"Your Friends Aren't as Good as Mine!"

Adult (or at least semi-adult) story; follow the link if you want to read it anyway: "Your Friends Aren't as Good as Mine!"

Linda's New Therapy

“They're being stuck up about it.” thirteen-year-old Linda said in the beginning of her first group-therapy session.

The five people around her sighed, the therapist included. Her, the therapist's eyebrows wrinkled a little and then she said: “It's not wise to always be accusing them. Even so I can understand that they sort of were stuck up with you all, or at least most of, the time.”

One of the two boys who were in the group looked at Linda and asked: “Why try to be different from everybody else? You know we all had that kind of abuse against us. And we've all been manipulated into finding ourselves comfortable with pretending to be something we aren't.”

“I don't,” the other boy said, “find it to be that what I did was to find myself very comfortable with that!”

One of the girls broke in: “I don't like that you're saying they didn't find it in you to seem to be part of their club for socializing the way they have it young boys should, because you told me you had to fancy yourself as a man already, and thereby pretend to be as tough as they!”

“Exactly!” the other boy said. “I also know that you pretended to be satisfied with it! Besides, it seems you didn't pretend to be blackmailed into seeming to be! Thereby think it's impossible for them tho have you pretend that well without making you feel comfortable with it!”

“But,” the boy defended himself, “I couldn't escape that they would be bullying me! I mean, although there wasn't quite any blackmail about it!”

“That's right,” the therapist broke in. “I recommend that it's not to be seen as if we were an group only for those who pretended to be happy in a way that actually fooled them into faking their happiness to be real, or so.”

The boy who had spoken first cleared his throat. “But I am a guy who never found myself to be happy without pretending to be happy in the first place!”

“I can't find it in you to be happy on the surface right now, though. ... So what do you actually mean by you insinuation that I aught to treat them as if they were in a group for pretend happy people?!”

“I can't help being facially happy when you tell me I'm not happy! Because I am facially happy right now, in the sense that I'm not even remotely as happy as I seem to be right now!”

She sighed. “I can't pretend that you aught to be pretending in my group, that you're actually fairly happy about the situation even if there are feelings in you of complete unhappiness! Thereby I recommend you to tell me about those unhappy feelings you say you have!”

“I feel unhappy that she isn't coming here to find our group to be for real about the problems of manipulation! I also feel disappointed at that Eric pretended to be someone who didn't have to be into faking himself into comfort as if happy about unhappiness!”

Linda looked at him, and then at her therapist. She felt as if she (the therapist) didn't realize that the boy she spoke to was just being obnoxious. In a sense she felt the therapist had no point in actually being the one to say there was any half a point even in letting that boy speak out for himself. She thereby seemed unhappy to the people around her, and the therapist looked at her and asked:

“Why do you keep on writhing as if we were trying to manipulate you right now? You know we're a group for trying not to be manipulative!”

“I find it in me not to pretend that I am not trying to be happy, only I'm not trying to be happy in the way that actually makes me comfortable!”

“What do you mean by that?” The therapist looked a bit interested in Linda's mimicry about her situation.

“What are you staring at?!” Linda burst our.

“Oh, I was just looking at the way your facial expressions changed during our conversation! It's just an interest I have in feeling comfortable about each other here in this precarious locality for having therapy against your notions of not being for real!”

The girl who hadn't yet spoken before broke in: “Why do you feel that it's therapy to say that they are for real, those people we can't trust, when we feel ourselves that those people try to facilitate our interpretations of them as so real that they aren't ever to be handled as if questionable?!”

Linda said silently to herself that she too felt that way about it, but that she hadn't dared to speak that way about those people in charge here. So instead she looked at the therapist now and added: “How come we never get to view ourselves as the kinds of persons who don't very easily find ourselves not to be a nuisance?! I mean I don't have an argument in my mother for actually trusting her! That is she is always the bitch about it! She always pretends I'm the imbecile in her company, and then when I'm being that she scorns me into feeling inferior so that I become even worse an imbecile for her and everybody else!”

