My Life, I Guess (A Memoir)

Chapter 5

I know these chapters have been quite depressing, so let's lighten the mood and talk about my love life. Surprisingly, that aspect of my life is not depressing. At least, not anymore.

Also, please note that all of these relationships are entirely online, because living in Indonesia as a not-yet-transitioned trans woman means I basically can never have a love life in person.

As I mentioned, my first love was my childhood friend from fifth grade, Sidi, but I also mentioned that a few years later, I got sucked into the hellhole that was IMVU. I have no idea what that app is like now, and I'm triggered every time I see or hear mention of it, but back then it was my first foray into catfishing in the traditional, online sense. I would get selfies of random pretty girls on Flickr--remember Flickr?--anytime someone asked to see a picture of me. 

Before that, though, I literally grabbed pictures from Google images of models, most of which had watermarks from the photo company. I genuinely tried to pass that shit off as legit IRL pics. You wanna talk about cringe? I was the cringe queen as a teenager.

Somehow it worked, though, and I got to experience what it was like being a whore on the internet.

I say I was a whore because I truly was one. I had so many random online flings with random guys, cybering non-stop, and I never considered that what the guys were doing was technically inadvertent statutory rape, because I only pretended to be 18 when I was really 14-15.

One of the guys I really fell for was named Mitchy. He was this very sweet guy from Canada, and was the first time I ever had someone as close to a boyfriend as possible. Because he wasn't really my boyfriend, he was the boyfriend of an impostor. A dumb, horny teen who wanted so badly to be loved, but knew that nobody would love her true self.

Mitchy and my catfishing self were together for a long time, until early 2011 when I decided to leave that persona behind and begin to be my real self online. However, I didn't reveal myself to him or even say goodbye, I just... left. I truly regret that, because he was a genuinely good guy and I often wonder where he is now, and how he's doing.

I think I got karma for ghosting him, though. You'll see in a bit.

But in 2013, I got lonely, so against my better judgment, I brought that persona back. I desperately wanted male attention, and that was the only way I knew how to get it.

I met Thomas then, a Danish guy who was very sweet, and we did plenty of sexual roleplays together. (Side note, this was also around the time where I first got into roleplay in general. Relevant for later.) Eventually we caught feelings for one another and I began to feel really bad that I was lying to him, and he became the first guy I ever revealed my real self to. I was expecting the worst, but he actually took it relatively well. He needed time to process, but we still stayed in contact.

We eventually lost touch, though, or at least we didn't talk as much anymore. We drifted apart, and became very different people. In his case, to a very... alarming extent.

The last few interactions we had, let's just say the red flags were red flagging.

It was 2018, so the subject of Black Panther came up. He said that he was hesitant to see the movie, because he was turned off by--and I quote--the "Black hype" surrounding it.

Can we say, yikes?

So after that, I basically avoided him. It wasn't until a few months later when, out of curiosity, I asked how he was doing. 

He then told me that he met some neo-Nazis over there in Denmark, and he literally said to me something to the effect of, "They're actually pretty chill, reasonable people."