Best Friends

I can quite proudly confess to never having seen a whole episode of a soap opera in my entire life. However, as someone who enjoys writing, I am pretty clued in on all the cliches that soap operas like to employ, again and again.

I like to know what to omit from my stories, what to play down, and how to be at least a little bit original. And that is why I consider this recount - this 'real life story' of mine - to be so ironic. Because it is cliche. Because it does seem like something straight out of a soap opera. And yet, it really happened.

It's a story that began 4 months before I decided that I'd like to recount it, and it was only 5 and a half months later that I began to do so.

It's a story that needs a fair amount of background to be explained first. I suppose if it were a fictional storie, I would begin from an interesting moment. I would try and grip the reader and pull them in. But I can't. I can't, because it is real, and because much like real life, it must move in a strict linear fashion. Background is needed for everything to make sense. And so I ask you all to bear with me, to read through the events that lead up to my story, so that once you come to it, you can understand both it and me a little better.

One could say that it truly began on Friday, the 7th of September, 2007. Some could say it began within the weeks following that date. Or perhaps, one could even say that in began in February 2002, on my first day of high school. I can't remember the exact date, or even seeing her on that day. I don't even remember her name being called out when we were sorted into our home room groups in the assembly hall - I do remember my heart beat increasing whenever my name, 'Kathleen', was called out, and I remember slumping back into my seat each time someone else's surname was called out after it.

Although we shared the same home room, Maria and I didn't make friends immediately. In fact, it was probably a couple of weeks into the beginning of the school year before we exchanged our first words. That was the kind of relationship we developed. We'd talk - occasionally - during class hours. Rarely at interval or lunch break. Almost never after school ended for the day. And certainly never outside of school. I leant her a book once, and she loaned me money when I forgot my lunch, so I could buy from the school cafeteria.

All in all, we were not friends. We were very much classmates.
It was only in our third year of high school, when we sat next to one another in art class, that we began to develop something that could possibly be called a friendship. And by our last year of high school, I could actually say that I'd invited her over to my house - though only once.

It was during our first year of university in 2007 that we started to become close. We and our other friend from high school, Sophia, were in the afternoon Japanese class, which ended at about 5:00 pm on Fridays. Since our campus was only a short distance from the centre of town, we usually walked down to get something to eat or drink after class. We began to grow closer, and subsequently, began to learn more about one another.

Until we began attending university together, I'd always come across to them as shy and innocent, probably slightly aloof. But of course, the closer you get to people, the less you can hide for them.
Unfortunately, this does mean I have to be straight up about myself for this story to make sense.

I have a certain image of myself that, if I think about it, is hardly true. Rather, it is the image that I long ago decided was right to present to the world, and after many years of playing this person, I began to believe she was the real me.

The girl I played was a shy, studious, innocent girl; always, courteous and friendly, if not a little plain. In reality, I am shy. As for being studious, I'm one of those hateful people who can pass tests and exams with little to no studying involved. From there, it's easy to pretend I work hard, when the only time I really study is for about an hour before I have a test.

The innocent part is a complete lie, but it is also the easiest (though eventually it becomes the hardest) part to play. I've been reading explicit material before I was even in high school. As I got older, I began to write it, and then later began to watch it, all before I was 15. I had an intense interest in homosexuality, and a secret fetish for animation and comics of Japanese gay porn.

But that sort of thing is so easy to hide from strangers and acquaintances. You can cover it up with plainer interests and hobbies in conversation; you can leave information out. It's when people get close to you that it's hard to hide. When they come to your house and see your collection of books and DVDS. When they go through your computer. When they find your blogs on the internet. When you become comfortable enough with them to slip up.

And so all throughout high school, I let Maria and Sophia think - maybe even tried to make them believe - that that's who I was. But once we grew closer, it got harder.

By the time I was in university, I had stopped watching Japanese animations, focusing instead on Japanese boybands. My obsession with homosexuality hadn't diminished, and instead of writing explicit fiction about animation characters, I began to write what we call 'Real Person Slash' or 'RPS' (basically gay, erotic celebrity fan fiction) about the boys from the bands I listened to. And somehow in the minds of my two friends, I went from innocent to what Sophia called 'mysterious'. I wouldn't let them read my livejournal blog. I behaved suspiciously and secretively when my interests were brought up.