“I can't see you as the kind of girl who doesn't fit in with having me in therapy. I can't see in any of you not to feel inferior because of those who insinuated about you that you are imbecile or something seemingly the same as that. Because I can't see it in you to be imbecile enough to actually pretend that you are secure with those acquaintances - including family - that you present for me as though you didn't care for actually being their friends or family, nor even acquaintances.

“What, then,” the boy who spoke first asked, “do you mean by pretending we're all family with each other around here!? I mean we're no family with each other! On the contrary she and I are very unalike!” He indicated Linda when saying the last sentence.

“Oh, Golly!” the girl who spoke first broke out. “Why do they feel that they are so stuck up, those parents!? I mean I have in my own two parents not to ever fake that they're unhappy about me and my so-called imbecile attitudes! Instead it's they - and they're virtually the only ones for that - who cared indiscriminately to say to me that I was an okay person and an okay soul to for that matter! So why do you complain about your parents!? I feel my parents are really good enough and they should be into pretending as if something about their own, so that they could be good enough as well!”

The second boy looked grimly at her. “We all have our own parents to talk about! They're not a bit like your own!”

“Then how come,” the girl asked, “do you never comment me about them when I tell you how nice it is that they still keep on caring?!”

“It's because,” the boy answered, “we have nothing to say about those parents who are just completely different! We have nothing to say about you, because you don't seem to be the same as the rest of us! Our problems are with parents; yours are that you're a stuck up little rascal who has parents that tell her she's an alright kid, although she isn't!”

Linda looked at the two of them. Now she found in herself to fit in, although she felt awkward about being fitting in just for being miserable enough for it. Then he looked at the therapist, who looked a bit troubled.

“How come,” the therapist asked, “do you feel that it's so important that she is different?”

“It's because,” he answered, “we don't have anything to say to each other! I mean how come she's here after just being that stuck up person whom nobody likes - except for her own folks!?”

“I suppose there isn't any need for therapy for her according to you, then? But I, I feel she needs therapy, just like you! And thereby she needs also to be treated with respect just like the rest of you all!”

The second girl said: “I guess we should all go home then and talk to our freaking parents about this session, which wasn't at all very rewarding, but which after all taught us to reward our parents for not being as stuck up as they, those who pester us for all they're worth, as it seems!”

The therapist looked at her watch and stated: “Yes, I believe there's need for doing something of that kind for perhaps all of you. But before you rush into anything, let me just tell you that it's not demanded from me that you tell your parents about anything. But neither do I recommend that you don't. Because I feel that if you do - to the extent you do it - you will very likely be able to find out from them, at least something about who might have to be seen as stuck up according to them. Thereby I recommend for you all to try to be into thinking about them as something of wiser than you are, and thereby, perhaps, you can get yourselves to talk to them, and thereby get to know yourselves from them. But, as I said, you should not feel that you really should have to do that. What I mean is that if you can, you really aught to try that!”

Upon that she ended the session by rising from her seat and going to the door, standing at which she said: “I fully understand that some of you feel uncomfortable in this group as well as with for example your parents. If so - or something similar to it - then you should try to feel comfortable with at least relating your problems with someone, perhaps not me, who thereby can be your parent about it! If not, then I am ready to be your parent, and then perhaps you can feel as well that I am the one to find it in to take interest in your problems.

“As for you, Linda, your problem with your grandma and mother both being stuck up, please turn to anyone else about it! I don't feel that you, yet, aught to speak to either of those two directly about it! And for you others, all of whom are already in therapy since at least six months, you should be speaking to either your parents,or to me, or to anyone. But don't speak to your parents if they don't agree with that you should consider them haughty - or stuck up, that is. Just speak to them to the extent they actually feel bad about themselves for being stuck up, or, as with Lisa, that they are not even part of that problem for you!

