There are two males in my life (present and past) who get referred to in a very similar tone of mingled affection and annoyance. They are Darkside and Fuzzy Modem. I offer here a breakdown of some of the most common similarities and differences between Darkside and Fuzzy Modem.

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Summary: Google Spreadsheets has a lot of improvements to go before they master export to HTML. Darkside is so much ♥, in a perfectly sour, sarcastic, and antisocial way. Fuzzy is a walking reality show waiting to happen, and my best position there is spectator, not co-star.


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The third most embarrassing moment of my life is probably the funniest, in retrospect. The first two most embarrassing moments happened when I was six or seven, the sort of kid things that are still somewhat painful to look back on. But the third most embarrassing moment involved Shawn.

When I was sixteen or seventeen, I had developed the habit of wearing a little bag around my neck at all times. This bag contained a few special secret treasures: the photos of my best friend Shawn, and his promise to return to me from that dreadful summer of 1996, some semi-precious stones, most likely an emergency quarter, and -- a condom. Just In Case. (I'd embraced the Health Class instruction that the wallet is the worst place for them, or else it would have been in there, and there wouldn't be this story.)

My high school fencing buddies and I had gotten down to the gym a little early. We were hanging out waiting for class to start and making all manner of disturbances. "Hey, I wanna see what's in that bag," Shawn said. I'd taken it off, since it didn't mix well with the fencing jacket and mask, either under or over. Not thinking, I handed it to him. He undid the drawstring and began poking through. Then I remembered the condom.

"No!" I cried, and launched myself after the bag. "Ack! Give that back!"

He dangled it out of my reach. I swatted after it. He dodged away and tried to run. I attached myself to his ankle after the fashion of a particularly stubborn toddler and clung with all my might. He started limping across the gym floor, dragging his shrieking shackle along with him.

He eventually twisted free, and made for sanctuary: the boys' bathroom.

I hesitated outside the door. Would-- could-- should--

"Ooo, rose quartz!" he said from inside.

I dove in after him. Surprised, he dodged inside a stall and barred the door. I got down on the floor and poked my head inside the stall. He retreated to the top of the toilet, crying out in alarm. He dangled the little bag over the stall next door. "If you come in here, I am going to drop this in the toilet!" he warned me.

I pouted, huffed, and retreated back outside. I stood there with arms sulkily crossed as he went through the bag in privacy. "Oh, that's what you didn't want me to see?" he said as he came out. "I have one in my wallet."

I started berating him for his general lack of attention in health class, and life returned to normal. Almost. "Hey, where's my earring?" I asked some minutes later.

"It must have come off while you were gnawing on my ankle like a three-year-old," Shawn said, and we set about searching the gym floor for the missing earring. It should have been easy to spot: it was a post earring with a little white dot, a long purple squiggle, and then a hot pink ball at the end, a very distinctive refugee from the 80s that fit my quirky personality perfectly. Alas, no earring was to be found. I left its mate on and started gearing up for class.

Other students arrived. I put out a general call for my lost earring. Before class started, the cute TA Dave approached me. "Is this it?" he called out. "I found it near the water fountain."

It was! I thanked him and accepted it and started to put it back in my ear.

"I don't want to know what you were doing in the mens' restroom," he said, quietly enough that only I could hear him.

I turned bright pink, considered the possibility of denying that it was my earring after all, and decided that no cover story in the world would be good enough to get past him. "I guess I'd better wash it first," I said, and scurried off to put on my jacket and pick a foil.

Dream involved a comedy of errors in an attempt to sleep with Shawn.

If I were being perfectly frank with myself, I'd be either somewhat scared, garnetdagger considers a "danger" (her wording) of me falling for him again.

When Dagger says "danger", she means it. If Darkside and I are somewhat of a social mismatch ... well, if a random reader thinks we aren't, there's nothing I can say that would be able to convince them that we're not, but ... I have problems with self esteem and social situations. It's difficult for me to trust that someone actually cares about me sometimes. But when I'm in my right mind, I have no doubts that Darkside does care. For someone who doesn't express emotion well, he's done a good job at somehow reassuring me that I'm cared about. (the swap between my right mind and my wrong mind is vast, and anyone catching me in my wrong mind should send me to bed.)

But. Shawn is distinct danger to me, because (BDSM terminology) he's not a good Master. He does not provide the care that a submissive needs, doesn't do the "I am master, I'm in charge, which means I'm responsible" wellness checks. There is history. There is bad history. Dagger has forbidden that I take up with Shawn again, which means that as much as Shawn and I would get on like a house afire in bed now (memory says that our kinks are eminently compatible now that I've grown more into mine) ... no. Absolutely not.

