Article called 'Asexuality'...

[Live R Perfect]

...which has nothing to do with asexuality, from what I can see! Can anyone shed any light on this? :?

http://orion.identicalsoftware.com/~brando/asex.txt

2013 Mod Edit: The above link doesn't seem to work, but its content can be found here. For future reference:

Asexuality by David Payne

They played poker every Tuesday night at ten, and this Tuesday was no

different. Terry dealt out the cards, slowly as he always did, but

something was different. His usually boisterous personality complete with

small talk was shadowed; tonight he was somber, sullen, and quiet. His

poker buddies noticed but tried to keep quiet about it, so they played in

relative silence, interrupted only by the occasional exclamation, polite

request for a smoke, and the rare frequency of curses. Terry was in no mood

to play, but he was doing well this night, pulling in about fifty dollars

before they closed up for the evening. His wife had just left him for

another person. Person, he thought to himself. All she said was person, as

if I shouldn't even know whether it was a man or a woman. It doesn't even

matter. She left me that's all. What do I have to say for myself now?

His thoughts went on uninterrupted for some time; his friends

cleaned up the kitchen table, old and rotting, put away the cards and chips,

patted Terry on the shoulder and wished him a good night as they marched like

mice out the door. The door closed with a silent click and Terry was left,

once again, alone in his own house. No wife. No friends. The clock struck

two and he still sat at the kitchen table, lamenting, sullenly his situation.

She hadn't even given any clue that she was leaving. Just a note on the

bedstand. Nothing. Short, trite, like she always was. His life suddenly

hit the brick wall of the life he was trying to build a shelter for. And it

fell on top of him, crushing him, his heart, his will. He had fifty bucks in

his pocket, a couple hundred in the bank and some money tossed around in the

stocks, but nothing else. He was a writer; never really had a steady

paycheck. This never seemed to bother her though. She was supportive of

his meager writing career, and he never asked for anything unless it was

really necessary. But now she's gone.

A sudden brisk knock on the door punched him out of his thoughts.

Someone knocking on the door at two in the morning. No one ever does that

unless they need something, Terry thought to himself, so why am I not

knocking on someone's door? I need something. My wife. Terry turned

around, looking gloomily at the door, oak, rotting. Everything's falling

apart. A dark form was outside, obfuscated as if not allowing light to

touch it. Terry got up and went over to the door, looking harder, trying to

distinguish features, but nothing, the figure blended like a chameleon into

the night. He put his hand on the knob of the door, turning it. It was cold

to his touch, more so than it should have been, but he didn't notice so much.

Pulling the door open he asked what they wanted, whoever they were. No

answer. A beckoning hand, childlike, frail like an old woman's motioned him

out into the night.

Thinking to himself that it was very strange someone should come to

his door, Terry unquestioningly followed the person in front of him. Person,

he thought to himself. All she said was person, as if I shouldn't even know

whether it was a man or a woman. The person in front of him led him out into

the woods, dark, foreboding, sanctuary. Terry knew them well; he walked them

every night to get some exercise and a little inspiration from the ghostly,

gnarled trees, withered with time. They seemed different this morning

though. Evil and good. Some seemed to glow with the legendary ghostlight.

Others seemed to suck the air out of his lungs, leaving him heaving,

breathless. The form simply walked forward, dodging around trees, never

leaving the straight line for very long. It had a gait that was

unrecognizable, not quite a man's swagger, but not even close to a child's

free waltz.

All of this was a little terrifying for Terry, his bones began to

rattle and his teeth to chatter, yet he continued on, wondering where all of

this would lead. A night raven perched on a low branch as he was walking

still in line with that form in front of him. It began to sing a sweet song,

a somber lullaby to lull him to a restful sleepwalk. He was no longer

thinking about his safety anymore. He was too entranced to care. What does

it matter anyway, he thought to himself, it all ends without her.

Suddenly the trees broke away and opened up into a wide pasture, a

hay field that Terry had never encountered on his sojourns before, though to

be truthful, he had never walked as far as he did on this particular morning.

