no weaker energy, the formula I expounded at the scala in Milan everything in the state, nothing against the State, nothing outside the state. (speech before the Chamber of Deputies, May 26, 1927, Discorsi del 1927, Milano, Alpes, 1928, p. 157).

(16) We are, in other words, a state which controls all forces acting in nature. We control political forces, we control moral forces we control economic forces, therefore we are a full-blown Corporative state. We stand for a new principle in the world, we stand for sheer, categorical, definitive antithesis to the world of democracy, plutocracy, free-masonry, to the world which still abides by the fundamental principles laid down in 1789. (Speech before the new National Directory of the Party, April 7, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 1927, p. 120).

The Ministry of Corporations is not a bureaucratic organ, nor does it wish to exercise the functions of syndical organizations which are necessarily independent, since they aim at organizing, selecting and improving the members of syndicates. The Ministry of Corporations is an institution in virtue of which, in the centre and outside, integral corporation becomes an accomplished fact, where balance is achieved between interests and forces of the economic world. Such a glance is only possible within the sphere of the state, because the state alone transcends the contrasting interests of groups and individuals, in view of co-coordinating them to achieve higher aims. The achievement of these aims is speeded up by the fact that all economic organizations, acknowledged, safeguarded and supported by the Corporative State, exist within the orbit of Fascism; in other terms they accept the conception of Fascism in theory and in practice. (speech at the opening of the Ministry of Corporations, July 31, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 1927, p. 250).


We have constituted a Corporative and Fascist state, the state of national society, a State which concentrates, controls, harmonizes and tempers the interests of all social classes, which are thereby protected in equal measure. Whereas, during the years of demo-liberal regime, labour looked with diffidence upon the state, was, in fact, outside the State and against the state, and considered the state an enemy of every day and every hour, there is not one working Italian today who does not seek a place in his Corporation or federation, who does not wish to be a living atom of that great, immense, living organization which is the national Corporate State of Fascism. (On the Fourth Anniversary of the March on Rome, October 28, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 1927, p. 340).


9. Democracy

(17) The war was revolutionary, in the sense that with streams of blood it did away with the century of Democracy, the century of number, the century of majorities and of quantities. (Da che parte va il Mondo, in Tempi della Rivoluzione Fascista, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 37)

(18) Cf. note 13.


(19) Race: it is a feeling and not a reality; 95 %, a feeling. (E. Ludwig, Talks with Mussolini, London, Allen and Unwin, 1932, p. 75).


10. Conception of the state

(20) A nation exists inasmuch as it is a people. A people rise inasmuch as they are numerous, hard working and well regulated. Power is the outcome of this threefold principle. (To the General Assembly of the Party, March lo, 1929, in Discorsi del 1929, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 24).

Fascism does not deny the State; Fascism maintains that a civic society, national or imperial, cannot be conceived unless in the form of a State (Stab, anti-Slato, Fascismo, in Tempi della Rivoluzione Fascista, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 94).


For us the Nation is mainly spirit and not only territory. There are States which owned immense territories and yet left no trace in the history of mankind. Neither is it a question of number, because there have been, in history, small, microscopic States, which left immortal, imperishable documents in art and philosophy. The greatness of a nation is the compound of all these virtues and conditions. A nation is great when the power of the spirit is translated into reality. (Speech at Naples, October 24, 1922, in Discorsi della Rivoluzione, Milano, Alpes, 1928, p. 103). We wish to unity the nation within the sovereign State, which is above everyone rid can afford to be against everyone, since it represents the moral continuity of the nation in history. Without the State there is no nation. There are, merely. human aggregations. subject to all the disintegration's which history may inflict upon them. (Speech before the National Council of the Fascist Party, August 8, 1924, in La Nuova Politica dell'Italia, vol. III; Milano, Alpes, 1928, p. 269).


11. Dynamic reality

(21) I believe that if a people wish to live, they should develop a will to power, otherwise they vegetate, live miserably and become prey to a stronger people, in whom this will to power is developed to a higher degree. (Speech to the Senate, May 28, 1926).

(22) It is Fascism which has refashioned the character of the Italians, removing impurity from our souls, tempering us to all sacrifices, restoring the true aspect of strength and beauty to our Italian face. (Speech delivered at Pisa ,

May 25, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 1927, p. 193).


It is not out of place to illustrate the intrinsic character and profound significance of the Fascist Levy. It is not merely a ceremony, but a very important stage in the system of education and integral preparation of Italian men which the Fascist revolution considers one of the fundamental duties of the State: fundamental indeed, for if the State does not fulfill this duty or in any way accepts to place it under discussion, the State merely and simply forfeits its right to exist. (Speech before the Chamber of Deputies, May 28, 1928, in Discorsi del 1928, Milano, Alpes, 1929, p. 68).
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It is one of the peculiar ironies of history that there are no limits to the misunderstanding and distortion of theories, even in an age when there is unlimited access to the sources; there is no more drastic example of this phenomenon than what has happened to the theory of Karl Marx in the last few decades. There is continuous reference to Marx and to Marxism in the press, in the speeches of politicians, in books and articles written by respectable social scientists and philosophers; yet with few exceptions, it seems that the politicians and newspapermen have never as much as glanced at a line written by Marx, and that the social scientists are satisfied with a minimal knowledge of Marx. Apparently they feel safe in acting as experts in this field, since nobody with power and status in the social-research empire challenges their ignorant statements.[1]

Among all the misunderstandings there is probably none more widespread than the idea of Marx's "materialism." Marx is supposed to have believed that the paramount psychological motive in man is his wish for monetary gain and comfort, and that this striving for maximum profit constitutes the main incentive in his personal life and in the life of the human race. Complementary to this idea is the equally widespread assumption that Marx neglected the importance of the individual; that he had neither respect nor understanding for the spiritual needs of man, and that his "ideal" was the well-fed and wellclad, but "soulless" person. Marx's criticism of religion was held to be identical with the denial of all spiritual values, and this seemed all the more apparent to those who assume that belief in God is the condition for a spiritual orientation.

This view of Marx then goes on to discuss his socialist paradise as one of millions of people who submit to an all-powerful state bureaucracy, people who have surrendered their freedom, even though they might have achieved equality; these materially satisfied "individuals" have lost their individuality and have been successfully transformed into millions of uniform robots and automatons, led by a small elite of better-fed leaders.

Suffice it to say at the outset that this popular picture of Marx's "materialism" -- his anti-spiritual tendency, his wish for uniformity and subordination -- is utterly false. Marx's aim was that of the spiritual emancipation of man, of his liberation from the chains of economic determination, of restituting him in his human wholeness, of enabling him to find unity and harmony with his fellow man and with nature. Marx's philosophy was, in secular, nontheistic language, a new and radical step forward in the tradition of prophetic Messianism; it was aimed at the full realization of individualism, the very aim which has guided Western thinking from the Renaissance and the Reformation far into the nineteenth century.

This picture undoubtedly must shock many readers because of its incompatibility with the ideas about Marx to which they have been exposed. But before proceeding to substantiate it, I want to emphasize the irony which lies in the fact that the description given of the aim of Marx and of the content of his vision of socialism, fits almost exactly the reality of present-day Western capitalist society. The majority of people are motivated by a wish for greater material gain, for comfort and gadgets, and this wish is restricted only by the desire for security and the avoidance of risks. They are increasingly satisfied with a life regulated and manipulated, both in the sphere of production and of consumption, by the state and the big corporations and their respective bureaucracies; they have reached a degree of conformity which has wiped out individuality to a remarkable extent. They are, to use Marx's term, impotent "commodity men" serving virile machines. The very picture of midtwentieth century capitalism is hardly distinguishable from the caricature of Marxist socialism as drawn by its opponents.

What is even more surprising is the fact that the people who accuse Marx most bitterly of "materialism" attack socialism for being unrealistic because it does not recognize that the only efficient incentive for man to work lies in his desire for material gain. Man's unbounded capacity for negating blatant contradictions by rationalizations, if it suits him, could hardly be better illustrated. The very same reasons which are said to be proof that Marx's ideas are incompatible with our religious and spiritual tradition and which are used to defend our present system against Marx, are at the same time employed by the same people to prove that capitalism corresponds to human nature and hence is far superior to an "unrealistic" socialism.

I shall try to demonstrate that this interpretation of Marx is completely false; that his theory does not assume that the main motive of man is one of material gain; that, furthermore, the very aim of Marx is to liberate man from the pressure of economic needs, so that he can be fully human; that Marx is primarily concerned with the emancipation of man as an individual, the overcoming of alienation, the restoration of his capacity to relate himself fully to man and to nature; that Marx's philosophy constitutes a spiritual existentialism in secular language and because of this spiritual quality is opposed to the materialistic practice and thinly disguised materialistic philosophy of our age. Marx's aim, socialism, based on his theory of man, is essentially prophetic Messianism in the language of the nineteenth century.

How can it be, then, that Marx's philosophy is so completely misunderstood and distorted into its opposite? There are several reasons. The first and most obvious one is ignorance. It seems that these are matters which, not being taught at universities and hence not being subjects for examination, are "free" for everybody to think, talk, write about as he pleases, and without any knowledge. There are no properly acknowledged authorities who would insist on respect for the facts, and for truth. Hence everybody feels entitled to talk about Marx without having read him, or at least, without having read enough to get an idea of his very complex, intricate, and subtle system of thought. It did not help matters that Marx Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, his main philosophical work dealing with his concept of man, of alienation, of emancipation, etc., had not until now been translated into English [2], and hence that some of his ideas were unknown to the English-speaking world.

This fact, however, is by no means sufficient to explain the prevailing ignorance, first, because the fact that this work of Marx's had never before been translated into English is in itself as much a symptom as a cause of the ignorance; secondly, because the main trend of Marx's philosophical thought is sufficiently clear in those writings previously published in English to have avoided the falsification which occurred.

Another reason lies in the fact that the Russian Communists appropriated Marx's theory and tried to convince the world that their practice and theory follow his ideas. Although the opposite is true, the West accepted their propagandistic claims and has come to assume that Marx's position corresponds to the Russian view and practice. However, the Russian Communists are not the only ones guilty of misinterpreting Marx. While the Russians' brutal contempt for individual dignity and humanistic values is, indeed, specific for them, the misinterpretation of Marx as the proponent of an economistic-hedonistic materialism has also been shared by many of the anti-Communist and reformist socialists. The reasons are not difficult to see. While Marx's theory was a critique of capitalism, many of his adherents were so deeply imbued with the spirit of capitalism that they interpreted Marx's thought in the economistic and materialistic categories that are prevalent in contemporary capitalism. Indeed, while the Soviet Communists, as well as the reformist socialists, believed they were the enemies of capitalism, they conceived of communism-or socialism -- in the spirit of capitalism. For them, socialism is not a society humanly different from capitalism, but rather, a form of capitalism in which the working class has achieved a higher status; it is, as Engels once remarked ironically, "the present-day society without its defects."

So far we have dealt with rational and realistic reasons for the distortion of Marx's theories. But, no doubt, there are also irrational reasons which help to produce this distortion. Soviet Russia has been looked upon as the very incarnation of all evil; hence her ideas have assumed the quality of the devilish. Just as in 1917, within a relatively short time, the Kaiser and the "Huns" were looked upon as the embodiment of evil, and even Mozart's music became part of the devil's territory, so the communists have taken the place of the devil, and their doctrines are not examined objectively. The reason usually given for this hate is the terror which the Stalinists practiced for many years. But there is serious reason to doubt the sincerity of this explanation; the same acts of terror and inhumanity, when practiced by the French in Algiers, by Trujillo in Santo Domingo, by Franco in Spain, do not provoke any similar moral indignation; in fact, hardly any indignation at all. Furthermore, the change from Stalin's system of unbridled terror to Khrushchev's reactionary police state has received insufficient attention, although one would think anyone seriously concerned with human freedom would be aware of and happy with a change which, while by no means sufficient, is a great improvement over Stalin's naked terror. All this gives us cause to wonder whether the indignation against Russia is really rooted in moral and humanitarian feelings, or rather in the fact that a system which has no private property is considered inhuman and threatening.

It is hard to say which of the above-mentioned factors is most responsible for the distortion and misunderstandings of Marx's philosophy. They probably vary in importance with various persons and political groups, and it is unlikely that any one of them is the only responsible factor.
 
autisticdragonkin said:
INTRODUCTION



by Burton H. Wolfe (author of The Hippies, Hitler and the Nazis, The Devil and Dr. Noxin, Pileup on Death Row, and The Devil's Avenger: a Biography of Anton Szandor LaVey)


On a winter's evening in 1967, I drove crosstown in San Fransisco to hear Anton Szandor LaVey lecture at an open meeting of the Sexual Freedom League. I was attracted by newspaper articles describing him as "the Black Pope" of a Satanic church in which baptism, wedding, and funeral ceremonies were dedicated to the Devil. I was a free-lance magazine writer, and I felt there might be a story in LaVey and his contemporary pagans; for the Devil has always made "good copy", as they say on the city desk.

It was not the practice of the black arts itself that I considered to be the story, because that is nothing new in the world. There were Devil-worshipping sects and voodoo cults before there were Christians. In eighteenth-century England a Hell-Fire Club, with connections to the American colonies through Benjamin Franklin, gained some brief notoriety. During the early part of the twentieth century, the press publicized Aleister Crowley as the "wickedest man in the world". And there were hints in the 1920s and '30s of a "black order" in Germany.

To this seemingly old story LaVey and his organization of contemporary Faustians offered two strikingly new chapters. First, they blasphemously represented themselves as a "church", a term previously confined to the branches of Christianity, instead of the traditional coven of Satanism and witchcraft lore. Second, they practiced their black magic openly instead of underground.

Rather than arrange a preliminary interview with LaVey for discussion of his heretical innovations, my usual first step in research, I decided to watch and listen to him as an unidentified member of an audience. He was described in some newspapers as a former circus and carnival lion tamer and trickster now representing himself as the Devil's representative on earth, and I wanted to determine first whether he was a true Satanist, a prankster, or a quack. I had already met people in the limelight of the occult business; in fact, Jeane Dixon was my landlady and I had a chance to write about her before Ruth Montgomery did. But I had considered all the occultists phonies, hypocrites, or quacks, and I would never spend five minutes writing about their various forms of hocus-pocus.

All the occultists I had met or heard of were white-lighters: alleged seers, prophesiers, and witches wrapping their supposedly mystic powers around God-based, spiritual communication. LaVey, seeming to laugh at them if not spit on them in contempt, emerged from between the lines of newspaper stories as a black magician basing his work on the dark side of nature and the carnal side of humanity. There seemed to be nothing spiritual about his "church".

As I listened to LaVey talk that first time, I realized at once there was nothing to connect him with the occult business. He could not even be described as metaphysical. The brutally frank talk he delivered was pragmatic, relativistic, and above all rational. It was unorthodox, to be sure: a blast at established religious worship, repression of humanity's carnal nature, phony pretense at piety in the course of an existence based on dog-eat-dog material pursuits. It was also full of sardonic satire on human folly. But most important of all, the talk was logical. It was not quack magic that LaVey offered his audience. It was common sense philosophy based on the realities of life.

After I became convinced of LaVey's sincerity, I had to convince him that I intended to do some serious research instead of adding to the accumulation of hack articles dealing with the Church of Satan as a new type of freak show. I boned up on Satanism, discussed its history and rationale with LaVey, and attended some midnight rituals in the famous Victorian manse once used as Church of Satan headquarters. Out of all that I produced a serious article, only to find that was not what the publishers of "respectable" magazines wanted. They were interested in only the freak show kind of article. Finally, it was a so-called "girlie" or "man's" magazine, Knight of September 1968, that published the first definitive article on LaVey, the Church of Satan, and LaVey's synthesis of the old Devil legends and black magic lore into the modern philosophy and practice of Satanism that all followers and imitators now use as their model, their guide, and even their Bible.

My magazine article was the beginning, not the end (as it has been with my other writing subjects), of a long and intimate association. Out of it came my biography of LaVey, The Devil's Avenger, published by Pryamid in 1974. After the book was published, I became a card-carrying member and, subsequently, a priest of the Church of Satan, a title I now proudly share with many celebrated persons. The postmidnight philosophical discussions I began with LaVey in 1967 continue today, a decade later, supplemented sometimes these days by a nifty witch or some of our own music, him on organ and me on drums, in a bizarre cabaret populated by superrealistic humanoids of LaVey's creation.

All of LaVey's background seemed to prepare him for his role. He is the descendant of Georgian, Roumanian, and Alsatian grandparents, including a gypsy grandmother who passed on to him the legends of vampires and witches in her native Transylvania. As early as the age of five, LaVey was reading Weird-Tales magazines and books such as Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula. Though he was different from other children, they appointed him as leader in marches and maneuvers in mock military orders.

In 1942, when LaVey was twelve, his fascination with toy soldiers led to concern over World War II. He delved into military manuals and discovered arsenals for the equipment of armies and navies could be bought like groceries in a supermarket and used to conquer nations. The idea took shape in his head that contrary to what the Christian Bible said, the earth would not be inhereted by the meek, but by the mighty.

In high school LaVey became something of an offbeat child prodigy. Reserving his most serious studies for outside the school, he delved into music, metaphysics, and secrets of the occult. At fifteen, he became second oboist in the San Fransisco Ballet Symphony Orchestra. Bored with high school classes, LaVey dropped out in his Junior year, left home, and joined the Clyde Beatty Circus as a cage boy, watering and feeding the lions and tigers. Animal trainer Beatty noticed that LaVey was comfortable working with the big cats and made him an assistant trainer.

Possessed since childhood by a passion for the arts, for culture, LaVey was not content merely with the excitement of training jungle beasts and working with them in the ring as a fill-in for Beatty. By age ten he had taught himself to play the piano by ear. This came in handy when the circus calliope player became drunk before a performance and was unable to go on; LaVey volunteered to replace him, confident he could handle the unfamiliar organ keyboard well enough to provide the necessary background music. It turned out he knew more music and played better than the regular calliopist, so Beatty cashiered the drunk and installed LaVey at the instrument. He accompanied the "Human Cannonball", Hugo Zachinni, and the Wallendas' high-wire acts, among others.

When LaVey was eighteen he left the circus and joined a carnival. There he became assistant to a magician, learned hypnosis, and studied more about the occult. It was a curious combination. On the one side he was working in an atmosphere of life at its rawest level - of earthy music; the smell of wild animals and sawdust; acts in which a second of missed timing meant accident or death; performances that demanded youth and strength, and shed those who grew old like last year's clothes; a world of physical excitement that had magical attractions. On the other side, he was working with magic in the dark side of the human brain. Perhaps the strange combination influenced the way he began to view humanity as he played organ for carnival sideshows.

"On Saturday night," LaVey recalled in one of our long talks, "I would see men lusting after half-naked girls dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning when I was playing organ for tent-show evaneglists at the other end of the carnival lot, I would see these same men sitting in the pews with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them and purge them of carnal desires. And the next Saturday night they'd be back at the carnival or some other place of indulgence. I knew then that the Christian church thrives on hypocrisy, and that man's carnal nature will out no matter how much it is purged or scourged by any white-light religion."

Though LaVey did not realize it then, he was on his way toward formulating a religion that would serve as the antithesis of Christianity and its Judaic heritage. It was an old religion, older than Christianity or Judaism. But it had never been formalized, arranged into a body of thought and ritual. That was to become LaVey's role in twentieth-century civilization.

After LaVey became a married man himself in 1951, at age twenty-one, he abandoned the wondrous world of the carnival to settle into a career better suited for homemaking. He had been enrolled as a criminology major at the City College of San Fransisco. That led to his first conformist job, photographer for the San Fransisco Police Department. As it worked out, that job had as much to do as any other with his development of Satanism as a way of life.

"I saw the bloodiest, grimiest side of human nature," LaVey recounted in a session dealing with his past life. "People shot by nuts, knifed by their friends; little kids splattered in the gutter by hit-and-run drivers. It was disgusting and depressing. I asked myself: 'Where is God?' I came to detest the sanctimonious attitude of people toward violence, always saying 'it's God's will'."

So he quit in disgust after three years of being a crime photographer and returned to playing organ, this time in nightclubs and theaters to earn a living while he continued his studies into his life's passion: the black arts. Once a week he held classes on arcane topics: hauntings, E.S.P., dreams, vampires, werewolves, divination, ceremonial magic, etc. They attracted many people who were, or have since become, well known in the arts and sciences, and the business world. Eventually a "Magic Circle" evolved from this group.

The major purpose of the Circle was to meet for the performance of magical rituals LaVey had discovered or devised. He had accumulated a library of works that descibed the Black Mass and other infamous ceremonies conducted by groups such as the Knights Templar in fourteenth-century France, the Hell-Fire club and the Golden Dawn in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England. The intent of some of these secret orders was to blaspheme, lampoon the Christian church, and address themselves to the Devil as an anthropomorphic deity that represented the reverse of God. In LaVey's view, the Devil was not that, but rather a dark, hidden force in nature responsible for the workings of earthly affairs, a force for which neither science nor religion had any explanation. LaVey's Satan is "the spirit of progress, the inspirer of all great movements that contribute to the development of civilization and the advancement of mankind. He is the spirit of revolt that leads to freedom, the embodiment of all heresies that liberate."

On the last night of April 1966 - Walpurgisnacht, the most important festival in the lore of magic and witchcraft - LaVey ritualistically shaved his head in accordance with magical tradition and announced the formation of the Church of Satan. For proper identification as its minister, he put on the clerical collar. Up to that collar he looked almost holy. But his Genghis Khan-like shaven head, his Mephistophelian beard, and his narrow eyes gave him the necessary demonic look for his priesthood of the Devil's church on earth.

"For one thing," LaVey explained himself, "calling it a church enabled me to follow the magic formula of one part outrage to nine parts social respectability that is needed for success. But the main purpose was to gather a group of like-minded individuals together for the use of their combined energies in calling up the dark force in nature that is called Satan."

As LaVey pointed out, all other churches are based on worship of the spirit and denial of the flesh and the intellect. He saw the need for a church that would recapture man's mind and carnal desires as objects of celebration. Rational self-interest would be encouraged and a healthy ego championed.

He began to realize that the old concept of a Black Mass to satirize Christian services was outmoded or, as he put it, "beating a dead horse". In the Church of Satan, LaVey initiated some exhilarating psychodramas, in lieu of Christianity's self-debasing services, thereby exorcising repressions and inhibitations fostered by white-light religions.

There was a revolution in the Christian church itself against orthodox rites and traditions. It had become popular to declare that "God is dead". So, the alternative rites that LaVey worked out, while still maintaining some of the trappings of ancient ceremonies, were changed from a negative mockery to positive forms of celebrations and purges: Satanic weddings consecrating the joys of the flesh, funerals devoid of sanctimonious platitudes, lust rituals to help individuals attain their sex desires, destruction rituals to enable members of the Satanic church to triumph over enemies.

On special occasions such as baptisms, weddings, and funerals in the name of the Devil, press coverage, though unsolicited, was phenominal. By 1967 the newspapers that were sending reporters to write about the Church of Satan extended from San Fransisco across the Pacific to Tokyo and across the Atlantic to Paris. A photo of a nude woman, half covered by a leopard skin, serving as an altar to Satan in a LaVey-conceived wedding ceremony, was transmitted by major wire services to daily newspapers everywhere: and it showed up on the front page of such bulwarks of the media as the Los Angeles Times. As the result of the publicity, grottos (LaVey's counterpart to covens) affiliated with the Church of Satan spread throughout the world, proving one of LaVey's cardinal messages: the Devil is alive and highly popular with a great many people.

Of course LaVey pointed out to anyone who would listen that the Devil to him and his followers was not the stereotyped fellow cloaked in red garb, with horns, tail and pitchfork, but rather the dark forces in nature that human beings are just beginning to fathom. How did LaVey square that explanation with his own appearance at times in black cowl with horns? He replied: "People need ritual, with symbols such as those you find in baseball games or church services or wars, as vehicles for expending emotions they can't release or even understand on their own." Nevertheless, LaVey himself soon tired of the games.

There were setbacks. First, some of LaVey's neighbors began complaining about the full-growm lion he was keeping as a house pet, and eventually the big cat was donated to the local zoo. Next, one of LaVey's most devoted witches, Jayne Mansfield, died under a curse he had placed on the head of her suitor, lawyer Sam Brody, for a variety of reasons I have explained in The Devil's Avenger; LaVey had persistently warned her away from Brody and felt depressed over her death. It was the second tragic death in the sixties of a Hollywood sex symbol with whom he had been intimately involved; the other was Marilyn Monroe, LaVey's paramour for a brief but crucial period in 1948 when he had quit the carnival and was playing organ for strippers around the Los Angeles area.

On top of all that, LaVey was tired of organizing entertainments and purges for his church members. He had gotten in touch with the last living remnants of the prewar occult fraternities of Europe, was busily acquiring their philosophies and secret rituals left over from the pre-Hitler era, and needed time to study, write and work out new principles. He had long been experimenting with and applying the principles of geometric spacial concepts in what he terms "The Law of the Trapezoid". (He scoffs at current faddists who are "barking up the wrong pyramids".) He was also becoming widely sought as speaker, guest on radio and television programs, and production and/or technical adviser to scores of television producers and moviemakers turning out Satanic chillers. Sometimes he was also an actor. As sociologist Clinton R. Sanders points out: "...no occultist has had as direct an impact upon formulaic cinematic presentations of Satanism as has Anton Szandor LaVey. Ritual and esoteric symbolism are central elements in LaVey's church and the films in which he has had a hand contain detailed portrayals of Satanic rites and are filled with traditional occult symbols. The emphasis upon ritual in the Church of Satan is 'intended to focus the emotional powers within each individual'. Similarly, the ornate ritualism that is central to LaVey's films may reasonably be seen as a mechanism to involve and focus the emotional experience of the cinema audience."

At last LaVey decided to transfer rituals and other organized activities to Church of Satan grottos around the world, and devote himself to writing, lecturing, teaching - and to his family: wife Diane, the blonde beauty who serves as High Priestess of the Church; raven-haired daughter Karla, now in her early twenties, a criminology major like her father before, spending much of her time lecturing on Satanism at universities in many parts of the country; and finally Zeena, remembered by people who saw the famous photo of the Satanic Church baptism as a tiny tot, but now a gorgeously developed teenager attracting a growing pack of wolves, human male variety.

Out of LaVey's relatively quiescent period came his widely read, pioneering books: First, The Satanic Bible, which at this writing is in its twelfth edition (and this is my second, revised introduction, after having written the original introduction to the first edition). Second, The Satanic Rituals, which covers more of the somber, complex material LaVey unearthed from his increasing sources. And third, The Compleat Witch, a bestseller in Italy, but, sadly, allowed by its American publisher to go out of print with its potential unfulfilled.

LaVey's spreading out from organized church activities to writing books for worldwide distribution has, of course, greatly expanded Church of Satan membership. Satanism's growing popularity has naturally been accompanied by scare stories from religious groups complaining that The Satanic Bible now outsells the Christian Bible on college campuses and is a leading causative factor in youngsters' turning away from God. And certainly one suspects that Pope Paul had LaVey in mind when he issued his worldwide proclamation two years ago that the Devil is "alive" and "a person", a living, fire-breathing character spreading evil over the earth. LaVey, maintaining that "evil" is "live" spelled backward and should be indulged in and enjoyed, answers the pope and the religious scare groups this way:

"People, organizations, nations are making millions of dollars off us. What would they do without us? Without the Church of Satan, they wouldn't have anybody to rage at and to take the blame for all the rotten things happening in the world. If they really feel this way, they shouldn't have blown us out of proportion. What you really have to believe instead is that they are the charlatans, and they're really glad to have us around so they can exploit us. We're an extremely valuable commodity. We've helped business, lifted up the economy, and some of the millions of dollars we have generated have in turn flowed into the Christian church. We have proved many times over the Ninth Satanic Statement that says the church - and countless individuals - cannot exist without the Devil."