But in the end, I didn't want to push them away. They had become my best friends, and when having to choose between pushing them away by defiantly keeping my secrets, or letting them know and staying close, I would most certainly - did, in the end - choose the second option. It helped that before I admitted anything, I'd managed to manipulate Maria into liking RPS as well.

Maria immigrated to my country while she was still in primary school. Where she originally came from, the majority of people indentified themselves as orthodox christians, and she is one herself. If I hadn't gotten her to like it first, I could probably never have admitted it to her. Because, although she had told me that she had no qualms about people being homosexual, she still never seemed one hundred percent comfortable with it.

But once I admitted it to her, and finally let her know that her and Sophia's suspisions about me not being quite as innocent as they'd always thought were right, our relationship only seemed to grow tighter. As I'd begun to predict she would, Maria began to pester me until I gave in to writing her RPS about her favourite couples. We had long conversations on AIM that mainly centered around that, but often broke off in other directions as well.

That was probably the time we begun to stop thinking of one another as asexual beings. She learnt about me and my hobbies, and in turn, wrote me RPS back. She told me things about herself that I would never have asked her to admit.

The turning point in our relationship for me was probably on Sunday the 2nd of September. We were talking about my second trip to Japan in 2006, and how I'd been hit on by a Japanese boy at the school festival I'd attended. She been amused as I told her the recount of his failed English, and how he'd told me, 'I am Japanese rockstar. Where are you from? I am from Japan'. I told her about how I'd been so stunned that I was being flirted with that I'd accepted the candy he'd offered me and then run back to my classroom as fast as my feet could carry me.

"When I told mom that story, I thought she was going to scold me for literally taking candy from a stranger, but she just looked at me bemusedly, shook her head, and said, 'I'm never going to have grandchildren, am I?'" I told her.

"Haha, nah. She will." Maria replied, positive as ever.

"I dunno." I typed, "Whenever anyone flirts with me, my natural reaction is, '....I have to go!' and then I run in the opposite direction. I'm kind of dumb."

"Not dumb. You're cute." She replied, with a winking emote.
"There's nothing cute about it!"

"Yeah there is." Was her response. "You're real cute."

"Haha, okay, whatever. Thanks." I decided to cut the argument short, since it wasn't getting anywhere. There was some pause in our conversation.

"Hey, Kathleen?"
I was a little surprised upon opening the AIM window. There was something about the message that seemed a little serious to me for some reason. No smiley emoticons or anything typical to Maria's usual messages.

"Yes?" I replied, in much the same fashion, feeling slightly on edge.

"How come I'm flirting with you but you're not running away?"

Even 5 and a half months later, I can still recall the feeling of my pulse increasing and the mix of panic and anticipation rising in my chest that I felt as I read that sentence. I remember my heart racing as I tried to play it cool, and wrote, "You were? I didn't notice."

"Oh, yeah." She said. "Well, I was."

I felt my face flush, and the atmosphere that had been created made me feel unsure. This was the sort of thing that friends joke about together. But it didn't sound like a joke.

"Well, I guess it's because you're my friend." I replied. Then casually added, "Why're you flirting with me in the first place?"

"Oh yeah, makes sense." She said. "I flirt with most of my friends."
And just like that, the atmosphere returned to normal. But still, I couldn't forget that feeling that had come over me for the rest of the night.

It was on Tuesday that things really changed for me. I'd begun writing her another little smut story the night before. She'd liked what I sent her on Monday night, and kept pushing me to continue it as we talked on Tuesday, managing to wrangle another scene out of me.
It was a scene that involved light spanking, one of my personal kinks, which I admitted to her after she'd finished sending me her usual glowing compliments filled with keybard mashing and obvious use of the capslock.

"I've been spanked once." She admitted to me. I felt my face heating up, as it usually did when she told me such things about herself.

"Oh... um, cool." I wrote back. "I like the idea of spanking, but I've never actually been spanked before."

"Yeah." She said, "He just suddenly took my underwear off, put me over his lap and spanked me." Then in tinier letters, as though she were whispering, added, "It was hot."

I didn't really know what to say. I knew that my face was flushed, and hoped that since it was almost midnight tha no one would come into the room and see. I didn't want to have to explain why I was blushing so brightly.