Nonetheless, this field did not seem to be in the right place. He felt an

eerie sensation wash over him like a calm scream of terror. It was a feeling

of displacement, disorientation. As the feelings started to fade away, he

began to notice little things about the field. It seemed normal enough,

early morning fog lingering about, a comfortable blanket for the hay and

field mice and the like. There was hardly any sound from his surroundings,

as if everything decided in that moment to listen to what he might say, even

though, he thought, no one ever paused to listen to me, so why would the

animals care now? The form in front of him, obfuscated in the shadows of

the fog, turned around, and raised a frail young hand towards him pointing

with a bony finger with a trimmed nail and a callused tip. And for the

first time, it spoke, in a voice so unrecognizable, it was hard for Terry to

realize it was speaking at all. It spoke in short sentences, pronouncing

every word with precision; the words sank into Terry as they came, with

instant understanding, though of what he wasn't entirely sure. When it was

done, Terry just stood there in a frozen gaze at this person. It didn't

matter to him now, who exactly it was; it no longer seemed all that

important.

The form in front of Terry seemed to fade before his eyes with the

raising of the morning sun; the dark figure in the cloak slowly evaporating

into the surrounding air. He was standing alone now, in the midst of a

place he had never once ventured, and felt so much ill at ease, that he

anxiously looked about him in a frantic way, looking for a way back to what

was familiar. Resigned that he was lost, he started walking in an arbitrary

direction, figuring, eventually, he would once again be rejoined with

society. What he didn't notice about all of this was his energy. A man of

his age, out all night without any sleep at all, suddenly bursting with the

energy of a full night's sleep. And for the first time since his wife left

him, he started thinking about himself.

It was hours of walking before Terry came to the edge of the forest.

The morning sun had already risen and was well on its way back down, becoming

evening and night without a single word. The world opened out in front of

him, stretching beyond further than he could see. A small dirt path wove

its way away from him, but he couldn't see its end. No houses stood nearby

and the usual din of cars didn't reach his ears. Although he had escaped

the labyrinth of the forest, he stood before an even greater maze. This did

not make him uneasy or depressed however, as many would be, but instead, he

strove forward, ready to find his way back to the life of a normal person.

Whatever that meant.

Terry walked along the path for the rest of the day, and well into

the ensuing night. Looking for any signs of humanity, finding nothing but a

virgin land, unfestered by human hands or minds, Terry could not get his

bearings. He had traveled most of the land around his home and for several

miles around, yet he could not seem to recognize anything around him. As if

he were in a place not totally unlike where he used to be, but yet unlike all

the same. Under the fall of night, he gazed up at the stars, figuring he

might be able to get some bearing by finding the North Star, but it wasn't

there. The guiding light for so many sailors of times gone by was somehow

not in the sky on this night. He was never particularly good at astronomy,

but he knew the North Star, and Ursa major and minor, but none of them were

in the sky tonight. He began to wonder if he would ever find his way home.

Then it occurred to him that he'd been walking for the greater part of an

entire day. Yet he wasn't exhausted from so much exercise. This made him

wonder further.

Terry alit upon a rock and eased himself into a moment's rest. He

was thinking, trying to analyze how he could possibly have gotten so

irrevocably lost in so short a time. He could picture his house in his

mind, rotting kitchen door and all, but he couldn't seem to place it into

the real world. It didn't seem right anymore, as if the house itself didn't

belong where it was. The land surrounding it seemed to set it off as

something that could never be a real part of the world. He could picture

the land around his house; the little sitting stone to the side of the

little house. He made it a few years back. It was simply two rocks that

when sitting on each other, were made to look like a mushroom. He thought

it was kind of odd, but he still went out when the weather was fair and

wrote while sitting on it. He thought about the old walnut tree behind the

house. It stood for countless ages, older than the English nation, he would

venture on some days. He remembered climbing that tree as a young boy,

searching for a way to touch the clouds. One day, he did, but he fell, and

landed hard on the ground. When he woke up, he was in a hospital of sorts,

bandaged greatly, bones aching in static positions. When his parents came

in, he didn't remember them. They were the faces of strangers; people he

did not want to know.