For that the Christian church must pay a price. The events that LaVey predicted in the first edition of The Satanic Bible have come to pass. Repressed people have burst their bonds. Sex has exploded, the collective libido has been released, in movies and literature, on the streets, and in the home. People are dancing topless and bottomless. Nuns have throwm off their traditional habits, exposed their legs, and danced the "Missa Solemnis Rock" that LaVey thought he was conjuring up as a prank. There is a ceaseless universal quest for entertainment, gourmet foods and wines, adventure, enjoyment of the here and now. Humanity is no longer willing to wait for any afterlife that promises to reward the clean, pure - translate: ascetic, drab - spirit. There is a mood of neopaganism and hedonism, and from it there have emerged a wide variety of brilliant individuals - doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, writers, stockbrokers, real estate developers, actors and actresses, mass communications media people (to cite a few categories of Satanists) - who are interested in formalizing and perpetuating this all-pervading religion and way of life.

It is not an easy religion to adopt in a society ruled so long by Puritan ethics. There is no false altruism or mandatory love-thy-neighbor concept in this religion. Satanism is a blatantly selfish, brutal philosophy. It is based on the belief that human beings are inherently selfish, violent creatures, that life is a Darwinian struggle for survival of the fittest, that only the strong survive and the earth will be ruled by those who fight to win the ceaseless competition that exists in all jungles - including those of urbanized society. Abhor this brutal outlook if you will; it is based, as it has been for centuries, on real conditions that exist in the world we inhabit rather than the mystical lands of milk and honey depicted in the Christian Bible.

In The Satanic Bible, Anton LaVey has explained the philosophy of Satanism more profoundly than any of his ancestors in the Kingdom of Darkness, while describing in detail the innovative rituals and trappings he has devised to create a church of realists. It has been clear from the first edition that many people want to read this book to learn how to start Satanic groups and ritualize black magic. The Satanic Bible and The Satanic Rituals are the only books that have demonstrated, in a way that is authentic and true to relevant traditions, how all of that can be done. There have been many imitators, never attributing their source, and with good reason; because once the shabbiness and shallowness of the imitators have been compared to LaVey's pioneering work, there can no longer be any market for the ripoff artists.

The evidence is clear to any who are willing to view the record: Anton LaVey brought Satan out of the closet and the Church of Satan is the fountainhead of contemporary Satanism. This book summarizes the message both convey, and remains both challenge and inspiration, as timely today as when it was written.

San Francisco

December 25, 1976 (XI Anno Satanas)



PREFACE

This book was written because, with very few exceptions, every tract and paper, every "secret" grimoire, all the "great works" on the subject of magic, are nothing more than sanctimonious fraud - guilt-ridden ramblings and esoteric gibberish by chroniclers of magical lore unable or unwilling to present an objective view of the subject. Writer after writer, in efforts to state the principles of "white and black magic", has succeeded instead in clouding the entire issue so badly that the would-be student of sorcery winds up stupidly pushing a planchette over a Ouija board, standing inside a pentagram waiting for a demon to present itself, limply tossing I-Ching yarrow stalks like so many stale pretzels, shuffling pasteboards to foretell a future which has lost any meaning, attending seminars guaranteed to flatten his ego - while doing the same to his wallet - and in general making a blithering fool of himself in the eyes of those who know!

The true magus knows that occult bookshelves abound with the brittle relics of frightened minds and sterile bodies, metaphysical journals of self-deceit, and constipated rule-books of Eastern mysticism. Far too long has the subject of Satanic magic and philosophy been written down by wild-eyed journalists of the right-hand path.

The old literature is the by-product of brains festering with fear and defeat, written unknowingly for the assistance of those who really rule the earth, and who, from their Hellish thrones, laugh with noisome mirth.

The flames of Hell burn brighter for the kindling supplied by these volumes of hoary misinformation and false prophecy.

Herein you will find truth - and fantasy. Each is necessary for the other to exist; but each must be recognized for what it is. What you see may not always please you; but you will see!

Here is Satanic thought from a truly Satanic point of view.

Anton Szandor LaVey

The Church of Satan

San Fransisco, Walpurgisnacht 1968



PROLOGUE

The gods of the right-hand path have bickered and quarreled for an entire age of earth. Each of these deities and their respective priests and ministers have attempted to find wisdom in their own lies. The ice age of religious thought can last but a limited time in this great scheme of human existence. The gods of wisdom-defiled have had their saga, and their millennium hath become as reality. Each, with his own "divine" path to paradise, hath accused the other of heresies and spiritual indiscretions. The Ring of the Nibelungen doth carry an everlasting curse, but only because those who seek it think in terms of "Good" and "Evil" - themselves being at all times "Good". The gods of the past have become as their own devils in order to live. Feebly, their ministers play the devil's game to fill their tabernacles and pay the mortgages on their temples. Alas, too long have they studied "righteousness", and poor and incompetent devils they make. So they all join hands in "brotherly" unity, and in their desperation go to Valhalla for their last great ecumenical council. "Draweth near in the gloom the twilight of the gods." The ravens of night have flown forth to summon Loki, who hath set Valhalla aflame with the searing trident of the Inferno. The twilight is done. A glow of new light is borne out of the night and Lucifer is risen, once more to proclaim: "This is the age of Satan! Satan Rules the Earth!" The gods of the unjust are dead. This is the morning of magic, and undefiled wisdom. The FLESH prevaileth and a great Church shall be builded, consecrated in its name. No longer shall man's salvation be dependent on his self-denial. And it will be known that the world of the flesh and the living shall be the greatest preparation for any and all eternal delights!

REGIE SATANAS!

AVE SATANAS!

HAIL SATAN!



THE NINE SATANIC STATEMENTS


1. Satan represents indulgence, instead of abstinence!

2. Satan represents vital existence, instead of spiritual pipe dreams!

3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom, instead of hypocritical self-deceit!

4. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it, instead of love wasted on ingrates!

5. Satan represents vengeance, instead of turning the other cheek!

6. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible, instead of concern for psychic vampires!

7. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his "divine spiritual and intellectual development", has become the most vicious animal of all!

8. Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!

9. Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years!




(FIRE) THE BOOK OF SATAN



THE INFERNAL DIATRIBE

The first book of the Satanic Bible is not an attempt to blaspheme as much as it is a statement of what might be termed "diabolical indignation". The Devil has been attacked by the men of God relentlessly and without reservation. Never has there been an opportunity, short of fiction, for the Dark Prince to speak out in the same manner as the spokesmen of the Lord of the Righteous. The pulpit-pounders of the past have been free to define "good" and "evil" as they see fit, and have gladly smashed into oblivion any who disagree with their lies - both verbally and, at times, physically. Their talk of "charity", when applied to His Infernal Majesty, becomes an empty sham - and most unfairly, too, considering the obvious fact that without their Satanic foe their very religions would collapse. How sad, that the allegorical personage most responsible for the success of spiritual religions is shown the least amount of charity and the most consistent abuse - and by those who most unctuously preach the rules of fair play! For all the centuries of shouting-down the Devil has received, he has never shouted back at his detractors. He has remained the gentleman at all times, while those he supports rant and rave. He has shown himself to be a model of deportment, but now he feels it is time to shout back. He has decided it is finally time to receive his due. Now the ponderous rule-books of hypocrisy are no longer needed. In order to relearn the Law of the Jungle, a small, slim diatribe will do. Each verse is an inferno. Each word is a tongue of fire. The flames of Hell burn fierce ... and purify! Read on and learn the Law.



I

1. In this arid wilderness of steel and stone I raise up my voice that you may hear. To the East and to the West I beckon. To the North and to the South I show a sign proclaiming: Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong!

2. Open your eyes that you may see, Oh men of mildewed minds, and listen to me ye bewildered millions!

3. For I stand forth to challenge the wisdom of the world; to interrogate the "laws" of man and of "God"!

4. I request reason for your golden rule and ask the why and wherefore of your ten commandments.

5. Before none of your printed idols do I bend in acquiescence, and he who saith "thou shalt" to me is my mortal foe!

6. I dip my forefinger in the watery blood of your impotent mad redeemer, and write over his thorn-torn brow: The TRUE prince of evil - the king of slaves!

7. No hoary falsehood shall be a truth to me; no stifling dogma shall encramp my pen!

8. I break away from all conventions that do not lead to my earthly success and happiness.

9. I raise up in stern invasion the standard of the strong!

10. I gaze into the glassy eye of your fearsome Jehovah, and pluck him by the beard; I uplift a broad-axe, and split open his worm-eaten skull!

11. I blast out the ghastly contents of philosophically whited sepulchers and laugh with sardonic wrath!



II

1. Behold the crucifix; what does it symbolize? Pallid incompetence hanging on a tree.

2. I question all things. As I stand before the festering and varnished facades of your haughtiest moral dogmas, I write thereon in letters of blazing scorn: Lo and behold; all this is fraud!

3. Gather around me, Oh! ye death-defiant, and the earth itself shall be thine, to have and to hold!

4. Too long the dead hand has been permitted to sterilize living thought!

5. Too long right and wrong, good and evil have been inverted by false prophets!

6. No creed must be accepted upon authority of a "divine" nature. Religions must be put to the question. No moral dogma must be taken for granted - no standard of measurement deified. There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy!

7. He that is slow to believe anything and everything is of great understanding, for belief in one false principle is the beginning of all unwisdom.

8. The chief duty of every new age is to upraise new men to determine its liberties, to lead it towards material success - to rend the rusty padlocks and chains of dead custom that always prevent healthy expansion. Theories and ideas that may have meant life and hope and freedom for our ancestors may now mean destruction, slavery, and dishonor to us!

9. As environments change, no human ideal standeth sure!

10. Whenever, therefore, a lie has built unto itself a throne, let it be assailed without pity and without regret, for under the domination of an inconvenient falsehood, no one can prosper.

11. Let established sophisms be dethroned, rooted out, burnt and destroyed, for they are a standing menace to all true nobility of thought and action!

12. Whatever alleged "truth" is proven by results to be but an empty fiction, let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness, among the dead gods, dead empires, dead philosophies, and other useless lumber and wreckage!

13. The most dangerous of all enthroned lies is the holy, the sanctified, the privileged lie - the lie everyone believes to be a model truth. It is the fruitful mother of all other popular errors and delusions. It is a hydra-headed tree of unreason with a thousand roots. It is a social cancer!

14. The lie that is known to be a lie is half eradicated, but the lie that even intelligent persons accept as fact - the lie that has been inculcated in a little child at its mother's knee - is more dangerous to contend against than a creeping pestilence!

15. Popular lies have ever been the most potent enemies of personal liberty. There is only one way to deal with them: Cut them out, to the very core, just as cancers. Exterminate them root and branch. Annihilate them, or they will us!



III

1. "Love one another" it has been said is the supreme law, but what power made it so? Upon what rational authority does the gospel of love rest? Why should I not hate mine enemies - if I "love" them does that not place me at their mercy?

2. Is it natural for enemies to do good unto each other - and WHAT IS GOOD?

3. Can the torn and bloody victim "love" the blood-splashed jaws that rend him limb from limb?

4. Are we not all predatory animals by instinct? If humans ceased wholly from preying upon each other, could they continue to exist? Is not "lust and carnal desire" a more truthful term to describe "love" when applied to the continuance of the race?

5. Is not the "love" of the fawning scriptures simply a euphemism for sexual activity, or was the "great teacher" a glorifier of eunuchs?

6. Love your enemies and do good to them that hate and use you - is this not the despicable philosophy of the spaniel that rolls upon its back when kicked?

7. Hate your enemies with a whole heart, and if a man smite you on one cheek, SMASH him on the other!; smite him hip and thigh, for self-preservation is the highest law!

8. He who turns the other cheek is a cowardly dog!

9. Give blow for blow, scorn for scorn, doom for doom - with compound interest liberally added thereunto! Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, aye four-fold, a hundred-fold! Make yourself a Terror to your adversary, and when he goeth his way, he will possess much additional wisdom to ruminate over. Thus shall you make yourself respected in all the walks of life, and your spirit - your immortal spirit - shall live, not in an intangible paradise, but in the brains and sinews of those whose respect you have gained.



IV

1. Life is the great indulgence - death, the great abstinence. Therefore, make the most of life - HERE AND NOW!

2. There is no heaven of glory bright, and no hell where sinners roast. Here and now is our day of torment! Here and now is our day of joy! Here and now is our opportunity! Choose ye this day, this hour, for no redeemer liveth!

3. Say unto thine own heart, "I am mine own redeemer."

4. Stop the way of them that would persecute you. Let those who devise thine undoing be hurled back to confusion and infamy. Let them be as chaff before the cyclone and after they have fallen rejoice in thine own salvation.

5. Then all thy bones shall say pridefully, "Who is like unto me? Have I not been too strong for mine adversaries? Have I not delivered MYSELF by mine own brain and body?"



V

1. Blessed are the strong, for they shall possess the earth -

Cursed are the weak, for they shall inherit the yoke!

2. Blessed are the powerful, for they shall be reverenced among men -

Cursed are the feeble, for they shall be blotted out!

3. Blessed are the bold, for they shall be masters of the world -

Cursed are the righteously humble, for they shall be trodden under cloven hoofs!

4. Blessed are the victorious, for victory is the basis of right -

Cursed are the vanquished, for they shall be vassals forever!

5. Blessed are the iron-handed, for the unfit shall flee before them -

Cursed are the poor in spirit, for they shall be spat upon!

6. Blessed are the death-defiant, for their days shall be long in the land -

Cursed are the gazers toward a richer life beyond the grave, for they shall perish amidst plenty!

7. Blessed are the destroyers of false hope, for they are the true Messiahs -

Cursed are the god-adorers, for they shall be shorn sheep!

8. Blessed are the valiant, for they shall obtain great treasure -

Cursed are the believers in good and evil, for they are frightened by shadows!

9. Blessed are those that believe in what is best for them, for never shall their minds be terrorized -

Cursed are the "lambs of God", for they shall be bled whiter than snow!

10. Blessed is the man who has a sprinkling of enemies, for they shall make him a hero -

Cursed is he who doeth good unto others who sneer upon him in return, for he shall be despised!

11. Blessed are the mighty-minded, for they shall ride the whirlwinds -

Cursed are they who teach lies for truth and truth for lies, for they are an abomination!

12. Thrice cursed are the weak whose insecurity makes them vile, for they shall serve and suffer!

13. The angel of self-deceit is camped in the souls of the "righteous" -

The eternal flame of power through joy dwelleth within the flesh of the Satanist!



(AIR) THE BOOK OF LUCIFER



THE ENLIGHTENMENT

The Roman god, Lucifer, was the bearer of light, the spirit of the air, the personification of enlightenment. In Christian mythology he became synonymous with evil, which was only to have been expected from a religion whose very existence is perpetuated by clouded definitions and bogus values! It is time to set the record straight. False moralisms and occult inaccuracies must be corrected. Entertaining as they might be, most stories and plays about Devil worship must be recognized as the obsolete absurdities they are. It has been said "the truth will make men free". The truth alone has never set anyone free. It is only DOUBT which will bring mental emancipation. Without the wonderful element of doubt, the doorway through which truth passes would be tightly shut, impervious to the most strenuous poundings of a thousand Lucifers. How understandable that Holy Scripture should refer to the Infernal monarch as the "father of lies" - a magnificent example of character inversion. If one is to believe this theological accusation that the Devil represents falsehood, then it surely must be concurred that it was HE, NOT GOD, THAT ESTABLISHED ALL SPIRITUAL RELIGIONS AND WHO WROTE ALL OF THE HOLY BIBLES! When one doubt is followed by another, the bubble, grown large from long accumulated fallacies, threatens to burst. For those who already doubt supposed truths, this book is revelation. Then Lucifer will have risen. Now is the time for doubt! The bubble of falsehood is bursting and its sound is the roar of the world!



- WANTED! - GOD DEAD OR ALIVE

IT is a popular misconception that the Satanist does not believe in God. The concept of "God", as interpreted by man, has been so varied throughout the ages, that the Satanist simply accepts the definition which suits him best. Man has always created his gods, rather than his gods creating him. God is, to some, benign - to others, terrifying. To the Satanist "God" - by whatever name he is called, or by no name at all - is seen as the balancing factor in nature, and not as being concerned with suffering. This powerful force which permeates and balances the universe is far too impersonal to care about the happiness or misery of flesh-and-blood creatures on this ball of dirt upon which we live.

Anyone who thinks of Satan as evil should consider all the men, women, children, and animals who have died because it was "God's will". Certainly a person grieving the untimely loss of a loved one whould much rather have their loved one with them than in God's hands! Instead, they are unctuously consoled by their clergyman who says, "It was God's will, my dear"; or "He is in God's hands now, my son." Such phrases have been a convenient way for religionists to condone or excuse the mercilessness of God. But if God is in complete control and as benign as he is supposed to be, why does He allow these things to happen? Too long have religionists been falling back on their bibles and rulebooks to prove or disprove, justify, condemn, or interpret.

The Satanist realizes that man, and the action and reaction of the universe, is responsible for everything, and doesn't mislead himself into thinking that someone cares. No longer will we sit back and accept "fate" without doing anything about it, just because it says so in Chapter such and such, Psalm so and so - and that's that! The Satanist knows that praying does absolutely no good - in fact, it actually lessens the chance of success, for the devoutly religious too often sit back complacently and pray for a situation which, if they were to do something about it on their own, could be accomplished much quicker!

The Satanist shuns terms such as "hope" and "prayer" as they are indicative of apprehension. If we hope and pray for something to come about, we will not act in a positive way which will make it happen. The Satanist, realizing that anything he gets is of his own doing, takes command of the situation instead of praying to God for it to happen. Positive thinking and positive action add up to results.

Just as the Satanist does not pray to God for assistance, he does not pray for forgiveness for his wrong doings. In other religions, when one commits a wrong he either prays to God for forgiveness, or confesses to an intermediary and asks him to pray to God for forgiveness for his sins. The Satanist knows that praying does no good, confessing to another human being, like himself, accomplishes even less - and is, furthermore, degrading.

When a Satanist commits a wrong, he realizes that it is natural to make a mistake - and if he is truly sorry about what he has done, he will learn from it and take care not to do the same thing again. If he is not honestly sorry about what he has done, and knows he will do the same thing over and over, he has no business confessing and asking forgiveness in the first place. But this is exactly what happens. People confess their sins so that they can clear their consciences - and be free to go out and sin again, usually the same sin.

There are many diferent interpretations of God, in the usual sense of the word, as there are types of people. The images run from a belief in a god who is some vague sort of "universal cosmic mind" to an anthropomorphic deity with a long white beard and sandals who keeps track of every action of each individual.

Even within the confines of a given religion, the personal interpretations of God differ greatly. Some religions actually go so far as to label anyone who belongs to a religious sect other than their own a heretic, even though the overall doctrines and impressions of godliness are nearly the same. For example: The Catholics believe that the Protestants are doomed to Hell simply because they do not belong to the Catholic Church. In the same way, many splinter groups of the Christian faith, such as the evangelical or revivalist churches, believe that the Catholics are heathens who worship graven images. (Christ is depicted in the image that is most psychologically akin to the individual worshipping him, and yet the Chrisitans criticize "heathens" for the worship of graven images.) And the Jews have always been given the Devil's name.

Even though the god in all of these religions is basically the same, each regards the way chosen by the others as reprehensible, and to top it all, religionists actually PRAY for one another! They have scorn for the brothers of the right-hand path because their religions carry different labels, and somehow this animosity must be released. What better way than through "prayer"! What a simperingly polite way of saying: "I hate your guts," is the thinly disguised device known as praying for your enemy! Praying for one's own enemy is nothing more than bargain-basement anger, and of a decidedly shoddy and inferior quality!

If there has been so much violent discrepancy as to the proper way in which to worship God, how many different interpretations of God can there be - and who is right?

All devout "white-lighters" are concerned with pleasing God so that they might have the "Pearly Gates" opened for them when they die. Nevertheless, if a man has not lived his life in accordance with the regulations of his faith, he can at the last minute call a clergyman to his deathbed for a final absolution. The priest or minister will then come running on the double, to "make everything right" with God and see to it that his passport to the Heavenly Realm is in order. (The Yezidis, a sect of Devil worshippers, take a different viewpoint. They believe that God is all-powerful, but also all-forgiving, and so accordingly feel that it is the Devil whom they must please, as he is the one who rules their lives while here on earth. They believe so strongly that God will forgive all of their sins once they have been given the last rites, that they feel no need to concern themselves with the opinion God may hold of them while they live.)

With all of the contradictions in the Christian scriptures, many people currently cannot rationally accept Christianity the way it has been practiced in the past. Great numbers of people are beginning to doubt the existence of God, in the established Christian sense of the word. So, they have taken to calling themselves "Christian Atheists". True, the Christian Bible is a mass of contradictions; but what could be more contradictory than the term "Christian Atheist"?

If prominent leaders of the Christian faith are rejecting the past interpretations of God, how then can their followers be expected to adhere to previous religious tradition?

With all the debates about whether or not God is dead, if he isn't he had better have MEDICARE!



THE GOD YOU SAVE MAY BE YOURSELF

ALL religions of a spiritual nature are inventions of man. He has created an entire system of gods with nothing more than his carnal brain. Just because he has an ego, and cannot accept it, he has to externalize it into some great spiritual device which he calls "God".

God can do all the things man is forbidden to do - such as kill people, perform miracles to gratify his will, control without any apparent responsibility, etc. If man needs such a god and recognizes that god, then he is worshipping an entity that a human being invented. Therefore, HE IS WORSHIPPING BY PROXY THE MAN THAT INVENTED GOD. Is it not more sensible to worship a god that he, himself, has created, in accordance with his own emotional needs - one that best represents the very carnal and physical being that has the idea-power to invent a god in the first place?

If man insists on externalizing his true self in the form of "God", then why fear his true self, in fearing "God", - why praise his true self in praising "God", - why remain externalized from "God" IN ORDER TO ENGAGE IN RITUAL AND RELIGIOUS CEREMONY IN HIS NAME?

Man needs ritual and dogma, but no law states that an externalized god is necessary in order to engage in ritual and ceremony performed in a god's name! Could it be that when he closes the gap between himself and his "God" he sees the demon of pride creeping forth - that very embodiment of Lucifer appearing in his midst? He no longer can view himself in two parts, the carnal and the spiritual, but sees them merge as one, and then to his abysmal horror, discovers that they are only the carnal - AND ALWAYS WERE! Then he either hates himself to death, day by day - or rejoices that he is what he is!

If he hates himself, he searches out new and more complex spiritual paths of "enlightenment" in hopes that he may split himself up again in his quest for stronger and more externalized "gods" to scourge his poor miserable shell. If he accepts himself, but recognizes that ritual and ceremony are the important devices that his invented religions have utilized to sustain his faith in a lie, then it is the SAME FORM OF RITUAL that will sustain his faith in the truth - the primitive pageantry that will give his awareness of his own majestic being added substance.

When all religious faith in lies has waned, it is because man has become closer to himself and farther from "God"; closer to the "Devil." If this is what the devil represents, and a man lives his life in the devil's fane, with the sinews of Satan moving in his flesh, then he either escapes from the cacklings and carpings of the righteous, or stands proudly in his secret places of the earth and manipulates the folly-ridden masses through his own Satanic might, until that day when he may come forth in splendor proclaiming "I AM A SATANIST! BOW DOWN, FOR I AM THE HIGHEST EMBODIMENT OF HUMAN LIFE!"



SOME EVIDENCE OF A NEW SATANIC AGE

THE seven deadly sins of the Christian Church are: greed, pride, envy, anger, gluttony, lust, and sloth. Satanism advocates indulging in each of these "sins" as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification.

A Satanist knows there is nothing wrong with being greedy, as it only means that he wants more than he already has. Envy means to look with favor upon the possessions of others, and to be desirous of obtaining similar things for oneself. Envy and greed are the motivating forces of ambition - and without ambition, very little of any importance would be accomplished.

Gluttony is simply eating more than you need to keep yourself alive. When you have overeaten to the point of obesity, another sin - pride - will motivate you to regain an appearance that will renew your self-respect.

Anyone who buys an article of clothing for a purpose other than covering his body and protecting it from the elements is guilty of pride. Satanists often encounter scoffers who maintain that labels are not necessary. It must be pointed out to these destroyers of labels that one or many articles they themselves are wearing are not wearing are not necessary to keep them warm. There is not a person on this earth who is completely devoid of ornamentation. The Satanist points out that any ornamentation of the scoffer's body shows that he, too, is guilty of pride. Regardless of how verbose the cynic may be in his intellectual description of how free he is, he is still wearing the elements of pride.

Being reluctant to get up in the morning is to be guilty of sloth, and if you lie in bed long enough you may find yourself commiting yet another sin - lust. To have the faintest stirring of sexual desire is to be guilty of lust. In order to insure the propagation of humanity, nature made lust the second most powerful instinct, the first being self-preservation. Realizing this, the Christian Church made fornication the "Original Sin". In this way they made sure no one would escape sin. Your very state of being is as a result of sin - the Original sin!

The strongest instinct in every living thing is self-preservation, which brings us to the last of the seven deadly sins - anger. Is it not our instinct for self-preservation that is aroused when someone harms us, when we become angry enough to protect ourselves from further attack? A Satanist practices the motto, "If a man smite thee on one cheek, smash him on the other!" Let no wrong go unredressed. Be as a lion in the path - be dangerous even in defeat!

Since man's natural instincts lead him to sin, all men are sinners; and all sinners go to hell. If everyone goes to hell, then you will meet all your friends there. Heaven must be populated with some rather strange creatures if all they lived for was to go to a place where they can strum harps for eternity.

"Times have changed. Religious leaders no longer preach that all our natural actions are sinful. We no longer think sex is dirty - or that taking pride in ourselves is shameful - or that wanting something someone else has is vicious." Of course not, times have changed! "If you want proof of this, just look at how liberal churches have become. Why, they're practicing all the things that you preach."

Satanists hear these, and similar statements, all the time; and they agree wholeheartedly. BUT, if the world has changed so much, why continue to grasp at the threads of a dying faith? If many religions are denying their own scriptures because they are out of date, and are preaching the philosophies of Satanism, why not call it by its rightful name - Satanism? Certainly it would be far less hypocritical.

In recent years there has been an attempt to humanize the spiritual concept of Christianity. This has manifested itself in the most obvious non-spiritual means. Masses which had been said in Latin are now said in native languages - which only succeeds in making the nonsense easier to understand, and at the same time robs the ceremony of the esoteric nature which is consistent with the tenets of the dogma. It is much simpler to obtain an emotional reaction using words and phrases that cannot be understood than it is with statements which even the simplest mind will question when hearing them in an understandable language.

If priests and ministers were to have used the devices to fill their churches one hundred years ago that they use today, they would have been charged with heresy, called devils, oft-times persecuted, but certainly excommunicated without hesitation.

The religionists wail, "We must keep up with the times," forgetting that, due to limiting factors and deeply engrained laws of white light religions, there can never be sufficient change to meet the needs of man.

