My mother became really close friends with the Lemelsons due to her new job. Every year, they have an extravagant Christmas party at their newly built mansion in the Palisades, and we would now be invited to it. James also went to the party, and I had a pleasant time hanging out with him and Noah.
During one week at father’s after the New Year, father had to leave for his work. For that week it was just me, my sister, and Max in the house. The three of us had a lot of fun together. Max took us to Universal Studios. Father allowed him to drive the big Lexus, for which I was a bit jealous. The last time I was at the Universal Studios amusement park was when I just moved to America. Mother took us to the Universal city walk a couple of times, but never the amusement park. I went on all of the rides, including the infamous Jurassic Park ride that I was rejected from going on when I was a child.
When father came back, we talked to him about our time at Universal Studios. He suggested that we all go to Six Flags. The four of us set out for it the next day. Six Flags was the biggest amusement park I’ve ever been to. I was awed by all the gigantic roller coaster rides. Max, my father, and even my little sister were all eager to tackle the largest roller coasters. I was the only one who was scared out of my mind. Max talked me into it, so I nervously gave all of the rides a try, and ended up having some fun.
To my chagrin, my father decided to take up motorcycle riding. He pulled up to the house one day in a roaring Harley Davidson, and I was completely baffled. I suppose it was due to some mid-life crisis he was going through. A motorcycle… Really? Alex Bubenheim got him into it. He and Alex would then ride their motorcycles all the time. He kept insisting that he take me on the motorcycle whenever we went out, instead of going in the car. This would be too embarrassing for me, and I adamantly refused to ever go on the motorcycle.
I went with mother to the red carpet premiere of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
This was my fourth premiere. Going to premieres were always an uplifting experience for me. The movie was quite a disappointment, however, and I much preferred the classic Indiana Jones films. The next day, I told some of my teachers that I went to this premiere, and they were very shocked. I bet I was the first kid at that school who has done such prestigious things.
Soumaya and Jazz returned from Morocco. I was happy to see my baby brother again, but not so happy to see Soumaya. Things were a lot better at father’s house when she was gone. Soon after she came back, we started getting into various arguments again, which embarrassed me in front of Max.
In the Spring, something horrible happened that will haunt me forever. We met up with the Bubenheims at the Sagebrush Cantina in Calabasas, and a friend of Pollina’s was there with them, named Nicole, a girl around my age. She sat next to Leo the whole time, and by the end of the dinner, the two of them were making out. Twelve-year-old Leo was making out with a girl who was almost my age. Not only does Leo have a better social life, but now he was making out with girls, AT AGE TWELVE!
They made out for a long time, and I could see them tongue kiss. They knew I was watching with envy, and they still did it. I bet that lucky bastard took great satisfaction from my envy. There I was, watching a boy four years younger than me experience everything I’ve longed for… to kiss a girl… to be worthy of a girl’s attraction. On that day, I developed a vicious hatred for Leo that will never go away.
A few days later, Max went home to France, never to come back again. I was deeply saddened by this.
For the brief period that Max was staying at father’s house, I enjoyed life a lot more. He was a big part of my life there. He drove me to places when father and Soumaya were busy, we played card games and had pleasant conversations after dinner, and we always took walks to the top of the hill overlooking father’s neighborhood, which I called the Overlook. Most importantly, he made me feel less lonely. I was very saddened by his departure.
Another horrible experience concerning the Bubenheims occurred. We were having dinner at their house, like we usually did. At the end of the dinner, a few of Pollina’s friends came over. They were all popular, good looking girls and boys. They were the kind of people who I’ve always had the desire to be a part of, but was never able to fit in with. Popular kids… cool kids. When I heard them talking about their awesome lives and their parties, I had a breakdown right then and there. I realized how much I’ve been missing out in my life, and I cried in front of everyone. I felt like I would never have a life as good as theirs. I told everyone that I wanted to commit suicide. Father, Soumaya, Alex, and Karina talked to me for three hours to cheer me up.
Eleventh Grade at Independence ended. Like the previous year, my time at the school went by like a blur. I didn’t talk to anyone. I barely considered it a part of my life. I just did the work that I was required to do while I waited for the bus to take me home.
Once summer started, I sank into a major depression. My feelings of inferiority were intensified by the recent events with the Bubenheims. The Bubenheims were family friends… but now they represented the very thing that destroyed my whole life and took away my happiness.
It was at this time that I was just beginning to realize, with a lot of clarity, how truly unfair my life is. I compared myself to other teenagers and became very angry that they were able to experience all of the things I’ve desired, while I was left out of it. I never had the experience of going to a party with other teenagers, I never had my first kiss, I never held hands with a girl, I never lost my virginity. In the past, I felt so inferior and weak from all of the bullying that I just accepted my lonely life and dealt with it by playing WoW, but at this point I started to question why I was condemned to suffer such misery.