"Wow. I've never had anything like that done to me at all. Nothing remotely sexual."

"Oh yeah. How do you write gay sex so well, anyway?" Maria typed to me.

"I dunno. I research. I'm probably totally wrong though." I replied, somewhat flattered by the odd compliment.

"Haha, reasearch. So that's what you call it?" She replied, and I could imagine the exact tone of voice she would have made that comment in. "And by 'research' you mean watching gay porn, right?"

"No... maybe. Shut up." That was my standard reply when we both knew the answer is yes, but I still refused to admit it. "Well, how else am I supposed to find out? I'm not a gay man, I'm a virgin and I have no sexual experience whatsoever."

"Yeah, I don't know how you do that." She wrote back, "I have to draw on personal experience."

"Oh yeah." I wrote back. Whenever Maria and I spoke online, it was pretty much all I did on the computer, and so I typed out the first thing to come into my head, as though we were having a normal conversation. It was only after I'd made the non-commital response that I remembered something from the other night. "Wait. You say you draw on personal experience, but didn't you write a story with a blowjob in it the other night?" I added.

Her only response to me was, "..." to which I replied back with, "......".

There was a brief pause, before she sent me, "Don't ever, ever do it, Kathleen! It's not nice!" And then she added a couple of sad face emoticons for good measure. I felt my face heat up even more and tried to retain my composure.

I knew she'd had boyfriends before, but we'd never been very close before this year, and so we'd never talked about how far she'd gone with them. I remember one time when she was awkward telling me about a kiss she'd had. Then again, I had come across as an innocent, non-sexual creature to her until very recently, so it wasn't a surprise that she'd had trouble telling me such things.

"There's not much chance of that happening. I highly doubt that there's anyone in this world who really wants to have sex with me. I've never really even been turned on by another person before."

"Haha, not true." Maria replied. "I bet I could turn you on."

Her comment almost gave me heart failure.
"No way." I wrote back, before I realized what I was saying. There was something off about the comment I'd just written. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on.

"I bet I could." She wrote back. "I'll spank you hard. And I'm really good at grinding. I've made a guy cum in his shorts from just grinding him."

I felt myself flushing harder, but ignored the comment at the end. It gave me an odd feeling in my stomach that I didn't like. The previous times she'd told me about such things, despite feeling embarrassed, I'd also felt pleased. It made me glad that we were becoming close enough for her to tell me such things. No one had ever entrusted me with information about their sex lives before, and I felt like I'd grown up some. But tonight, it made me feel odd.

"Not possible. You'd never grind me. I know you wouldn't." I said back.

"Don't tempt me." Was all she said back. Whether it was a real warning, or if she was just carrying on what I assumed was a joke, I didn't know. And suddenly it hit me. I knew what it was that felt wrong about my comment - I was goading her. But why?

It was true that I sometimes grew possessive of my female friends, sometimes developed crushes on them - I was bisexual, after all - but I'd never felt that way about Maria. Had even thought to myself one night that there was no way I'd ever feel that way about Maria or Sophia. It just wasn't possible. I liked slender Asian women, with long, straight, shiny hair. I wasn't attracted to Maria at all.

Everyone else said that she was hot, sexy, beautiful, but she was such a far cry from the girls that I was interested in that I just couldn't see it. Her build has always been athletic, never slender, and her clearly Eastern European features gave away her heritage at a single glance. And even though I feel bad for saying so, knowing how self concious she is about it, her hair is wildly curly and quite impossible to tame under normal circumstances.

But here I was, quite blatantly daring her to... I wasn't even sure what. Strangely enough, though, even though I knew what I was doing, at the same time I of didn't. The idea that maybe I wanted to have sex with her, that I liked the idea of her touching me, that I possibly was attracted to her, it never properly formed in my mind.

After all, the logical side of my brain had decided for me, this was clearly a joke. And even when I went to school the next day, even when I spent the entire hour I had free before my Korean tutorial fantasizing about her spanking me, it didn't clearly form in my mind that I could possibly want her.

When we sat down together in Japanese class, the entire event was gone from my mind, and everything was normal.

And that brings me to Friday, the 7th of September, 2007. A day that I can say, without any hesitation, honestly changed my life.