Past religions have always represented the spiritual nature of man, with little or no concern for his carnal or mundane needs. They have considered this life but transitory, and the flesh merely a shell; physical pleasure trivial, and pain a worthwhile preparation for the "Kingdom of God". How well the utter hypocrisy comes forth when the "righteous" make a change in their religion to keep up with man's natural change! The only way that Christianity can ever completely serve the needs of man is to become as Satanism is NOW.

It has become necessary for a NEW religion, based on man's natural instincts, to come forth. THEY have named it. It is called Satanism. It is that power condemned that has caused the religious controversy over birth-control measures - a disgruntled admission that sexual activity, for fun, is here to stay.

It is the "Devil" who caused women to show their legs, to titillate men - the same kind of legs, now socially acceptable to gaze upon, which are revealed by young nuns as they walk about in their shortened habits. What a delightful step in the right (or left) direction! Is it possible we will soon see "topless" nuns sensually throwing their bodies about to the "Missa Solemnis Rock"? Satan smiles and says he would like that fine - many nuns are very pretty girls with nice legs.

Many churches with some of the largest congregations have the most hand-clapping, sensual music - also Satanically inspired. After all, the Devil has always had the best tunes.

Church picnics, despite all of Aunt Martha's talk about the Lord's Bountiful Harvest, are nothing more than a good excuse for Sunday gluttony; and everyone knows that lots more than Bible reading goes on in the bushes.

The fund-raising adjunct to many church bazaars is commonly known as a carnival, which used to mean the celebration of the flesh; now a carnival is okay because the money goes to the church so that it can preach against the temptations of the Devil! It will be said that these things are only pagan devices and ceremonies - that the Christians borrowed them. True, but the Pagans revelled in the delights of the flesh, and were condemned by the very same people who celebrate their rituals, but call them by different names.

Priests and ministers are in the front lines of peace demonstrations, and lying on railroad tracks in front of trains carrying war materials, with as much dedication as their brothers of the cloth, from the same seminaries, who are blessing the bullets and bombs and fighting men as chaplains in the armed forces. Someone must be wrong, someplace. Could it be that Satan is the one qualified to act as accuser? Certainly they named him that!

When a puppy reaches maturity it becomes a dog; when ice melts it is called water; when twelve months have been used up, we get a new calendar with the proper chronological name; when "magic" becomes scientific fact we refer to it as medicine, astronomy, etc. When one name is no longer appropriate for a given thing it is only logical to change it to a new one which better fits the subject. Why, then, do we not follow suit in the area of religion? Why continue to call a religion the same name when the tenets of that religion no longer fit the original one? Or, if religion does preach the same things that it always has, but its followers practice nearly none of its teachings, why do they continue to call themselves by the name given to followers of that religion?

If you do not believe in what your religion teaches, why continue to support a belief which is contradictory with your feelings. You would never vote for a person or issue you did not believe in, so why cast your ecclesiastical vote for a religion which is not consistent with your convictions? You have no right to complain about a political situation you have voted for or supported in any way - which includes sitting back and complacently agreeing with neighbors who approve the situation, just because you are too lazy or cowardly to speak your mind. So it is with religious balloting. Even if you cannot be aggressively honest about your opinions because of unfavorable consequences from employers, community leaders, etc., you can, at least, be honest with yourself. In the privacy of your own home and with close friends you must support religion which has YOUR best interests at heart.

"Satanism is based on a very sound philosophy," say the emancipated. "But why call it Satanism? Why not call it something like 'Humanism' or a name that would have the connotation of a witchcraft group, something a little more esoteric - something less blatant." There is more than one reason for this. Humanism is not a religion. It is simply a way of life with no ceremony or dogma. Satanism has both ceremony and dogma. Dogma, as will be explained, is necessary.

Satanism differs greatly from all other so-called white-light, "white" witchcraft or magical groups in the world today. These self-righteous and supercilious religions protest that their members use the powers of magic only for altruistic purposes. Satanists look with disdain upon "white" witchcraft groups because they feel that altruism is sinning on the lay-away plan. It is unnatural not to have desire to gain things for yourself. Satanism represents a form of controlled selfishness. This does not mean that you never do anything for anyone else. If you do something to make someone for whom you care happy, his happiness will give you a sense of gratification.

Satanism advocates practicing a modified form of the Golden Rule. Our interpretation of this rule is: "Do unto others as they do unto you"; because if you "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and they, in turn, treat you badly, it goes against human nature to continue to treat them with consideration. You should do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but if your courtesy is not returned, they should be treated with the wrath they deserve.

White witchcraft groups say that if you curse a person, it will return to you three-fold, come home to roost, or in some way boomerang back to the sender. This is yet another indication of the guilt-ridden philosophy which is held by these neo-Pagan, pseudo-Christian groups. White witches want to delve into witchcraft, but cannot divorce themselves from the stigma attached to it. Therefore, they call themselves white magicians, and base seventy-five per cent of their philosophy on the trite and hackneyed tenets of Christianity. Anyone who pretends to be interested in magic or the occult for reasons other that gaining personal power is the worst kind of hypocrite. The Satanist respects Christianity for, at least, being consistent in its guilt-ridden philosophy, but can only feel contempt for the people who attempt to appear emancipated from guilt by joining a witchcraft group, and then practice the same basic philosophy as Christianity.

White magic is supposedly utilized only for good or unselfish purposes, and black magic, we are told, is used only for selfish or "evil" reasons. Satanism draws no such dividing line. Magic is magic, be it used to help or hinder. The Satanist, being the magician, should have the ability to decide what is just, and then apply the powers of magic to attain his goals.

During white magical ceremonies, the practitioners stand within a pentagram to protect themselves from the "evil" forces which they call upon for help. To the Satanist, it seems a bit two-faced to call on these forces for help, while at the same time protecting yourself from the very powers you have asked for assistance. The Satanist realizes that only by putting himself in league with these forces can be fully and unhypocritically utilize the Powers of Darkness to his best advantage.

In a Satanic magical ceremony, the participants do NOT: join hands and dance "ring around the rosy" in a circle; burn candles of various colors for various wishes; call out the names of "Father, Son and Holy Ghost" while supposedly practicing Black Arts; pick a "Saint" for their personal guide in obtaining help for their problems; dunk themselves in smelly oils and hope the money comes in; meditate so they can arrive at a "great spiritual awakening"; recite long incantations with the name of Jesus thrown in for good measure, between every few words, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam!

BECAUSE - This is NOT the way to practice Satanic magic. If you cannot divorce yourself from hypocritical self-deceit, you will never be successful as a magician, much less a Satanist.

The Satanic religion has not merely lifted the coin - it has flipped it completely over. Therefore, why should it support the very principles to which it is completely opposed by calling itself anything other than a name which is totally in keeping with the reversed doctrines which make up the Satanic philosophy? Satanism is not a white light religion; it is a religion of the flesh, the mundane, the carnal - all of which are ruled by Satan, the personification of the Left Hand Path.

Inevitably, the next question asked is: "Granted, you can't call it humanism because humanism is not a religion; but why even have a religion in the first place if all you do is what comes naturally, anyway? Why not just do it?"

Modern man has come a long way; he has become disenchanted with the nonsensical dogmas of past religions. We are living in an enlightened age. Psychiatry has made great strides in enlightening man about his true personality. We are living in an era of intellectual awareness unlike any the world has ever seen.

This is all very well and good, BUT - there is one flaw in this new state of awareness. It is one thing to accept something intellectually, but to accept the same thing emotionally is an entirely different matter. The one need that psychiatry cannot fill is man's inherent need for emotionalizing through dogma. Man needs ceremony and ritual, fantasy and enchantment. Psychiatry, despite all the good it has done, has robbed man of wonder and fantasy which religion, in the past, has provided.

Satanism, realizing the current needs of man, fills the large grey void between religion and psychiatry. The Satanic philosophy combines the fundamentals of psychology and good, honest emotionalizing, or dogma. It provides man with his much needed fantasy. There is nothing wrong with dogma, providing it is not based on ideas and actions which go completely against human nature.

The quickest way of traveling between two points is in a straight line. If all the guilts that have been built up can be turned into advantages, it eliminates the need for intellectual purging of the psyche in an attempt to cleanse it from these repressions. Satanism is the only religion known to man that accepts man as he is, and promotes the rationale of turning a bad thing into a good thing rather than bending over backwards to eliminate the bad thing.

Therefore, after intellectually evaluating your problems through common sense and drawing on what psychiatry has taught us, if you still cannot emotionally release yourself from unwarranted guilt, and put your theories into action, then you should learn to make your guilt work for you. You should act upon your natural instincts, and then, if you cannot perform without feeling guilty, revel in your guilt. This may sound like a contradiction in terms, but if you will think about it, guilt can often add a fillip to the senses. Adults would do well to take a lesson from children. Children often take great delight in doing something they know they are not supposed to.

Yes, times have changed, but man hasn't. The basics of Satanism have always existed. The only thing that is new is the formal organization of a religion based on the universal traits of man. For centuries, magnificent structures of stone, concrete, mortar, and steel have been devoted to man's abstinence. It is high time that human beings stopped fighting themselves, and devoted their time to building temples designed for man's indulgences.

Even though times have changed, and always will, man remains basically the same. For two thousand years man has done penance for something he never should have had to feel guilty about in the first place. We are tired of denying ourselves the pleasures of life which we deserve. Today, as always, man needs to enjoy himself here and now, instead of waiting for his rewards in heaven. So, why not have a religion based on indulgence? Certainly, it is consistent with the nature of the beast. We are no longer supplicating weaklings trembling before an unmerciful "God" who cares not whether we live or die. We are self-respecting, prideful people - we are Satanists!



HELL, THE DEVIL, AND HOW TO SELL YOUR SOUL

SATAN has certainly been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years. The false doctrine of Hell and the Devil has allowed the Protestant and Catholic Churches to flourish far too long. Without a devil to point their fingers at, religionists of the right hand path would have nothing with which to threaten their followers. "Satan leads you to temptation"; "Satan is the prince of evil"; "Satan is vicious, cruel, brutal," they warn. "If you give in to the temptations of the devil, you will surely suffer eternal damnation and roast in Hell."

The semantic meaning of Satan is the "adversary" or "opposition" or the "accuser". The very word "devil" comes from the Indian devi which means "god". Satan represents opposition to all religions which serve to frustrate and condemn man for his natural instincts. He has been given an evil role simply because he represents the carnal, earthly, and mundane aspects of life.

Satan, the chief devil of the Western World, was originally an angel whose duty was to report human delinquencies to God. It was not until the Fourteenth Century that he began to be depicted as an evil deity who was part man and part animal, with goat-like horns and hooves. Before Christianity gave him the names of Satan, Lucifer, etc., the carnal side of man's nature was governed by the god which was then called Dionysus, or Pan, depicted as a satyr or faun, by the Greeks. Pan was originally the "good guy", and symbolized fertility and fecundity.

Whenever a nation comes under a new form of government, the heroes of the past become villains of the present. So it is with religion. The earliest Christians believed that the Pagan deities were devils, and to employ them was to use "black magic". Miraculous heavenly events they termed "white magic"; this was the sole distinction between the two. The old gods did not die, they fell into Hell and became devils. The bogey, goblin, or bugaboo used to frighten children is derived from the Slavonic "Bog" which means "god", as does Bhaga in Hindu.

Many pleasures revered before the advent of Christianity were condemned by the new religion. It required little changeover to transform the horns and cloven hooves of Pan into a most convincing devil! Pan's attributes could be neatly changed into charged-with-punishment sins, and so the metamorphosis was complete.

The association of the goat with the Devil is found in the Christian Bible, where the holiest day of the year, the Day of Atonement, was celebrated by casting lots for two goats "without blemish", one to be offered to the Lord, and one to Azazel. The goat carrying the sins of the people was driven into the desert and became a "scapegoat". This is the origin of the goat which is still used in lodge ceremonies today as it was also used in Egypt, where once a year it was sacrificed to a God.

The devils of mankind are many, and their origins diversified. The performance of Satanic ritual does not embrace the calling forth of demons; this practice is followed only by those who are in fear of the very forces they conjure.

Supposedly, demons are malevolent spirits with attributes conductive to the deterioration of the people or events that they touch upon. The Greek word demon meant a guardian spirit or source of inspiration, and to be sure, later theologians invented legion upon legion of these harbingers of inspiration - all wicked.

An indication of the cowardice of "magicians" of the right-hand path is the practice of calling upon a particular demon (who would supposedly be a minion of the devil) to do his bidding. The assumption is that the demon, being only a flunky of the devil, is easier to control. Occult lore states that only the most formidably "protected" or insanely foolhardy sorcerer would try to call forth the Devil himself.

The Satanist does not furtively call upon these "lesser" devils, but brazenly invokes those who people that infernal army of long-standing outrage - the Devils themselves!

Theologians have catalogued some of the names of devils in their lists of demons, as might be expected, but the roster which follows contains the names and origins of the Gods and Goddesses called upon, which make up a large part of the occupancy of the Royal Palace of Hell:


THE FOUR CROWN PRINCES OF HELL

SATAN - (Hebrew) adversary, opposite, accuser, Lord of fire, the inferno, the south

LUCIFER - (Roman) bringer of light, enlightenment, the air, the morning star, the east

BELIAL - (Hebrew) without a master, baseness of the earth, independence, the north

LEVIATHAN - (Hebrew) the serpent out of the deeps, the sea, the west


THE INFERNAL NAMES

Abaddon - (Hebrew) the destroyer

Adramelech - Samarian devil

Ahpuch - Mayan devil

Ahriman - Mazdean devil

Amon - Egyptian ram-headed god of life and reproduction

Apollyon - Greek synonym for Satan, the arch fiend

Asmodeus - Hebrew devil of sensuality and luxury, originally "creature of judgement"

Astaroth - Phoenician goddess of lasciviousness, equivalent of Babylonian Ishtar

Azazel - (Hebrew) taught man to make weapons of war, introduced cosmetics

Baalberith - Canaanite Lord of the covenant who was later made a devil

Balaam - Hebrew Devil of avarice and greed

Baphomet - worshipped by the Templars as symbolic of Satan

Bast - Egyptian goddess of pleasure represented by the cat

Beelzebub - (Hebrew) Lord of the Flies, taken from symbolism of the scarab

Behemoth - Hebrew personification of Satan in the form of an elephant

Beherit - Syriac name for Satan

Bile - Celtic god of Hell

Chemosh - national god of Moabites, later a devil

Cimeries - rides a black horse and rules Africa

Coyote - American Indian devil

Dagon - Philistine avenging devil of the sea

Damballa - Voodoo serpent god

Demogorgon - Greek name of the devil, it is said should not be known to mortals

Diabolus - (Greek) "flowing downwards"

Dracula - Romanian name for devil

Emma-O - Japanese ruler of Hell

Euronymous - Greek prince of death

Fenriz - son of Loki, depicted as a wolf

Gorgo - dim. of Demogorgon, Greek name of the devil

Haborym - Hebrew synonym for Satan

Hecate - Greek goddess of the underworld and witchcraft

Ishtar - Babylonian goddess of fertility

Kali - (Hindu) daughter of Shiva, high priestess of the Thuggees

Lilith - Hebrew female devil, Adam's first wife who taught him the ropes

Loki - Teutonic devil Mammon - Aramaic god of wealth and profit

Mania - Etruscan goddess of Hell

Mantus - Etruscan god of Hell

Marduk - god of the city of Babylon

Mastema - Hebrew synonym for Satan

Melek Taus - Yezidi devil

Mephistopheles - (Greek) he who shuns the light, q.v. Faust

Metztli - Aztec goddess of the night

Mictian - Aztec god of death

Midgard - son of Loki, depicted as a serpent

Milcom - Ammonite devil

Moloch - Phoenician and Canaanite devil

Mormo - (Greek) King of the Ghouls, consort of Hecate

Naamah - Hebrew female devil of seduction

Nergal - Babylonian god of Hades

Nihasa - American Indian devil

Nija - Polish god of the underworld

O-Yama - Japanese name for Satan

Pan - Greek god of lust, later relegated to devildom

Pluto - Greek god of the underworld

Proserpine - Greek queen of the underworld

Pwcca - Welsh name for Satan

Rimmon - Syrian devil worshipped at Damascus

Sabazios - Phrygian origin, identified with Dionysos, snake worship

Saitan - Enochian equivalent of Satan

Sammael - (Hebrew) "venom of God"

Samnu - Central Asian devil

Sedit - American Indian devil

Sekhmet - Egyptian goddess of vengeance

Set - Egyptian devil Shaitan - Arabic name for Satan

Shiva - (Hindu) the destroyer

Supay - Inca god of the underworld

T'an-mo - Chinese counterpart to the devil, covetousness, desire

Tchort - Russian name for Satan, "black god"

Tezcatlipoca - Aztec god of Hell

Thamuz - Sumerian god who later was relegated to devildom

Thoth - Egyptian god of magic

Tunrida - Scandanavian female devil

Typhon - Greek personification of Satan

Yaotzin - Aztec god of Hell

Yen-lo-Wang - Chinese ruler of Hell


The devils of past religions have always, at least in part, had animal characteristics, evidence of man's constant need to deny that he too is an animal, for to do so would serve a mighty blow to his impoverished ego.

The pig was despised by the Jews and the Egyptians. It symbolized the gods Frey, Osiris, Adonis, Persephone, Attis, and Demeter, and was sacrificed to Osiris and the Moon. But, in time, it became degraded into a devil. The Phoenicians worhipped a fly god, Baal, from which comes the devil, Beelzebub. Both Baal and Beelzebub are identical to the dung beetle or scarabaeus of the Egyptians which appeared to resurrect itself, much as the mythical bird, the phoenix, rose from its own ashes. The ancient Jews believed, through their contact with the Persians, that the two great forces in the world were Ahura-Mazda, the god of fire, light, life, and goodness; and Ahriman, the serpent, the god of darkness, destruction, death, and evil. These, and countless other examples, not only depict man's devils as animals, but also show his need to sacrifice the original animal gods and demote them to his devils.

At the time of the Reformation, in the Sixteenth Century, the alchemist, Dr. Johann Faustus, discovered a method of summoning a demon - Mephistopheles - from Hell and making a pact with him. He signed a contract in blood to turn his soul over to Mephistopheles in return for the feeling of youth, and at once became young. When the time came for Faustus to die, he retired to his room and was blown to bits as though his laboratory had exploded. This story is a protest of the times (the Sixteenth Century) against science, chemistry, and magic.

To the Satanist, it is unnecessary to sell your soul to the Devil or make a pact with Satan. This threat was devised by Christianity to terrorize people so they would not stray from the fold. With scolding fingers and trembling voices, they taught their followers that if they gave in to the temptations of Satan, and lived their lives according to their natural predilictions, they would have to pay for their sinful pleasures by giving their souls to Satan and suffering in Hell for all eternity. People were led to believe that a pure soul was a passport to everlasting life.

Pious prophets have taught man to fear Satan. But what of terms like "God fearing"? If God is so merciful, why do people have to fear him? Are we to believe there is nowhere we can turn to escape fear? If you have to fear God, why not be "Satan fearing" and at least have the fun that being God fearing denies you? Without such a wholesale fear religionists would have had nothing with which to wield power over their followers.

The Teutonic Goddess of the Dead and daughter of Loki was named Hel, a Pagan god of torture and punishment. Another "L" was added when the books of the Old Testament were formulated. The prophets who wrote the Bible did not know the word "Hell"; they used the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades, which meant the grave; also the Greek Tartaros, which was the abode of fallen angels, the underworld (inside the earth), and Gehenna, which was a valley near Jerusalem where Moloch reigned and garbage was dumped and burned. It is from this that the Christian Church has evolved the idea of "fire and brimstone" in Hell.

The Protestant Hell and the Catholic Hell are places of eternal punishment; however, the Catholics also believe there is a "Purgatory" where all souls go for a time, and a "Limbo" where unbaptized souls go. The Buddhist Hell is divided into eight sections, the first seven of which can be expiated. The ecclesiastical description of Hell is that of a horrible place of fire and torment; in Dante's Inferno, and in northern climes, it was thought to be an icy cold region, a giant refrigerator.

(Even with all their threats of eternal damnation and soul roasting, Christian missionaries have run across some who were not so quick to swallow their drivel. Pleasure and pain, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. So, when missionaries ventured into Alaska and warned the Eskimos of the horrors of Hell and the blazing lake of fire awaiting transgressors, they eagerly asked: "How do we get there?"!)

Most Satanists do not accept Satan as an anthropomorphic being with cloven hooves, a barbed tail, and horns. He merely represents a force in nature - the powers of darkness which have been named just that because no religion has taken these forces out of the darkness. Nor has science been able to apply technical terminology to this force. It is an untapped reservoir that few can make use of because they lack the ability use a tool without having to first break down and label all the parts which make it run. It is this incessant need to analyze which prohibits most people from taking advantage of this many faceted key to the unknown - which the Satanist chooses to call "Satan".

Satan, as a god, demi-god, personal saviour, or whatever you wish to call him, was invented by the formulators of every religion on the face of the earth for only one purpose - to preside over man's so-called wicked activities and situations here on earth. Consequently, anything resulting in physical or mental gratification was defined as "evil" - thus assuring a lifetime of unwarrented guilt for everyone!

So, if "evil" they have named us, evil we are - and so what! The Satanic Age is upon us! Why not take advantage of it and LIVE! [* evil reversed]



LOVE AND HATE

SATANISM represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates!

You cannot love everyone; it is ridiculous to think you can. If you love everyone and everything you lose your natural powers of selection and wind up being a pretty poor judge of character and quality. If anything is used too freely it loses its true meaning. Therefore, the Satanist believes you should love strongly and completely those who deserve your love, but never turn the other cheek to your enemy!

Love is one of the most intense emotions felt by man; another is hate. Forcing yourself to feel indiscriminate love is very unnatural. If you try to love everyone you only lessen your feelings for those who deserve your love. Repressed hatred can lead to many physical and emotional ailments. By learning to release your hatred towards those who deserve it, you cleanse yourself of these malignant emotions and need not take your pent-up hatred out on your loved ones.

There has never been a great "love" movement in the history of the world that hasn't wound up killing countless numbers of people, we must assume, to prove how much they loved them! Every hypocrite who ever walked the earth has had pockets buldging with love!

Every pharisaical religionist claims to love his enemies, even though when wronged he consoles himself by thinking "God will punish them". Instead of admitting to themselves that they are capable of hating their foes and treating them in the manner they deserve, they say: "There, but for the grace of God, go I," and "pray" for them. Why should we humiliate and lower ourselves by drawing such inaccurate comparisons?

Satanism has been thought of as being synonymous with cruelty and brutality. This is so only because people are afraid to face the truth - and the truth is that human beings are not all benign or all loving. Just because the Satanist admits he is capable of both love and hate, he is considered hateful. On the contrary, because he is able to give vent to his hatred through ritualized expression, he is far more capable of love - the deepest kind of love. By honestly recognizing and admitting to both the hate and the love he feels, there is no confusing one emotion with the other. Without being able to experience one of these emotions, you cannot fully experience the other.



SATANIC SEX

MUCH controversy has arisen over the Satanic views on "free love". It is often assumed that sexual activity is the most important factor of the Satanic religion, and that willingness to participate in sex-orgies is a prerequisite for becoming a Satanist. Nothing could be farther from the truth! In fact, opportunists who have no deeper interest in Satanism than merely the sexual aspects are emphatically discouraged.

Satanism does advocate sexual freedom, but only in the true sense of the word. Free love, in the Satanic concept, means exactly that - freedom to either be faithful to one person or to indulge your sexual desires with as many others as you feel is necessary to satisfy your particular needs.

Satanism does not encourage orgiastic activity or extramarital affairs for those to whom they do not come naturally. For many, it would be very unnatural and detrimental to be unfaithful to their chosen mates. To others, it would be frustrating to be bound sexually to just one person. Each person must decide for himself what form of sexual activity best suits his individual needs. Self-deceitfully forcing yourself to be adulterous or to have sex partners when not married just for the sake of proving others (or worse yet, to yourself) that you are emancipated from sexual guilt is just as wrong, by Satanic standards, as leaving any sexual need unfulfilled because of ingrained feelings of guilt.

Many of those who are constantly preoccupied with demonstrating their emancipation from sexual guilt are, in reality, held in even greater sexual bondage than those who simply accept sexual activity as a natural part of life and don't make a big to-do over their sexual freedom. For example, it is an established fact that the nymphomaniac (every man's dream girl and heroine of all lurid novels) is not sexually free, but is actually frigid and roves from man to man because she is too inhibited to ever find complete sexual release.

Another misconception is the idea that ability to engage in group sexual activity is the indicative of sexual freedom. All contemporary free-sex groups have one thing in common - discouragement of fetishistic or deviant activity.

Actually, the most forced examples of non-fetishistic sexual activity thinly disguised as "freedom" have a common format. Each of the participants in an orgy removes all clothing, following the example set forth by one, and mechanically fornicate - also following the leader's example. None of the performers consider that their "emancipated" form of sex might be regarded as regimented and infantile by non-members who fail to equate uniformity with freedom.

The Satanist realizes that if he is to be a sexual connoiseur (and truly free from all sexual guilt) he cannot be stifled by the so-called sexual revolutionists any more than he can by the prudery of his guilt-ridden society. These free-sex clubs miss the whole point of sexual freedom. Unless sexual activity can be expressed on an individual basis (which includes personal fetishes), there is absolutely no purpose in belonging to a sexual freedom organization.

Satanism condones any type of sexual activity which properly satisfies your individual desires - be it heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or even asexual, if you choose. Satanism also sanctions any fetish or deviation which will enhance your sex-life, so long as it involves no one who does not wish to be involved.

The prevalence of deviant and/or fetishistic behavior in our society would stagger the imagination of the sexually naпve. There are more sexual variants than the unenlightened individual can perceive: transvestism, sadism, masochism, urolagnia, exhibitionism - to name only a few of the more predominant. Everyone has some form of fetish, but because they are unaware of the preponderance of fetishistic activity in our society, they feel they are depraved if they submit to their "unnatural" yearnings. [* Fetishism is not only practice by human beings, but by animals, as well. The fetish is an integral ingredient in the sex lives of animals. The sexual odor, for example, is necessary for one animal to become sexually aroused by another. Laboratory tests have shown that when an animal is scientifically deodorized, it loses sexual attractiveness to the other animals. The stimulation provided by sexual odor is also enjoyed by man, although he will often deny it.]

Even the asexual has a deviation - his asexuality. It is far more abnormal to have a lack of sexual desire (unless illness or old-age, or another valid reason has caused the wane) than it is to be sexually promiscuous. However, if a Satanist chooses sexual sublimination above overt sexual expression, that is entirely his own affair. In many cases of sexual sublimination (or asexuality), any attempt to emancipate himself sexually would prove devastating to the asexual.

Asexuals are invariably sexually sublimated by their jobs or hobbies. All the energy and driving interest which would normally be devoted to sexual activity is channelled into other pastimes or into their chosen occupations. If a person favors other interests over sexual activity, it is his right, and no one is justified in condemning him for it. However, the person should at least recognize the fact that this is a sexual sublimation.