There was nothing I could really do about my unfair life situation. I felt completely powerless. The only way I could deal with it was to continue to drown all of my troubles with my online games. I played WoW really hard, leveling two new characters to 70. At mother’s house, I sometimes played it for fourteen hours a day. James, Steve, and Mark would always joke that there was never a time that they saw me offline. I was known as the guy who was “always on WoW”.
My laptop was getting slower and slower. It wasn’t a very powerful laptop, but it was the only computer I had to play WoW on. This was really frustrating me, because eventually it became so slow that it ruined my gaming experience. I kept pestering my mother and father to get me a faster laptop that was more efficient for gaming.
For my 17th Birthday, my parents agreed to split the funds for a new laptop. My mother took me to Best Buy to choose it out, and I found the perfect one. It was a larger, highly efficient dark-colored laptop designed for gaming. After we bought it, we had dinner at the Japanese restaurant Kabuki on Ventura Boulevard, the same restaurant my mother took me to after my 5th Grade graduation.
17 Years Old
Father told me that Max invited me to visit him in France for three weeks. I would have to travel there alone, and Max would pick me up at the airport near his hometown of Montpellier. At first I was very anxious about it, and I was about to say no. Father talked me into it, saying that I was lucky to have an opportunity like this. I really missed Max, and I wanted to see him again, so I quickly made the decision to go.
I left around the beginning of August. This was my first time traveling alone, and I didn’t know what to expect. Father signed me up to have supervised travel assistance to help me along the way, otherwise I would get lost in the airport. On the way there, I made a stop in Frankfurt, Germany to transfer planes.
Germany became another country I can add to the list of places I’ve been. When I arrived at the airport in France, I waited for a few hours and finally Max showed up. I was really happy to see him. I couldn’t believe I was actually in France again.
Max and I stayed at his grandmother’s house in Montpellier. Montpellier was an exquisite city, with a romantic and cultured vibe to it. It was such a pity that I was too caught up in my own world to truly appreciate it at the t
ime.
Max introduced me to his life in France. I met with some of his friends and we went to bars together.
In France, the legal drinking age is 16, so I was able to drink alcohol at a bar. It was astounding! For those three weeks, I had the faintest taste of what life was like for normal young people. The experience of hanging out with a group of young people, boys and girls, and enjoying life was something I never did before. It really turned my whole world around, for that short amount of time. So this is what everyone else gets to experience, I thought to myself with jealousy. I felt a sense of happiness and bliss that I hadn’t felt since childhood, when life was good.
During the trip, we visited the town of Arles where we stayed in the hotel that Max’s family owns.
Max told me about all of the sexual experiences he had. I never knew he had such an active sex life. The more he talked to me about it, the more envious I became. I questioned to myself why he got to experience such an amazing life, while I had to suffer so much loneliness and humiliation. I was introduced to some of the girls he had sex with in the past, and they were all pretty. On top of that, his family was extremely wealthy and they owned a sprawling mansion in the countryside. Where’s the justice? I thought. Why couldn’t I have been born into that life? I envied Max so much. His life must have been heaven on earth. Despite my envy of Max, I couldn’t hate him, at least at that time. He was the only popular young person who ever reached out to me. He invited me to visit his home, and he treated me like a friend. For that, I will always have a grudging respect for Max Bonon.
After three weeks in France doing exciting social things, I returned to my lonely life in the U.S., where I became even more depressed than I was in the beginning of summer, especially after getting a taste of what life was truly like for normal people. I knew I could never live such a pleasurable life, and the knowledge haunted me. I was back to my routine of World of Warcraft. At least the new expansion was coming out soon, and I tried to look forward to that.
When Twelfth Grade began, I made a vow to finish high school before the month of March. The high school system at Independence allows students to work at their own pace, so the more extra work I did, the sooner I could graduate. I was always depressed and bored for the few hours a day I had to spend there, and I disliked all of the degenerate, low-class students there. They repulsed me. I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could, and it became my goal for the year. At the end of school time every day I asked my teachers to give me extra homework assignments, and I stopped myself from playing WoW
until I completed them.
The second expansion for World of Warcraft finally released, called Wrath of the Lich King. When I got home from school, I wanted the game so badly. Mother wasn’t home from work yet, so she couldn’t drive me. I decided to walk all the way to Best Buy to pick up the game. It was a long walk that took almost an hour. On the way home I was very hungry and stopped at Panda Express to eat lunch. Planet Cyber was right next to that Panda Express, so I walked in there for a few seconds to reminisce about better times before hurrying home to install the game. Once it was installed, James and I played it together all afternoon.
I found out that one of my teachers at Independence, Mr. Perales, also played WoW. From then on, the two of us would talk about the game every day. It was nice to have someone at school to talk to, and I enjoyed telling him about my daily progression with my character. This made my time at school a lot less mundane and boring.
James, Steve, and Mark were the closest thing I had to a group of friends. I played with them online almost every day. We had so many adventures in WoW as a group, and yet… I felt like the outcast of the group. Steve and Mark only considered me an online friend, never a real friend. I found out that the three of them had WoW meetups at one of their houses a lot, and they never invited me. Sometimes, when I would be playing with them online, I would find out that they were all together in real life, and I was the only one left out. Whenever they did this, I acted bitter towards them through the game, but they didn’t even care. Even in the World of Warcraft, I was an outcast, alone and unwanted.
