Kindly

||NOTE FROM AUTHOR TO AUTHOR
I hope I'm not portraying your character out of character.||

"You must be Wesley, it's good to meet you." Connie said.

"It's good to meet you to." There was a brief pause between your last two words. A pause of discomfort. "I'm sorry. This is my first time," you paused again. "meeting and talking to an openly non-binary person. I know I should have researched micro-aggressions and what to avoid. But I kept procrastinating on it. I hope I won't offend too much."

"Wesley," Connie said with a warm comforting tone "I'm here to help you, not the other way around. But it's kind you thought of it." He paused this time. "Do you like hugs?"

You just slowly, gravely, perhaps sternly shook your head side to side. "I don't think we're there yet. At least I'm not." The two of you finally step inside Connie's office.

It wasn't your first time in therapy even if it was your first time in sex therapy. The layout seemed familiar. You took in the room and noticed the couch opposite the chair. You looked between it and Connie and Connie nodded.

Still you hesitated. "If I'm going to do this I need to be honest." You pulled the folded papers out of your pocket again. "And if I'm being honest I might as well as be thorough." You finally make your way to your seat on the couch, but you do not sit at ease. You are as tense as iron on the soft cushion.

"What is that and why did it make you so tense?" Connie asked.

"It's a list of talking points, most of which are problems. I'm only tense because I've never admitted this stuff to anyone. There is also the fear that this will make me the worst person you'll see today." Still tense, and the tension reached your voice.

"How long do you think this will take?" Connie asked.

"I think it will take most of my session just to air out my problems."

"Oh, you think you're a real piece of work, don't you." Connie finally sat down and got comfortable. "Go ahead."

Your heart began beating so hard you were worried it my crack your ribs with its new found strength. You could feel yourself sweating as if it were the high noon on a summer day, and you sweat like a pig on a good day. This is not a good day, and it won't become a good day.

"I'll start with you are not the only therapist I’m seeing. I’m seeing a psychiatrist and a physical therapist."

"Oh okay. May I ask why?"

"ADHD, suicidal depression, anxiety, and Autistic Spectrum Disorder. I have a complicated relationship with the final diagnosis. But my relationship with my own mind is complicated enough that it shouldn't stand out that way."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I'd rather address that later. This list has twenty-three talking points, many of which are more relevant than this."

"If you insist." Connie said

"I believe most of my romantic and sexual problems are mental in nature and origin."

"A simple and reasonable conclusion."

"I removed myself from the dating pool in high school because I asked myself a question. “What’s the bare minimum I want in a woman? Easy on the eyes, someone I can talk to, and someone I can keep happy.” If I can’t keep myself happy how could I keep anyone happy? I can’t, I told myself. That may have been a mistake."

"Have you dated anyone?"

"No."

"You said that decision may have been a mistake. Why?"

"When I was in boot camp I was told a girl had a crush on me by another girl. Since then at least two other women have shown interest in me. And people seem happy enough with me as is."

"Good to know."

"I hit puberty at the age of eleven and have been masturbating ever since."

"How did you know you hit puberty then? That's a year earlier than most boys. "

"Hair on my testicles and sexual ideation." I continued "My dick was once straight but has been curved for years leading me to believe I have Peyronie's disease."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Mostly." I read on. "Two of my Ten Core Branching Superpowers are life-**** manipulation and erotic **** manipulation. A sub-application of life-**** manipulation is sexuality manipulation, and an application of erotic **** manipulation is indomitable sexuality. Many of the applications of these powers have been locked away by fear as my powers are controlled by my emotions, among other things."

"About that..." Connie dragged out his words. "You wrote the following on your form, that you have 10 Core Branching Superpowers that affect anatomy, physiology, psychology, and spirituality. Okay. Controlled directly by thought, emotion, imagination, personality, memory, trauma, dreams, desires, every aspect of the mind except will and intention. They will do what you want but not what you choose." Connie paused and pursed his lips. "What are your ten 'core' 'branching' superpowers? It's not that I don't believe you it's just that it's common only to have one or a few."

"Life-****, ****-****, spiritual ****, and erotic **** manipulation are the first four. art manipulation and animation are the fifth and sixth. Video game manipulation, materialization, physics, and interaction are the last four. The main conceits behind my power system are why I have ten powers I label core and branching."

"And the core conceits are?" Connie asked.