Over the years, his amnesia never fading away, Terry gradually came

to accept the couple as his parents. He accepted them on the surface anyway;

inside, he always held up a picture of what he thought his parents looked

like. He couldn't explain it, but he was sure the kindly couple who brought

him up after the hospital, were part of some scheme to hide something from

him. As if it were something he shouldn't know...

The memories were coming in torrents to the front of his

consciousness, flooding him with emotions of days long gone. He longed for

those days as a child, when he was so carefree and without a real worry. It

was in those days that he started to write. His parents didn't seem to

approve, subtly dissuading him from such an activity. It had no future they

told him. Their influence would have won him over, if it weren't for that

one person. Years ago, his mentor instructed him, and he began to understand

that writing was his one real calling. He enjoyed it as another point as

well.

When he became old enough, Terry moved away from his parents,

heading towards the vast world ahead of him. He attended college at the

state university, earned his degree, and started a career in writing.

During the days, he managed to scrape away a meager living by working at the

local store. The realms of night were his time, when he sat at his computer,

or at a desk with a pad of paper, and wrote until the sun came up. He met

his wife at work one day, flirting that gradually blossomed into something

called love by most. He was entranced by her. Put his whole life in her.

And now she's gone.

Terry's memories were of little comfort to him in the night hours.

Now, embraced with the light of the morning, he stood facing a world, once

so familiar to him, that seemed so foreign. The path still wound its way

around this planet, but it never seemed to go anywhere. He wondered if he

were going anywhere after all. In one bold step, he walked off the path.

Suddenly, the bright world around him flooded into a watery darkness.

Rain pummeled his weary form and night seemed to come back with a force

unparalleled. Ghostly forms flitted past him, leaving him cold and lost.

Nothing seemed right anymore, not in this world of terror. Terry took a

step back, hoping to find himself back on the tranquil path, and so he was.

The world was back to where he wished it to be. The sun was rising, birds

were out singing, and the only remembrance of that horrible other world,

physically, was his soaked and dripping clothes; even these were quickly

drying off, faster than possible, he figured, but dismissing it anyway,

since he wished no longer to be in that world. This place is better, even

if it is a little bland.

He could see most of the area around him, the terrain was little

more than a field with the path he stood upon running through it. It

reminded him of an old story from back home about Dorothy, or maybe Alice,

he couldn't decide. Struck with the mood, he started once again down the

path, almost skipping, though why he did not know. As he walked, the path

became a little more structured, a little more substantial, slowly

transforming into a cobbled foot path. Instead of watching what was to

come, he affixed his eyes on the mesmerizing pattern of the cobblestones,

enchanted by them. They became the most important thing on his mind.

Rocks.

"Who are you?"

A voice called out from far ahead of him, a tone of wariness and

annoyance mingled with the inherent curiosity of the question. Terry looked

up; the voice transformed into a man some ways off, also standing on the

path. In his hands, he held an axe, but not one that would be used for

cutting down trees, rather, this one looked like one from the ancient Celts,

or possibly something around that time. Terry recognized it, mainly because

he studied the Celts for quite some time. The man was dressed in a style

that had no comparison so far as he knew, but they were quite obviously

common clothes for the common man. I am probably trespassing, thought

Terry, acknowledging the fact that he was completely lost. After a long

pause, Terry responded to the man in the simplest way, and asked the same of

him.

"It is of no concern who I am. I want to know what you're doing

here. You don't belong here you know."

Terry stood, a lot confused, but more intrigued by the man's words,

obviously said in disgust. He tried explaining to the man that he didn't

know where here was, nor how he got here, or how to get out of here. The

man simply shook his head, frowning at Terry, more with pity now than with

disgust. The man motioned Terry towards him, and told him to follow him

back to his place. The first thing he did was take a step off of the path.

Terry hesitated a moment, but resolved to follow him anyway. To his

surprise, the dismal other place he had encountered earlier did not return.