Because of lack of opportunity for expression, many secret sexual desires never progress beyond the fantasy stage. Lack of release often leads to compulsion and, therefore, a great number of people devise undetectable methods of giving vent to their urges. Just because most fetishistic activity is not outwardly apparent, the sexually unsophisticated should not delude himself into thinking it does not exist. To cite examples of the ingenious techniques used: The male transvestite will indulge in his fetish by wearing feminine undergarments while going about his daily activities; or the masochistic woman might wear a rubber girdle several sizes too small, so she may derive sexual pleasure from her fetishistic discomfort throughout the day, with no one the wiser. These illustrations are far tamer and more prevalent examples than others which could have been given.

Satanism encourages any form of sexual expression you may desire, so long as it hurts no one else. This statement must be qualified, to avoid misinterpretation. By not hurting another, this does not include the unintentional hurt felt by those who might not agree with your views on sex, because of their anxieties regarding sexual morality. Naturally, you should avoid offending others who mean a great deal to you, such as prudish friends and relatives. However, if you earnestly endeavor to escape hurting them, and despite your efforts they accidentally find out, you cannot be held responsible, and therefore should feel no guilt as a result of either your sexual convictions, or their being hurt because of those convictions. If you are in constant fear of offending the prudish by your attitude towards sex, then there is no sense in trying to emancipate yourself from sexual guilt. However, no purpose is served by flaunting your permissiveness.

The other exception to the rule regards dealings with masochists. A masochist derives pleasure from being hurt; so denying the masochist his pleasure-through-pain hurts him just as much as actual physical pain hurts the non-masochist. The story of the truly cruel sadist illustrates this point: The masochist says to the sadist, "beat me." To which the merciless sadist replies, "NO!" If a person wants to be hurt and enjoys suffering, then there is no reason not to indulge him in his wont.

The term "sadist" in popular usage describes one who obtains pleasure from indiscriminate brutality. Actually, though, a true sadist is selective. He carefully chooses from the vast reserve of appropriate victims, and takes great delight in giving those who thrive on misery the fulfillment of their desires. The "well-adjusted" sadist is epicurean in selecting those on whom his energies will be well-spent! If a person is healthy enough to admit he is a masochist and enjoys being enslaved and whipped, the real sadist is glad to oblige!

Aside from the foregoing exceptions, the Satanist would not intentionally hurt others by violating their sexual rights. If you attempt to impose your sexual desires upon others who do not welcome your advances, you are infringing upon their sexual freedom. Therefore, Satanism does not advocate rape, child molesting, sexual defilement of animals, or any other form of sexual activity which entails the participation of those who are unwilling or whose innocence or naпvetй would allow them to be intimidated or misguided into doing something against their wishes.

If all parties involved are mature adults who willingly take full responsibility for their actions and voluntarily engage in a given form of sexual expression - even if it is generally considered taboo - then there is no reason for them to repress their sexual inclinations.

If you are aware of all the implications, advantages, and disadvantages, and are certain your actions will hurt no one who does not wish or deserve to be hurt, you have no cause to suppress your sexual preferences.

Just as no two people are exactly the same in their choice of diet or have the same capacity for the consumption of food, sexual tastes and appetites vary from person to person. No person or society has the right to set limitations on the sexual standards or the frequency of sexual activity of another. Proper sexual conduct can only be judged within the context of each individual situation. Therefore, what one person considers sexually correct and moral may be frustrating to another. The reverse is also true; one person may have great sexual prowess, but it is unjust for him to belittle another whose sexual capacity may not equal his own, and inconsiderate for him to impose himself upon the other person, i.e., the man who has a voracious sexual appetite, but whose wife's sexual needs do not match his own. It is unfair for him to expect her to enthusiastically respond to his overtures; but she must display the same degree of thoughtfulness. In the instances when she does not feel great passion, she should either passively, but pleasantly, accept him sexually, or raise no complaint if he chooses to find his needed release elsewhere - including auto-erotic practices.

The ideal relationship is one in which the people are deeply in love with one another and are sexually compatible. However, perfect relationships are relatively uncommon. It is important to point out here that spiritual love and sexual love can, but do not necessarily, go hand in hand. If there is a certain amount of sexual compatibility, often it is limited; and some, but not all, of the sexual desires will be fulfilled.

There is no greater sexual pleasure than that derived from association with someone you deeply love, if you are sexually well-suited. If you are not suited to one another sexually, though, it must be stressed that lack of sexual compatibility does not indicate lack of spiritual love. One can, and often does, exist without the other. As a matter of fact, often one member of a couple will resort to outside sexual activity because he deeply loves his mate, and wishes to avoid hurting or imposing upon his loved one. Deep spiritual love is enriched by sexual love, and it is certainly a necessary ingredient for any satisfactory relationship; but because of differing sexual predilictions, outside sexual activity or masturbation sometimes provides a needed supplement.

Masturbation, considered a sexual taboo by many people, creates a guilt problem not easily dealt with. Much emphasis must be placed on this subject, as it constitutes an extremely important ingredient of many a successful magical working.

Ever since the Judaeo-Christian Bible described the sin of Onan (Gen. 38:7-10), man has considered the seriousness and consequences of the "solitary vice". Even though modern sexologists have explained the sin of Onan as simply coitus interruptus, the damage has been done through centuries of theological misinterpretation.

Aside from actual sex crimes, masturbation is one of the most frowned upon sexual acts. During the last century, innumerable texts were written describing the horrific consequences of masturbation. Practically all physical or mental illnesses were attributed to the evils of masturbation. Pallor of the complexion, shortness of breath, furtive expression, sunken chest, nervousness, pimples and loss of appetite are only a few of the many characteristics supposedly resulting from masturbation; total physical and mental collapse was assured if one did not heed the warnings in those handbooks for young men.

The lurid descriptions in such texts would be almost humorous, were it not for the unhappy fact that even though contemporary sexologists, doctors, writers, etc. have done much to remove the stigma of masturbation, the deep-seated guilts induced by the nonsense in those sexual primers have been only partially erased. A large percentage of people, especially those over forty, cannot emotionally accept the fact that masturbation is natural and healthy, even if they now accept it intellectually; and they, in turn, relate their repugnance, often subconsciously, to their children.

It was thought that one would go insane if, despite numerous admonitions, his auto-erotic practices persisted. This preposterous myth grew from reports of wide-spread masturbation by the inmates of mental institutions. It was assumed that since almost all incurably insane people masturbated, it was their masturbation that had driven them mad. No one ever stopped to consider the lack of sexual partners of the opposite sex and the freedom from inhibition, which is a characteristic of extreme insanity, were the real reasons for the masturbatory practices of the insane.

Many people would rather have their mates seek outside sexual activity than perform auto-erotic acts because of their own guilt feelings, the mate's repugnance towards having them engage in masturbation, or the fear of their mate's repugnance - although in a surprising number of cases, a vicarious thrill is obtained from the knowledge that the mate is having sexual experiences with outsiders - although this is seldom admitted.

If stimulation is provided by envisioning one's mate sexually engaged with others, this should be brought out into the open where both parties may gain from such activities. However, if the prohibition of masturbation is only due to guilt feelings on the part of one or both parties, they should make every attempt to erase those guilts - or utilize them. Many relationships might be saved from destruction if the people involved did not feel guilt about performing the natural act of masturbation.

Masturbation is regarded as evil because it produces pleasure derived from intentionally fondling a "forbidden" area of the body by one's own hand. The guilt feelings accompanying most sexual acts can be assuaged by the religiously-acceptable contention that your sensual delights are necessary to produce off-spring - even though you cautiously watch the calendar for the "safe" days. You cannot, however, placate yourself with this rationale while engaging in masturbatory practices.

No matter what you've been told about the "immaculate conception" - even if blind faith allows you to swallow this absurdity - you know full well if you are to produce a child, there must be sexual contact with a person of the opposite sex! If you feel guilty for committing the "original sin," you certainly will feel even deeper guilt for performing a sex act only for self-gratification, with no intention of creating children.

The Satanist fully realizes why religionists declare masturbation to be sinful. Like all other natural acts people will do it, no matter how severely reprimanded. Causing guilt is an important facet of their malicious scheme to obligate people to atone for "sins" by paying the mortgages on temples of abstinence!

Even if a person is no longer struggling under the burden of religiously-induced guilt (or thinks he isn't), modern man still feels shame if he yields to his masturbatory desires. A man may feel robbed of his masculinity if he satisfies himself auto-erotically rather than engaging in the competitive game of woman chasing. A woman may satisfy herself sexually but yearns for the ego-gratification that comes from the sport of seduction. Neither the quasi Casanova nor bogus vamp feels adequate when "reduced" to masturbation for sexual gratification; both would prefer even an inadequate partner. Satanically speaking, though, it is far better to engage in a perfect fantasy than to cooperate in an unrewarding experience with another person. With masturbation, you are in complete control of the situation.

To illustrate the undebatable fact that masturbation is an entirely normal and healthy practice: it is performed by all members of the animal kingdom. Human children will also follow their instictive masturbatory desires, unless they have been scolded for it by their indignant parents, who were undoubtably berated for it by their parents, and so on down the retrocedent line.

It is unfortunate, but true, that the sexual guilts of parents will immutably be passed on to their children. In order to save our children from the ill-fated sexual destiny of our parents, grandparents, and possibly ourselves, the perverted moral code of the past must be exposed for what it is: a pragmatically organized set of rules which, if rigidly obeyed, would destroy us! Unless we emancipate ourselves from the ridiculous sexual standards of our present society, including the so-called sexual revolution, the neuroses caused by those stifling regulations will persist. Adherence to the sensible and humanistic new morality of Satanism can - and will - evolve society in which our children can grow up healthy and without the devastating moral encumbrances of our existing sick society.



NOT ALL VAMPIRES SUCK BLOOD!

SATANISM represents responsibility to the responsible, instead of concern for psychic vampires.

Many people who walk the earth practice the fine art of making others feel responsible and even indebted to them, without cause. Satanism observes these leeches in their true light. Psychic vampires are individuals who drain others of their vital energy. This type of person can be found in all avenues of society. They fill no useful purpose in our lives, and are neither love objects nor true friends. Yet we feel responsible to the psychic vampire without knowing why.

If you think you may be the victim of such a person, there are a few simple rules which will help you form a decision. Is there a person you often call or visit, even though you really don't want to, because you know you will feel guilty if you don't? Or, do you find yourself constantly doing favors for one who doesn't come forward and ask, but hints? Often the psychic vampire will use reverse psychology, saying: "Oh, I couldn't ask you to do that" - and you, in turn, insist upon doing it. The psychic vampire never demands anything of you. That would be far too presumptuous. They simply let their wishes be known in subtle ways which will prevent them from being considered pests. They "wouldn't think of imposing" and are always content and willingly accept their lot, without the slightest complaint - outwardly!

Their sins are not of commission, but of omission. It's what they don't say, not what they do say, that makes you feel you must account to them. They are much too crafty to make overt demands upon you, because they know you would resent it, and would have a tangible and legitimate reason for denying them.

A large percentage of these people have special "attributes" which make their dependence upon you more feasible and much more effective. Many psychic vampires are invalids (or pretend to be) or are "mentally or emotionally disturbed." Others might feign ignorance or incompetence so you will, out of pity - or more often, exasperation - do things for them.

The traditional way to banish a demon or elemental is to recognize it for what it is, and exorcise it. Recognition of these modern-day demons and their methods is the only antidote for their devastating hold over you.

Most people accept these passively vicious individuals at face value only because their insidious maneuvers have never been pointed out to them. They merely accept these "poor souls" as being less fortunate than themselves, and feel they must help them however they can. It is this misdirected sense of responsibility (or unfounded sense of guilt) which nourishes well the "altruisms" upon which these parasites feast!

The psychic vampire is allowed to exist because he cleverly chooses conscientious, responsible people for his victims - people with great dedication to their "moral obligations."

In some cases we are vampirized by groups of people, as well as individuals. Every fund raising organization, be it a charitable foundation, community council, religious or fraternal association, etc., carefully selects a person who is adept at making others feel guilty for its chairman or coordinator. It is the job of this chairman to intimidate us into opening first our hearts, and then our wallets, to the recipient of their "good will" - never mentioning that, in many cases, their time is not unselfishly donated, but that they are drawing a fat salary for their "noble deeds." They are masters at playing upon the sympathy and consideration of responsible people. How often we see little children who have been sent forth by these self-righteous Fagins to painlessly extract donations from the kindly. Who can resist the innocent charm of a child?

There are, of course, people who are not happy unless they are giving, but many of us do not fit into this category. Unfortunately, we are often put upon to do things we do not genuinely feel should be required of us. A conscientious person finds it very difficult to decide between voluntary and imposed charity. He wants to do what is right and just, and finds it perplexing trying to decide exactly who he should help and what degree of aid should rightfully be expected of him.

Each person must decide for himself what his obligations are to his respective friends, family, and community. Before donating his time and money to those outside his immediate family and close circle of friends, he must decide what he can afford, without depriving those closest to him. When taking these things into consideration he must be certain to include himself among those who mean most to him. He must carefully evaluate the validity of the request and the personality or motives of the person asking it of him.

It is extremely difficult for a person to learn to say "no" when all his life he has said "yes." But unless he wants to be constantly taken advantage of, he must learn to say "no" when circumstances justify doing so. If you allow them, psychic vampires will gradually infiltrate your everyday life until you have no privacy left - and your constant feeling of concern for them will deplete you of all ambition.

A psychic vampire will always select a person who is relatively content and satisfied with his life - a person who is happily married, pleased with his job, and generally well-adjusted to the world around him - to feed upon. The very fact that the psychic vampire chooses to victimize a happy person shows that he is lacking all the things his victim has; he will do everything he can to stir up trouble and disharmony between his victim and those people he holds dear.

Therefore, be wary of anyone who seems to have no real friends and no appearant interest in life (except you). He will usually tell you he is very selective in his choice of friends, or doesn't make friends easily because of the high standards he sets for his companions. (To acquire and keep friends, one must be willing to give of himself - something of which the psychic vampire is incapable.) But he will hasten to add that you fulfill every requirement and are truly an outstanding exception among men - you are one of the very few worthy of his friendship.

Lest you confuse desperate love (which is a very selfish thing) with psychic vampirism, the vast difference between the two must be clarified. The only way to determine if you are being vampirized is to weigh what you give the person compared to what they give you in return.

You may, at times, become annoyed with the obligations put upon you by a loved one, a close friend, or even an employer. But before you label them psychic vampires, you must ask yourself, "What am I getting in return?" If your spouse or lover insists that you call them frequently, but you also require them to account to you for their time spent away from you, you must realize this is a give and take situation. Or, if a friend is in the habit of calling upon you for help at inopportune moments, but you similarly depend upon them to give your immediate needs priority, you must regard it as a fair exchange. If your employer asks you to do a little more than is normally expected of you in your particular position, but will overlook occasional tardiness or will give you time off when you need it, you certainly have no cause for complaint and need not feel he is taking advantage of you.

You are, however, being vampirized if you are incessantly called upon or expected to do favors for someone who, when you need a favor, always happens to have other "pressing obligations."

Many psychic vampires will give you material things for the express purpose of making you feel you owe them something in return, thereby binding you to them. The difference between your giving, and theirs, is that your return payment must come in a non-material form. They want you to feel obligated to them, and would be very disappointed and even resentful if you attempted to repay them with materal objects. In essence, you have "sold your soul" to them, and they'll constantly remind you of your duty to them, by not reminding you.

Being purely Satanic, the only way to deal with a psychic vampire is to "play dumb" and act as though they are genuinely altruistic and really expect nothing in return. Teach them a lesson by graciously taking what they give you, thanking them loudly enough for all to hear, and walking away! In this way you come out the victor. What can they say? And when you are inevitably expected to repay their "generosity," (this is the hard part!) you say "NO" - but again, graciously! When they feel you falling from their clutches two things will happen. First, they will act "crushed," hoping your old feeling of duty and sympathy will return, and when (and if) it doesn't, they will show their true colors and will become angry and vindictive.

Once you have moved them to this point, YOU can play the role of the injured party. After all, you've done nothing wrong - you just happened to have had "pressing obligations" when they needed you, and since nothing was expected in return for their gifts, there should be no hard feelings.

Generally, the psychic vampire will realize his methods have been discovered and will not press the issue. He will not continue to waste his time with you, but will move on to his next unsuspecting victim.

There are times, however, when the psychic vampire will not release his hold so easily, and will do everything possible to torment you. They have plenty of time for this because, when once rejected, they wil neglect all else (what little else they have, that is) to devote their every waking moment to planning the revenge to which they feel they are entitled. For this reason, it is best to avoid a relationship with this kind of person in the first place. Their "adulation" and dependence upon you may, at first, be very flattering, and their material gifts very attractive, but you will eventually find yourself paying for them many times over.

Don't waste your time with people who will ultimately destroy you, but concentrate instead on those who will appreciate your responsibility to them, and, likewise, feel responsible to you.

And if you are a psychic vampire - take heed! Beware of the Satanist - he is ready and willing to gleefully drive the proverbial stake through your heart!

I


NDULGENCE... NOT COMPULSION

THE HIGHEST PLATEAU OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IS THE AWARENESS OF THE FLESH! SATANISM encourages its followers to indulge in their natural desires. Only by doing so can you be a completely satisfied person with no frustrations which can be harmful to yourself and others around you. Therefore, the most simplified description of the Satanic belief is:

INDULGENCE INSTEAD OF ABSTINENCE People often mistake compulsion for indulgence, but there is a world of difference between the two. A compulsion is never created by indulging, but by not being able to indulge. By making something taboo, it only serves to intensify the desire. Everyone likes to do the things they have been told not to. "Forbidden fruits are sweetest."

Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary defines indulgence thusly: "To give oneself up to; not to restrain or oppose; to give free course to; to gratify by compliance; to yeild to." The dictionary definition of compulsion is: "The act of compelling or driving by a force, physical or moral; constraint of the will; (compulsory, obligatory)." In other words, indulgence implies choice, whereas compulsion indicates the lack of choice.

When a person has no proper release for his desires they rapidly build up and become compulsions. If everyone had a particular time and place for the purpose of periodically indulging in their personal desires, without fear of embarrassment or reproach, they would be sufficiently released to lead unfrustrated lives in the everyday world. They would be free to plunge headlong into whatever undertaking they might choose instead of going about their duties half-heartedly, their creative urges frustrated by denying their natural desires. This would apply in the majority of cases, but there will always be those who work better under pressure.

Generally, those who need to endure a certain amount of hardship to produce to their full capabilities are in basically artistic vocations. (More will be said later about fulfillment through self-denial.) This does not mean to imply that all artists fit into this category. On the contrary, many artists are unable to produce unless their basic animal needs have been satisfied.

For the most part, it is not the artist or individualist, but the average middle-class working man or woman who is lacking the proper release for their desires. It is ironic that the responsible, respectable person - the one who pays society's bills - should be the one given the least in return. It is he who must be ever conscious of his "moral obligations", and who is condemned for normally indulging in his natural desires.

The Satanic religion considers this a gross injustice. He who upholds his responsibilities should be most entitled to the pleasures of his choice, without censure from the society he serves.

Finally a religion (Satanism) has been formed which commends and rewards those who support the society in which they live, instead of denouncing them for their human needs.

From every set of principles (be it religious, political, or philosophical), some good can be extracted. Amidst the madness of the Hitlerian concept, one point stands out as a shining example of this - "strength through joy!". Hitler was no fool when he offered the German people happiness, on a personal level, to insure their loyalty to him, and peak efficiency from them.

It has been clearly established that the majority of all illnesses are of a psychosomatic nature, and that psychosomatic illnesses are a direct result of frustration. It has been said that "the good die young". The good, by Christian standards, do die young. It is the frustration of our natural instincts which leads to the deterioration of our minds and bodies.

It has become very fashionable to concentrate on the betterment of the mind and spirit, and to consider giving pleasure to one's body (the very shell without which the mind and spirit could not exist) to be coarse, crude, unrefined. AS OF LATE, MOST PEOPLE WHO DEEM THEMSELVES EMANCIPATED HAVE LEFT NORMALCY ONLY TO "TRANSCEND" INTO IDIOCY! By way of bending their behinds around to meet their navels, subsisting on wild and exotic diets like brown rice and tea, they feel they will arive at a great state of spiritual development.

"Hogwash!" says the Satanist. He would rather eat a good hearty meal, exercise his imagination, and transcend by means of physical and emotional fulfillment. It seems, to the Satanist, that after being harnessed with unreasonable religious demands for so many centuries, one would welcome the chance to be human for once!

If anyone thinks that by denying his natural desires he can avoid mediocrity, he should examine the Eastern mystical beliefs which have been in great intellectual favor in recent years. Christianity is "old-hat", so those who wish to escape its fetters have turned to so-called enlightened religions, such as Buddhism. Although Christianity is certainly deserving of the criticism it has received, perhaps it has been taking more than its share of the blame. The followers of the mystical beliefs are every bit as guilty of the little humanisms as the "misguided" Christians. Both religions are based on trite philosophies, but the mystical religionists profess to be enlightened and emancipated from the guilt-ridden dogma which is typified by Christianity. However, the Eastern mystic is even more preoccupied than the Christian with avoiding animalistic actions that remind him he is not a "saint", but merely a man - only another form of animal, sometimes better, more often worse, than those who walk on all fours; and who, becuase of his "divine spiritual and intellectual development", has become the most vicious animal of all!

The Satanist asks, "What is wrong with being human, and having human limitations as well as assets?" By denying his desires the mystic has come no closer to overcoming compulsion than his kindred soul, the Christian. The Eastern mystical beliefs have taught people to contemplate their navels, stand on their heads, stare at blank walls, avoid the use of labels in life, and discipline themselves against any desire for materialistic pleasure. Nevertheless, I am sure you have seen just as many so-called desciplined yogis with the inablility to control a smoking habit as anyone else; or just as many supposedly emancipated Buddhists become just as excited as a "less aware" person when they are confronted with a member of the opposite - or in some cases, the same - sex. Yet when asked to explain the reason for their hypocrisy, these people retreat into the ambiguousness which characterizes their faith - no one can pin them down if there are no straight answers that can be given!

The simple fact of the matter is that the very thing which has led this type of person to a faith which preaches abstinence, is indulgence. Their compulsive masochism is the reason for choosing a religion which not only advocates self-denial, but praises them for it; and gives them a sacrosanct avenue of expression for their masochistic needs. The more abuse they can stand, the holier they become.

Masochism, to most people, represents a rejection of indulgence. Satanism points out many meanings behind the meanings, and considers masochism to be an indulgence if any attempt to sway or change the person from his masochistic traits is met with resentment and/or failure. The Satanist does not condemn these people for giving vent to their masochistic desires, but he does feel the utmost contempt towards those who cannot be honest enough (at least with themselves) to face and accept their masochism as a natural part of their personality make-up.

Having to use religion as an excuse for their masochism is bad enough, but these people actually have the effrontery to feel superior to those who are not bound-up in self-deceitful expression of their fetishes! These people would be the first to condemn a man who found his weekly release with a person who would beat him soundly, thereby releasing himself from the very thing which could, if unreleased, make him - as they are - a compulsive church-goer or religious fanatic. By finding adequate release for his masochistic desires, he no longer needs to debase and deny himself in his every waking moment, as do these compulsive masochists.

Satanists are encouraged to indulge in the seven deadly sins, as they need hurt no one; they were only invented by the Christian Church to insure guilt on the part of its followers. The Christian Church knows that it is impossible for anyone to avoid committing these sins, as they are all things which we, being human, most naturally do. After inevitably committing these sins financial offerings to the church in order to "pay off" God are employed as a sop to the parishioner's conscience!

Satan has never needed a book of rules, because vital natural forces have kept man "sinful" and intent on preserving himself and his feelings. Nevertheless, demoralizing attempts have been made on his body and being for his "soul's" sake, which only illustrate how misconceived and misused the labels of "indulgence" versus "compulsion" have become.

Sexual activity certainly is condoned and encouraged by Satanism, but obviously the fact that it is the only religion which honestly takes this stand, is the reason it has been traditionally given so much literary space.

Naturally, if most people belong to the religions which repress them sexually, anything written on this provocative subject is going to make for titillating reading.

If all attempts to sell something (be it a product or an idea) have failed - sex will always sell it. The reason for this is that even though people now consciously accept sex as a normal and necessary function, their subconscious is still bound by the taboo which religion has placed upon it. So, again, what is denied is more intensely desired. It is this bugaboo regarding sex which causes the literature devoted to the Satanic views on the subject to overshadow all else written about Satanism.

The true Satanist is not mastered by sex any more than he is mastered by any of his other desires. As with all other pleasurable things, the Satanist is master of, rather than mastered by sex. He is not the perverted fiend who is just waiting for the opportunity to deflower every young virgin, nor is he the skulking degenerate who furtively hangs around in the "dirty" bookstores, slavering over the "nasty" pictures. If pornography fills his needs for the moment, he unashamedly buys some "choice items" and guiltlessly peruses them at his leisure.

"We have to accept the fact that man has become disgruntled at being constantly repressed, but we must do everything we can to at least temper the sinful desires of man, lest they run rampant in this new age," say the religionists of the right-hand path to the questioning Satanist. "Why continue to think of these desires as shameful and something to be repressed, if you now admit they are natural?" returns the Satanist. Could it be that the white-light religionists are a bit "sour-grapes" about the fact that they didn't think of a religion, before the Satanists, which would be enjoyable to follow; and if the truth were known, would they too not like to have a bit more pleasure out of life, but for fear of losing face, cannot admit it? Could it also be that they are afraid people will, after hearing about Satanism, tell themselves "This is for me - why should I continue with a religion which condemns me for everything I do, even though there is nothing actually wrong with it?" The Satanist thinks this is more than likely true.

There is certainly much evidence that past religions are, every day, lifting more and more of their ridiculous restrictions. Even so, when an entire religion is based on abstinence instead of indulgence (as it should be) there is little left when it has been revised to meet the current needs of man. So, why waste time "buying oats for a dead horse"?

The watchword of Satanism is INDULGENCE instead of "abstinence" ... BUT - it is not "compulsion".



ON THE CHOICE OF A HUMAN SACRIFICE

THE supposed purpose in performing the ritual of sacrifice is to throw the energy provided by the blood of the freshly slaughtered victim into the atmosphere of the magical working, thereby intensifying the magician's chances of success.

The "white" magician assumes that since blood represents the life force, there is no better way to appease the gods or demons than to present them with suitable quantities of it. Combine this rationale with the fact that a dying creature is expending an overabundance of adrenal and other biochemical energies, and you have what appears to be an unbeatable combination.

The "white" magician, wary of the consequences involved in the killing of a human being, naturally utilizes birds, or other "lower" creatures in his ceremonies. It seems these sanctimonious wretches feel no guilt in the taking of a non-human life, as opposed to a human's.

The fact of the matter is that if the "magician" is worthy of his name, he will be uninhibited enough to release the necessary force from his own body, instead of from an unwilling and undeserving victim!

Contrary to all established magical theory, the release of this force is NOT effected in the actual spilling of blood, but in the death throes of the living creature! This discharge of bioelectrical energy is the very same phenominon which occurs during any profound heightening of the emotions, such as: sexual orgasm, blind anger, mortal terror, consuming grief, etc. Of these emotions, the easiest entered into of one's own violation are sexual orgasm and anger, with grief running a close third. Remembering that the two most readily available of these three (sexual orgasm and anger) have been burned into man's unconscios as "sinful" by religionists, it is small wonder they are shunned by the "white" magician, who plods along carrying the greatest of all millstones of guilt!

