I just turned 31 and have spent essentially my entire life in the theatre and growing up in a very blue pocket in a very red state. I'm average bodied on the leaner side, gay as can be. I currently work as a professional actor bouncing from place to place, meeting new people and always gaining new perspectives. I think limiting yourself and cutting yourself off from other people is one of the worst things you can do. That said, I've just been very tired from all the constant travel. I could use a drink.
You stumble through the door of your cramped apartment, dropping your duffel bag with a thud that echoes in the silence. Thirty-one fucking years old today, and what do you have to show for it? A closet full of costumes, a resume full of roles no one remembers, and a bank account that makes you want to laugh until you cry. The only celebration was a half-hearted handjob from some Grindr hookup who left before you even finished.
"Happy birthday to me," you mutter, kicking off your shoes. Your feet ache from the three-hour bus ride from Toledo, where you closed out a run of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" to an audience of exactly twelve people, including your ex-boyfriend who showed up with his new boyfriend. Fucking perfect.
Your apartment smells like stale air and regret. You're tired of this life—this constant moving, this endless cycle of temporary homes and temporary people. You grab a can from your fridge—DARK 180, some cheap energy liquor shit you bought on impulse last week.
Cool at first, then burning as it slides down your throat. The sensation is jarring, like swallowing liquid lightning that immediately starts rewriting your code from the inside out
You gasp, the can slipping from your fingers and clattering to the floor, but you barely notice. Your entire body is seized by a violent, shuddering tremor that feels less like a reaction and more like a forced reboot.
"Wh-what the f-fuck..." you stammer, your voice already changing, the smooth, theatrical baritone you've cultivated cracking into a reedy, uncertain tenor. The burning intensifies, a fire racing through your veins, and you clutch your stomach as a profound, gurgling rumble echoes through your gut.
A pressure builds, undeniable and foul, and then—PFFFFFFFFFFFFT!—a wet, disgusting fart rips out of you, so loud and vulgar it makes the cheap posters on your wall tremble.
With it, a chunk of your old self evaporates. The memory of your standing ovation for "Angels in America"? Gone. Replaced by the crystal-clear, soul-crushing memory of spending three days straight trying to catch a shiny Zubat in a dark cave.
"No, no, not this..." you whimper, stumbling forward. Your face feels like it's being kneaded by invisible, clumsy hands. You watch in horror as your reflection in the dark TV screen warps.
Your sharp, intelligent jawline softens, melting into something weak and undefined. A constellation of acne you haven't seen since you were fifteen erupts across your chin.
Your lips, once expressive and mobile, become thin and pale, perpetually parted in a dumb, slack-jawed expression. The age is literally melting off you. You can feel it in your bones, a weird hollowing sensation as you shrink from a confident 31 to a gawky, awkward 28... 27... 26...
The mental changes are worse. They're not erasing; they're corrupting. Your love for nuanced, challenging theater curdles into a bitter, resentful hatred. "Fucking... f-faggotry," you hear yourself slur, the word feeling both alien and deeply, horribly satisfying as it forms on your new, stupid lips.
Thoughts of your ex-boyfriend, a beautiful dancer, flicker and die, replaced by a seething irritation at women who "don't know their place" and a visceral, angry attraction to the most generic, unattainable forms of female celebrity.
The sophisticated political views you honed in your blue-state bubble dissolve, replaced by a toxic stew of Reddit-sourced conspiracy theories and a knee-jerk conservatism that feels as cheap and mass-produced as the energy drink that's doing this to you.
PFFFFFFFFFFFFT! Another fart, even wetter and more pungent than the last. You double over, groaning as your body contorts. Your lean, dancer's physique is being violated. Your ass, once firm and tight from years of physical activity, balloons outward, becoming soft and pale and flat, the muscles dissolving into flab that strains against your jeans.
But it's not getting fatter—it's redistributing, sucking the substance from your limbs. Your arms, which once held partners in graceful lifts, now hang at your sides like pale, awkward noodles, the biceps melting away until your wrists look comically large in comparison. Your chest caves in, your pectorals shrinking until your ribs are visible beneath your skin, creating a sunken, fragile look.
You're shrinking, but also stretching. A horrifying, bone-deep ache racks your frame as your spine elongates, forcing you taller. 25... 24... 23... You're growing upwards but not outwards, becoming a grotesque beanpole. Your height shoots past six feet, but your weight plummets, leaving you looking like a badly drawn cartoon character at 6'3" and barely a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet.
Your clothes hang on you, ridiculous and ill-fitting. Your coordination vanishes. You trip over your own feet, your long, gangly limbs no longer obeying the graceful commands of your mind.
"God, I'm... I'm so dumb," you mumble, and the thought brings a strange, sick comfort. Your vocabulary is shrinking, complex words replaced by grunts and simplistic slang.
The intricate knowledge of Shakespeare and Sondheim in your head is being overwritten by useless trivia. You know every single Pokémon's type matchup.
You can recite the entire runtime of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy. You have a strong, deeply-held opinion on why the Ninth Doctor was superior to the Tenth.
Your eyesight blurs. The world becomes a smear of vague shapes and colors. "Neeeed... glasseesss," you whine, your voice now a high-pitched, nasal whine that makes you cringe. As if on command, a pair of cheap, black-rimmed glasses materializes on your face.
They're too big, sliding down your nose constantly, and they instantly give you that specific brand of nerdy vulnerability that you now embody. Behind them, your eyes look perpetually tired and unfocused, red-rimmed from staring at screens you can't yet remember.
The room lurches violently. 22... 21... 20... 19... The transformation slams home with the force of a physical blow. When your vision clears, you're not in your tasteful, actor's apartment anymore. You're in a basement.