“Even if there perhaps are tendencies of facial happiness seeming to be everything there is of trust from your friends or so, even if so, you should try to speak to me, your parents - or at least someone!”

Not until now did she open the door. Linda stood and waited until all others - but the therapist - had left. Then she walked slowly towards the door, and whispered said to the therapist: “I don't have anyone to talk to! But I feel not even that I want to talk to you about my problems! So how can I abide by the assignment without you - or all others I might talk to - feeling that I am not to be seen as anyone but an idiot who doesn't seem to fit in with anyone but those who despise me?”

“I feel you are not to be despised! Now how come you are so scared of me or anyone else relating to your side of the story you have to tell? To tell me is, I can assure you, not a very dangerous thing! To tell your parents, or your grandmother or so, can be that, but for me it's not very interesting to have them know what we say to each other. So why don't you tell me, and then I'll drive you home, but not until you've told me all will I have to take you to those parents you are so afraid of!”

With that they talked for about half an hour. But Linda didn't really say much about how to relate to her mother (or the father whom she hardly knew). Instead she fussed about her mother not trying even to feel empathetic, which the therapist tried to sympathise with. But in the end she just felt confident that she had in Linda a patient who would never be well and whom she thereby didn't have to care about.

She drove her home and followed her up to her mother apartment. When saying hello to the mother of Linda, she felt that she could not believe Linda to be an imbecile. But even so she felt tempted to actually scold her as such. But for the better of things, she thought, the mother seemed to be into saying to herself that she didn't have to be into finding this therapist to be very bad even if the therapy failed.

A Very Adult Vacation

Adult (or at least semi-adult) story; follow the link if you want to read it anyway: A Very Adult Vacation

Matters of Trust

Sitting in the rather cheap salad bar in the neighbourhood, I happen to overhear two people talking from the next table. They are one young man and one young woman. I can fairly easily look right at them, and have noted them both to be fairly good-looking. Thereby I feel a bit surprised by their attitudes:

“It's true!” the young woman said. “Almost every other guy I've met has been thorough about checking me out as though I was an imbecile!”

The guy looked at her. “Me too,” he said after a while. “But also feel the young women in this neighbourhood seem to laugh at that I am naive enough - or something - to find it in me to be a guy who would have cared to care about morals and stuff.”

“Then what do you mean that I am not the only one that you could imagine hanging out with among the girls around here?!”

“I mean that I simply imagine them to be for real about morals and stuff.”

“What do you mean you simply imagine that!? I mean couldn't they be what you should realize that you aught to avoid them?! They could be even meaner in the long run if you don't! That's what I feel!” she burst out.

He sighed. “No! I hate to imagine everybody to simply be faking that they are into morals just for the sake of pretending they aren't for real about finding it in themselves to care for immorality and so!”

She seemed disturbed by this. After a while she looked deeply into his eyes and said: “You don't know what they can do to someone who is naive with them!”

He stared at her for a while. “I imagine they can't take it for granted that they are good enough people to be into trying to be good all the time! But I cannot say to myself that they are completely evil, unless they are clearly into pretending to be simply about ways of being clear minded about having lust for evils that one cannot say to oneself that anyone has a right to do.”

“Do you mean that they seem to be good just because they don't pretend all the time to be satanists or something?!”

“Yeah! That's sort of what I mean!” he said rather solemnly. “But I do mean to say that I also am into believing that they are satanists even without there being any proof for that!”

The girl looked a little bit uneasy about this. “I feel they are into sort of being into satan! I feel they are into him in the sense that they are into evil in the first place! It is evil to pretend as though they are rather good people when one knows that they don't care for either men nor other women in any sort of real sense!”

“I can't suppose they don't really care for one another,” he said, with an attempted air of apprehension. After a short silence he added: “Also, I don't think I'm into pretending they're as evil as the men they hang out with!”