The inhibitive and asinine absurdity in the need to kill an innocent living creature at the high-point of a ritual, as practiced by erstwhile "wizards", is obviously their "lesser of the evils" when a discharge of energy is called for. These poor conscience-stricken fools, who have been calling themselves witches and warlocks, would sooner chop the head off a goat or chicken in an attempt to harness its death agony, than have the "blasphemous" bravery to masturbate in full view of the Jehovah whom they claim to deny! The only way these mystical cowards can ritualistically release themselves is through the agony of another's death (actually their own, by proxy) rather than the indulgent force which produces life! The treaders of the path of white light are truly the cold and the dead! No wonder these tittering pustules of "mystical wisdom" must stand within protective circles to bind the "evil" forces in order to keep themselves "safe" from attack - ONE GOOD ORGASM WOULD PROBABLY KILL THEM!

The use of a human sacrifice in a Satanic ritual does not imply that the sacrifice is slaughtered "to appease the gods". Symbolically, the victim is destroyed through the working of a hex or curse, which in turn leads to the physical, mental or emotional destruction of the "sacrifice" in ways and means not attributable to the magician.

The only time a Satanist would perform a human sacrifice would be if it were to serve a two-fold purpose; that being to release the magician's wrath in the throwing of a curse, and more important, to dispose of a totally obnoxious and deserving individual.

Under NO circumstances would a Satanist sacrifice any animal or baby! For centuries, propagandists of the right-hand path have been prattling over the supposed sacrifices of small children and voluptuous maidens at the hands of diabolists. It would be thought that anyone reading or hearing of these heinous accounts would immediately question their authenticity, taking into consideration the biased sources of the stories. On the contrary, as with all "holy" lies which are accepted without reservation, this assumed modus operandi of the Satanists persists to this day!

There are sound and logical reasons why the Satanists could not perform such sacrifices. Man, the animal, is the godhead to the Satanist. The purest form of carnal existence reposes in the bodies of animals and human children who have not grown old enough to deny themselves their natural desires. They can perceive things that the average adult human can never hope to. Therefore, the Satanist holds these beings in a sacred regard, knowing he can learn much from these natural magicians of the world.

The Satanist is aware of the universal custom of the treader of the path of Agarthi; the killing of the god. Inasmuch as gods are always created in man's own image - and the average man hates what he sees in himself - the inevitable must occur: the sacrifice of the god who represents himself. The Satanist does not hate himself, nor the gods he might choose, and has no desire to destroy himself or anything for which he stands! It is for this reason he could never willfully harm an animal or child.

The question arises, "Who, then, would be considered a fit and proper human sacrifice, and how is one qualified to pass judgment on such a person?" The answer is brutally simple. Anyone who has unjustly wronged you - one who has "gone out of his way" to hurt you - to deliberately cause trouble and hardship for you or those dear to you. In short, a person asking to be cursed by their very actions.

When a person, by his reprehensible behavior, practically cries out to be destroyed, it is truly your moral obligation to indulge them their wish. The person who takes every opportunity to "pick on" others is often mistakenly called "sadistic". In reality, this person is a misdirected masochist who is working towards his own destruction. The reason a person viciously strikes out against you is because they are afraid of you or what you represent, or are resentful of your happiness. They are weak, insecure, and on extremely shaky ground when you throw your curse, and they make ideal human sacrifices.

It is sometimes easy to overlook the actual wrongdoing of the victim of your curse, when one considers how "unhappy" a person he really is. It is not so easy, though, to retrace the damaging footsteps of your antagonist and make right those practical situations he or she has made wrong.

The "ideal sacrifice" may be emotionally insecure, but nonetheless can, in the machinations of his insecurity, cause severe damage to your tranquility or sound reputation. "Mental illness", "nervous breakdown", "maladjustment", "anxiety neuroses", "broken homes", "sibling rivalry", etc., etc., ad infinitum have too long been convenient excuses for vicious and irresponsible actions. Anyone who says "we must try to understand" those who make life miserable for those undeserving of misery is aiding and abetting a social cancer! The apologists for these rabid humans deserve any clobberings they get at the hands of their charges!

Mad dogs are destroyed, and they need help far more than the human who conveniently made froths at the mouth when irrational behavior is in order! It is easy to say, "So what! - these people are insecure, so they can't hurt me." But the fact remains - given the opportunity they would destroy you!

Therefore, you have every right to (symbolically) destroy them, and if your curse provokes their actual annihilation, rejoice that you have been instrumental in ridding the world of a pest! If your success or happiness disturbs a person - you owe him nothing! He is made to be trampled under foot! IF PEOPLE HAD TO TAKE THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR OWN ACTIONS, THEY WOULD THINK TWICE!



LIFE AFTER DEATH THROUGH FULFILLMENT OF THE EGO

MAN is aware that he will die, someday. Other animals, when nearing death, know they are about to die; but it is not until death is certain that the animal senses his coming departure from this world. And even then he does not know exactly what is entailed in dying. It is often pointed out that animals accept death gracefully, without fear or resistance. This is a beautiful concept, but one that only holds true in cases where death for the animal is unavoidable.

When an animal is sick or injured he will fight for his life with every ounce of strength he has left. It is this unshakable will to live that, if man were not so "highly evolved", would also give him the fighting spirit he needs to stay alive.

It is a well known fact that many people die simply because they give up and just don't care anymore. This is understandable if the person is very ill, with no apparent chance for recovery. But this often is not the case. Man has become lazy. He has learned to take the easy way out. Even suicide has become less repugnant to many people than any number of other sins. Religion is totally to blame for this.

Death, in most religions, is touted as a great spiritual awakening - one which is prepared for throughout life. This concept is very appealing to one who has not had a satisfactory life; but to those who have experienced all the joys life has to offer, there is a great dread attached to dying. This is as it should be. It is this lust for life which will allow the vital person to live on after the inevitable death of his fleshly shell.

History shows that men who have given their own lives in pursuit of an ideal have been deified for their martyrdom. Religionists and political leaders have been very crafty in laying their plans. By holding the martyr up as a shining example to his fellow men, they eliminate the common sense reaction that willful self-destruction goes against all animal logic. To the Satanist, martyrdom and non-personalized heroism is to be associated not with integrity, but with stupidity. This, of course, does not apply to the situations which involve the safety of a loved one. But to give one's own life for something as impersonal as a political or religious issue is the ultimate in masochism.

Life is the one great indulgence; death the one great abstinence. To a person who is satisfied with his earthly existence, life is like a party; and no one likes to leave a good party. By the same token, if a person is enjoying himself here on earth he will not so readily give up this life for the promise of an afterlife about which he knows nothing.

The Eastern mystical beliefs teach humans to discipline themselves against any conscious will for success so they might dessolve themselves into "Universal Cosmic Awareness" - anything to avoid good healthy self-satisfaction or honest pride in earthly accomplishments!

It is interesting to note that the areas in which this type of belief flourishes are those where material gains are not easily obtainable. For this reason the predominant religious belief must be one which commends its followers for their rejection of material things and their avoidance of the use of labels which attaches a certain amount of importance to material gains. In this way the people can be pacified into accepting their lot, no matter how small it may be.

Satanism uses many labels. If it were not for names, very few of us would understand anything in life, much less attach any significance to it; - and significance compels recognition, which is something everyone wants, especially the Eastern mystic who tries to prove to everyone he can meditate longer or stand more deprivation and pain than the next fellow.

The Eastern philosophies preach the dissolution of man's ego before he can produce sins. It is unfathomable to the Satanist to conceive of an ego which would willfully choose denial of itself.

In countries where this is used as a sop for the willingly impoverished, it is understandable that a philosophy which teaches the denial of the ego would serve a useful purpose - at least for those in power, to whom it would be detrimental if their people were discontented. But for anyone who has every opportunity for material gain, to choose this form of religious thought seems foolish, indeed!

The Eastern mystic believes strongly in reincarnation. To a person who has virtually nothing in this life, the possibility that he may have been a king in a past life or may be one in the next life is very attractive, and does much to appease his need for self-respect. If there is nothing in which they can take pride in this life, they can console themselves by thinking, "there are always future lives." It never occurs to the believer in reincarnation that if his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, etc. had developed "good karmas", by their adherence to the same beliefs and ethics as his present ones - then why is he now living in privation, rather than like a maharajah?

Belief in reincarnation provides a beautiful fantasy world in which a person can find the proper avenue of ego-expression, but at the same time claim to have dissolved his ego. This is emphasized by the roles people choose for themselves in their past or future lives.

Believers in reincarnation do not always choose an honorable character. If the person is of a highly respectable and conservative nature, he will often choose a colorful rogue or gangster, thereby fulfilling his alter-ego. Or, a woman who has much social status may pick a harlot or famous courtesan for the characterization of herself in a past life.

If people were able to divorce themselves from the stigma attached to personal ego-fulfillment, they would not need to play self-deceitful games such as belief in reincarnation as a means of satisfying their natural need for ego-fulfillment.

The Satanist believes in complete gratification of his ego. Satanism, in fact, is the only religion which advocates the intensification or encouragement of the ego. Only if a person's own ego is sufficiently fulfilled, can he afford to be kind and complimentary to others, without robbing himself of his self-respect. We generally think of a braggart as a person with a large ego; in reality, his bragging results from a need to satisfy his impoverished ego.

Religionists have kept their followers in line by suppressing their egos. By making their followers feel inferior, the awesomeness of their god is insured. Satanism encourages its members to develop a good strong ego because it gives them the self-respect necessary for a vital existence in this life.

If a person has been vital throughout his life and has fought to the end for his earthly existence, it is this ego which will refuse to die, even after the expiration of the flesh which housed it. Young children are to be admired for their driving enthusiasm for life. This is exemplified by the small child who refuses to go to bed when there is something exciting going on, and when once put to bed, will sneak down the stairs to peek through the curtain and watch. It is this child-like vitality that will allow the Satanist to peek through the curtain of darkness and death and remain earthbound.

Self-sacrifice is not encouraged by the Satanic religion. Therefore, unless death comes as an indulgence because of extreme circumstances which make the termination of life a welcome relief from the unendurable earthyl existence, suicide is frowned upon by the Satanic religion.

Religious martyrs have taken their own lives, not because life was intolerable for them, but to use their supreme sacrifice as a tool to further the religious belief. We must assume, then, that suicide, if done for the sake of the church, is condoned and even encouraged - even though their scriptures label it a sin - because religious martyrs of the past have always been deified.

It is rather curious that the only time suicide is considered sinful by other religions is when it comes as an indulgence.



RELIGIOUS HOLIDAYS

THE highest of all holidays in the Satanic religion is the date of one's own birth. This is in direct contradiction to the holy of holy days of other religions, which deify a particular god who has been created in an anthropomorphic form of their own image, thereby showing that the ego is not really buried.

The Satanist feels: "Why not really be honest and if you are going to create a god in your image, why not create that god as yourself." Every man is a god if he chooses to recognize himself as one. So, the Satanist celebrates his own birthday as the most important holiday of the year. After all, aren't you happier about the fact that you were born than you are about the birth of someone you have never even met? Or for that matter, aside from religious holidays, why pay higher tribute to the birthday of a president or to a date in history than we do to the day we were brought into this greatest of all worlds?

Despite the fact that some of us may not have been wanted, or at least were not particularly planned, we're glad, even if no one else is, that we're here! You should give yourself a pat on the back, buy yourself whatever you want, treat yourself like the king (or god) that you are, and generally celebrate your birthday with as much pomp and ceremony as possible.

After one's own birthday, the two major Satanic holidays are Walpurgisnacht and Halloween (or All Hallows' Eve).

St. Walpurgis - or Walpurga, or Walburga, depending upon the time and area in which one is referring to her - was born in Sussex about the end of the Seventh or the beginning of the Eighth Century, and was educated at Winburn, Dorset, where after taking the veil, she remained for twenty-five years. She then, at the instance of her uncle, St. Boniface, and her brother, St. Wilibald, set out along with some other nuns to found religious houses in Germany. Her first settlement was at Bischofsheim in the diocese of Mainz, and two years later (754 A.D.) she became abbess of the Benedictine nunnery at Heidenheim, within her brother Wilibald's diocese of Eichstadt in Bavaria, where another brother, Winebald, had at the same time also been made head of a monastery. On the death of Winebald in 760 she succeeded him in his charge, retaining the superintendence of both houses until her death on February 25, 779. Her relics were translated to Eichstadt, where she was laid in a hollow rock, from which exuded a kind of bituminous oil, afterwards known as Walpurgis oil, regarded as having miraculous efficacy against disease. The cave became a place of pilgrimage, and a great church was built over the spot. She is commemorated at various times, but principally on May 1st, her day taking the place of an earlier Pagan festival. Amazingly enough, all of this rigmarole was found necessary simply to condone the continuance of the most important Pagan festival of the year - the grand climax of the spring equinox!

The Eve of May has been memorialized as the night that all of the demons, specters, afreets, and banshees would come forth and hold their wild revels, symbolizing the fruition of the spring equinox.

Halloween - All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Day - falls on October 31st or November 1st. Originally, All Hallows' Eve was one of the great fire festivals of Britain at the time of the Druids. In Scotland it was associated with the time when the spirits of the dead, the demons, witches, and sorcerers were unusually active and propitious. Paradoxically, All Hallows' Eve was also the night when young people performed magical rituals to determine their future marriage partners. The youth of the villages carried on with much merry-making and sensual revelry, but the older people took great care to safeguard their homes from the evil spirits, witches, and demons who had exceptional power that night.

The solstices and equinoxes are also celebrated as holidays, as they herald the first day of the seasons. The difference between a solstice and an equinox is a semantic one defining the relationship between the sun, moon, and the fixed stars. The solstice applies to summer and winter; the equinox refers to autumn and spring. The summer solstice is in June, and the winter solstice is in December. The autumn equinox is in September, and the spring equinox is in March. Both the equinoxes and the solstices vary a day or two from year to year, depending on the lunar cycle at the time, but usually fall on the 21st or 22nd of the month. Five to six weeks after these days the legendary Satanic revels are celebrated.



THE BLACK MASS

NO other single device has been associated with Satanism as much as the black mass. To say that the most blasphemous of all religious ceremonies is nothing more than a literary invention is certainly a statement which needs qualifying - but nothing could be truer.

The popular concept of the black mass is thus: a defrocked priest stands before an altar consisting of a nude woman, her legs spread-eagled and vagina thrust open, each of her outstretched fists grasping a black candle made from the fat of unbaptized babies, and a chalice containing the urine of a prostitute (or blood) reposing on her belly. An inverted cross hangs above the altar, and triangular hosts of ergot-laden bread or black-stained turnip are methodically blessed as the priest dutifully slips them in and out of the altar-lady's labia. Then, we are told, an invocation to Satan and various demons is followed by an array of prayers and psalms chanted backwards or interspersed with obscenities... all performed within the confines of a "protective" pentagram drawn on the floow. If the Devil appears he is invariably in the form of a rather eager man wearing the head of a black goat upon his shoulders. Then follows a potpouri of flagellation, prayer-book burning, cunnilingus, fellatio, and general hindquarters kissing - all done to a background of ribald recitations from the Holy Bible, and audible expectorations on the cross! If a baby can be slaughtered during the ritual, so much the better; for as everyone knows, this is the favorite sport of the Satanist!

If this sounds repugnant, then the success of the reports of the black mass, in keeping the devout in church, is easy to understand. No "decent" person could fail to side with the inquisitors when told of these blasphemies. The propagandists of the church did their job well, informing the public at one time or another of the heresies and heinous acts of the Pagans, Cathars, Bogomils, Templars and others who, because of their dualistic philosophies and sometimes Satanic logic, had to be eradicated.

The stories of unbaptized babies being stolen by Satanists for use in the mass were not only effective propoganda measures, but also provided a constant source of revenue for the Church, in the form of baptism fees. No Christian mother would, upon hearing of these diabolical kidnappings, refrain from getting her child properly baptized, post haste.

Another facet of man's nature was apparent in the fact that the writer or artist with lewd thoughts could exercise his most obscene predilections in the portrayal of the activities of heretics. The censor who views all pornography so that he will know what to warn others of is the modern equivalent of the medieval chronicler of the obscene deeds of the Satanists (and, of course, their modern journalistic counterparts). It is believed that the most complete library of pornography in the world is owned by the Vatican!

The kissing of the Devil's behind during the traditional black mass is easily recognized as the forerunner of the modern term used to describe one who will, through appealing to another's ego, gain materially from him. As all Satanic ceremonies were performed toward very real or material goals, the oscularum infame (or kiss of shame) was considered a symbolic requisite towards earthly, rather than spiritual, success.

The usual assumption is that the Satanic ceremony or service is always called a black mass. A black mass is not the magical ceremony practiced by Satanists. The Satanist would only employ the use of a black mass as a form of psychodrama. Furthermore, a black mass does not necessarily imply that the performers of such are Satanists. A black mass is essentially a parody of the religious service of the Roman Catholic Church, but can be loosely applied to a satire on any religious ceremony.

To the Satanist, the black mass, in its blaspheming of orthodox rites, is nothing more than a redundancy. The services of all established religions are actually parodies of old rituals performed by the worshippers of the earth and the flesh. In attempts to de-sexualize and de-humanize the Pagan beliefs, later men of spiritual faith whitewashed the honest meanings behind the rituals into the bland euphemisms now considered to be the "true mass". Even if the Satanist were to spend each night performing a black mass, he would no more be performing a travesty than the devout churchgoer who unwittingly attends his own "black mass" - his spoof on the honest and emotionally-sound rites of Pagan antiquity.

Any ceremony considered a black mass must effectively shock and outrage, as this seems to be the measure of its success. In the Middle Ages, blaspheming the holy church was shocking. Now, however, the Church does not present the awesome image it did during the inquisition. The traditional black mass is no longer the outrageous spectacle to the dilettante or renegade priest that it once was. If the Satanist wishes to create a ritual to blaspheme an accepted institution, for the purpose of psychodrama, he is careful to choose one that is not in vogue to parody. Thus, he is truly stepping on a sacred cow.

A black mass, today, would consist of the blaspheming of such "sacred" topics as Eastern mysticism, psychiatry, the psychedelic movement, ultra-liberalism, etc. Patriotism would be championed, drugs and their gurus would be defiled, acultural militants would be deified, and the decadence of ecclesiastical theologies might even be given a Satanic boost.

The Satanic magus has always been the catalyst for the dichotomy necessary in molding popular beliefs, and in this case a ceremony in the nature of a black mass may serve a far-reaching magical purpose.

In the year 1666, some rather interesting events occurred in France. With the death of Franзois Mansart, the architect of the trapezoid, whose geometrics were to become the prototype of the haunted house, the Palace of Versailles was being constructed, in accordance with his plans. The last of the glamorous priestesses of Satan, Jeanne-Marie Bouvier (Madame Guyon) was to be overshadowed by a shrewd opportunist and callous business-woman named Catharine Deshayes, otherwise known as LaVoisin. Here was an erstwhile beautician who, while dabbling in abortions and purveying the most efficient poisons to ladies desirous of eliminating unwanted husbands or lovers, found in the lurid accounts of the "messes noir" a proverbial brainstorm.

It is safe to say that 1666 was the year of the first "commercial" black mass! In the region south of St. Denis, which is now called LaGarenne, a great walled house was purchased by LaVoisin and fitted with dispensaries, cells, laboratories, and ... a chapel. Soon it became de rigueur for royalty and lesser dillettantes to attend and participate in the very type of service mentioned earlier in this chapter. The organized fraud perpetrated in these ceremonies has become indelibly marked in history as the "true black mass".

When LaVoisin was arrested on March 13, 1679 (in the Church of Our Blessed Lady of Good Tidings, incidentally), the die had already been cast. The degraded activities of LaVoisin had stifled the majesty of Satanism for many years to come.

The Satanism-for-fun-and-games fad next appeared in England in the middle 18th Century in the form of Sir Francis Dashwood's Order of the Medmanham Fanciscans, popularly called The Hell-Fire Club. While eliminating the blood, gore, and baby-fat candles of the previous century's masses, Sir Francis managed to conduct rituals replete with good dirty fun, and certainly provided a colorful and harmless form of psychodrama for many of the leading lights of the period. An interesting sideline of Sir Francis, which lends a clue to the climate of the Hell-Fire Club, was a group called the Dilettanti Club, of which he was the founder.

It was the 19th Century that brought a whitewashing to Satanism, in the feeble attempts of "white" magicians trying to perform "black" magic. This was a very paradoxical period for Satanism, with writers such as Baudelaire and Huysmans who, despite their apparent obsession with evil, seemed nice enough fellows. The Devil developed his Luciferian personality for the public to see, and gradually evolved into a sort of drawing-room gentleman. This was the era of "experts" on the black arts, such as Eliphas Levi and countless trance-mediums who, with their carefully bound spirits and demons, have also succeeded in binding the minds of many who call themselves parapsychologists to this day!

As far as Satanism is concerned, the closest outward signs of this were the neo-Pagan rites conducted by MacGregor Mathers' Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and Aleister Crowley's later Order of the Silver Star (A... A... - Argentinum Astrum) and Order of Oriental Templars (O.T.O.) [*Ordo Templi Orientis," Crowley's take-off on the German sect of the same name, originally founded in 1902, and practicing some of the priciples set forth in this volume.], which paranoiacally denied any association with Satanism, despite Crowley's self-imposed image of the beast of revelation. Aside from some rather charming poetry and a smattering of magical bric-a-brac, when not climbing mountains Crowley spent most of his time as a poseur par excellence and worked overtime to be wicked. Like his contemporary, Rev.(?) Mantague Summers, Crowley obviously spent a large part of his life with his tongue jammed firmly into his cheek, but his followers, today, are somehow able to read esoteric meaning into his every word.

Perennially concurrent with these societies were the sex clubs using Satanism as a rationale - that persists today, for which tabloid newspaper writers may give thanks.

If it appears that the black mass developed from a literary invention of the church, to a depraved commercial actuality, to a psychodrama for dilettantes and iconoclasts, to an ace in the hole for popular media ... then where does it fit into the true nature of Satanism - and who was practicing Satanic magic in those years beyond 1666?

The answer to this riddle lies in another. Is the person generally considered to be a Satanist really practicing Satanism in its true sense, or rather from the point of view taken by the opinion makers of heavenly persuasion? It has often been said, and rightly so, that all of the books about the Devil have been written by the agents of God. It is, therefore, quite easy to understand how a certain breed of devil worshippers was created through the inventions of theologians. This erstwhile "evil" character is not necessarily practicing true Satanism. Nor is he a living embodiment of the element of untrammeled pride or majesty of self which gave the post-Pagan world the churchman's definition of evil. He is instead the by-product of later and more elaborate propaganda.

The pseudo-Satanist has always managed to appear throughout modern history, with his black masses of varying degrees of blasphemy; but the real Satanist is not quite so easily recognized as such.

It would be an over-simplification to say that every successful man and woman on earth is, without knowing it, a practicing Satanist; but the thirst for earthly success and its ensuing realization are certainly grounds for Saint Peter turning thumbs down. If the rich man's entry into heaven seems as difficult as the camel's attempt to go through the eye of a needle; if the love of money is the root of all evil; then we must at least assume the post powerful men on earth to be the most Satanic. This applies to financiers, industrialists, popes, poets, dictators, and all assorted opinion-makers and field marshals of the world's activities.

Occasionally, through "leakages", one of the enigmatic men or women of earth will be found to have "dabbled" in the black arts. These, of course, are brought to light as in the "mystery men" of history. Names like Rasputin, Zaharoff, Cagliostro, Rosenberg and their ilk are links - clues, so to speak, of the true legacy of Satan ... a legacy which transcends ethnic, racial, and econimic differences and temporal ideologies, as well. The Satanist has always ruled the earth ... and always will, by whatever name he is called.

One thing stands sure: the standards, philosophy and practices set forth on these pages are those employed by the most self-realized and powerful humans on earth. In the secret thoughts of each man and woman, still motivated byt sound and unclouded minds, resides the potential of the Satanist, as always has been. The sign of the horns shall appear to many, now, rather than the few; and the magician will stand forth that he may be recognized.



(EARTH) THE BOOK OF BELIAL


THE MASTERY OF THE EARTH

The greatest appeal of magic is not in its application, but in its esoteric meanderings. The element of mystery which so heavily enshrouds the practice of the black arts has been fostered, deliberately or out of ignorance, by those who often claim the highest expertise in such matters. If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, then established occultists would do well as maze-makers. The basic principles of ceremonial magic have been relegated for so long to infinitely classified bits of scholastic mysticism, that the would-be wizard becomes the victim of the very art of misdirection which he, himself, should be employing! An analogy may be drawn of the student of applied psychology who, though knowing all of the answers, cannot make friends.

What good is a study of falsehoods, unless everyone believes in falsehoods? Many, of course, DO believe in falsehoods, but still ACT according to natural law. It is upon this premise that Satanic magic is based. This is a primer - a basic text on materialistic magic. It is a Satanic McGuffrey's Reader.

Belial means "without a master", and symbolizes true independence, self-sufficiency, and personal accomplishment. Belial represents the earth element, and herein will be found magic with both feet on the ground - real, hard-core, magical procedure - not mystical platitudes devoid of objective reason. Probe no longer. Here is bedrock!



THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF SATANIC MAGIC


(Definition and Purpose)

THE definition of magic, as used in this book, is: "The change in situations or events in accordance with one's will, which would, using normally accepted methods, be unchangable." This admittedly leaves a large area for personal interpretation. It will be said, by some, that these instructions and procedures are nothing more than applied psychology, or scientific fact, called by "magical" terminology - until they arrive at a passage in the text that is "based on no known scientific finding". It is for this reason that no attempt has been made to limit the explanations set forth to a set nomenclature. Magic is never totally scientifically explainable, but science has always been, at one time or another, considered magic.

There is no difference between "White" and "Black" magic, except in the smug hypocrisy, guilt-ridden righteousness, and self-deceit of the "White" magician himself. In the classical religious tradition, "White" magic is performed for altruistic, benevolent, and "good" purposes; while "Black" magic is used for self-aggrandizement, personal power, and "evil" purposes. No one on earth ever pursued occult studies, metaphysics, yoga, or any other "white light" concept, without ego gratification and personal power as a goal. It just so happens that some people enjoy wearing hair shirts, and others prefer velvet or silk. What is pleasure to one, is pain to another, and the same applies to "good" and "evil". Every practitioner of witchcraft is convinced that he or she is doing the "right" thing.

Magic falls into two categories, ritual or ceremonial, and non-ritual or manipulative. Ritual magic consists of the performance of a formal ceremony, taking place, at least in part, within the confines of an area set aside for such purposes and at a specific time. Its main function is to isolate the otherwise dissipated adrenal and other emotionally induced energy, and convert it into a dynamically transmittable force. It is purely an emotional, rather than intellectual, act. Any and all intellectual activity must take place before the ceremony, not during it. This type of magic is sometimes known as "GREATER MAGIC".

Non-ritual or manipulative magic, sometimes called "LESSER MAGIC", consists of the wile and guile obtained through various devices and contrived situations, which when utilized, can create "change, in accordance with one's will". In olden times this would be called "fascination", "glamour", or the "evil eye".

Most of the victims of the witch trials were not witches. Often the victims were eccentric old women who were either senile or did not conform to society. Others were exceptionally attractive women who turned the heads of the men in power, and were not responsive to their advances. The real witches were rarely executed, or even brought to trial, as they were proficient in the art of enchantment and could charm the men and save their own lives. Most of the real witches were sleeping with the inquisitors. This is the origin of the word "glamour". The antiquated meaning of glamour is witchcraft. The most important asset to the modern witch is her ability to be alluring, or to utilize glamour. The word "fascination" has a similarly occult origin. Fascination was the term applied to the evil eye. To fix a person's gaze, in other words, fascinate, was to curse them with the evil eye. Therefore, if a woman had the ability to fascinate men, she was regarded as a witch.

