VirtualExile

Have I ever experienced such a quiet Christmas Eve?  Ah, yes, in 2002.  I deliberately spent Christmas Eve by myself, in my studio apartment in SW DC, because my father had died a month before, and for the first time in my life I was an orphan.  I deliberately chose not to travel for Christmas.  For all of my life I'd spent Christmas Eve with one or both of my parents.  In 2002 I worked a half day, then went to the gym, then to the Safeway for ingredients, then baked cookies for hours.  It was snowing, one of the few white Christmases I've experienced in the DC area.  The next day, Christmas Day, I expected to see local friends.  It became my new tradition, to not travel for Christmas, to see local friends.

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Tonight I cooked dinner for T, and then he went directly to bed.  Quietest Christmas Eve in 18 years.  Usually we have our Christmas Eve Orphan's Party here at the house, and every friend we have who hasn't traveled for the holiday drops by to share drinks, desserts, and board games.  Sometimes the hot tub and/or the fire pit.  Sometimes competitive video games in our Media Cave.

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The following year, 2003, I went to Hampton, Virginia, with KWC to stay with his family.  KWC, my first live-in boyfriend, from the 1990s.  We stayed friends after he broke up with me, after I started fucking around and he fell in love with Eliot.  I still send his parents a Christmas gift every year, in a way they're my substitute parents.  I spent many a night under their roof when I was younger.  Sometimes having sex with KWC after his parents had fallen asleep.

Then in 2004, I was in the middle of moving in with T, having met him that January.  Oh, I was so happy to be moving in with him after living alone for years.  We were still in our honeymoon stage.  He hadn't begun souring on me yet.  The souring happened after we bought this house together, in 2006.  Then he decided I wasn't any good at being a joint homeowner.  But, he'd been the one who pushed us into it before I was ready.  Maybe I never was going to be ready for homeownership.  Then he got so mad at me about so many things, big and small.  I tried so hard to please him and it never worked, so I gave up.  Then we did poly wrong, adding other relationships instead of fixing our own first, trying a triad when we couldn't communicate well with each other.  We never did fix our relationship, although couples counseling got us to a point where we understood each other better, well enough to be mostly-friendly housemates, so long as T wasn't feeling upset about one of his other relationships -- then he'd take out his frustrations on me.  Sometimes I'm shocked we still live together, given the long list of grievances he's collected about me over the past 16 years, and our complete lack of a sex life.  For a few years he was mainly focused on B, while I was mainly focused on K, but ... last year B let his husband move back in, this year K moved away with his boyfriend.

And meanwhile the Pandemic has forced us to spend day and night together, except when I head to the condo for Time to Self.

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Now we have our medium-term plan, to keep the house together for now, to take care of the pets together for now, perhaps until we retire and split up.  After the Vaccine I'll be open to a new relationship, though.  If T and B aren't able to patch things up now that B's husband is moving Northeast, I expect T will also be open to a new relationship.  So we might not last until retirement, we might find new people to live with instead.  Who knows.  Maybe T and B will live together after all, and I'll move out.  I kinda doubt T could live with anybody else, I've seen his temper.

I'm not sure living with a romantic partner is the best idea for me either.  At this age I might be better off dating one or more people who don't want to live with me.  Let me have regular time by myself in my own apartment or condo, while we have frequent sleepovers.

I'm not worried about being too old to find somebody or somebodies new.  My father and both grandfathers before me had no trouble remarrying after their spouses passed away.  I get crushes on people easily enough, I'm reasonably attractive.  The tricky part will be engaging my rational brain -- deciding whether the person I have a crush on is really the kind of person I'll get along with over the long haul.

But maybe there is no long haul.  Especially when no kids are involved.  I often think the main reason I'm still living with T is not T himself but our pets, who are all now over 10 years old.  Is that just an excuse, or did I make a commitment to these living beings to take care of them until death do us part?  And I think all of them need both T and me, there's too many of them for one human who has a full-time job outside of the house (in normal times).  Before I used to think the reason I hadn't moved out yet was because the house was still underwater, but now we have plenty of equity.  Now would be a good time to sell and split the profits.  And maybe if it weren't for the Pandemic ... I can't imagine living alone right now, or playing roommate roulette with a newbie.