"My powers may come from my soul but are informed by an encyclopedia that draws connections I wouldn't. If I can draw connections between the first power and another through the first's capabilities, applications, techniques, variations, or those of the powers that they lead to I can have the other power. A sub-application of video game physics, which is the ability to make reality act like a video game to varying degrees or in various ways, led to sentient powers, which means that my core ten powers are sentient and self sustaining with in me."

"Your superpowers can think for themselves?" Connie asked bewildered.

"No, not individually, but together they formed something that can think. My powers can percieve stimuli and feel emotions individually. Together, after their interacting with various media and machines in my appartment they formed a spiritual energy construct that can process and retain information like a computer. I've dubbed this spiritual energy construct the spiritual machine." I paused. "We are so off topic"

"If you say so."

"My unwanted fetishes are" My heart sank, my mouth ran dry, and I started shaking.

"Are you okay Wesley?" Connie asked with what sounded to be sincere concern.

"I've never admitted this to anyone. Even now, in private, the prospect is painful." I answered.

"You don't have to say anything you're not ready to say." Connie tried to reassure me. Tried and failed.

"No, I got to get this out" I said. "If I don't I won't work on it. My... unwanted... fetishes... are... ****... mind control, hypnosis, and transformation. The first has made me want to castrate myself since I was in junior high school watching Taimanin Asagi. The other three need to go A.S.A.P. because they are now possibilities instead of fantasies. I was so ashamed of the fetishes that I could not even fantasize about them without torturing myself over them, and therefore could not complete any fantasy. But this did not keep me from consuming media centered around them, until I got off, at which point I would flee from the media in question."

Connie was silent for a moment. "I assume you haven't **** anyone."

"I haven't." I answered.

"You don't plan on it, do you?" Connie inquired.

"No. I've worried about it since junior high school, and that was eighteen years ago." I answered

"Eighteen years ago... How old are you?"

"Chronologically thirty years old. Physically this body is a pastiche of measurements and traits I possessed at different ages. Prepubescent skin. The same low body fat I had at fifteen. The same muscle mass I had at nineteen but with out the injuries. The liver I had at twenty one. Yada, yada."

Connie squinted. "You barely look eighteen."

"It's an unintended effect of my powers. I'm not sure what happened or why but I know that it had to have happened when I was in the void."

"What is this void?" Connie tilted his head with furrowed brows as he asked the question.

"The space outside reality. I don't know how it exists or how my powers allowed me to survive in it but it is part of the reason I’m here." I answered.

"Here as in my office? Or something else?"

"Here as in this universe. The court, the judge and jury accepted what evidence I provided as proof I'm from another universe. But the judge wouldn’t accept proof of my age."

"I don't understand."

"The judge is convinced I'm a teenager. And as such is putting actual teenagers in danger by forcing me to attend high school for one year in order to undergo remedial power training." I balled my other hand into a fist so tight and tense that I heard the knuckles in it pop. The way Connie looked at it I assume he heard it to.

"I assume you're not okay with this." Connie observed.

“No, I'm not, but I'll deal with that later." I took a deep breath, then another slower one. "For the first thirty-one days that I had my powers I had accidentally turned myself into a human equivalent of an incubus, and therefore I kept dying due to lack of sex but resurrected by the second and ninth of my ten powers. While that problem has been rectified recently, I’m still traumatized and horrified by that."

Connie stared at me horrified. "You've died before?" He said slowly.

I nodded.

"What do you mean that you..." Connie dragged the word out then went silent for a moment. "What do you mean that you turned yourself into a human equivalent of an incubus?"

"My fourth power, tantric manipulation in the encyclopedia, but renamed by me as erotic **** manipulation, came with a power, or more accurately a consequence, named tantric metabolization. This erotic metabolization meant that I needed to feed my soul via sex, or die."

"There's a term for that?" Connie was bewildered. "And you have it."

"There is and I do, yes."

"It was always just the hunger to me." He murmured.

It was my turn to squint in suspicion.

"Oh, please continue." Connie motioned. "How did you rectify this problem?"

"I'd rather not say just yet. It's convoluted, and bizarre."

"If you say so..." Connie dragged out the last word and was clearly disappointed

I shook a little bit as I prepared to read the next item aloud.

"You don't have to read these if they make you this uncomfortable." Connie tried to assure me.

"Change rarely comes from a place of comfort." I said "so I'll push through as far as I can." I took a slow breath with tightly closed eyes. then I read aloud the ninth item. "Up until I received my ten core branching superpowers I had only had one wet or sex dream, and it was me **** my stepmother with the intent to hurt her. Since I’ve had my powers I’m having sex dreams every time I sleep or nap. Thankfully they are more varied than my first, and few are as disturbing as that."