Thank you, Darkside, for being a wonderful man and respectful of me...


My teenage fumblings of sex with Shawn were just as much of a comedy of errors as the dream was, which I find refreshing and amusing. Oy. Oy vey. My sex dreams tend to be extremely realistic, and feature the correct personality of my partner(s) as I know it. And. Yeah. Not happening. What garnetdagger says, goes.

Once upon a time in high school, I had this best friend. We'd spend hours on the phone, because that's the sort of friends we were. And he'd get himself in alarming trouble, because that's the sort of guy he was.

One day, while we were on the phone, he found himself standing behind the couch (he may have been lounging on the back of the couch? Or something?) with a need to get out.

So he tried sidling out. This did not work, as the couch was pushed up tightly against the wall; the reason he could be where he was standing was because there was a window behind the couch, and that created enough space for him to stand. So he tried pushing the couch.

This was even less successful. As he probably should have already known, but discovered loudly right in my ear, the windowsill behind him housed his mother and stepfather's reasonably impressive collection of potted cacti. Pushing the couch forward meant pushing his bottom backward, and behind him was not open air, but a tasteful selection of succulents with thorns.

Of course, neither of his parents were home to push the couch to let him out. He was stuck.

After I stopped giggling at his expense, I suggested that he fall forward, letting his torso down onto the couch, and his feet would follow, and all would be good. He argued with me a little, and continued in his fruitless attempts to push the couch forward for a bit (spearing himself on the cacti behind every time) but after he got tired of playing pincushion with his butt, he followed my advice and escaped.

I suddenly realized that Darkside had heard whether or not I was on good terms with my exes or not, but had probably never encountered direct evidence of that entire polyamory thing. Between calls at work, I got a long litany of my exes and other people I would have had reason to romantically love at one point or another written out, and whether I love them now or not, and why. My object with the litany was to demonstrate that unless something happened to make it otherwise, I would keep on loving someone until the end of time, or I died, or something like that. It worked out that either there was some definite thing that happened so that I stopped loving them, or I still love them.

A few slipped under the radar, I am sure. I will have to include Queenie. I have slipped out of contact with too many, and there have been drastic changes here and there, and that's sad. But I still trust and respect many of my exes, and that's where my love has its roots. Some of my exes have proved that I can and should not trust them, and a few of them have demonstrated that I should not respect them overmuch either.

A large factor in my trust and respect for Darkside is that he compels my honesty. There are not many people who I feel that I must tell everything to. I am capable of lying with a straight face to the public in general, if I have a reason that I should lie. After getting caught lying on some things a couple times, I learned how to lie convincingly. I just told my lies exactly the way I told the truth, with the same level of detail and enthusiasm, throwing in plenty of extraneous corroborating detail. And while I considered myself, for the most part, exceptionally honest and straightforward, I, like Miles, never realized how much "subtle spin" I was putting on stuff until I had someone who not only appreciated my honesty, but compelled it.

How does he compel my honesty? He is honest and open with me, to whatever degree he is open. I would be doing his trust a disservice if I did not repay him in kind. If he doesn't wish to tell me something, he tells me that he'd rather keep that to himself. He is the antidote to Shawn. He won't let me lie to myself, either. I trust that he would never lie to me, but I know he's not so great about open and honest communication with himself. Ah, well, we all have our little flaws.

And he's honorable. If I am in need, and he knows about it, and it's something he can do something about, he'll help. He has had any number of opportunities to betray me and hasn't. Most telling is that he could have betrayed me by not encouraging me to do what was right for me -- he would have just had to offer me no opinion, and not help me figure out what was right. It wouldn't, technically, have been betrayal, only that he would have been standing by as I turned traitor on myself. He didn't, even though it meant inconvenience for him. So he has demonstrated his honor to me.

His honesty and honor are what win him my trust. Those and his kindness win my respect, and his charm and wit win my fondness. Trust, respect, and fondness are the seeds of love.

And when the seeds of love take root, they stay rooted so long as trust, respect, and fondness are still there.