Yeah, we're both living with somebody we know how to live with, taking care of pets and house and each other together, until sometime in 2021, when circumstances will change.

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I kinda didn't want to dump all this on my readers on a Christmas Eve, when most of you are busier than I am.  Thinking about marking this private?  My one Quarantine human is sick and went to bed.  I hope the rest of you have a bit more socializing happening than I do tonight.  But I'm OK.  I'm not depressed.  Somewhat nostalgic, and missing certain people, but also ... a bit relieved that I haven't spent the past 48 hours preparing for a huge party that will wear me out, that I'll spend the next 48 hours cleaning up after.

If our plan to have one other household over had worked out, I might have felt afterward like it was the perfect Christmas.  I think if I were living by myself again, spending Christmas with just a small group of people would be nice.  Some of the people who I keep in touch with regularly anyway, instead of the mob of people I really only see at Christmas.

Back in 2002, after my father's death, that's what I wanted Christmas to be.  Spend it with a few friends.  Ditto in 2003, spent it with KWC's small family of four people.  Inviting everybody we know to spend Christmas Eve with us, that's a T thing, not a Bug thing.

I'm spending this Christmas Eve with Astrid.  I think I'll watch some more Outlander until I get sleepy.  Then tomorrow morning, I'll open presents and a bottle of champagne with T.  And cook two meals!  Then Saturday I'll head to the condo for Time to Self.  Just that one night, not a Friday-Sunday stay, because I care too much about T, despite everything over the past 16 years, or because of everything over the past 16 years, to leave him alone on Christmas Day.

I feel deep ecology is one of those things, once you see it, you cannot unsee it,

it's the fault of all the things, all my curiosities, all the books, all the podcasts, all the Internets, everything in my past spinning into now, these 53 years, these 6^e11 seconds,

the library inside my head folding upon itself, recursive intelligence, the unhappy self, slamming into the Wall of Physics, as we all must,

plus meditation, and Astrid snuggling next to me while I sleep, pretending to be K, LOL,

what remains?

zen remains, my little game, back to 7 minutes, but I fall asleep, dreams so close, they are minutes away, and my cock gets hard inside its cage, chafing my balls,

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I'm afraid to get a haircut because there's a 2% chance it will give me COVID, and then give T COVID, and, shit,

so ... I have a night to self at the house ...

B is turning from a gas into a solid once more ... phase change ... I haven't seen T, prepare himself like this, in a long time ...

I've always been intrigued by NaNoWriMo. I've always enjoyed creative writing, with no concern about whether it would "sell" or not, but it looks like I needed this Pandemic Quarantine to get through the entire month, though I'm only 2/3 of the way now, but ... having never made it this far, I'm realizing: Wait, I have to figure out how to end this story on November 30!  Where is this going? :-)

This series of stories started years ago with a spontaneous short story about Chris, an unhappy clone, one of the first human clones, coming to terms with who he was and with his creator and why he was created, then forging an independent life for himself.  Later I wrote about Matt and Alex, and Matt meeting Chris -- but all this a couple decades later.  With Tate thrown in on the side -- I don't think that was for NaNoWriMo, I think it was also spontaneous creative writing.

But last November I wanted to do NaNoWriMo, and I started off with Tate's mother Talon, and made the story mainly about Tate, except I had to travel for work in mid-November and totally lost my thread.  And it was kind of YA, about the Problems of a Teen.  But that work travel was too stressful!  No room in my head for all these characters.  Also trying to hang out with friends in Chicago, making it into a leisure trip.

[I still remember, a handsome young man playing a guitar and singing, inside a used book store, me having an instant crush on him.  While simultaneously feeling depressed because the person I'd wanted to meet that night had flaked on me.  Sad, but, look at that beautiful young man, just a few feet away from me.  Such beauty exists on this planet.]