"Was this dream one of the reason you were scared you'd become a ****?" Connie asked gently.

"Yes." I answered.

"But you haven't."

"Still a virgin. So no."

"Alright then."

"There’s a disconnect between people and sexual arousal in my mind. I have to think about sex to be aroused and erect. But when I see someone I don’t think about sex. This means that even when I’m watching porn or hentai I need to tell myself little stories to get hard, as even observing sex isn’t enough to make me think about sex. But reading erotic fiction is the easiest way to arouse me because I think in words more than I think in images, and therefore reading about sex is the equivalent to thinking about sex for me."

"That's interesting. weird, but interesting."

"I often have hundreds of hentai, erotic audio, and cartoon porn tabs open on my phone at any given time. Last week I closed 681 tabs at once that were mostly erotic in nature."

"I assume that's the aforementioned ADHD causing this?"

"Me to, but I'm not sure." I returned my attention to the list. "I’m mainly horny when I’m alone and bored instead of when I’m around people I recognize to be attractive."

"Odd, but keep going."

"If it weren’t for trap cartoon pornography and transwomen that had facial feminization surgery I would consider myself entirely heterosexual."

"Hmm, that's why you wrote bi-curious on the form?" Connie scratched the note down.

"I’ve been afraid of having children from childhood to present for various reasons, but around the ages of twenty-three to twenty-five I’ve had a breeding/impregnation kink that conflicts with that fear that tears my mind apart as I think about that conflict."

Connie gave me a quizzical look. "Did you have what you would call a happy childhood?"

"No." I answered.

"Is that one of the reasons?"

"Not the only one but yes it is a reason. Or, more accurately the reasons I had a unhappy childhood made me fear having children, and other reasons were added later over the years."

Connie scratched down more notes. "Go on."

"An example of my backwards thinking is I knew I’d be a bad dad when I was a child, a bad husband as a teenager, and a bad boyfriend as an adult."

"How many talking points are on this list again?" Connie asked.

"Twenty-three." I answered.

"How many have we gone over?"

"That was the fifteenth."

"Eight more. Keep going."

"Any sex I will have will be considered interracial because of my mixed heritage. This is one of the reasons I have an ambivalence to interracial pornography and race play, other than mixed race people being left out and uncatered to, the focus on racist thinking, and the unending racist stereotypes."

"Raceplay is a strange and uncomfortable fetish."

"Very much so. Despite quizzes telling me I’m a switch, I don’t trust myself enough to be a top, and I’m to insecure to be a bottom."

"So you are a switch, but out of discomfort instead of comfort with both positions."

I just grunted. "Because I’ve almost always been aware of my similarities to my father and grandfather I have been convinced I would be an abuser who would get away with the **** I did. This is one of the reasons I’ve avoided relationships."

Connie silently took note of that statement.

I continued. "Out of fear of being accused of having an Oedipus complex I avoided any girl or woman that had a single trait with my mother in common. I feared this accusation because I’ve wanted to **** my father before I hit puberty because of what he did, and a favoritism towards my mother that lasted until I realized or learned that she had been mistreating my little sister. Now I fear accusations of internal racism for avoiding women with dark skin, or ableism for avoiding women with glasses."

"So you avoid relationships and women. Got it." Connie observed. "I assume this is something you want to change?"

A few seconds of silence passed. "Yes." Connie moved as if he was about to speak but I kept reading aloud. "My stepmother gave me a murderous hatred of anyone with short red hair because she triggered my first suicide attempt. When I was **** I ended up verbally forgiving that woman for almost making me kill myself at the age of fourteen. I’ve regretted that forgiveness ever since."

"Okay..." Connie slowly took note. "I assume that's a bit of hyperbole, and that you haven't killed anyone."

"Not yet." I replied. "I never consciously thought of **** anyone, but having the only wet dream I ever had involve **** with the explicit intention to cause pain and harm has made me fear being a **** and has caused me to avoid sex my entire life."

"Ah." Connie made more notes.

"I’m a thirty year old virgin."

"Yes, we've established that."

"My lack of sexual confidence stems from my lack of plain confidence."

"A safe assumption to make. How many more do we have on the list?" Connie asked.

"That's it. twenty-three of twenty-three talking points."

Connie looked to the clock on the wall and I followed his gaze. We were about seventeen minutes into the hour long session, meaning we had about forty-three minutes left to go.