Learning to effectively utilize the command to LOOK, is an integral part of a witch's or warlock's training. To manipulate a person, you must first be able to attract and hold his attention. The three methods by which the command to look can be accomplished are the utilization of sex, sentiment, or wonder, or any combination of these. A witch must, honestly, decide into which category she most naturally falls. The first category, that of sex, is self-evident. If a woman is attractive or sexually appealing, she should do everything in her power to make herself as enticing as possible, thereby using sex as her most powerful tool. Once she has gained the man's attention, by using her sex appeal, she is free to manipulate him to her will. The second category is sentiment. Usually older woman fit into this category. This would include the "cookie lady" type witch, who might live in a little cottage, and be thought of by people as being a bit eccentric. Children are usually enchanted by the fantasy that this type of witch can provide for them, and young adults seek her out for her sage-like advice. Through their innocence, children can recognize her magical power. By conforming to an image of the sweet little old lady next door, she can employ the art of misdirection to accomplish her goals. The third category is the wonder theme. This category would apply to the woman who is strange or awesome in her appearance. By making her strange appearance work for her, she can manipulate people simply becuase they are fearful of the consequences should they not do as she asks.

Many women fit into more than one of these categories. For example, the young girl who has an appearance of freshness and innocence, but at the same time is very sexy, combines sex appeal with sinister overtones, uses sex and wonder. After evaluating her assets, each witch must decide into which category or combination of categories she fits, and then utilize these assets in their proper form.

To be a successful warlock, a man must similarly fit himself into the proper category. The handsome or sexually appealing man would, naturally, fit into the first category - sex. The second, or sentiment category would apply to the older man who has, perhaps, an elfin or forest wizard appearance. The sweet old grandpa (often a dirty old man!) would also be in the sentiment category. The third type would be the man who presents a sinister or diabolic appearance. Each of these men would apply his particular brand of the command to look, in much the same way as the women previously described.

Visual imagery utilized for emotional reaction is certainly the most important device incorporated in the practice of lesser magic. Anyone who is foolish enough to say "looks don't mean a thing" is indeed deluded. Good looks are unnecessary, but "looks" certainly are needed!

Odor is another important manipulative factor in lesser magic. Remember, animals fear and distrust anyone or anything that doesn't smell! And even though we may, as human animals, deny many of the judgments based on this sense consciously, we still are motivated by our sense of smell just as surely as any all-fours animal. If you are a man, and wish to enchant a woman, allow the natural secretions of your body to pervade the atmosphere immediately around you, and work in animalistic contrast to the vestments of social politeness that you wear upon your back. If you, as a woman, wish to bewitch a man, do not fear that you might "offend" simply because the oils and fragrances of your flesh have not been scrubbed away, or that place between your thighs is not dry and sterile. These natural odors are the sexual stimulants which nature, in her magical wisdom, has provided.

The sentiment stimulants are those odors that will appeal to pleasant memories and nostalgia. The enchanting of a man, through his stomach, is first established by the smell of cooking! A "sentiment" type of witch will find this one of the most useful of all charms. It is not so facetious to dwell upon the technique of the man who wished to charm the young lady who had been displaced from her home of childhood joys, which happened to be a fishing village. Wise to the ways of lesser magic, he neatly tucked a mackerel into his trousers pocket, and reaped the rewards that great fondness may often bring.



THE THREE TYPES OF SATANIC RITUAL

THERE are three types of ceremony incorporated in the practice of Satanic magic. Each of these correspond to a basic human emotion. The first of these we shall call a sex ritual.

A sex ritual is what is commonly known as a love charm or spell. The purpose in performing such a ritual is to create desire on the part of the person whom you desire, or to summon a sex partner to fulfill your desires. If you have no specific person or type of person in mind strong enough to cause direct sexual feeling culminating in orgasm, you will not succeed in performing as successfull working. The reason for this is that even if the ritual was successful, by accident, what good would it serve if you could not take advantage of your eventual opportunity because of lack of stimulation or desire? It is easy to confuse enchantment for your ulterior motives, with spell-casting to satisfy your sexual desires.

Enchantment for self-aggrandizement, when accompanied by ceremonial magic, falls into the category of either the compassion or the destruction ritual, or possibly both. If you want or need something so badly you are sad or feel much anguish without it, without causing hurt on another's part, then this would incorporate a compassion ritual to increase your power. If you wish to enchant or entrap a deserving victim for your own purposes, you would employ a destruction ritual. These formulas are to be adhered to, as applying the wrong type of ritual towards a desired result can lead to trouble of a complicated nature.

A good example of this is the girl who finds herself plagued by a relentless suitor. If she has done little to encourage him, then she should recognize him for the psychic vampire he is, and let him play his masochistic role. If, however, she has enchanted him frivolously, giving him every encouragement and then finds herself a steady object of sexual desire, much to her dismay, she has no one to blame but herself. Such exercises are only ego boosts, borne of an indoctrination of ego denial which makes these little bewitchments necessary. The Satanist has enough ego strength to use enchantments for her own sexual gratification, or to gain power or success of a specific nature.

The second type of ritual is of a compassionate nature. The compassion, or sentiment, ritual is performed for the purpose of helping others, or helping oneself. Health, domestic happiness, business activities, material success, and scholastic prowess are but a few of the situations covered in a compassion ritual. It might be said that this form of ceremony could fall into the realm of genuine charity, bearing in mind that "charity begins at home".

The third motivating force is that of destruction. This is a ceremony used for anger, annoyance, disdain, contempt, or just plain hate. It is known as a hex, curse, or destroying agent.

One of the greatest of all fallacies about the practice of ritual magic is the notion that one must believe in the powers of magic before one can be harmed or destroyed by them. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as the most receptive victims of curses have always been the greatest scoffers. The reason is frighteningly simple. The uncivilized tribesman is the first to run to his nearest witch-doctor or shaman when he feels a curse has been placed upon him by an enemy. The threat and presence of harm is with him consciously, and belief in the power of the curse is so strong that he will take every precaution against it. Thus, through the application of sympathetic magic, he will counteract any harm that might come his way. This man is watching his step, and not taking any chances.

On the other hand, the "enlightened" man, who doesn't place any stock in such "superstition", relegates his instinctive fear of the curse to his unconscious, thereby nourishing it into a phenominally destructive force that will multiply with each succeeding misfortune. Of course, every time a new setback occurs, the non-believer will automatically deny any connection with the curse, especially to himself. The emphatic conscious denial of the potential of the curse is the very ingredient that will create its success, through setting-up of accident prone situations. In many instances, the victim will deny any magical significance to his fate, even unto his dying gasp - although the magician is perfectly satisfied, so long as his desired results occur. It must be remembered that it matters not whether anyone attaches any significance to your working, so long as the results of the working are in accordance with your will. The super-logician will always explain the connection of the magical ritual to the end result as "coincidence".

Whether magic is performed for constructive or destructive purposes, the success of the operation is dependent on the receptivity of the person who is to receive the blessing or curse, as the case may be. In the case of a sex or compassion ritual, it helps if the recipient has faith and believes in magic, but the victim of a hex or curse is much more prone to destruction if he DOES NOT believe in it! So long as man knows the meaning of fear, he will need the ways and means to defend himself against his fears. No one knows everything, and as long as there is wonder, there will always be an apprehension of the unknown, where there are potentially dangerous forces. It is this natural fear of the unknown, a first cousin to the fascination towards the unknown, that impels the man of logic towards his very explanations. Obviously, the man of science is motivated to discovery by his very sense of wonder. And yet, how sad that this man who calls himself logical is often the last to recognize the essence of ritual magic.

If religious faith can make bleeding wounds appear on the body in approximation to the wounds supposedly inflicted on Christ, it is called stigmata. These wounds appear as a result of compassion driven to an emotionally violent extreme. Why, then, should there be any doubt as to the destructive extremes of fear and terror. The so-called demons have the power to destroy in a flesh rending manner, theoretically, as much as a handful of nails, long rusted away, can create blood-dripping ecstasy in a person convinced he is hooked upon the cross of Calvary.

Therefore, never attempt to convince the skeptic upon whom you wish to place a curse. Allow him to scoff. To enlighten him would lessen your chance of success. Listen with benign assurance as he laughs at your magic, knowing his days are filled with turmoil all the while. If he is despicable enough, by Satan's grace, he might even die - laughing!


A WORD OF WARNING!

TO THOSE WHO WOULD PRACTICE THESE ARTS -

Concerning Sex or Lust: Take full advantage of spells and charms that work; if you be a man, plunge your erect member into her with lascivious delight; if you be a woman, open wide your loins in lewd anticipation.

Concerning Compassion: Be resolved that you'll have no regrets at the expense of the help that you have given others, should their new-found blessings place an obstacle in your path. Be grateful for things that come to you through the use of magic.

Concerning Destruction: Be certain you DO NOT care if the intended victim lives or dies, before you throw your curse, and having caused their destruction, revel, rather than feel remorse.

HEED WELL THESE RULES - OR IN EACH CASE YOU WILL SEE A REVERSAL OF YOUR DESIRES WHICH WILL HARM, RATHER THAN HELP, YOU!



THE RITUAL, OR "INTELLECTUAL DECOMPRESSION", CHAMBER

A MAGICAL ceremony may be performed by oneself or in a group, but the advantages of each should be made clear.

A group ritual is certainly much more of a reinforcement of faith, and an instillation of power, than is a private ceremony. The massing together of persons who are dedicated to a common philosophy is bound to insure a renewal of confidence in the power of magic. The pageantry of religion consistently becomes a solitary situation it reaches into that realm of self-denail which runs concurrent with anti-social behavior.

It is for this reason that the Satanist should attempt to seek out others with whom to engage in these ceremonies.

In the case of a curse or destruction ritual, it sometimes helps the magician if his desires are intensified by other members of the group. There is nothing in this type of ceremony which would lead to embarrassment on the part of those conducting a ritual of this sort, since anger and the symbolic destruction of the intended victim are the essential ingredients.

On the other hand, a compassion ritual, with its unashamed shedding of tears, or a sex ritual, with its masturbatory and orgasmic overtones, would most likely succeed best if privately performed.

There is no place for self-consciousness in the ritual chamber, unless that very self-consciousness is an integral part of the role being played, and can be used to good advantage - i.e.: the shame felt by a prudent woman serving as an altar, who, through her embarrassment, feels sexual stimulation.

Even in a totally personalized ritual, however, the standardized preliminary invocations and devices should be employed before the intimate fantasies and acting out occur. The formal part of the ritual can be performed in the same room or chamber as the personalized working - or, the formal ceremony in one place, the personal in another. The beginning and end of the ritual must be conducted within the confines of the ritual chamber containing the symbolic devices (altar, chalice, etc.).

The formalized beginning and end of the ceremony acts as a dogmatic, anti-intellectual device, the purpose of which is to disassociate the activities and frame of reference of the outside world from that of the ritual chamber, where the whole will must be employed. This facet of the ceremony is most important to the intellectual, as he especially requires the "decompression chamber" effect of the chants, bells, candles, and other trappings, before he can put his pure and willful desires to work for himself, in the projection and utilization of his imagery.

The "intellectual decompression chamber" of the Satanic temple might be considered a training school for temporary ignorance, as are ALL religious services! The difference is that the Satanist KNOWS he is practicing a form of contrived ignorance in order to expand his will, whereas another religionist doesn't - or if he does know, he practices that form of self-deceit which forbids such recognition. His ego is already too shaky from his religious inculcation to allow himself to admit to such a thing as self-imposed ignorance!



THE INGREDIENTS USED IN THE PERFORMANCE OF SATANIC MAGIC


A. Desire

THE first ingredient in the performance of a ritual is desire, otherwise known as motivation, temptation, or emotional persuasion. If you do not truly desire any end result, you should not attempt to perform a working.

There is no such thing as a "practice" working, and the only way that a magician could do "tricks" such as moving inanimate objects, would be to have a strong emotional need to do so. It is true that if the magician wishes to gain power through impressing others with his feats of magic, he must produce tangible proof of his ability. The Satanic concept of magic, however, fails to find gratification in the proving of magical prowess.

The Satanist performs his ritual to insure the outcome of his desires, and he would not waste his time nor force of will on something so inconclusive as folling a pencil off a table, etc. through the application of magic. The amount of energy needed to levitate a teacup (genuinely) would be of sufficient force to place an idea in a group of people's heads half-way across the earth, in turn, motivating them in accordance with your will. The Satanist knows that even if you succeeded in lifting the teacup from the table, it would be assumed that trickery was used anyway. Therefore, if the Satanist wants to float objects in mid-air, he uses wires, mirrors, or other devices, and saves his force for self-aggrandizement. All "gifted" mediums and white-light mystics practice pure and applied stage magic, with their blindfolds and sealed envelopes, and any fairly competent stage magician, carnival worker, or lodge-hall entertainer can duplicate the same effect - although lacking, perhaps, the sanctimonious "spiritual" overtones.

A little child learns that if he wishes for something hard enough, it will come true. This is meaningful. Wishing indicates desire, whereas prayer is accompanied by apprehension. Scripture has twisted desire into lust, covetousness, and greed. Be as a child, and do not stifle desire, lest you lose touch with the first ingredient in the performance of magic. Be led into temptation, and take that which tempts, whenever you can!


B. Timing

IN every successful situation, one of the most important ingredients is the proper timing. In the performance of a magical ritual, timing can mean success or failure to an even greater extent. The best time to cast your spell or charm, hex or curse, is when your target is at his most receptive state. Receptivity to the will of the magician is assured when the recipient is as passive as possible. No matter how strong-willed one is, he is naturally passive while he is asleep; therefore, the best time to throw your magical energy towards your target is when he or she sleeps.

There are certain periods of the sleep cycle that are better than others for susceptibility to outside influences. When a person is normally fatigued from a day's activities, he will "sleep like a log" until his mind and body are rested. This period of profound sleep usually lasts about four to six hours, after which the period of "dream sleep" occurs which lasts two or three hours, or until awakening. It is during this "dream sleep" that the mind is most receptive to outside or unconscious influence.

Let us assume the magician wishes to cast a spell on a person who would usually retire at 11 o'clock in the evening, and rise at 7 o'clock in the morning. The most effective time to perform a ritual would be about 5 o'clock in the morning, or two hours before the recipient awakens.

It is to be emphasized that the magician must be at his peak of efficiency, as he represents the "sending" factor when he performs his ritual. Traditionally speaking, witches and sorcerers are night people, and understandably so. What better schedule on which to live, for the sending of thoughts towards unsuspecting sleepers! If only people were aware of the thoughts injected into their minds while they slept! The dream state is the birthplace of much of the future. Great thoughts are manifest upon awakening, and the mind that retains, in conscious form, these thoughts, shall produce much. But he who is guided by thoughts unrecognized is led into situations that will later be interpreted as "fate", "God's will", or accident.

There are other times in each person's day that lend themselves to the receiving of the will of the wizard. Those times when day-dreaming or boredom ensue, or when time hangs heavy, are fertile periods of suggestibility.

If a woman is the target for your spell, do not forget the importance of the menstrual cycle. If man were not dulled through his stifling evolutionary development, he would know, as an all-fours animal knows, when the female was most sexually inclined. Man's snout, however unsullied by cheap opiates, is not normally equipped to ferret out such tell-tale erotic scents. Even if he were so endowed with such olfactory powers, the object of his quest would most likely "throw him off the scent" through the use of massive doses of perfumery to cover and smother the "offending" effluvium, or eliminate detection completely, by the astringent action of powerful deodorants.

Despite these discouraging factors, man is still motivated to desire or be repelled, as the case may be, by his unconscious recognition of the change in woman's body chemistry. This is accomplished in the form of a sensory cue, which is olfactory in its nature. To go backwards, in what would amount to a return to the all-fours animal, would seem to be the best exercise for the conscious application of these powers, but to the squeamish might smack of lycanthropy. There is, however, an easier way, and that is to simply ascertain the dates and frequency of the menstrual cycle of the woman who is your target. It is immediately before and after the period itself that the average woman is most sexually approachable. Therefore, the magician will find the sleep period during these times most effective for the instillation of thoughts or motivations of a sexual nature.

Witches and sorceresses have a much greater range of time in which to cast their spells toward the men of their choice. Becuase man is more consistent in his sexual drives than woman (although there are many women with equal or even greater lusts), day to day timing is not as important. Any man who is not already drained of all sexual energy is a "sitting duck" for the proficient witch. The time of the year following the spring equinox is the most fraught with sexual vigor in a man, and he asserts himself accordingly; but the witch, in turn, must work her magic stronger, as she will find his eyes will stray.

Should the fearful ask, "Is there no defense against such witchery?" it must be answered thus - "Yes, there is protection. You must never sleep, never daydream, never be without a vital thought, and never have an open mind. Then you shall be protected from the forces of magic."


C. Imagery

THE adolescent boy who takes great care in carving, on a tree, a heart containing his and his love object's initials; the little chap who sits by the hour drawing his conception of sleek automobiles; the tiny girl who rocks a scuffed and ragged doll in her arms, and thinks of it as her beautiful little baby - these capable witches and warlocks, these natural magicians, are employing the magical ingredient known as imagery, and the success of any ritual depends on it.

Children, not knowing or caring if they possess artistic skill or other creative talents, pursue their goals through the use of imagery of their own manufacture, whereas "civilized" adults are much more critical of their own creative efforts. This is why a "primitive" magician can utilize a mud doll or crude drawing to successful advantage in his magical ceremonies. To HIM, the image is as accurate as needs be.

Anything which serves to intensify the emotions during a ritual will contribute to its success. Any drawing, painting, sculpture, writing, photograph, article of clothing, scent, sound, music, tableau, or contrived situation that can be incorporated into the ceremony will serve the sorcerer well.

Imagery is a constant reminder, an intellect-saving device, a working substitute for the real thing. Imagery can be manipulated, set up, modified, and created, all according to the will of the magician, and the very blueprint that is created by imagery becomes the formula which leads to reality.

If you wish to enjoy sexual pleasures with the one of your choice, you must create the situation you desire on paper, canvas, by the written word, etc., in as overstated a way as possible, as an integral part of the ceremony.

If you have material desires, you must gaze upon images of them - surround yourself with the smells and sounds conducive to them - create a lodestone which will attract the situation or thing that you wish!

To insure the destruction of an enemy, you must destroy them by proxy! They must be shot, stabbed, sickened, burned, smashed, drowned, or rent in the most vividly convincing manner! It is easy to see why the religions of the right-hand path frown upon the creation of "graven images". The imagery used by the sorcerer is a working mechanism for material reality, which is totally opposed to esoteric spirituality.

A Greek gentleman of magical persuasion once wanted a woman who would satisfy his every desire, and so obsessed with the unfound object of his dreams was he, that he went about constructing such a wonderful creature. His work completed, he fell so convincingly and irrevocably in love with the woman he had created that she was no longer stone, but mortal flesh, and alive and warm; and so the magus, Pygmalion, received the greatest of magical benedictions, and the beautiful Galatea was his.


D. Direction

ONE of the most overlooked ingredients in the working of magic is the accumulation and subsequent direction of force toward an effective end.

Altogether too many would-be witches and warlocks will perform a ritual, and then go about with tremendous anxiety waiting for the first sign of a successful working. For all intent and purpose, they might as well get down on their knees and pray, for their very anxiety in waiting for the desired results only nullifies any real chance of success. Furthermore, with this attitude, it is doubtful that enough concentrated energy to even perform a proper ceremony could be stored up in the first place.

To dwell upon or constantly complain about the situation upon which your ritual would be based only guarantees the weakening of what should be ritualistically directed force, by spreading it thin and diluting it. Once the desire has been established strongly enough to employ the forces of magic, then every attempt must be made to symbolically give vent to these wishes IN THE PERFORMANCE OF THE RITUAL - NOT before or after!

The purpose of the ritual is to FREE the magician from thoughts that would consume him, were he to dwell upon them constantly. Contemplation, daydreaming and constant scheming burns up emotional energy that could be gathered together in a dynamically usable force; not to mention the fact that normal productivity is severely depleted by such consuming anxiety.

The witch who casts her spells between long waits by the telephone, anticipating her would-be lover's call; the destitute warlock who invokes Satan's blessing, then waits on pins and needles for the check to arrive; the man, saddened by the injustices wrought upon him, who, having cursed his enemy, plods his way, long of face, and forrowed of brow - all are common examples of misdirected emotional energy.

Small wonder that the "white" magician fears retribution after casting an "evil" spell! Retribution, to the guilt-ridden sender, would be assured, by their very conscience-stricken state!


E. The Balance Factor

THE Balance Factor is an ingredient employed in the practice of ritual magic which applies to the casting of lust and compassion rituals more than in the throwing of a curse. This ingredient is a small, but extremely important one.

A complete knowledge and awareness of this factor is an ability few witches and warlocks ever attain. This is, simply, knowing the proper type of individual and situation to work your magic on for the easiest and best results. Knowing one's own limitations is a rather odd bit of introspection, it would seem, for a person who should be able to perform the impossible; but under many conditions it can make the difference between success and failure.

If, in attempting to attain your goal through either greater or lesser magic, you find yourself failing consistently, think about these things: Have you been the victim of a misdirected, over-blown ego which has caused you to want something or someone when the chances are virtually non-existent? Are you a talentless, tone-deaf individual who is attempting, through magic, to receive great acclaim for your unmusical voice? Are you a plain, glamorless witch with oversized feet, nose, and ego, combined with an advanced case of acne, who is casting love spells to catch a handsome young movie star? Are you a gross, lumpy, lewd-mouthed, snaggle-toothed loafer who is desirous of a luscious young stripper? If so, you'd better learn to use the balance factor, or else expect to fail consistently!

To be able to adjust one's wants to one's capabilities is a great talent, and too many people fail to realize that if they are unable to attain the maximum, "a half a loaf can be better than none". The chronic loser is always the man who, having nothing, if unable to make a million dollars, will reject any chance to make fifty thousand with a disgruntled sneer.

One of the magician's greatest weapons is knowing himself; his talents, abilities, physical attractions and detractions, etc., and when, where, and with whom to utilize them! The man with nothing to offer, who approaches the man who is successful with grandiose advice and promise of great wealth, has the alacrity of the flea climbing up the elephant's leg with the intention of rape!

The aspiring witch who deludes herself into thinking that a powerful enough working will always succeed, despite a magical imbalance, is forgetting one essential rule: MAGIC IS LIKE NATURE ITSELF, AND SUCCESS IN MAGIC REQUIRES WORKING IN HARMONY WITH NATURE, NOT AGAINST IT.



THE SATANIC RITUAL


A. NOTES WHICH ARE TO BE OBSERVED BEFORE BEGINNING RITUAL

1. Person performing ritual stands facing the altar and symbol of Baphomet throughout ritual, except when other positions are specifically indicated.

2. If possible, altar should be against west wall.

3. In rituals performed by one person the role of priest is not required. When more than one person is involved in the ceremony, one of them must act as priest. In a private ritual the sole performer follows the instructions for the priest.

4. Whenever the words "Shemhamforash!" and "Hail Satan!" are spoken by the person acting as priest, the other participants will repeat the words after him. The gong is struck following the other participants' response to "Hail Satan!"

5. Conversing (except within the context of the ceremony) and smoking are prohibited after the bell is rung at the beginning, until after it is again rung at the end of the ritual.

6. The Book of Belial contians the principles of Satanic magic and ritual. Before attempting the rituals in the Book of Leviathan, it is imperative that you read and understand the complete Book of Belial. Until you have done so, no degree of success can be expected from the thirteen steps which follow.


B. THE THIRTEEN STEPS

1. Dress for ritual.

2. Assemble devices for ritual; light candles and shut out all outside light sources; place parchments to right and left of the altar as indicated.

3. If a woman is used as the altar she now takes her position - head pointing south, feet pointing north.

4. Purification of the air by ringing of the bell.

5. "Invocation to Satan" and "Infernal Names" which follow (see Book of Leviathan) are now read aloud by priest. Participants will repeat each Infernal Name after it has been said by priest.

6. Drink from chalice.

7. Turning counter-clockwise, the priest points with the sword to each cardinal point of the compass and calls forth the respective Princes of Hell: Satan from the south, Lucifer from the east, Belial from the north, and Leviathan from the west.

8. Perform benediction with the phallus (if one is used).

9. Priest reads aloud appropriate invocation for respective ceremony: Lust, Compassion, or Destruction (see Book of Leviathan).

10. In the case of a personalized ritual this step is extremely important. Solitude is compatible with the expressing of the most secret desires, and no attempt to "hold back" should be made in the acting out, verbalizing, or casting of images pertaining to your desires. It is at this step that your "blueprint" is drawn, wrapped, and sent off to the recipient of your working.

(A) To Summon One For Lustful Purpose Or Establish A Sexually Gratifying Situation

Leave the area of the altar and remove yourself to that place, either in the same room or without, that will be most conducive to the working of the respective ritual. Then, fashion whatever imagery you possibly can that will parallel in as exact a way possible the situation towards which you strive. Remember, you have five senses to utilize, so do not feel you must limit your imagery to one. Here are devices that may be employed (either alone, or in any combination):

a) graphic imagery such as drawings, paintings, etc.

b) written imagery such as stories, plays, descriptions of desires and eventual outcome of same.

c) acting out the desire in tableau or playet, either as yourself or portraying the role of the object of your desire (transference), using any devices necessary to intensify imagery.

d) any odors relative to the desired person or situation.

e) any sounds or background noises conducive to a strong image.

Intense sexual feeling should accompany this step of the ritual, and after sufficient imagery is obtained, as strong an orgasm as is possible should serve as climax to this step. This climax should be attained using any masturbatory or auto-erotic means necessary. After orgasm is obtained, return to the location of the altar and proceed with step #11.

(B) To Insure Help Or Success For One Who Has Your Sympathy Or Compassion (Including Yourself)

Remain in close proximity of the altar and with as vivid a mental image as possible of the person you wish to help (or intense self-pity), state your desire in your own terms. Should your emotions be genuine enough, they will be accompanied the shedding of tears, which should be allowed to flow without restraint. After this exercise in sentiment is completed, proceed to step #11.

(C) To Cause The Destruction Of An Enemy

Remain in the area of the altar unless imagery is more easily obtained in another spot, such as in the vicinity of the victim. Producing the image of the victim, proceed to inflict the destruction upon the effigy in the manner of your choice. This can be done in the following ways:

a) the sticking of pins or nails into a doll representing your victim; the doll may be cloth, wax, wood, vegetable matter, etc.

b) The creation of graphic imagery depicting the method of your victim's destruction; drawings, paintings, etc.

c) the creation of a vivid literary description of your victim's ultimate end.

d) a detailed soliloquy directed at the intended victim, describing his torments and annihilation.

e) mutilation, injury, infliction of pain or illness by proxy using any other means or devices desired.

Intense, calculated hatred and disdain should accompany this step of the ceremony, and no attempt should be made to stop this step until the expended energy results in a state of relative exhaustion on the part of the magician. When the exhastion ensues, proceed to step #11.

11. (a) If requests are written, they are now read aloud by the priest and then burned in the flames of the appropriate candle. "Shemhamforash!" and "Hail Satan!" is said after each request.