As K was leaving for Portland, I knew I needed some art therapy.  First I went after music, but because I'd lost my files from last time, the learning curve was going to be steep.  It was easier to slide into NaNoWriMo, because I write a lot all the time already.  Last year I'd proven to myself I could keep up the required word count pace, to write a novel within a month.  I still want to do music!  But right now I'm writing.  Writing.  Writing.  Thinking about Writing.

And it's fun!  I'm finally having fun, doing something new and creative, during Quarantine.  And now suddenly doing more "new" stuff -- interacting with sexy fellas online.

Goddess, the past two months have been a lot.  The entire year has been a lot.  Ever since I realized this Pandemic was going to fuck everything up.  And then it did.  And Trump still won't let go.

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The best thing about being 53 -- I'm more comfortable being me than ever before.  I'd never go back to being younger.  I wasn't yet myself.  I think -- probably the 50s is when human males get to know themselves best, before the aging process becomes overwhelming.  But we'll see how long I can keep this going, heh.

It wasn't my obsessive modeling of the outcome, it was that the rest of you didn't believe me.

Shared Reality has arrived.

Biden is now ahead in states with 286 Electoral Votes. I expect he will also take the lead in Pennsylvania later today, for 306 Electoral Votes.

The most uncertain state is now Arizona, where Biden currently has a lead, but the late ballots have so far been trending toward Trump, unlike every other coin-flip state. But, as I wrote before, several news organizations already called Arizona for Biden, claiming Biden was far enough ahead to hold his lead. If Arizona does hold, then we're looking at Biden 306 / Trump 232.

But Biden doesn't need either Arizona or Georgia if he wins Pennsylvania. He'll be leading in enough states to win even if Trump somehow yanks one of them away via a recount or a successful legal challenge.

Betting markets now give Biden a 92% chance of winning. Hah, remember when they were expecting Trump to win, back on Election Night? And I disagreed, LOL.

If the networks call Pennsylvania for Biden later today, then it's over. I have no control over when a network calls a state or the race, but this was baked in for Biden way back on Wednesday morning when he took the lead in Michigan. After that point, it was just a matter of counting the rest of the votes. That's when I decided this was over.

And, already, as I expected, Trump allies are talking up him running again in 2024.

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Now we have the problem of -- what if Trump won't leave? Reportedly, Trump plans to oppose any networks calling the election for Biden, refusing to concede the race. What if Trump just refuses to leave? What if he calls the Electoral College a fraud?

One friend of mine who has contacts in the Secret Service told me that if Trump won't leave the White House on January 20, the Secret Service will firmly escort him off the premises. She said, "The people guarding him don't particularly like Trump."

Yeah, but what if Trump, as Commander in Chief, orders a military detachment to the White House to protect him from a disloyal Secret Service, and to deny Biden entry? What if Trump fires the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense and installs acting military and civilian leadership who are personally loyal to him?

I mean, what's the plan if Trump attempts a coup? What if Trump calls for his supporters to surround the White House in a show of popular force? And orders all federal police to stand down?

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What if the Republican-controlled state legislatures in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin all vote to set aside the popular vote in their states, instead appointing Republican Electors to the Electoral College, as the US Constitution would seem to allow?  Would the Supreme Court endorse such a scheme, overturning Biden's 7-million edge in the national popular vote, as well as overturning the popular vote in these six states, to award a second term to Trump?

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I can use statistics to model and predict how people will vote (within a margin of error), and I can use statistics to model and predict how a vote count will turn out, but I cannot use statistics to model and predict how Trump and his loyalists will act once the media declare Biden our President-Elect. Will Trump try to order the National Park Service to close the Mall so Biden cannot prepare to give his Inauguration Address?  There's a lot of potential mischief available to a President who does not respect either democracy or our republican institutions.

I don't think anybody knows how far Trump will go, or when he'll fold. We've never had somebody like him in the White House. It may require people with guns to force him to leave.  Or Biden may have to set up shop somewhere else until he can broker a peaceful resolution.

It's kind of up to you, Republicans.  Will you accept the outcome?  You lost.  Can you accept that?  Are you willing to take your turn on the outside?  This is not a decision I can make for you.

K asked me this question last night.

