One of the scariest things about being an Ace in a sexual-deviant paranoid society…
I’ve always wanted a younger sibling. When I was a teen, my cousins lived with us. Eventually they’d gone home and I was a lonely only child again. Unfortunately when I was around 20-21 my maternal instincts decided to make that feeling worse. The fact that we’d moved to a new state and I had no friends didn’t help - since every time I’d meet anyone interesting they’d soon forget about me because I wasn’t as one guy put it “a wild one” in sex terms, or into parties, drinking and all that typical expected crap.
Eventually I’d made friends with a 13 yearold at a family get together. He was into more obscure anime that I liked, while 99% of the others who liked it only liked the mainstream crap. We started talking when he noticed a doll I’d made of one of the characters. He also liked to draw.
He lived with his single mom and 2 other brothers. He was the middle child so he didn’t get a lot of attention. Simply put, I ended up adopting him as my younger brother. But unfortunately his mom thought it was odd that an ‘adult’ was hanging out with a kid. My parents were even odd about it at times. It was so frustrating.
But what pissed me off and insulted me most was when I was talking to my shrink about the situation, clearly stating for about 25 minutes the problem and that it was in no way sexual, or had ulterior motives… just to have her ask immediately after I was finished, “well, IS it sexual?” I was appalled. The topic was so far from my mind that I didn’t even acknowledge the term “pedophile” until after people started accusing me of such bullshit. And unfortunately I had no idea about the term “asexual” at that age. I just knew I wasn’t interested. Sure, I’d heard about people I knew at school dating 20 yearolds while they were 15 and how it was illegal, but I’d never even compared these two situations. Not to mention it was always a younger female and an older male. The part that made it more ridiculous is that if my friend were a girl, no one would give a shit. She’d just be my little sister. But apparently a little brother was completely out of the question and we must be screwing. Ironic behavior for a virgin who’s never even kissed a potential crush when given a chance, mind you. I’ve always been the kind of person who stays out of trouble unless it were a protest against something unfair or hurtful.
Served me right for trying to help someone out. I’d taken him shopping and all that, but it was because of how impoverished his family was, and being homeless once myself as a teen, and generally growing up in poverty, I know how shitty it is. I like to treat my friends like family, be it buying them gifts, cooking, etc. His mother was also gone most of the time, and his brothers made things hectic. He also had problems at school and simply seemed unhappy. He was an outsider like I was and that’s why I reached out. I tried to prevent him from going through the same crap I had to at that age, even if he did act like a total brat at times. His acting out was just a side effect of the problem.
In the end it worked out though. His mom ended up thanking me when I was 22 or 23 for being there for him and such a good friend, and apologized for the drama. I wasn’t angry at her since I could understand, I was just hurt by it. Though by this time, I’d forgotten about it. Even though he acted like a spoiled brat at first, always wanting me to buy more crap instead of being happy with what I did gift to him, eventually it turned out that the simple things were appreciated more and had more impact. She told me I had influenced him and he’d made drastic positive changes and had more respect. Another time he’d told me that if I wouldn’t have been there, he would have killed himself or went off the deep end.
All of this surprised me, since we didn’t hang out much due to school and distance, and he was awful at talking online. Usually online, he’d act brattier than in person, so I’d ignore him in that case.
Though it was a stressful and even scary experience, the outcome was worth it. When I was younger people often misunderstood my fondness as something else too. To them, the word “Love” meant “I want to fuck you” if the people exchanging it weren’t directly related. Now that I look back on it, I wonder if any other aces have had problems like this where people would make gross accusations without knowing the full story, or refusing to listen to it. It was dangerous in this case. I was afraid I’d be falsely accused of something and sent to jail though I’d done nothing at all, with the way people were overreacting and blowing things out of proportion.
It makes me sad that we live in a society like this. Where if one shows affection or any kind of fondness it’s automatically wrong until proven acceptable. The ironic part about situations like this, or even situations where a woman’s chest is exposed in a non-sexual way, or even public breast feeding, is that the people labeling them as wrong or obscene are the ones perverting things, where as others don’t even think about it.
There’s also the gender problem. If he were a she it would be considered cute - unless of course I were openly homosexual. And if I were bisexual, I’d simply be labeled a pedophile. Period. Since homos apparently have no morals or control, and heteros are perfect - especially if they’re a Christian… (No offense. My whole family is Christian in some way) despite the many cases reported proving otherwise. In reality, expected and ‘correct’ ways to be simply keep everything in a neat little basket, where twisted stereotypes based on bias accusations or botched ‘facts’ instruct people who and who not to trust without thinking for themselves or having to go an extra mile to get to know something, while also allowing them to be hateful but somehow justified so long as they appear to fit the correct image.
And to think typical society insists that there’s something wrong with us… Denial is a wonderful thing.
I have a friend who could easily relate to this. When he was 20 or 21, he was falsely accused of “luring” a young girl — about 12 — “in a secluded place”. The “secluded place” was a flat one-block park with almost no trees where any-and-everything going on was visible from all sides of the park. The “luring” was him sharing his drawing pencils and paper because the girl showed interest when she saw him there one day. He’d been going to that park to draw things since he was a child by that point, never having in mind to lure any child. A creeeeeepy neighbor saw what was going on and called the police. The police, who were all this nasty neighbor’s friends, basically lied about the whole situation to the prosecutor who didn’t bother to check out the facts (they didn’t have Google maps back then), and not only screwed up my friend’s life for a few years, but wasted all kinds of tax-payer money that ought to have gone to prosecuting real pedos.
I’m glad it all worked out, in the end for you and your friend. I haven’t heard much more about what happened with my friend, and it’s been 10 years since all this happened, but I think the girl herself said nothing happened at all, so there’s at least that. My friend got probation for two years, which was ridiculous. If only the prosecutor’s office had just done some leg work, none of this would have happened.