To his surprise and pleasure that is.

The man led Terry away from the path for quite some time; it was

nearing dusk when Terry finally perceived a house in the distance. It was

old, apparent even from that distance and the nearing darkness. The roof

was fashioned out of thatch and the walls constructed of long logs, rotting

with age. Terry looked at it with an architect's eye, trying to place it in

history, but he couldn't manage it. His knowledge in the area was not

sufficient, but he figured it was dating back before the battle at Hastings,

possibly even before the great nation of England existed. He figured,

considering the axe and all, the house belonged to the same lost era.

When the duo finally reached the weathered house, the man opened the

door and led Terry inside. The hearth held a small fire, with many glowing

embers; an animal carcass held onto a spit over the fire left unattended.

The stench within the quaint house was overbearing, something of a mix of

offal, sweat, and food.

"Marianne?" the man called out, a question in his eyes. "Where is

she?"

The man looked around the small house in vain, looking for Marianne,

must be his wife, thought Terry. His search became frantic, throwing

obstacles out of his way, occasionally shoving Terry aside as he went to

look outside, as if she would be there at the moment he was looking out.

Terry, trying to get out of the way, went over to the fire, and turned the

meat on the spit. Looking at it more closely now, he decided it was a

rabbit. One side of it was a little overcooked, but for the most part, it

was still raw. Giving up hope, the man slumped down against the hearth,

next to Terry.

"I don't understand, where could she be? Marianne is always here

cooking when I get back. I'm sorry, I can't help you right now. I must

find her. I just wish I knew where to look..."

Terry knew what the man felt, even though the thought of his ex wife

no longer troubled him. She barely existed in his mind anymore, and he

couldn't seem to explain to himself why. He just put his hand on the man's

shoulder, and patted him, telling him it will be all right. He knew what it

felt to find the house empty, but at least this man didn't have the knowledge

of why she left. She may even come back to him, he thought. It didn't

really matter, as far as Terry could tell, because this man was crushed by

his missing wife. Terry almost looked on him with pity, even though he

realized, he was much the same way when his wife had left him.

"Well, now I know why you're here," the man said, suddenly

reasonable. Terry looked at him questioningly. "Yes, now I know... You

are here to tell me she left me, and has gone off to find another to fulfill

her life in a way I didn't. That's why you're here isn't it?

Terry realized that no matter which course of action he took here

could be taken wrong. With the state of the man's mind, he could take

anything the wrong way. He pleaded with the man, saying that he didn't know

why he was here. The man wouldn't hear any of it, getting up, picking up the

Celtic axe from where he had dropped it when he himself fell. His eyes,

Terry noticed, were the color of emeralds, betraying his new found hatred

towards Terry. Looking frantically about the small house, Terry figured

that he wouldn't be able to make it to the door before the large man,

suddenly looming above him, could make mince meat out of him. In his

sweeping glances, Terry noticed the poker resting against the wall next to

the fireplace, within arm's reach.

"Oh, I get it now," the man said in the midst of rage, "Marianne ran

away... with YOU. YOU just came back to GLOAT. Well, I'll teach YOU, YOU

insolent BASTARD!" Blind with his rage, the man missed Terry by a mere

inch; the axe sparking as it clashed against the stones of the hearth.

Terry sent himself towards the poker, throwing his weight into its

direction, grabbing it as he landed hard on the ground. Scrambling to his

feet, he brought the poker up just in time to parry the man's axe. Backing

away from the man, Terry was suddenly stopped as he backed into a table. At

the same moment, the man made another swing; it took both of Terry's hands

to deflect the blow this time. Thinking quickly, Terry brought up his poker,

and sent it crashing down onto the man's hand. Howling in pain, the man

released the axe, clutching his hand in the other. Before the man could

recover from the hit, Terry started running towards the door, closed with a

bar. He managed to remove the bar and open the door, before the man tackled

him to the ground, holding his neck with a vice arm.