I can't love Shawn again. My respect for him is growing slowly as he earns it, and the fondness is back after Darkside healed me, but the trust, the undeserved trust, will never return. Trust, respect, and fondness have all departed for BJ, leaving me wondering why I made that mistake. I am fond of digitalambience, but there is history there too with trust and respect. I trust, respect, and am fond of the Lady E., my first and most beloved fiancée. I trust, respect, and am fond of River, lately beloved of swallowtayle. I respect and am fond of pyrogenic, and while I suppose I trust him, I would have to spend more time interacting with him in the present to say that definitively.

Actual innate respect differs from showing respect for someone. Showing respect for someone is a basic social grace. Actual respect for someone is something that is earned through that person's actions. While I behave respectfully towards the people I speak with on the phone, do I actually respect the ones who curse at me? Absolutely not.

I was probably going somewhere with this, but I have no clue where. At least more of the structure of my mind is being revealed, now.

So, back in high school, I had this best friend. That Idiot Shawn.

( It always goes downhill after this point. )

*puff puff* Squirrel nuts!

[Poll #163899]

My experiences with That Idiot Shawn have given me a keen sense of who may and may not be trusted, especially with my heart, mind, and stability.


Someone who doesn't give a shit about my emotions, no matter why I'm feeling them, is not to be trusted. If someone were to say, as Shawn effectively did, "I'm sorry you have to feel that way. It's your fault you're sad. You should stop feeling that way because no one's going to feel sorry for you," then they are not welcome around me. It may well be that way; it may well be that I was lighting up incense in the no-smoking zone around a buried bomb, but that doesn't excuse him for crawling around with lit matches trying to locate the fuse. Though it was my fault for telling him that there was a bomb there to start with, I suppose, even though I saw him smoking and warned him not to.

Someone who acknowledges that I feel the way I do, and if it's good, yay, and if it's not good, sucks, and says that if it's not good, then something needs to be done to make it better (and who kicks my ass if I'm just sulking), is more on their way to earning my trust. Even if there's nothing that can be done to make it better short of moving the universe, and I'm feeling horrendous about it, a hug-it-all-better and a "I'm sorry you feel so lousy, and I hope you feel better soon, because you being sad makes me worry and I care about you," do wonders. If Darkside should see me waving lit incense around in a buried bomb zone, he points out the appropriate sign, sometimes forcefully, and lugs along a fire extinguisher, his own flak jacket, and an extra one for me.



I came to be a friend of Darkside when I was losing my very shaky grasp on my mental health. Instead of squeezing my wrists until I had to let go of it, and then blaming me for not having a high enough tolerance for pain, as Shawn did, Darkside grabbed it, wrapped both of my hands around it, and left his hands over mine until he was sure that I could maintain my hold of it. Then he stuck around and re-positioned my hands when it looked like it was slipping again, and gave me pointers that he'd learned the hard way himself, on how to keep it and not let it slip away like that so often.

Once I could drag my focus away from my grasp of my own mental health, once I no longer had to hold onto it so tightly my fingers were going numb, I was able to look up and see what he had in his own hands, and how his hands were shaking from time to time. And, very gently at first, I helped steady him.

We're not both in college anymore, as he's graduated. His schedule sucks. In classic introverted Army brat fashion, he'd never had a friendship that didn't fade with distance, and doesn't know how to handle it. I am Anomaly. I am Joanie. I am still his friend.

And every now and then, my hands shake on my sanity. Weird things happen inside me, and I reach out to him as one of two people I trust to help me figure out how to make things right inside me, who won't make me drop myself on purpose or by unknowing accident.

So.

My good old high school best friend That Idiot Shawn (now known as Fuzzy) broke my heart once, or twice, or a dozen times. I stuttered for years as a direct result of events that were deliberately caused by him and deliberately shared with me by him.

Finally, though, I have forgiven him.

But not before some very tasty revenge.

It so happened that he was getting married, and I was invited to the wedding. I attended, wearing my most formal outfit (the fact that it was all black was incidental). As his bride walked down the aisle and past me, I tossed off a covert gesture behind the pew.

His little brother noticed, and giggled, and told me that Mrs. Fuzzy had obviously seen it, because of the glare she'd given me. The memory kept me warm for several years.


Fast-forward.

Fuzzy and I are chatting online, and the topic of embarrassing/worst sex stories in the forum he frequents comes up. He invites me to go, take a look, and contribute. I do so. I share my worst sex story, which happens to feature him and his wife, and ends with my lovely gesture of "Fuck You!" at her, just before she took her vows.


Fuzzy was dumbfounded. I have never heard him quite so incoherent before. It was priceless.

Ahh, sweet revenge. Sweet, sweet revenge.