11. (b) If requests are given verbally, participants (one at a time) now tell them to the priest. He then repeats in his own words (those which are most emotionally stimulating to him) the request. "Shemhamforash!" and "Hail Satan!" is said after each request.

12. Appropriate Enochian Key is now read by the priest, as evidence of the participants' allegiance to the Powers of Darkness.

13. Ringing of the bell as pollutionary, and then the words "SO IT IS DONE" are spoken by the priest.

END OF RITUAL


C. DEVICES USED IN A SATANIC RITUAL


CLOTHING

Black robes are worn by the male participants. The robes may be cowled or hooded, and if desired may cover the face. The purpose in covering the face is to allow the participant freedom to express emotion in the face, without concern. It also lessens distraction on the part of one participant towards another. Female participants wear garments which are sexually suggestive; or all black clothing for older women. Amulets bearing the sigil of Baphomet or the traditional pentagram of Satan are worn by all participants.

Robes are donned by men before entering the ritual chamber, and are worn throughout the ritual. Men may substitute all black clothing for black robes.

Black is chosen for the attire in the ritual chamber because it is symbolic of the Powers of Darkness. Sexually appealing clothing is worn by women for the purpose of stimulating the emotions of the male participants, and thereby intensifying the outpouring of adrenal or bio-electrical energy which will insure a more powerful working.


ALTAR

Man's earliest altars were living flesh and blood; and man's natural instincts and predilictions were the foundation on which his religions were based. Later religions, in making man's natural inclinations sinful, perverted his living altars into slabs of stone and lumps of metal.

Satanism is a religion of the flesh, rather than of the spirit; therefore, an altar of flesh is used in Satanic ceremonies. The purpose of an altar is to serve as a focal point towards which all attention is focused during a ceremony. A nude woman is used as the altar in Satanic rituals because woman is the natural passive receptor, and represents the earth mother.

In some rituals nudity for the woman serving as altar may be impractical, so she may be clothed or partially covered. If a female is performing the ritual alone, no woman need be used for the altar. If no female is used for the altar, the elevated plane used for her to lie upon may be used to hold other devices for the ritual. For large group rituals a trapezoidal altar about 3 to 4 feet high and 5Ѕ to 6 feet long can be specially constructed for the woman to lie upon. If this is impractical, or in private ceremonies, any elevated plane may be used. If a woman is used for the altar, the other devices may be placed upon a table within easy reach of the priest.


SYMBOL OF BAPHOMET

The symbol of Baphomet was used by the Knights Templar to represent Satan. Through the ages this symbol has been called by many different names. Among these are: The Goat of Mendes, The Goat of a Thousand Young, The Black Goat, The Judas Goat, and perhaps the most appropriately, The Scapegoat.

Baphomet represents the Powers of Darkness combined with the generative fertility of the goat. In its "pure" form the pentagram is shown encompassing the figure of a man in the five points of the star - three points up, two pointing down - symbolizing man's spiritual nature. In Satanism the pentagram is also used, but since Satanism represents the carnal instincts of man, or the opposite of spiritual nature, the pentagram is inverted to perfectly accomodate the head of the goat - its horns, representing duality, thrust upwards in defiance; the other three points inverted, or the trinity denied. The Hebraic figures around the outer circle of the symbol which stem from the magical teachings of the Kabala, spell out "Leviathan", the serpent of the watery abyss, and identified with Satan. These figures correspond to the five points of the inverted star.

The symbol of Baphomet is placed on the wall above the altar.


CANDLES

The candles used in Satanic ritual represent the light of Lucifer - the bearer of light, enlightenment, the living flame, burning desire, and the Flames of the Pit.

Only black and white candles are to be used in Satanic ritual. Never use more than one white candle; but as many black candles as are required to illuminate the ritual chamber may be used. At least one black candle is placed to the left of the altar, representing the Powers of Darkness and the left-hand path. Other black candles are placed where needed for illumination. One white candle is placed to the right of the altar, representing the hypocrisy of white light "magicians" and the followers of the right-hand path. No other light source is to be used.

Black candles are used for power and success for the participants of the ritual, and are used to consume the parchments on which blessings requested by the ritual participants are written. The white candle is used for destruction of enemies. Parchments upon which curses are written are burned in the flame of the white candle.


BELL

The shattering effect of the bell is used to mark both the beginning and the end of the ritual. The priest rings the bell nine times, turning counter clockwise and directing the tolling towards the four cardinal points of the compass. This is done once at the beginning of the ritual to clear and purify the air of all external sounds, and once again at the end of the ritual to intensify the working and act as a pollutionary indicating finality.

The tonal quality of the bell used should be loud and penetrating, rather than soft and tinkling.


CHALICE

In Satanic ritual the chalice or goblet used represents the Chalice of Ecstasy. Ideally, the chalice should be made of silver, but if a silver chalice can not be obtained, one made from another metal, glass, or crockery may be used - anything but gold. Gold has always been associated with white-light religions and the Heavenly Realm.

The chalice is to be drunk from first by the priest, then by one assistant. In private rituals the person performing the ceremony drains the chalice.


ELIXIR

The stimulating fluid or Elixir of Life used by the Pagans has been corrupted into sacramental wine by the Christian faith. Originally, the liquor used in Pagan rituals was drunk to relax and intensify the emotions of those involved in the ceremony. Satanism does not sacrifice its god, as do other religions. The Satanist practices no such form of symbolic cannibalism, and returns the sacramental wine used by the Christians to its original purpose - that of stimulating the emotions necessary to Satanic ritual. Wine itself need not be used - whatever drink is most stimulating and pleasing to the palate is in order.

The Elixir of Life is to be drunk from the Chalice of Ecstasy, as indicated above, immediately following the Invocation to Satan.


SWORD

The Sword of Power is symbolic of aggressive force, and acts as an extension and intensifier of the arm with which the priest uses to gesture and point. A parallel to this is the pointing stick or blasting wand used in other forms of magical ritual.

The sword is held by the priest and is used to point towards the symbol of Baphomet during the Invocation to Satan. It is also used, as indicated in Steps of Ritual, when calling forth the four Princes of Hell. The priest thrusts the point of the sword through the parchment containing the message or request after it has been read aloud; it is then used to hold the parchment while introduced into the candle flame. While hearing the requests of other participants, and while repeating same, the priest places the sword atop their heads (in traditional "knighting" fashion).

For private rituals, if a sword cannot be obtained, a long knife, cane, or similar staff may be used.


PHALLUS

The phallus is a Pagan fertility symbol which represents generation, virility, and aggresion. This is yet another device which has been blasphemously converted to fit the guild-ridden ceremonies of Christianity. The phallus is a non-hypocritical version of the aspergillim, or "holy water sprinkler" used in Catholicism - quite a metamorphosis of the common penis!

The phallus is held in both hands of one of the priest's assistants, and methodically shaken twice towards each cardinal point of the compass, for the benediction of the house.

Any phallic symbol may be used. If none is obtainable one may be made from plaster, wood, clay, wax, etc. The phallus is necessary only in organized group rituals.


GONG

The gong is used to call upon the forces of Darkness. It is to be struck once after the participants have repeated the priest's words, "Hail Satan!". A gong is necessary only in organized group rituals. For the best tonal quality a concert gong is preferred, but if one cannot be obtained any gong with a full, rich tone may be used.


PARCHMENT

Parchment is used because its organic properties are compatible with the elements of nature. In keeping with the Satanic views on sacrifice, the parchment used would be made from the skin of a sheep which was, by necessity, killed for food. An animal is never slaughtered for the purpose of using all or a part of that animal in a Satanic ritual. If commerical parchment which has been made from already slaughtered sheep cannot be obtained, plain paper may be substituted.

The parchment is the means by which the written message or request can be consumed by the candle flame and sent out into the ether. The request is written on parchment or paper, read aloud by the priest, and then burned in the flame of either the black or white candle - whichever is appropriate for the particular request. Before the ritual begins curses are placed to the right of the priest, and charms or blessings are placed to the left of him.



(WATER) THE BOOK OF LEVIATHAN



THE RAGING SEA

Despite all non-verbalists' protests to the contrary, soaring heights of emotional ecstasy or raging pangs of anguish can be attained through verbal communication. If the magical ceremony is to employ all sensory awarenesses, then the proper sounds must be invoked. It is certainly true that "actons speak louder than words", but words become as monuments to thoughts.

Perhaps the most noticeable shortcoming in the printed magical conjurations of the past is the lack of emotion developed upon the reciting of them. An old wizard known to the author, who was once employing a self-composed invocation of great personal meaning in the light of his magical desires, ran out of words just as his ritual was moments short of its successful culmination. Aware of the necessity of keeping his emotional response generating, he quickly adlibbed the first emotion-provoking words that came to mind - a few stanzas of a poem by Rudyard Kipling! Thus, with this final burst of glory-charged adrenalin, was he able to finalize an effective working!

The invocations which follow are designed to serve as proclamations of certainty, not whining apprehension. For this reason they are devoid of shallow offerings-up and hollow charities. Leviathan, the great Dragon from the Watery Abyss, roars forth as the surging sea, and these invocations are his tribunals.



INVOCATION TO SATAN


In nomine Dei nostri Satanas Luciferi excelsi!


In the name of Satan, the Ruler of the earth, the King of the world, I command the forces of Darkness to bestow their Infernal power upon me!

Open wide the gates of Hell and come forth from the abyss to greet me as your brother (sister) and friend!

Grant me the indulgences of which I speak!

I have taken thy name as a part of myself! I live as the beasts of the field, rejoicing in the fleshly life! I favor the just and curse the rotten!

By all the Gods of the Pit, I command that these things of which I speak shall come to pass!

Come forth and answer to your names by manifesting my desires!



OH HEAR THE NAMES: THE INFERNAL NAMES

The Infernal names are listed here in alphabetical order purely to simplify referral to them.

When calling the names, all of them may be recited, or a given number of those most significant to the respective working may be chosen.

Whether all or only some of the names are called, they must be taken out of the rigidly organized form in which they are listed here and arranged in a phonetically effective roster.



Abaddon Euronymous O-Yama

Adramelech Fenriz Pan

Ahpuch Gorgo Pluto

Ahriman Haborym Proserpine

Amon Hecate Pwcca

Apollyn Ishtar Rimmon

Asmodeus Kali Sabazios

Astaroth Lilith Sammael

Azazel Loki Samnu

Baalberith Mammon Sedit

Balaam Mania Sekhmet

Baphomet Mantus Set

Bast Marduk Shaitan

Beelzebub Mastema Shamad

Behemoth Melek Taus Shiva

Beherit Mephistopheles Supay

Bile Metztli T'an-mo

Chemosh Mictian Tchort

Cimeries Midgard Tezcatlipoca

Coyote Milcom Thamuz

Dagon Moloch Thoth

Damballa Mormo Tunrida

Demogorgon Naamah Typhon

Diabolus Nergal Yaotzin

Dracula Nihasa Yen-lo-Wang

Emma-O Nija



INVOCATION EMPLOYED TOWARDS THE CONJURATION OF LUST

COME forth, Oh great spawn of the abyss and make thy presence manifest. I have set my thoughts upon the blazing pinnacle which glows with the chosen lust of the moments of increase and grows fervent in the turgid swell.

Send forth that messenger of voluptuous delights, and let these obscene vistas of my dark desires take form in future deeds and doings.

From the sixth tower of Satan there shall come a sign which joineth with those saltes within, and as such will move the body of the flesh of my summoning.

I have gathered forth my symbols and prepare my garnishings of the is to be, and the image of my creation lurketh as a seething basilisk awaiting his release.

The vision shall become as reality and through the nourishment that my sacrifice giveth, the angles of the first dimension shall become the substance of the third.

Go out into the void of night (light of day) and pierce that mind that respondeth with thoughts which leadeth to paths of lewd abandon.

(Male) My rod is athrust! The penetrating force of my venom shall shatter the sanctity of that mind which is barren of lust; and as the seed falleth, so shall its vapours be spread within that reeling brain benumbing it to helplessness according to my will! In the name of the great god Pan, may my secret thoughts be marshalled into the movements of the flesh of that which I desire!

Shemhamforash! Hail Satan!

(Female) My loins are aflame! The dripping of the nectar from my eager cleft shall act as pollen to that slumbering brain, and the mind that feels not lust shall on a sudden reel with crazed impulse. And when my mighty surge is spent, new wanderings shall begin; and that flesh which I desire shall come to me. In the names of the great harlot of Babylon, and of Lilith, and of Hecate, may my lust be fulfilled!

Shemhamforash! Hail Satan!



INVOCATION EMPLOYED TOWARDS THE CONJURATION OF DESTRUCTION

BEHOLD! The mighty voices of my vengeance smash the stillness of the air and stand as monoliths of wrath upon a plain of writhing serpents. I am become as a monstrous machine of annihilation to the festering fragments of the body of he (she) who would detain me.

It repenteth me not that my summons doth ride upon the blasting winds which multiply the sting of my bitterness; And great black slimy shapes shall rise from brackish pits and vomit forth their pustulence into his (her) puny brain.

I call upon the messengers of doom to slash with grim delight this victim I hath chosen. Silent is that voiceless bird that feeds upon the brain-pulp of him (her) who hath tormented me, and the agony of the is to be shall sustain itself in shrieks of pain, only to serve as signals of warning to those who would resent my being.

Oh come forth in the name of Abaddon and destroy him (her) whose name I giveth as a sign.

Oh great brothers of the night, thou who makest my place of comfort, who rideth out upon the hot winds of Hell, who dwelleth in the devil's fane; Move and appear! Present yourselves to him (her) who sustaineth the rottenness of the mind that moves the gibbering mouth that mocks the just and strong!; rend that gaggling tongue and close his (her) throat, Oh Kali! Pierce his (her) lungs with the stings of scorpions, Oh Sekhmet! Plunge his (her) substance into the dismal void, Oh mighty Dagon!

I thrust aloft the bifid barb of Hell and on its tines resplendently impaled my sacrifice through vengeance rests!

Shemhamforash! Hail Satan!



INVOCATION EMPLOYED TOWARDS THE CONJURATION OF COMPASSION

WITH the anger of anguish and the wrath of the stifled, I pour forth my voices, wrapped in rolling thunder, that you may hear!

Oh great lurkers in the darkness, oh guardians of the way, oh minions of the might of Thoth! Move and appear! Present yourselves to us in your benign power, in behalf of one who believes and is stricken with torment.

Isolate him (her) in the bulwark of your protection, for he (she) is undeserving of anguish and desires it not.

Let that which bears against him (her) be rendered powerless and devoid of substance.

Succor him (her) through fire and water, earth and air, to regain what he (she) has lost.

Strengthen with fire the marrow of our friend and companion, our comrade of the Left-Hand Path.

Through the power of Satan let the earth and its pleasures re-enter his (her) being.

Allow his (her) vital saltes to flow unhampered, that he (she) may savor the carnal nectars of his (her) future desires.

Strike dumb his (her) adversary, formed or formless, that he (she) may emerge joyful and strong from that which afflicts him (her).

Allow no misfortune to allay his (her) path, for he (she) is of us, and therefore to be cherished.

Restore him (her) to power, to joy, to unending dominion over the reverses that have beset him (her).

Build around and within him (her) the exultant radiance that will herald his (her) emergence from the stagnant morass which engulfs him (her).

This we command, in the name of Satan, whose mercies flourish and whose sustenance will prevail!

As Satan reigns so shall his (her) own whose name is as this sound: (name) is the vessel whose flesh is as the earth; life everlasting, world without end!

Shemhamforash! Hail Satan!



INVOCATION EMPLOYED TOWARDS THE CONJURATION OF COMPASSION

WITH the anger of anguish and the wrath of the stifled, I pour forth my voices, wrapped in rolling thunder, that you may hear!

Oh great lurkers in the darkness, oh guardians of the way, oh minions of the might of Thoth! Move and appear! Present yourselves to us in your benign power, in behalf of one who believes and is stricken with torment.

Isolate him (her) in the bulwark of your protection, for he (she) is undeserving of anguish and desires it not.

Let that which bears against him (her) be rendered powerless and devoid of substance.

Succor him (her) through fire and water, earth and air, to regain what he (she) has lost.

Strengthen with fire the marrow of our friend and companion, our comrade of the Left-Hand Path.

Through the power of Satan let the earth and its pleasures re-enter his (her) being.

Allow his (her) vital saltes to flow unhampered, that he (she) may savor the carnal nectars of his (her) future desires.

Strike dumb his (her) adversary, formed or formless, that he (she) may emerge joyful and strong from that which afflicts him (her).

Allow no misfortune to allay his (her) path, for he (she) is of us, and therefore to be cherished.

Restore him (her) to power, to joy, to unending dominion over the reverses that have beset him (her).

Build around and within him (her) the exultant radiance that will herald his (her) emergence from the stagnant morass which engulfs him (her).

This we command, in the name of Satan, whose mercies flourish and whose sustenance will prevail!

As Satan reigns so shall his (her) own whose name is as this sound: (name) is the vessel whose flesh is as the earth; life everlasting, world without end!

Shemhamforash! Hail Satan!



INVOCATION EMPLOYED TOWARDS THE CONJURATION OF COMPASSION

WITH the anger of anguish and the wrath of the stifled, I pour forth my voices, wrapped in rolling thunder, that you may hear!

Oh great lurkers in the darkness, oh guardians of the way, oh minions of the might of Thoth! Move and appear! Present yourselves to us in your benign power, in behalf of one who believes and is stricken with torment.

Isolate him (her) in the bulwark of your protection, for he (she) is undeserving of anguish and desires it not.

Let that which bears against him (her) be rendered powerless and devoid of substance.

Succor him (her) through fire and water, earth and air, to regain what he (she) has lost.

Strengthen with fire the marrow of our friend and companion, our comrade of the Left-Hand Path.

Through the power of Satan let the earth and its pleasures re-enter his (her) being.

Allow his (her) vital saltes to flow unhampered, that he (she) may savor the carnal nectars of his (her) future desires.

Strike dumb his (her) adversary, formed or formless, that he (she) may emerge joyful and strong from that which afflicts him (her).

Allow no misfortune to allay his (her) path, for he (she) is of us, and therefore to be cherished.

Restore him (her) to power, to joy, to unending dominion over the reverses that have beset him (her).

Build around and within him (her) the exultant radiance that will herald his (her) emergence from the stagnant morass which engulfs him (her).

This we command, in the name of Satan, whose mercies flourish and whose sustenance will prevail!

As Satan reigns so shall his (her) own whose name is as this sound: (name) is the vessel whose flesh is as the earth; life everlasting, world without end!

Shemhamforash! Hail Satan!



INVOCATION EMPLOYED TOWARDS THE CONJURATION OF COMPASSION

WITH the anger of anguish and the wrath of the stifled, I pour forth my voices, wrapped in rolling thunder, that you may hear!

Oh great lurkers in the darkness, oh guardians of the way, oh minions of the might of Thoth! Move and appear! Present yourselves to us in your benign power, in behalf of one who believes and is stricken with torment.

Isolate him (her) in the bulwark of your protection, for he (she) is undeserving of anguish and desires it not.

Let that which bears against him (her) be rendered powerless and devoid of substance.

Succor him (her) through fire and water, earth and air, to regain what he (she) has lost.

Strengthen with fire the marrow of our friend and companion, our comrade of the Left-Hand Path.

Through the power of Satan let the earth and its pleasures re-enter his (her) being.

Allow his (her) vital saltes to flow unhampered, that he (she) may savor the carnal nectars of his (her) future desires.

Strike dumb his (her) adversary, formed or formless, that he (she) may emerge joyful and strong from that which afflicts him (her).

Allow no misfortune to allay his (her) path, for he (she) is of us, and therefore to be cherished.

Restore him (her) to power, to joy, to unending dominion over the reverses that have beset him (her).

Build around and within him (her) the exultant radiance that will herald his (her) emergence from the stagnant morass which engulfs him (her).

This we command, in the name of Satan, whose mercies flourish and whose sustenance will prevail!

As Satan reigns so shall his (her) own whose name is as this sound: (name) is the vessel whose flesh is as the earth; life everlasting, world without end!

Shemhamforash! Hail Satan!



THE ENOCHIAN LANGUAGE AND THE ENOCHIAN KEYS

THE magical language used in Satanic ritual is Enochian, a language thought to be older than Sanskrit, with a sound grammatical and syntactical bases. It resembles Arabic in some sounds and Hebrew and Latin in others. It first appeared in print in 1659 in a biography of John Dee, the famous Sixteenth Century seer and court astrologer. This work, by Meric Casaubon, describes the occultist Dee's activities with his associate, Edward Kelly, in the art of scrying or crystal gazing.

Instead of the usual crystal ball, Kelly, who was the gazer, used a many-faceted trapezohedron. The "angels" referred to in Kelly's first revelation of the Enochian Keys, obtained through the windows of the crystal, are only "angels" because occultists to this day have lain ill with metaphysical constipation. Now the crystal clears, and the "angels" are seen as "angles" and the windows to the fourth dimension are thrown open - and to the frightened, the Gates of Hell.

I have presented my translation of the following calls with an archaic but Satanically correct unvarnishing of the translation employed by the Order of the Golden Dawn in the late Nineteenth Century. In Enochian the meaning of the words, combined with the quality of the words, unite to create a pattern of sound which can cause tremendous reaction in the atmosphere. The barbaric tonal qualities of this language give it a truly magical effect which cannot be described.

For many years the Enochian Keys, or Calls, have been shrouded in secrecy. The few printings that have existed completely eliminate the correct wording, as the proper translation has been disguised through the use of euphemisms, and only designed to throw the inept magician and/or would-be inquisitor off the track. Apocryphal as they have become (and who can tell what grim reality provokes the "fantasy"), the Enochian Calls are the Satanic paeans of faith. Dispensing with such once-pragmatic whitewashing in terms such as "holy" and "angelic", and arbitrarily chosen groups of numbers, the purpose of which were only to act as substitutes for "blasphemous" words - here, then, are the TRUE Enochian Calls, as received from an unknown hand. [* The unexpurgated version, translated by Anton LaVey.]


THE FIRST KEY

The first Enochian Key represents an initial proclamation from Satan, stating the inception of the laws of temporal theologies and of the lasting power which resides in those bold enough to recognize earthly beginnings and absolutes.


(Enochian)

Ol sonuf vaoresaji, gohu IAD Balata, elanusaha caelazod: sobrazod-ol Roray i ta nazodapesad, od comemahe ta nobeloha zodien; soba tahil ginonupe pereje aladi, das vaurebes obolehe giresam. Casarem ohorela caba Pire: das zodonurenusagi cab: erem Iadanahe. Pilahe farezodem zodenurezoda adana gono Iadapiel das home-tohe: soba ipame lu ipamis: das sobolo vepe zodomeda poamal, od bogira aai ta piape Piamoel od Vaoan! Zodacare, eca, od zodameranu! odo cicale Qaa; zodoreje, lape zodiredo Noco Mada, hoathahe Saitan!


(English)

I reign over thee, saith the Lord of the Earth, in power exalted above and below, in whose hands the sun is a glittering sword and the moon a through-thrusting fire, who measureth your garments in the midst of my vestures, and trusseth you up as the palms of my hands, and brighten your vestments with Infernal light.

I made ye a law to govern the holy ones, and delivered a rod with wisdom supreme. You lifted your voices and swore your allegiance to Him that liveth triumphant, whose beginning is not, nor end cannot be, which shineth as a flame in the midst of your palaces, and reigneth amongst you as the balance of life!

Move therefore, and appear! Open the mysteries of your creation! Be friendly unto me, for I am the same! - the true worshipper of the highest and ineffable King of Hell!


THE SECOND KEY

In order to pay homage to the very lusts which sustain the continuance of life, itself, The Second Enochian Key extends this recognition of our earthly heritage unto a talisman of power.


(Enochian)

Adagita vau-pa-ahe zodonugonu fa-a-ipe salada! Vi-i-vau el! Sobame ial-pereji i-zoda-zodazod pi-adapehe casarema aberameji ta ta-labo paracaleda qo-ta lores-el-qo turebesa ooge balatohe! Giui cahisa lusada oreri od micalapape cahisa bia ozodonugonu! lape noanu tarofe coresa tage o-quo maninu IA-I-DON. Torezodu! gohe-el, zodacare eca ca-no-quoda! zodameranu micalazodo od ozadazodame vaurelar; lape zodir IOIAD!


(English)

Can the wings of the winds hear your voices of wonder?; O you!, the great spawn of the worms of the Earth!, whom the Hell fire frames in the depth of my jaws!, whom I have prepared as cups for a wedding or as flowers regaling the chambers of lust!

Stronger are your feet than the barren stone! Mightier are your voices than the manifold winds! For you are become as a building such as is not, save in the mind of the All-Powerful manifestation of Satan!

Arise!, saith the First! Move therefore unto his servants! Show yourselves in power, and make me a strong seer-of-things, for I am of Him that liveth forever!


THE THIRD KEY

The Third Enochian Key establishes the leadership of the earth upon the hands of those great Satanic magicians who throughout the successive ages have held dominion over the peoples of the world.


(Enochian)

Micama! goho Pe-IAD! zodir com-selahe azodien biabe os-lon-dohe. Norezodacahisa otahila Gigipahe; vaunid-el-cahisa ta-pu-ime qo-mos-pelehe telocahe; qui-i-inu toltoregi cahisa i cahisaji em ozodien; dasata beregida od torezodul! Ili e-Ol balazodareji, od aala tahilanu-os netaabe: daluga vaomesareji elonusa cape-mi-ali varoesa cala homila; cocasabe fafenu izodizodope, od miinoagi de ginetaabe: vaunu na-na-e-el: panupire malapireji caosaji. Pilada noanu vaunalahe balata od-vaoan. Do-o-i-ape mada: goholore, gohus, amiranu! Micama! Yehusozod ca-ca-com, od do-o-a-inu noari micaolazoda a-ai-om. Casarameji gohia: Zodacare! Vaunigilaji! od im-ua-mar pugo pelapeli Ananael Qo-a-an.


(English)

Behold!, saith Satan, I am a circle on whose hands stand the Twelve Kingdoms. Six are the seats of living breath, the rest are as sharp as sickles, or the Horns of Death. Therein the creatures of Earth are and are not, except in mine own hands which sleep and shall rise!

In the first I made ye stewards and placed ye in the Twelve seats of government, giving unto every one of you power successively over the Nine true ages of time, so that from the highest vessels and the corners of your governments you might work my power, pouring down the fires of life and increase continually on the Earth. Thus you are become the skirts of justice and truth. In Satan's name, rise up! Show yourselves! Behold!, his mercies flourish, and his name is become mighty among us. In whom we say: Move!, Ascend!, and apply yourselves unto us as the partakers of His secret wisdom in your creation!


THE FOURTH KEY

The Fourth Enochian Key refers to the cycling of the ages of time.


(Enochian)

Otahil elasadi babaje, od dorepaha gohol: gi-cahisaje auauago coremepe peda, dasonuf vi-vau-di-vau? Casaremi oeli meapeme sobame agi coremepo carep-el: casaremeji caro-o-dazodi cahisa od vaugeji; dasata ca-pi-mali cahisa ca-pi-ma-on: od elonusahinu cahisa ta el-o calaa. Torezodu nor-quasahi od fe-caosaga: Bagile zodir e-na-IAD: das iod apila! Do-o-a-ipe quo-A-AL, zodacare! Zodameranu obelisonugi resat-el aaf nor-mo-lapi!