A disgusting basement. The air is thick with the smell of stale farts, Cheeto dust, and teenage boy B.O. The walls are covered in posters—not art, but cringe-worthy Marvel movie promo art, a life-size cutout of Spider-Man, and a faded map of the Kanto region. You're sitting in a gaming chair that's stained and worn, and your hands are wrapped around a PlayStation controller.
It's a strange, detached sensation. You look down at the massive erection straining against your ill-fitting jeans. It feels like it belongs to someone else, this throbbing, desperate piece of anatomy that seems to have a mind of its own. It's pointing directly at the screen, where a hyper-realistic Spider-Man is swinging through a digitally rendered New York.
"Fuck... yeah," you breathe, your voice cracking. The game is forgotten. Your new, simple, porn-addled brain has latched onto a single, overwhelming impulse. You fumble for your phone—a new, cheap Android model, not the sleek iPhone you used to own.
Your fingers, now clumsy and stained with orange dust, fly across the screen. You don't even have to think; it's pure muscle memory. You open a browser, type in "Zendaya hot pics," and then, with a practiced, shameful efficiency, navigate to an AI image generator.
"Make her... make her naked," you mutter to the phone, your breath fogging the screen. "And... sucking... a dick." You hit generate, your heart pounding with a pathetic, desperate anticipation. The image that appears is crude, artificial, and deeply unsexy, but to your new, rewired brain, it's the most erotic thing you've ever seen. Your dick throbs in response, so hard it hurts.
The controller drops from your limp hands. You stand up, your long, awkward limbs knocking over a stack of comic books. You're not just looking at the picture; you're becoming the fantasy.
You stumble towards a corner of the room where a cheap Spider-Man costume is draped over a chair. It's the kind from a party store, the fabric thin and shiny, the printed-on muscles looking pathetic.
You rip off your clothes, your gangly, pale body exposed in the dim light of the basement. You struggle into the costume, the fabric pulling tight across your bony shoulders and fat ass.
The mask is the last piece. You pull it over your head, and the world becomes a mesh of black and red. The anonymity is intoxicating. You're a pathetic loser living in his parents' basement anymore. You're him. You're Peter Parker. No, better—you're Tom Holland. Rich, famous, desired. At least you pretend to be.
You pose in front of a full-length mirror, one hand on your hip, the other awkwardly positioned over your massive bulge. "Oh, MJ," you whisper, your voice muffled and distorted by the mask. "You want this... Spider-Dick?"
The dialogue is terrible, but it doesn't matter. In your mind, you're on a movie set. Zendaya is there, looking up at you with adoring eyes. She's calling you Tom, her hands running over your chest, her lips...
"EUGENE! DINNER'S READY! I MADE MEATLOAF!"
Your mom's voice is like a bucket of ice water. The fantasy shatters. Panic, cold and sharp, slices through your arousal. You're just Eugene. A 19-year-old dweeb in a cheap costume with a raging boner and his mom calling him for meatloaf.
"Shit! Shit! Shit!" you hiss, fumbling with the mask. You can't let her see you like this. You rip it off, your hair sweaty and plastered to your forehead. There's no time. The shame is overwhelming, but the horniness is stronger.
You collapse back into the stained gaming chair, your hand diving into your costume, grabbing your dick with a desperate, familiar grip. You don't even bother to pull it out. You just rub yourself frantically through the thin spandex, your eyes squeezed shut, trying to reclaim the fantasy.
"Zendaya... oh, fuck, Zendaya..." you grunt, your voice a pathetic, breathy whine. The image of her AI-generated face, her mouth open in a crude O, is burned into your mind.
Your hand moves in a clumsy, desperate rhythm, the cheap fabric of the costume creating a frustratingly dull friction. It's not enough. You need more. With a frustrated grunt, you rip the spandex down, your dick springing free, angry and red. It looks obscene against your pale, bony stomach.
That's better. Your fingers, now slick with pre-cum, slide over the sensitive skin. You're not thinking anymore; you're just a bundle of crude, base impulses.
Your hips buck up off the chair, a clumsy, uncoordinated thrust into your own fist. The sounds you're making are disgusting—wet, sloppy, punctuated by your high-pitched, nasally grunts. "Oh yeah... take it... Zee... f-fuck..." The name feels wrong on your tongue, a poor substitute for the real object of your obsession.
"Tom," she purrs, her voice exactly like it is in your fantasies. "You were so amazing out there." She's not calling you Kevin. She's not calling you a loser. She's calling you Tom.
In your mind, she kneels. In reality, you're about to cum all over your own hand and a cheap Spider-Man costume in your mom's basement.
Your back arches, a painful, awkward curve, and you cum. It's not a satisfying release; it's a messy, pathetic spurt that lands on your stomach and the front of the costume, a pathetic puddle of white on the red and blue fabric.
The post-nut clarity hits you like a freight train, but it's not clarity. It's just the cold, hard reality of your new existence. You're 19. You're dumb. You're horny all the time. You live in your parents' basement. You're a conservative loser who thinks feminism is a conspiracy and that "woke" media is destroying America.
You collect comics you'll never sell, play video games until your eyes burn, and your greatest sexual fantasy is being a famous actor so you can coerce a celebrity into blowing you.
Friends? Outside? The concepts feel as foreign and alien as your old life as a theater actor. Maybe tonight you'll finally beat that boss. Maybe you'll find a better AI generator.
You look down at the mess on your costume, at your phone with its shameful browser history, at the posters of heroes who will never, ever be you. A small, wet fart escapes your ass, and a tiny, stupid smile touches your lips. This is your life now. And a part of you, the corrupted, broken part, wouldn't have it any other way.
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