Terry was pretty well pinned underneath the heavier bulk of the man;

he couldn't get the inertia to even flip over. Terry simply couldn't figure

out what to do next, his struggles seemed to leave him even shorter of

breath, and it was hard to breathe as it was, what with the man's arm around

his neck and all.

The sun clouded over then, covered by dark puffs of black and grey

cotton. Flares of lightning and the crashes of thunder suddenly shook the

ground, and Terry was back once again in that horrible place. The place he

had left once he returned to the path. Rain plummeted to the ground and

soaked Terry's clothes as he struggled still to get free. The lightning

struck nearby; the smell of it permeating the air in an all-too-real

representation of its destructive power.

The man started laughing then; not a friendly laugh, but one that

was riddled with the insane, the mad and the crazy. The man's laughter was

throwing himself off balance, enough so Terry could grip his arm and pull

the man off of his crushed form. The man was laughing very hard, his face

was turning the most brilliant of shades of red and then purple, followed by

blue. Then, in a flash of lightning, the man simply fell to the moist

ground, limp. His face, still twisted from his endless laughter betrayed an

almost demonic smile. It was a horrifying thing to look at. Terry turned

away in disgust, and entered the house, shielding himself from the onslaught

of the rain. He tasted the rain on his lips and he suddenly thinking that

the recent events were extremely funny. He couldn't help himself from

laughing, and he suddenly realized, in the midst of a chuckle, why the man

had perished, though he couldn't rationalize why the rain, which was so dark

and cold, could make the most serious of matters so entirely hilarious.

As the chuckles faded from his system, he walked about the small

room, looking for anything of use. Terry wasn't sure what would be of use

for what, but he looked anyway; he just needed to do something. Sitting

down once again by the fire, he removed the burnt carcass of the rabbit.

Dropping it nonchalantly on the table, he walked into an area that might as

well be a kitchen to search for some utensils. Finding none, he seated

himself at the table. As he ate, Terry couldn't help but try to picture the

barbarian sitting at the table ripping off chunks of meat to sustain himself.

The rabbit wasn't very good, but it satiated him enough to take the hunger

away.

The storm kept up for the rest of the night, pounding on the thatch

roof with intermittent claps of thunder and lightning spears. Terry tried

curling up on the ground in front of the fire for most of the night, but

sleep never came to him. Something was on his mind, but he couldn't seem to

place exactly what, just this overwhelming feeling of confusion. For the

rest of the night, after he finally gave up on trying to sleep, Terry

resolved to exploring the small shack of a house.

Walking around, in no particular direction, he paused for a moment

at a door he hadn't noticed before. It was kind of set into the wall as an

afterthought, formed out of the same design of the actual wall, made to be

hardly noticeable and set off in an odd place that would be ideal for

nothing, let alone a door. Pulling on it, the door opened into a dark

passageway, lit by only the fire at the opposite end of the room. Faintly,

underneath the recurrent constant thumping of the rain on the room, Terry

could hear the sound of raging waters, but far enough off to be barely

audible. In the partial light from the fire, he could see the walls

glistening as if with sweat, a bead of water here and there dripping down.

The passageway looked as if it would go on forever, ending in

darkness so far as Terry could tell, but then it struck him that he hadn't

seen anything protruding from the small house from this part of the house

when he and the man had approached early. Having no better alternative, and

becoming a little ancy from sitting alone in the shack for so long, Terry

started walking down the passage. Before long, his eyes became adjusted to

the very dim lighting, and Terry started to perceive more and more.

There was a faint odor in the passage, like stale water, or maybe

mold; Terry wasn't completely sure. The walls were formed of single slabs

of stone and mortar, barely a single slab to each wall. There was a

pervading sense of cold coming from all around Terry, sucking the life out

his walk. It wasn't too long before his feet became gradually more and more

wet, until their current state of being soaked. His feet felt extremely

uncomfortable, but he wasn't about to walk barefoot in this passage;

especially with the floor being so wet. Terry didn't like the emotions that

were entering his mind; they were plagued with feelings of jealousy and envy,

but he couldn't seem to identify what they were being expressed towards. The

corridor was oppressive, pushing down upon him as the ceiling became lower

and the width began to slim down. Claustrophobia entered his mind, amid all

of the other thoughts and emotions. His eyes began to dart about, almost

uncontrollably around and around. In the pervading darkness, his eyes could

barely make out a door, ending the passage. He grappled the doorknob, and

pulled the door open.