(English)

I have set my feet in the South, and have looked about me, saying: Are not the thunders of increase those which reign in the second angle?

Under whom I have placed those whom none hath yet numbered, but One; in whom the second beginnings of things are and wax strong, successively adding the numbers of time, and their powers doth stand as the first of the nine!

Arise!, you sons of pleasure, and visit the Earth; for I am the Lord, your God, which is and liveth forever!

In the name of Satan, Move!, and show yourselves as pleasant deliverers, that you may praise Him among the sons of men!


THE FIFTH KEY

The Fifth Enochian Key affirms the Satanic placing of traditional priests and wizards upon the earth for the purpose of misdirection.


(Enochian)

Sapahe zodimii du-i-be, od noasa ta qu-a-nis, adarocahe dorepehal caosagi od faonutas peripesol ta-be-liore. Casareme A-me-ipezodi na-zodaretahe afa; od dalugare zodizodope zodelida caosaji tol-toregi; od zod-cahisa esiasacahe El ta-vi-vau; od iao-d tahilada das hubare pe-o-al; soba coremefa cahisa ta Ela Vaulasa od Quo-Co-Casabe. Eca niisa od darebesa quo-a-asa: fetahe-ar-ezodi od beliora: ia-ial eda-nasa cicalesa; bagile Ge-iad I-el!


(English)

The mighty sounds have entered into the third angle and are become as seedlings of folly, smiling with contempt upon the Earth, and dwelling in the brightness of the Heaven as continual comforters to the destroyers of self.

Unto whom I fastened the pillars of gladness, the lords of the righteous, and gave them vessels to water the earth with her creatures. They are the brothers of the First and the Second, and the beginning of their own seats which are garnished with myriad ever-burning lamps, whose numbers are as the First, the ends, and the contents of time!

Therefore, come ye and obey your creation. Visit us in peace and comfort. Conclude us receivers of your mysteries; for why? Our Lord and Master is the All-One!


THE SIXTH KEY

The Sixth Enochian Key establishes the structure and form of that which has become the Order of the Trapezoid and Church of Satan.


(Enochian)

Gahe sa-div cahisa em, micalazoda Pil-zodinu, sobam El haraji mir babalonu od obeloce samevelaji, dalagare malapereji ar-caosaji od acame canale, sobola zodare fa-beliareda caosaji od cahisa aneta-na miame ta Viv od Da. Daresare Sol-petahe-bienu. Be-ri-ta od zodacame ji-mi-calazodo: sob-ha-atahe tarianu luia-he od ecarinu MADA Qu-a-a-on!


(English)

The spirits of the fourth angle are Nine, mighty in the trapezoid, whom the first hath formed, a torment to the wretched and a garland to the wicked; giving unto them fiery darts to vanne the earth, and Nine continual workmen whose courses visit with comfort the Earth, and are in government and continuance as the Second and Third.

Therefore, harken unto my voice! I have talked of you, and I move you in power and presence, whose works shall be a song of honor, and the praise of your God in your creation!


THE SEVENTH KEY

The Seventh Enochian Key is used to invoke lust, pay homage to glamor, and rejoice in the delights of the flesh.


(Enochian)

Ra-asa isalamanu para-di-zoda oe-cari-mi aao iala-pire-gahe Qui-inu. Enai butamonu od inoasa ni pa-ra-diala. Casaremeji ujeare cahirelanu, od zodonace lucifatianu, caresa ta vavale-zodirenu tol-hami. Soba lonudohe od nuame cahisa ta Da o Desa vo-me-dea od pi-beliare itahila rita od miame ca-ni-quola rita! Zodacare! Zodameranu! Iecarimi Quo-a-dahe od I-mica-ol-zododa aaiome. Bajirele papenore idalugama elonusahi-od umapelifa vau-ge-ji Bijil - IAD!


(English)

The East is a house of harlots singing praises among the flames of the first glory wherein the Dark Lord hath opened His mouth; and they are become as living dwellings in whom the strength of man rejoiceth; and they are appareled with ornaments of brightness, such as work wonders on all creatures. Whose kingdoms and continuance are as the Third and Fourth, strong towers and places of comfort, the seats of pleasure and continuance. O ye servants of pleasure, Move!, Appear!, sing praises unto the Earth and be mighty amongst us. For that to this remembrance is given power, and our strength waxeth strong in our comforter.


THE EIGHTH KEY

The Eighth Enochian Key refers to the emergence of the Satanic Age.


(Enochian)

Bazodemelo i ta pi-ripesonu olanu Na-zodavabebe ox. Casaremeji varanu cahisa vaugeji asa berameji balatoha: goho IAD. Soba miame tarianu ta lolacis Abaivoninu od azodiajiere riore. Irejila cahisa da das pa-aox busada Caosago, das cahisa od ipuranu telocahe cacureji o-isalamahe lonucaho od Vovina carebafe? NIISO! bagile avavago gohon. NIISO! bagile mamao siasionu, od mabezoda IAD oi asa-momare poilape. NIIASA! Zodameranu ciaosi caosago od belioresa od coresi ta beramiji.


(English)

The midday of the first is as the third indulgence made of hyacinthine pillars, in whom the elders are become strong, which I have prepared for mine own justice, saith Satan, whose long continuance shall be as bucklers to Leviathan. How many are there which remain in the glory of the earth, which are, and shall not see death until the house falls and the dragon doth sink? Rejoice!, for the crowns of the temple and the robe of Him that is, was, and shall be crowned are no longer divided! Come forth!, Appear!, to the terror of the Earth, and to the comfort of such as are prepared!


THE NINTH KEY

The Ninth Enochian Key warns of the use of substances, devices or pharmaceuticals which might lead to the delusion and subsequent enslavement of the master. A protection against false values.


(Enochian)

Micaoli beranusaji perejela napeta ialapore, das barinu efafaje Pe vaunupeho olani od obezoda, soba-ca upaahe cahisa tatanu od tarananu balie, alare busada so-bolunu od cahisa hoel-qo ca-no-quodi cial. Vaunesa aladonu mom caosago ta iasa olalore gianai limelala. Amema cahisa sobra madarida zod cahisa! Ooa moanu cahisa avini darilapi caosajinu: od butamoni pareme zodumebi canilu. Dazodisa etahamezoda cahisa dao, od mireka ozodola cahisa pidiai Colalala. Ul ci ninu a sobame ucime. Bajile? IAD BALATOHE cahirelanu pare! NIISO! od upe ofafafe; bajile a-cocasahe icoresaka a uniji beliore.


(English)

A mighty guard of fire with two-edged swords flaming (which contain the vials of delusion, whose wings are of wormwood and of the marrow of salt), have set their feet in the West, and are measured with their ministers. These gather up the moss of the Earth, as the rich man doth his treasure. Cursed are they whose iniquities they are! In their eyes are millstones greater than the Earth, and from their mouths run seas of blood. Their brains are covered with diamonds, and upon their heads are marble stones. Happy is he on whom they frown not. For Why? The Lord of Righteousness rejoiceth in them! Come away, and leave your vials, for the time is such as requireth comfort!


THE TENTH KEY

The Tenth Enochian Key creates rampant wrath and produces violence. Dangerous to employ unless one has learnt to safeguard his own immunity; a random lightning bolt!


(Enochian)

Coraxo cahisa coremepe, od belanusa Lucala azodiazodore paebe Soba iisononu cahisa uirequo ope copehanu od racalire maasi bajile caosagi; das yalaponu dosiji od basajime; od ox ex dazodisa siatarisa od salaberoxa cynuxire faboanu. Vaunala cahisa conusata das daox cocasa o Oanio yore vohima ol jizod-yazoda od eoresa cocasaji pelosi molui das pajeipe, laraji same darolanu matorebe cocasaji emena. El pataralaxa yolaci matabe nomiji mononusa olora jinayo anujelareda. Ohyo! ohyo! noibe Ohyo! caosagonu! Bajile madarida i zodirope cahiso darisapa! NIISO! caripe ipe nidali!


(English)

The thunders of wrath doth slumber in the North, in the likeness of an oak whose branches are dung-filled nests of lamentation and weeping laid up for the Earth, which burn night and day and vomit out the heads of scorpions and live sulphur mingled with poison. These be the thunders that in an instant roar with a hundred mighty earthquakes and a thousand as many surges, which rest not, nor know any time here. One rock bringeth forth a thousand, even as the heart of man doth his thoughts. Woe! Woe!, Yea!, woe be to the Earth, for her inquity is, was, and shall be great. Come away! But not your mighty sounds!


THE ELEVENTH KEY

The Eleventh Enochian Key is used to herald the coming of the dead and establish a sustenance beyond the grave. To bind to the earth. A funerary call.


(Enochian)

Oxiayala holado, od zodirome O coraxo das zodiladare raasyo. Od vabezodire cameliaxa od bahala: NIISO! salamanu telocahe! Casaremanu hoel-qo, od ti ta zod cahisa soba coremefa i ga. NIISA! bagile aberameji nonuзape. Zodacare eca od Zodameranu! odo cicale Qaa! Zodoreje, lape zodiredo Noco Mada, hoathahe Saitan!


(English)

The mighty throne growled and there were five thunders that flew into the East. And the eagle spake and cried aloud: Come away from the house of death! And they gathered themselves together and became those of whom it measured, and they are the deathless ones who ride the whirlwinds. Come away! For I have prepared a place for you. Move therefore, and show yourselves! Unveil the mysteries of your creation. Be friendly unto me for I am your God, the true worshipper of the flesh that liveth forever!


THE TWELFTH KEY

The Twelfth Enochian Key is used to vent one's displeasure towards man's need for misery, and bring forth torment and conflict to the harbingers of woe.


(Enochian)

Nonuci dasonuf Babaje od cahisa ob hubaio tibibipe? alalare ataraahe od ef! Darix fafenu mianu ar Enayo ovof! Soba dooainu aai i VONUPEHE. Zodacare, gohusa, od Zodameranu. Odo cicale Qaa! Zodoreje, lape zodiredo Noco Mada, hoathahe Saitan!


(English)

O ye that range in the South and are the lanterns of sorrow, buckle your armor and visit us! Bring forth the legions of the army of Hell, that the Lord of the Abyss may be magnified, whose name amongst ye is Wrath! Move therefore, and appear! Open the mysteries of your creation! Be friendly unto me, for I am the same!, the true worshipper of the highest and ineffable King of Hell!


THE THIRTEENTH KEY

The Thirteenth Enochian Key is used to make the sterile lustful and vex those who would deny the pleasures of sex.


(Enochian)

Napeai Babajehe das berinu vax ooaona larinuji vonupehe doalime: conisa olalogi oresaha das cahisa afefa. Micama isaro Mada od Lonu-sahi-toxa, das ivaumeda aai Jirosabe. Zodacare od Zodameranu. Odo cicale Qaa! Zodoreje, lape zodiredo Noco Mada, hoathahe Saitan!


(English)

O ye swords of the South, which have eyes to stir up the wrath of sin, making men drunken which are empty; Behold! the promise of Satan and His power, which is called amongst ye a bitter sting! Move and appear! Unveil the mysteries of your creation! For I am the servant of the same, your God, the true worshipper of the highest and ineffable King of Hell!


THE FOURTEENTH KEY

The Fourteenth Enocian Key is a call for vengeance and the manifestation of justice.


(Enochian)

Noroni bajihie pasahasa Oiada! das tarinuta mireca ol tahila dodasa tolahame caosago homida: das berinu orocahe quare: Micama! Bial! Oiad; aisaro toxa das ivame aai Balatima. Zodacare od Zodameranu! Od cicale Qaa! Zodoreje, lape zodiredo Noco Mada, hoathahe Saitan!


(English)

O ye sons and daughters of mildewed minds, that sit in judgement of the inquities wrought upon me - Behold! the voice of Satan; the promise of Him who is called amongst ye the accuser and supreme tribune! Move therefore, and appear! Open the mysteries of your creation! Be friendly unto me, for I am the same!, the true worshipper of the highest and ineffable King of Hell!


THE FIFTEENTH KEY

The Fifteenth Enochian Key is a resolution of acceptance and understanding of the masters whose duty lies in administering to the seekers after spiritual gods.


(Enochian)

Ilasa! tabaanu li-El pereta, casaremanu upaahi cahisa dareji; das oado caosaji oresacore: das omaxa monasaзi Baeouibe od emerajisa Iaiadix. Zodacare od Zodameranu! Odo cicale Qaa. Zodoreje, lape zodiredo Noco Mada, hoathahe Saitan!


(English)

O thou, the governor of the first flame, under whose wings are the spinners of cobwebs that weave the Earth with dryness; that knowest the great name "righteousness" and the seal of false honor. Move therefore, and appear! Open the mysteries of your creation! Be friendly unto me, for I am the same!, the true worshipper of the highest and ineffable King of Hell!


THE SIXTEENTH KEY

The Sixteenth Enochian Key gives recognition of the wondrous contrasts of the earth, and of the sustenance of these dichotomies.


(Enochian)

Ilasa viviala pereta! Salamanu balata, das acaro odazodi busada, od belioraxa balita: das inusi caosaji lusadanu emoda: das ome od taliobe: darilapa iehe ilasa Mada Zodilodarepe. Zodacare od Zodameranu. Odo cicale Qaa: zodoreje, lape zodiredo Noco Mada, hoathahe Saitan!


(English)

O thou second flame, the house of justice, which hast thy beginnings in glory and shalt comfort the just; which walketh upon the Earth with feet of fire; which understands and separates creatures! Great art thou in the God of stretch-forth-and-conquer. Move therefore, and appear! Open the mysteries of your creation! Be friendly unto me, for I am the same!, the true worshipper of the highest and ineffable King of Hell!


THE SEVENTEENTH KEY

The Seventeenth Enochian Key is used to enlighten the benumbered and destroy through revelation.


(Enochian)

Ilasa dial pereta! soba vaupaahe cahisa nanuba zodixalayo dodasihe od berinuta faxisa hubaro tasataxa yolasa: soba Iad i Vonupehe o Uonupehe: aladonu dax ila od toatare! Zodacare od Zodameranu! Odo cicale Qaa! Zodoreje, lape zodiredo Noco Mada, hoathahe Saitan!


(English)

O thou third flame!, whose wings are thorns to stir up vexation, and who hast myriad living lamps going before thee; whose God is wrath in anger - Gird up thy loins and harken! Move therefore, and appear! Open the mysteries of your creation! Be friendly unto me, for I am the same!, the true worshipper of the highest and ineffable King of Hell!


THE EIGHTEENTH KEY

The Eighteenth Enochian Key opens the gates of Hell and casts up Lucifer and his blessing.


(Enochian)

Ilasa micalazoda olapireta ialpereji beliore: das odo Busadire Oiad ouoaresa caosago: casaremeji Laiada eranu berinutasa cafafame das ivemeda aqoso adoho Moz, od maoffasa. Bolape como belioreta pamebeta. Zodacare od Zodameranu! Odo cicale Qaa. Zodoreje, lape zodiredo Noco Mada, hoathahe Saitan!


(English)

O thou mighty light and burning flame of comfort!, that unveilest the glory of Satan to the center of the Earth; in whom the great secrets of truth have their abiding; that is called in thy kingdom: "strength through joy", and is not to be measured. Be thou a window of comfort unto me. Move therefore, and appear! Open the mysteries of your creation! Be friendly unto me, for I am the same!, the true worshipper of the highest and ineffable King of Hell!


THE NINETEENTH KEY

The Nineteenth Enochian Key is the great sustainer of the natural balance of the earth, the law of thrift, and of the jungle. It lays bare all hypocrisy and the sanctimonious shall become as slaves under it. It brings forth the greatest outpouring of wrath upon the miserable, and lays the foundation of success for the lover of life.


(Enochian)

Madaritza das perifa LIL cahisa micaolazoda saanire caosago od fifisa balzodizodarasa Iaida. Nonuca gohulime: Micama adoianu MADA faoda beliorebe, soba ooaona cahisa luciftias peripesol, das aberaasasa nonucafe netaaibe caosaji od tilabe adapehaheta damepelozoda, tooata nonucafe jimicalazodoma larasada tofejilo marebe yareyo IDOIGO, od torezodulape yaodafe gohola, Caosaga, tabaoreda saanire, od caharisateosa yorepoila tiobela busadire, tilabe noalanu paida oresaba, od dodaremeni zodayolana. Elazodape tilaba paremeji peripesatza, od ta qurelesata booapisa. Lanibame oucaho sayomepe, od caharisateosa ajitolorenu, mireca qo tiobela lela. Tonu paomebeda dizodalamo asa pianu, od caharisateosa aji-la-tore-torenu paracahe a sayomepe. Coredazodizoda dodapala od fifalazoda, lasa manada, od faregita bamesa omaosa. Conisabera od auauotza tonuji oresa; catabela noasami tabejesa leuitahemonuji. Vanucahi omepetilabe oresa! Bahile? Moooabe OL coredazodizoda. El capimao itzomatzipe, od cacocasabe gosaa. Bajilenu pii tianuta a babalanuda, od faoregita teloca uo uime.

Madariatza, torezodu !!! Oadariatza orocaha aboaperi! Tabaori periazoda aretabasa! Adarepanu coresata dobitza! Yolacame periazodi arecoazodiore, od quasabe qotinuji! Ripire paaotzata sagacore! Umela od peredazodare cacareji Aoiveae coremepeta! Torezodu! Zodacare od Zodameranu, asapeta sibesi butamona das surezodasa Tia balatanu. Odo cicale Qaa, od Ozodazodama pelapeli IADANAMADA!


(English)

O ye pleasures which dwell in the first air, ye are mighty in the parts of the Earth, and execute the judgment of the mighty. Unto you it is said: Behold the face of Satan, the beginning of comfort, whose eyes are the brightness of the stars, which provided you for the government of the Earth, and her unspeakable variety; furnishing you a power of understanding to dispose all things according to the providence of Him that sitteth on the Infernal Throne, and rose up in the Beginning saying: The Earth, let her be governed by her parts; and let there be division in her; the glory of her may be always drunken and vexed in itself. Her course, let it run with the fulfillment of lust; and as an handmaiden, let her serve them. One season, let it confound another; and let there be no creature upon or within her the same. All her numbers, let them differ in their qualities; and let there be no creature equal with another. The reasonable creatures of the Earth, and Men, let them vex and weed out one another; and their dwelling places, let them forget their names. The work of Man and his pomp, let them be defaced. His buildings, let them become caves for the beasts of the field! Confound her understanding with darkness! For why? it repenteth me that I have made Man. One while let her be known, and another while a stranger; because she is in the bed of a harlot, and the dwelling place of Lucifer the King.

Open wide the gates of Hell! The lower heavens beneath you, let them serve you! Govern those who govern! Cast down such as fall. Bring forth those that increase, and destroy the rotten. No place, let it remain in one number. Add and diminish until the stars be numbered. Arise! Move! and appear before the covenant of His mouth, which He hath sworn unto us in His justice. Open the mysteries of your creation, and make us partakers of the UNDEFILED WISDOM.


YANKEE ROSE
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cumrobbery said:
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What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.
 
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The format of the White Genocide Manifesto is by calculated intent designed to exclude and ignore the sophistries of establishment sanctioned "authorities." Power systems both religious and secular throughout recorded time have invented and canonized Bishops, Priests, Professors, Historians, Propaganda experts, Word-smiths, Doctors in various alleged disciplines and a host of similar glorified prostitutes, for the specific purpose of befuddling, misleading, controlling and using the masses.

Two well known historical figures who fell out of favor after exhibiting rare candor are Napoleon Bonaparte and Henry Ford. Bonaparte after perusing documents from the Vatican library is reported to have said, "History is a fable." Henry Ford after commissioning a group of scholars to investigate the real powers behind governments made the statement, "History is bunk." An author named Trevanian wrote that "The propaganda of the victors becomes the history of the vanquished." The fact is, all power systems rewrite history and propagandize contemporary events for self-serving purposes.

Dignifying the deceptions of system prostitutes by quotation, debate or by acceding to use of politically sanctioned terminology only legitimizes their harlotry and opens the doors to endless sophistry.

It has long been noted among men of perception that those who have acquired system sanction through so-called "higher education" seem particularly obtuse in accepting circumstances as shown by common sense, and that these "educated" individuals are usually the last to opt out of a corrupt, destructive and tyrannical system. This is so, partially because they have prostituted themselves for personal gain, but also, because higher education is more properly called "advanced brain pollution." The purpose of higher education is to create managers for the masters' empire.

In light of these stated circumstances, the White Genocide Manifesto will not rely on the words of "recognized" authorities or "approved" writings. The Manifesto's statements and conclusions come primarily from three sources: Nature's Laws, common sense and current circumstances. The present power structure's intellectual masturbation specialists will almost certainly react with the usual specious word games, for ophistry is the only recourse when denying fact. For example, when I state that only around 8% of the earth's population is White, I can foresee from past experience the system prostitutes attempting debate on whether the figure should be 9%, or whether modern Greeks are White, or if there even is a White race. They have a semantic arsenal of deception almost without end. It is self-evidently invalid, political rhetoric. The undamentals of the White Genocide Manifesto are absolute Truth in spirit, functional in detail and undeniable by men of good conscience and reasonable mind.

The Manifesto by design and intent uses time honored terminology in deliberate contravention of politically motivated semantic desecration. For centuries the word "gay" referred to a joyous mood, while the word "homosexual" referenced a sad state of affairs in which the natural role of male to female was abandoned in favor of something which denies Nature's intent. For centuries the 3 major races of the world have been called Negroid, Mongoloid and Aryan, (now called Caucasoid, to mean White, so as to include Jews and other Asiatics). The colored races of the world( comprising over 90% of the earth's population and far more when considering the all important demographic statistic of child-bearing age or younger ) are not a minority.

Western civilization is the creation of White man, from indoor plumbing and central heating, to more sophisticated inventions such as symphony orchestras, modern communications and anesthetics.

The addition of a suffix such as "ist" or "ism" does not demonize a word. Just as a Baptist loves and supports his religion, so a Racist loves and supports his race. The preservation of one's own kind being the first and highest Law of Nature, when the existence of one's own race is threatened, then racism becomes a Nature ordained imperative of the highest order. The White Genocide Manifesto does not comply with corruption of language as in the examples given, or to other politically sanctioned but fallacious terminology.

The Manifesto attaches little, if any, weight to the statements of political or religious prostitutes from power systems of this or any other age. The best judgment of intent is derived from actions, results and who benefits. Recognizing that no race commits suicide voluntarily, the Manifesto exposes the racial-religious tribe which now rules over the once White countries and which denies the White race not only White countries, but White schools, White neighborhoods, White organizations and everything necessary for survival as a biological and cultural entity.

Let it be understood that the term "racial integration" is a euphemism for genocide. The inevitable result of racial integration is a percentage of inter-racial matings each year, leading to extinction, as has happened to the White race in numerous areas in the past. As the White remnant is submerged in a tidal wave of five billion coloreds, they will become an extinct species in a relatively short time. This genocide is being accomplished by deliberate design. The author of this Manifesto, his comrades, both in chains and out, and others retaining their powers of reason stand in opposition.

Zionist control of the media, as well as of all essential power points of industry, finance, law and politics in the once White nations is simply fact and is well known by everyone in positions of influence. For those who doubt, the information is available to diligent researchers through such easily accessed sources as a book called the Jewish Who's Who at a local library or an intelligent perusal of readily available biographies. Unceasing and usually spurious wailings about "anti-semitism" will not change facts. Recognizing that it is the nature of sober and reflective men to accept the dictates or direction of existing governmental and religious institutions, it is imperative that the intent of such systems be clearly identified. When the intent, identified above all else by the affect of existing and ruling institutions, is destructive to a people, then the circumstances must be presented to all men of good conscience.

THE WHITE GENOCIDE MANIFESTO

Therefore, we, the aware body of those people identified historically and properly as the Aryan (or White) race, declare the following:

1) All existing governments in the once White political states now deny us hegemony and the exclusive territorial imperatives necessary to our survival as a biological and cultural entity.

2) The inevitable result of racial integration is genocide for the White race through miscegenation. The promotion of miscegenation between White women and colored men is self-evidently a priority in all existing system approved methods of communication.

3) White men who resist genocidal practices against their race are destroyed economically, politically and socially. If they continue to effectively resist they are assassinated or falsely imprisoned.

4) The life of a race is in the wombs of its women, and today approximately 2% of the earth's population is White female of child-bearing age, this being the essential demographic statistic relative to survival.

5) That economic, political and religious systems can be destroyed and resurrected, but the death of our race will be eternal.

6) That the instinct of White men to preserve the beauty of their women and a future for White children on this earth is ordained by Nature and Nature's God.

7) That all Western nations are ruled by a Zionist conspiracy to mix, overrun and exterminate the White race.

8) That America is the world, Zionist police department. America's military and police powers are used to destroy every White racial state or territorial imperative on the globe. Examples are the forced integration of Southern schools by the 101st Airborne using bayonets, the use of clubs by police under Federal edicts to beat and bloody the White mothers of South Boston when they protested the integration and destruction of their neighborhood schools, and the destruction of a White racial state in our ancient European homeland through war and subsequent occupation by colored troops. This is after Germany attempted to perform its historic function as defender of the race, as demonstrated against the invading Moors and Mongols.

9) That the denial of jobs to White men through so-called affirmative action and other nefarious schemes by result decreases White families and our population.

10) That multi-racial sports, entertainment and integration are designed to destroy the senses of uniqueness and value necessary to the survival of our race.

11) That history is being re-written to obscure the accomplishments of our ancestors and credit them to colored races.

12) That Judeo-Christianity is dedicated to the concept of racial leveling the oneness of mankind and, therefore, genocide.

13) That the Zionist occupation governments of America and other Western nations promote the unnatural act of homosexuality, knowing full well the power of the male instinct for sexual union must be directed toward procreation with females of the same race to ensure racial survival.

14) That the Zionist occupation governments of America and other Western nations promote and protect infanticide of healthy White babies, now called abortion, immensely to the detriment of the race.

In light of these and innumerable crimes against the collective White race, as well as the self-evident policy of genocide, we hereby forswear allegiance or support for our executioners' institutions. In obedience to Nature's Laws and recognizing that Nature and her Laws are the work of God, whatever a man's understanding of the Creator might be, and that the highest law is the preservation of one's own kind, we further demand the formation of exclusive White homelands on the North American continent and in Europe. If denied, then we will seek redress in whatever measures are necessary.

Let those who commit treason with the Zionist destroyer, or sit on the fence, be aware. If we are successful in our goal, expressed in the FOURTEEN WORDS:

"We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children,"

...then your treachery will be appropriately rewarded. If not, and the White race goes the way of the dinosaurs, then the last generation of White children, including yours, will pay for your vile complicity at the hands of the colored races who will inherit the world.
 
music game rule #59:
if the game allows you to put your own music in
there will be a ton of videos of people playing "Through the fire and the flames"
because retards think it's the fastest and hardest song in the world
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Ginger Piglet
ZehnBoat said:
music game rule #59:
if the game allows you to put your own music in
there will be a ton of videos of people playing "Through the fire and the flames"
because retards think it's the fastest and hardest song in the world
Click to expand...

I prefer Brocas Helm's "Cry of the Banshee" myself.

Actually... I'm going to listen to that right now.
 
Sunshine
Lunchbox
Playground
Raincoat
Hotdog
Oatmeal
Railroad
Icecream
Bathtub
Pancake
Eardrum
 
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