The girl looked at him as if she had just seen a ghost. At first she said nothing. Then she slowly began to say that she was into something that she didn't realize they seemed to be too innocent to do to her.

But he looked as if there was nothing real about what she was telling him.

Then she continued by saying that they actually pretended to be for real about men around here. But instead they actually harassed other women, as long as they weren't part of “the type of attitude,” she said “that seemed to lure about them - or at least I find them to be full of that real evil attitude!”

“I feel that they are not into men and thereby they are evil enough not to try to realize what is evil and what isn't! It is not up to me to decide, of course, what is and what isn't - I don't mean that! But still i can find it in me that as a man I can find it in me to know something about when things start to really be evil, and then I have to care about it, unless I'm a bad man. But with you and other girls and women around here, it is as if they never had any man around them, except for in a sense their family and perhaps one or two others. Thereby I feel they are not imbecile but evil but not in the sense that you put it when you say they're into the devil - even sort of!”

As I listen to this I start to realize that it's not imbecile to realize one is bad, but that it's also not imbecile to realize it too little to take for granted that one must be punished - unless God somehow fixes one a punishment just the same! As I keep on thinking about this, I find the two people before me to be rather imbecile, the two of them, apart from the fact that they are both into God in the not so imbecile sense that they are mature enough to care about what He has to say about morals.

While I ponder upon this, I find that the two people before me rise and leave. They are not talking any more about good and evil, nor rights and wrongs. Instead they are talking about going home to her place or his, and they somehow seem too trustworthy to be viewed as the kinds of people that God punishes for their attitudes about seeing more of each other.

Scornful Attitudes for a Newcomer

This story is not really for adults only! ... : Scornful Attitudes for a Newcomer

In the Mists of the Dissatisfaction of an Honest Man

They stood there, crying, those two girls, about whom Donald knew for certain that they at least one of them must have stolen his wallet. Even so they looked very innocent, although there was absolutely no way that they could actually be it! In amazement Donald stared at them for a while.

Then one of them said: “I was trying to find out if it was he who had stolen my ticket for the train.” then she gave a fairly detailed description of the train ticket he had himself bought earlier that day.

A boy who was with the girls stood up and said to him: “You better give that ticket back to her! Because it's no way to treat an innocent girl like that to fake that its she who stole from you rather than the other way around!”

Even the boy looked astonishingly innocent to Donald, although he wasn't exactly the crying type - on the surface, even. Instead, he looked a bit threateningly at him now. At first Donald was frightened so that he felt he couldn't decide on what to say. But after a short while he did speak his mind, and said: “I don't recall that she ever had a reason to think I ever stole from her! I believe that they are just faking it! And so are you perhaps!?”

He looked at the three of them. All of them seemed to be from somewhere near Mediterranean sea, or so, he thought, and looked glanced quickly at each of them again. Then he felt that the three of them were related, and probably even siblings.

In the pub where they confronted each other, there were fairly many people around the four of them. A lady who seemed to have been listening since about two minutes back said: “I don't believe you can have the guts to say to the girls there that they are trying to steal from you! Instead, you just stand here and say to everyone else that they have been stealing from you!” This comment surprised Donald a bit, because the lady who had spoken seemed unrelated to the other three. But he found her to be perhaps in league with them - and possibly even related to them, even though it didn't show.

A bartender arrived and looked at them all. He had an air of sophistication about his ways, which Donald wondered if it had to do with that he worked with other things as well.

“What should they all think you are?” the bartender asked him. “It seems to me, as well, that you are an asshole in having stolen from these young and innocent girls.”

Donald felt happy that he hadn't drunk more than one glass of whine that evening. Because, he figured, they could perhaps even have had him himself believe their fairly outrageous lies, if he had! At the same time, though, he felt frightened about not being able to show that he was not the one who was guilty at all of stealing anything form anyone this evening. There wasn't even a clue in him about how the could have stolen even a train ticket.