The light beyond the door assaulted Terry's eyes, making them burn

with the intensity of the sun. Terry brought his arms up to shield his eyes

while they adjusted to the new lighting, but even a few minutes later, his

eyes were still heavily clouded with bright spots of red in the middle of

his vision. At least then they stopped hurting, even though he could only

look around for brief moments before he had to blink, his eyes were so dry.

The room was large, high-ceilinged and the walls were painted the

starkest of whites. A single light was set up in the middle of the room,

burning brighter than the biggest of bonfires. There was an emanating sense

of heat, as if in waves from the source of light, flowing over and around

Terry like the roiling flames of the Abyss. Faintly, Terry could hear the

sound of many people chanting, something in a language he couldn't make out.

He couldn't place where, exactly, the chanting seemed to be originating, but,

if he didn't know better, he could have sworn they were voices in his head.

Strangely enough, he started to talk to them, even though he couldn't

decipher anything of what they were saying. At least when he spoke, they

seemed to be quieter, though he could still hear them in the back of his

mind. The sounds they were making gradually heightened in volume and

intensity. At one moment they seemed to be speaking with English words, but

all jumbled into a random order so as to make no sense to Terry.

A door presented itself on the opposite wall, which Terry started to

approach, eager to rid himself of the blinding light and the murmuring of

voices in his head. The voices were nearly deafening. Reaching for the

doorknob, the door suddenly flung open, hitting Terry's hand with such force

as to send his arm reeling with his body ready to follow. Pain flowed

through his body uninhibited. He tried flexing his hand, but found that

instead of moving his fingers, pain moved through his hand. Fiery tendrils

reached into his consciousness as he realized that his hand was pretty badly

broken. Recovering from the hit, cradling his broken hand in a comforting

arm, Terry looked beyond the door and could see virtually nothing. Not that

there was blackness beyond, because surely the light behind him would have

sent the darkness to flight, but just nothing. Although nothing was there,

Terry felt drawn toward the open doorway, and all that was running through

his mind was the old saying, curiosity killed the cat.

After Terry stepped through the portal into the nothingness beyond;

suddenly finding himself back in his house, old and rotting. The letter

left by his wife, who had left him, clutched in his hand, no longer broken.

He couldn't help but think about what transpired in his mind in the past few

days. He read the letter over again, thinking bitterly my wife didn't even

give me the satisfaction of knowing who her lover was, not even whether it

was a man or a woman. In the dark of his house, he looked up at the clock

and it blinked at him, flashing midnight.

Terry was just about to go up to bed when something entered his

mind. A pure thought of his wife, walking out the door with a form,

indistinguishable as anything but human. He looked around the room, the

kitchen, taking in everything. His eyes closed for a moment.

Then a rapping came on the door...

[Vicious Trollop]

I just skimmed it, but based on the "brando" part of the URL and a character named Terry, I'm guessing FanFiction story about On the Waterfront???

Just as mystified about the correlation with asexuality.

Though upon further skimming, I can't see the correlation with the film, either.

[Silly Green Monkey]

Maybe they meant the androgynous figure that lured him out of the house. This whole thing sounds like a detailed dream.

[Shockwave]

I think it was an allegorical story. His wife left for "another person," as she said. The mysterious figure led him to a beautiful place he had never been before. Then another person told him he didn't belong and led him back home. In the end he realizes his wife left with the mysterious figure.

His wife had realized she was asexual and left him for a new life (the beautiful place). He went after her but didn't belong there, so he came home. The ancient Celt(?) represented the desires of the world in which he lived. It would not let him stay. He had to return to the life he knew.

But that's just my theory...

[Live R Perfect]

And as good a theory as any, Xenius! That'll do for me