The more lonely I felt, the more angry I became. The anger slowly built up inside me throughout all of the dark years. Even after the release of the new WoW expansion, I noticed that the game’s ability to alleviate my sense of loneliness was starting to fade. I began to feel lonely even while playing it, and I often broke down into tears in the middle of my WoW sessions. I began to ask myself what the point was in playing this game anymore. I spent less and less time playing it.
One day I found some posts on the internet about teenagers having sex, and I was once again reminded of the life I had been denied. I felt that no girl would ever want to have sex with me… And I developed extreme feelings of envy, hatred, and anger towards anyone who has a sex life. I saw them as the enemy. I felt condemned to live a life of lonely celibacy while other boys were allowed to experience the pleasures of sex, all because girls didn’t want me. I felt inferior and undesirable. This time, however, I couldn’t just stand by and accept such an injustice anymore. I refused to continue hiding away from the world and forgetting about all the insults it dealt to me.
I began to have fantasies of becoming very powerful and stopping everyone from having sex. I wanted to take their sex away from them, just like they took it away from me. I saw sex as an evil and barbaric act, all because I was unable to have it. This was the major turning point. My anger made me stronger inside. This was when I formed my ideas that sex should be outlawed. It is the only way to make the world a fair and just place. If I can’t have it, I will destroy it. That’s the conclusion I came to, right then and there.
I spent more time studying the world, seeing the world for the horrible, unfair place it is. I then had the revelation that just because I was condemned to suffer a life of loneliness and rejection, doesn’t mean I am insignificant. I have an exceptionally high level of intelligence. I see the world differently than anyone else. Because of all of the injustices I went through and the worldview I developed because of them, I must be destined for greatness. I must be destined to change the world, to shape it into an image that suits me!
At the beginning of the winter break, I decided to quit playing World of Warcraft entirely. On my last day on the game, I had a long, emotional conversation with James where I opened up about all of my troubles. I told him about all my newfound views of the world, and my belief that sex must be abolished.
He seemed to be supportive of my stance, and I was glad that he understood me. It was a very memorable day.
My father’s movie was released, but it did not do well at all. He was only able to get it released in a few select theatres, and no one was interested in seeing it. He stupidly invested all of his money into the movie, and he got absolutely nothing out of it. This caused him to fall into a financial crisis that he will be stuck in for a long time. I was annoyed that he kept having to make it clear to us that he was now in a “financial crisis”. He talked about it all the time, and it was embarrassing.
What a bitter coincidence, that right at the point when my life fell even deeper into agony, my father is cursed with this financial crisis. Right at the time when I needed my father’s support the most, he lost all of his assets. It was as if some malevolent being cursed me with bad luck. I truly had no advantage at all. The universe was not kind to me.
I formed an ideology in my head of how the world should work. I was fueled both by my desire to destroy all of the injustices of the world, and to exact revenge on everyone I envy and hate. I decided that my destiny in life is to rise to power so I can impose my ideology on the world and set everything right. I was only seventeen, I have plenty of time. I thought to myself. I spent all of my time studying in my room, reading books about history, politics, and sociology, trying to learn as much as I can.
I became a new person, furiously driven by a goal. My torment would continue, but I had something to live for. I felt empowered.
>
I went over to James’s house to have a sleepover. Usually when I went there we spent the whole time playing WoW, with the exception of walking to town for lunch. Because I quit WoW, this was the first time we had to find other things to do. We spent most of the time going on walks around the Palisades town center, or along the Palisades Bluffs, talking about our views of the world and our hopes and dreams. I told him more about my hatred of people who have sex. James quickly deduced the reason for why I was so fervent about abolishing sex… that in truth I really want to have sex but I feel like I can never have it, so I wish to take it away from everyone else. He read me very well. I had to admit that he was right. That is the exact reason for it.
I fulfilled my vow of finishing high school by March. In fact, I finished a bit earlier than I expected – in mid-February. I completed so many homework assignments towards the end, especially since I no longer played WoW. I was glad to be done with it. School was finally over. Not having to go to school anymore gave me a lot of free time to think and brood.
As time progressed, I realized how hopeless everything in my life was. The chances that I will ever rise to power and right the wrongs of the world were extremely slim. I had absolutely no idea or plan of how to acquire any sort of power. It was naïve of me to think that I could one day become a dictator. The only thing I could do was fantasize about it.
My whole world twisted even deeper into darkness and despair as my depressing life continued on.
My hatred for people who have sex festered inside me like a plague. I frequently went on walks around town to brood over how hopeless and unfair everything was. It was better than being stuck in my room all the time. When I saw young couples walking around at the mall, my anger and hatred intensified greatly. It was the worst torture ever to see them making out and being intimate. My life, if you can call it a life, was living hell.
My Twisted World Page 12