“Unlike those youngsters, and perhaps that young woman too, I can't trick people into believing me! But I can say I'm innocent because I'm not very capable of stealing! I wouldn't be the one to be able to steal that ticket - and perhaps I can even prove, later on that it was I who bought such a ticket earlier today!”

The waiter looked at him for a while. He seemed to be into scrutinizing him to the extent he could possibly be a liar. Then he answered: “I can't know to which extent you're imbecile enough not to be able to steal anything! But this time it's you who owe her a ticket, not the other way around!”

Donald stood still for a while, a bit baffled by it all. Then he checked his pockets, and found that he didn't even find his car keys. Nor could he find his mobile phone, which didn't surprise him, disturbed him even more about that the girls - and whoever else could be in on it - seemed very guilty to the extent they didn't admit that he was the one that someone had stolen from.

For that reason he said to the waiter: “Even though they look innocent, I still don't have my care keys, even. Can you understand that it's probably she who stole them.” He pointed at one of the girls. “If not, then it's probably her sister, but I wouldn't know who very easily!”

The waiter examined him again. But this time he chose to believe him. “Okay,” he said, “I'll call the cops and tell them a young man has probably been pick-pocketed by some youngsters who act innocent, but who do steal cars, even, as it seems.”

Relieved, Donald thanked the man, who said that it was nothing to thank him for; he just did his duty, and that now that he believed him he should get the help they, the police, can give him.

When the police arrived the waiter and Donald and a few others who had been there described the three youngsters. Even the woman who had taken their part initially described them fairly thoroughly and called them rascals, of whom she had thought better but now realized even they could be totally guilty although looking innocent.

Donald gave a description of the three as dark-haired, fairly dark-skinned but not too obviously southern. He said they somehow matched his idea about how robbers who might kill during their robberies might look. At the same time, though, he said, they seemed to him to pretend to be innocent so thoroughly that for seeming it they might have to alienate themselves from all that they're doing.

Two weeks later, the police had caught two guys and two girls who seemed to match those criteria and a few others of those who had given evidence or so about them. The two girls and one of the boys did seem to Donald to be those who seemingly stole both his wallet and his car keys. The forth boy was, the police said, an accomplice who wasn't at the scene of that crime, but whom they had caught red-handed, while robbing someone else.

Bad Neighborhood

“I don't feel comfortable about it!” Sonya said. “I mean all the suggestive porn we have around here!”

Her two brothers looked at her. The younger one, Richard, answered: “I sort of don't like it either, actually. I mean i really fancied it to begin with. But nowadays I feel rather fed up with it.”

“Me too,” the eldest one said and cleared his throat. “I actually feel that their into so pointless sex that it's rather boring in the long run.”

“I feel, that we've actually been tricked by them, you and I,” Richard answered him, “into fancying it to the degree that neither one of us can fancy sex without that edge to it anymore. Or at least I feel that way about it!” he exclaimed.

“Yeah, me too” his brother said.

Sonya looked at them. “I feel they are trying to harass me into feeling that way. I mean into feeling that I have to fancy that stuff for real! What has happened to you guys upon that you fell into their trap?!”

Her two brothers were silent for a while, then the younger one spoke: “I guess we both felt embarrassed unless we fancied it to begin with. What happened to me after introducing myself to that type of fancy is mostly that I began feeling blunt and so. As for Patrick, I guess he feels the same, but off course you better speak for yourself old bro!”

Patrick said nothing at first. Then he began slowly telling them that he felt more than just blunt about it. He said he felt both and humiliation he couldn't quite describe, he said.

“Really!?” his siblings said.

He sighed. “Yeah, really that bad. But in a sense I felt I had to enjoy for a fairly long time, you know when we were new here and only I was a teenager. Now that the two of you are fourteen, I guess I should tell you again about how they seemed to be so clever at seducing me and then simply left me for the fool who paid them for actually leaving me with my shame and my guilt!”

