Consequences Chapter Nine has been published! You can read it here. The rest of the blog contains spoilers for the chapter.

One of the driving forces of basically all erotica is desire. Erotica is based on feeling like you want to do something with someone, or if one’s in an unhealthy mindset, the desire to control or own someone else for your personal gain. Even kinks based on a lack of passion, like free use, operate under this idea. It can be sexual, it can even be non-sexual, but erotica needs to stem from desire of some kind.

In high school, I had a very strong sense of desire. I was very hormonal and even when I wasn’t feeling sexual, I still had strong romantic crushes on basically any girl that gave me the time of day. Part of the reason that I personally believe you can have a crush on someone and still want to be their friend, or that you can be friends with an ex (a normal thing to do), is because in high school, I had to grapple with crushes a lot, and maneuver around them. I had a few girlfriends, and a fair number more friends with benefits, and an almost infinitely higher number of crushes.

Part of Jason’s issue with Adam in Consequences is that Adam can’t seem to be friends with any girl in his life without being involved with her, romantically or sexually, somehow. To me, this is actually a valid point from Jason. It actually is a little concerning that Adam is incapable of being platonic friends with girls. Adam has a strong sense of desire, and certain gifts, and he kind of runs wild with it, which brings… well, you know what the story is named.

I had to grapple with being what I call “girl crazy” in high school. I was nuts about girls, and it led to good outcomes, like being friends with a lot of girls and listening to them and learning about consent earlier than other boys and not running away if periods were brought up (I know men in their thirties that can’t handle the idea of periods existing, they’re not exactly lotharios), but it also came with downsides. I was very persistent, and while I knew about sexual consent, I wasn’t great with personal boundaries.

Teenagers on a whole aren’t famous for being good with boundaries, or handling relationships with grace, although I was a particularly poor example. This is probably the way I am most similar to Adam. Adam has every advantage in the world. His biggest issue is that he takes advantage of it. He sees himself often as this understood underdog, which shows a lack of self-awareness, especially for a guy that monologues and reflects on everything. Chiefly, he can’t resist getting involved with any girl he knows as long as they’re even slightly interested in him.

I’d urge a gentle caution to anyone who sees that and thinks that this sounds like them. Do me a favor and ask yourself what you might accidentally misunderstood if you want to have sex with every female friend, or male friend, or every non-binary friend, or every friend, that you have. How that warps how you see them, if that impacts how much you actually want to be their friend. My one saving grace is that I asked myself this question early on, and I resolved that if I wanted to be friends with benefits with someone, I had to make sure I committed to the friend part. As a result, even decently far into my adult life, I’m still in contact with a lot of my former friends with benefits, let alone exes. I’m on good terms with a lot of them, and that comes from a place of care. I’m not saying this to highlight myself as this shining example, but rather to say I can’t help but feel this should be the standard.

I don’t think it’s controversial to say that if you want to have sex with people, you should care about people. You should find them interesting and want to make them smile. You should like them. If you don’t like people, but like sex, it honestly sounds like you’ll live a happier life by spending about a grand on sex toys rather than trying to form sexual relationships with people. And again, if you find yourself as girl crazy, or boy crazy, or just sex crazy, be careful about how that shapes your social life, and the way you might accidentally hurt others. I’ll talk to you all next week.