It's hard to say until we have all the results.  And -- Biden did get millions more votes than Trump got, a result that is obscured by the ongoing Electoral College drama.  Biden did better against Trump than Hillary, and he probably won, beating an incumbent President for the first time since 1992.  Beating an incumbent President is no easy feat!

A hypothesis to look at, that may explain why the results diverged from expectations:

Although voter turnout this year broke records going back over 100 years, people who do not fear COVID-19 were more likely to vote than people who do fear COVID-19.  And people who do not fear COVID-19 are much more likely to vote Republican.  (And voting by mail is more subject to screwing up than voting in person.)

So it is possible the pandemic affected turnout in ways that were impossible to predict accurately beforehand, because we've never had a pandemic during an election before, we've never been able to measure how fear of contagion might polarize along partisan lines, and also pump up in-person turnout for one party.

But another hypothesis:

Is that having Trump on the ballot is just different, that Trump appeals to people in ways that cannot be modeled or weighted appropriately by pollsters.  We've never had a politician like him before.  He stokes turnout among his supporters, and among those who hate him, but he stokes turnout among his supporters even more.  They love him even more than we hate him.  Because he's shamelessly willing to play their inner asshole on TV and Twitter, in front of all to see.  Trump does their asshole for them.  He's all their inner assholes, wishing they felt free to say whatever the fuck they want to say, like he does.

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It's hard to test either of these hypotheses in real time.  It may be Republicans won their dice rolls twice in a row, and that's all there is to it.  Polling is often a few points off, that's why there's a "margin of error" -- though everybody ignores it.

Or it may be that voting actually matters.  The only way to know the future is to vote, and then to count the votes.  Ignore the polls, and vote.  There is no "blue wave", there is no "red wave", there's only you, making your own decision.

It is probable that AP will call Michigan for Biden by tomorrow morning.  It is possible -- flip a coin possible -- that AP will call Georgia for Biden by tomorrow morning.

If Biden wins the coin toss in Georgia, then this is over, we're done.

If Trump wins the coin toss in Georgia, then it will probably be days until AP calls Nevada, Pennsylvania, or North Carolina.  That's because these three states allow late arrival ballots -- ballots are literally still arriving in the mail tomorrow, and Friday -- and AP is not going to call these states while ballots are still arriving unless they can be sure those late arrivals can't possibly change the outcome.

So, either you wake up tomorrow and Biden has Georgia and he won, or you'll be waiting for days for another state to be called.

Nevertheless, Biden will win.  Biden is in the lead in enough states for 270 Electoral Votes, and the balance of the remaining ballots to be counted will favor Biden.  That's why I called the race earlier today when Biden pulled ahead in Michigan -- he was ahead in enough states to win, so he will win.

And Trump can't stop Biden by getting any court to stop counting the votes, because Biden is already ahead.  Stop counting, Biden wins.  Keep counting, Biden wins.  Biden will win.  But it may yet take several days before the race is called by the news organizations, because the ballots are still arriving in the mail.

Biden wins the Electoral College!  He's ahead in Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin, that's all he needs for 270.

The betting markets now agree with me, and also throw in Pennsylvania for 290.  Georgia is still close, if Biden pulls ahead in Georgia then 306/232, but he doesn't need Georgia to win.

It's all over but for the counting, LOL.  But even if Trump gets some sort of Supreme Court ruling to stop the counting in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, he's still going to lose :-)

So, what, two seconds after I registered the writing on the door, the infrareds light flicked off.

Fuck!

FUCK!!

I mean, I was actually yelling, "FUCK!!"

Those infrareds were so cool, and then they were gone, and I was back into the darknesses.  And now I know the comprehensive numerity of darknesses.  I mean, numerosity.  There are multiplicities of darkness that I didn't understand before.

Now so fucking dark, fuck.

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No, I'm not afraid, I'm angry.  So, OK, I do feel emotion.  If I'm an android, I have an emotion chip.  Or maybe I'm just a cyborg.  Or it's just my friggin' eyes.

Fuck this.  OK, what am I going to do.

"Hey, this isn't fun anymore, let me out!"

...

"Hello!"

....