“I feel it's silly to say that they didn't seduce you old bro,” Richard said. But Sonya broke in and said:”I feel that you shouldn't have fancied them in the first place. Even though they - and who are they, actually - seems to have pressured you into believing in them, I feel that those whores are nothing that they want to seem to be about, and that they're nothing of value to anyone with the right fancy of things!”

Patrick stared downwards, his gaze sort emptying out, it seemed with the notions he had of - was it of himself - or was it of something else? ... “I know!” he said at last.

Sonya looked at him with pity. “Oh, Patrick, I'm sorry if I just insulted you for what you already are into hating yourself for! I can't suppose it's not easy for you! ... Even I could have, I guess, fallen for at least one or two of those gigolos who are also out there!”

“I feel,” Patrick said finally, “that you and he, Sonya, don't seem to care for the notions of the attitudes that I have warned you for. I feel that there's no reason for us to pay attention to those gigolos nor whores any more.”

Sonya and Patrick looked at him. Then Patrick glanced at Sonya and then looked back. “I guess there's not any big deal about simply having it they're idiots apart from the seductive capacity they all have! How about we all, including our parents perhaps, start seeing that in them. I mean in a different sense than to religiously or something try to pretend as though we were sort chosen to be better!”

“Yeah! I think we should!” Sonya burst out. Richard, too seemed to agree. “Yes let's to that!” he said. But then after a short break he added: “I feel that we both, I and you, Sonya, are wise now in the sense that we probably can't be caught in the trap of the prostitutes or the other pornographers. But I feel also that we are not, probably, wise enough to be able to handle any embarrassment or harassment they might do to us! I mean somewhere dons the line, it seems, some of them are gonna start having it we are stuck up unless we try to fake that we're into the same kinds of thinking as they are! Right? ... Sonya? ... Patrick?”

His two siblings looked at one another. Sonya began saying that she wasn't sure about what he meant when her older brother broke in and answered: “I feel that they are not gonna harass us since we all now know what they're into!”

Sonya shrugged. “No, I guess not, then!” she said.

Richard looked at the two of them. “I feel there's no embarrassment, actually, anymore, to the extent that I can see it in them to be nothing but the frauds they are. But how about you, though, old bro? you have seemed to be into thinking about them as though they supposedly could have been wise if they only were out of that lifestyle. In a sense I think that will be a trap for him!” he added, looking at his sister, who took notice and seemed rather thoughtful for a while, during which she began saying that she wanted them both to feel safe about themselves. “Because it seems,” she said, “that they all are going to find us to be naively innocent or so, and by that notion insinuate that we should be into sex of their awful kind!”

Her brothers both looked rather thoughtful at this. After a while they both said that they agreed. Patrick added that they “might not have to be into caring about it, their bullying, I mean. But we might all need to become more proud and confident in, not only ourselves, but also in truth, decency and so.”

“I meant that!” Sonya replied.

“Okay. But it seems I and not you was able to say it, then, sis!”

“Anyway,” he added, “I expect to be going to college fairly soon. Because, after all, since we moved here, they - I mean our parents - have been saving money for it. I'm not sure if you know it actually, but hey really did say that they were gonna move with us to a cheap neighbourhood because they wanted to make sure the money they saved for my college education, and yours too, would be enough!”

Sonya looked thoughtful and replied: “I guess they can have said that sort of a thing!” Richard agreed, but looked thoughtful and added:

“But then what shall we expect of ourselves once we're there?! Do they expect us to be able to cope with higher-class class mates who seem to have it we are into actually being beneath them?”

“I don't know what they feel we should say to ourselves about that. But perhaps we aught to just leave it be until we're there, apart from simply sticking together about not becoming bad just because we live in a bad neighbourhood!”

His two younger siblings seemed to agree.''

“Then why don't we all,” Patrick added, “fancy ourselves as seemingly that wise and smart, so that our rotten neighbourhood doesn't get at us very much?!”

“Obviously we shall!” his younger siblings answered.