"Fuck,"

OK, breathe, calm down, this isn't helping.  I need to pee, and I'm hungry.  Fuck.

OK, I can pee in this goddess damned bucket.  It's not far away, this is a tiny ass room.  OK, bucket, I touch my cock like men do when we pee, we have to hold our cocks, it's all about the aim, right, not about the touching, about the aim.  But I'm also touching my cock.

And I don't remember touching my cock before.  And it feels good.  Touching my cock.  As I'm peeing into this plastic bucket in the corner.

Can I touch my cock some more?  Yum.  I'm done peeing but I'm not done touching my cock.  This feels good.  Fuck these people for IMPRISONING ME and possibly stealing my memories, but I can touch my fucking cock.

Mmm.  I think it might feel better if, I, yeah spit on my cock.  Yeah.  Feels good, and my cock is growing, it's growing bigger, and hardening, so ... accessing ... my encyclopaedic knowledge-without-memory ... yeah, I'm masturbating, I'm getting an erection, and it feels fucking good,

I lay back down on the mattress, playing with my saliva-lubed cock,

"Hey, Marco,"

WTF?

"Marco,"

I'm hearing a voice from the ceiling.  A male voice, heavy, deep, natural not amplified, like he's looking down at me from the ceiling.

"Marco, stop masturbating."

WTF?

I'd just discovered this great sensation, touching my cock, spitting on my cock, it was driving me crazy,

"Marco, stop masturbating!"

"Fuck you!"

And then a sharp electric pain in my testicles, OK, I have testicles, like every other male, but OUCH, and I'm doubling over, falling off the mattress, five inches down to the concrete floor, rolling over, OUCH, OUCH,

Of course I've stopped masturbating, I'm in fucking pain!

"Good boy," he said.

"Boy, you were doing well until you started playing with your cock," he said.

"Who the fuck are you, and why am I here?" came harsh words writhing from my writhing body, although the pain was subsiding.

"Are you afraid, yet?" he asked.

And then the door opened.  Both visible and infrareds, first an outline of the door, then opening wider, and reflecting off surfaces around me, reflecting off my naked body,

"Hi, Marco.  I'm Tate.  I'm here to help you."

There's a lot missing.  There has to be.  My situation and my knowledge regarding my situation do not mesh, there's no connection between now and a specific past.  No context.

I've explored this completely dark room, found no window, nothing like a light switch.  Nothing responds to voice commands, or I don't know the correct commands.  The mattress upon which I woke a while ago rests on the floor, with no bed frame.  There's a plastic bucket in one of the four corners of the room, which i'm guessing is for temporary storage of my waste products ... I have a mild need to piss but haven't done it yet, I know I'm not used to pissing in buckets.  I know that toilets exist and how to use them.

There's nothing else in the room, and the room isn't much bigger than needed to fit the mattress, the bucket, and me.  I cannot reach the ceiling, the walls are far enough apart that I can stretch out completely, but there's not enough room to walk around.

I think I figured out where the door is, because there's a sealed inset the size of a door, but there's no handle, no hinges on this side of it, a hard rubber seal keeps out light and probably muffles sound, because I can't hear any sounds I'm not producing myself.  There's probably an air outlet in the ceiling, I hope, I can't feel one in the wall or floor..  I presume there's a light source up there, perhaps a camera, but now I'm speculating.

I don't remember how I got here, or why I'm here, and although I do not remember any dreams, I also do not have a contiguous memory or understanding of where I was before I fell "asleep".  I have a sense of unconscious time seeping backward without limitation, an expanse of nothingness, as though I've been asleep for days or weeks -- or months?  Is it possible to feel my own past in this way?  As a tangible yet empty expanse?

So after figuring out what I could about my enclosure, I examined my body.  Completely naked, male anatomy.  Short or closely trimmed (?) hair everywhere that a male body should have hair.  Trimmed finger and toe nails.  Not a lot of body fat, not a lot of muscle, but not anorexic.  Skin doesn't feel either smooth as a baby or wrinkled as an elder, but why don't I know how old I am?  I'm mildly hungry and thirsty -- hunger and thirst levels that don't match the sense I've been asleep for days or longer.  Same for my bladder -- not full enough to think I slept through even one night.

OK, I'm becoming more curious about my amnesia.  I know a language, I've been thinking using words that I know are English.  I have the concepts necessary to investigate and label my surroundings and my bodily characteristics, my bodily sensations.  So I've got a dictionary of words and an encyclopedia of concepts.  But beyond that there's a muffled and obscured distance between my here & now and my past.

I know neither name, nor date of birth (nor today's date or year), nor Social Security number, yet I feel I should know these things, that it would be normal for me to know these things.  It's a type of amnesia where I know of the sorts of things I should know, yet do not know these things.  Where was I born, who are my parents, where did I go to school, who are my friends?  I should know these things, but I do not.  How do I know I should know these things?  I'd guess this is the 21st Century, unless I've recently experienced time travel, so I have general concepts of human history and my basic orientation within this history.

That's the weird part.  Having a structure of knowledge that must have come from somewhere, but I do not know from where.  Having a body that must have come from somewhere.  Understanding that I've been imprisoned -- kidnapped -- incarcerated -- but having no memory of this happening or clue as to why.  I understand that this is not normal.  I should have family, friends, an occupation, a bank account, a gym membership.  I should.  I feel like I most likely do have these things.

I'm aware of the concept of amnesia, even the idea there are different kinds of amnesia, because there are different kinds of memory, such as short-term and long-term.  Wait ... I have a memory of my mother having temporary amnesia once, and I had to take her to the emergency room.  OK, I did have a mother.  Or do.  Is she alive?  What is her name?  I only have this one image of her right now.

And now I remember having amnesia before myself.  After I was in an accident.  I'd been riding a bicycle to my friend's house, and was hit by a car, and woke up in the emergency room with temporary amnesia.  But that was different from now.  I'd been knocked unconscious by a bodily trauma, and coming out of that trauma was very different from waking up here.  I didn't know my own name for a while, though.  An attenuated return to consciousness from unconsciousness, as various parts of my brain took time to spin back up.

Another time I had a sort of temporary amnesia, I'd been out clubbing with friends, took a lot of party drugs, and came to on my bathroom floor, also in the dark like now, with a striking lack of knowledge of how I'd gotten there or for how long I'd spent on the hard tile floor.  But then I found the light switch, and my two friends were in my bed, so the lack of context didn't last long.

I'm currently feeling no sense of physical trauma, no hangover.  My lack of context is static, with no improvement as I stand here.  A lot of memories I should have are just missing, but now I've found a few memories from what feels like decades ago that lack much detail.  Memories about amnesia, because I'm thinking about the amnesia I must have.

Weird, an amnesia that wipes out memories of everything except some prior experiences with amnesia.  As though whatever caused this amnesia had a blind spot with respect to amnesia itself.  Or maybe my missing memories will eventually return as I find the correct stimuli for them.  Think about dogs and I'll remember my dog?  Er ... no ... maybe I don't have one?  Never had one?  Or maybe she's outside that door, waiting for me to remember how to open the door.  Everybody's just waiting for me to remember how to open the door.  That makes no sense.  Now I'm imagining family and friends and pets I never had.

I'm wearing out (what's left of) my brain with all this -- as though trying to remember memories that simply aren't there causes a form of mental exhaustion.  As though there's an energy cost to remembering a memory, but trying to remember a missing memory drains the battery.  Or floods the engine.  But I know a brain is neither a battery nor an engine.  I'm engaging in arbitrary metaphor.

I don't think I was a neurologist.  I don't know enough about how my brain is supposed to work to figure out what's not working.  But I seem to have a high verbal IQ.  Maybe later I can try doing some math.

OK, lie down.  Take some breaths.  Try to relax.  Not in any immediate danger.  It's possible I've been thrown in here to dehydrate and starve, but I have no evidence of this yet.  I wonder whether they're watching me on an infrared camera.

Wait ... infrared vision ... I have infrared vision.  I'd forgotten.  I just have to turn it on.  How do I have infrared vision?  Humans don't have infrared vision!

Oh, wow ...