Horror stories were best shared under the influence.
All they had was bottled water, green tea that tasted more like piss, and shrimp crackers they apparently couldn’t eat until after everything was said and done. To be fair, Yosuke had just come along for the snacks. Although that wasn’t to say he had better things to do because he didn’t. If anyone asked, he was there to show his support. But the reality was that he’d been wrung and twisted into dragging his ass inside. Free beer was as good a motivator as he was ever going to get.
Apparently these meetings were popping up across the country. They called themselves STC.Sexually transmitted confessions. Yosuke still couldn’t wrap his head around the society’s name, it seemed to be more damage than advocacy– but who was he to argue? All he wanted was for the talking to end so he could grab a handful of the crackers and leave before anyone got to asking names. Short rows of fold up chairs filled the already tiny room. Shame permeated the walls, and it took great effort to keep his grin from parting around obnoxious bouts of snickering and laughs. Faces were stoic, tones serious as what looked to be a gathering of entirely men spoke about their random run ins with syphilis and gonorrhea. It seemed to him they were trying awfully hard to be alcoholics anonymous without the sympathy and sob stories. His friend never spoke, no, he just sat and nodded like he was a sage, while digging his elbow into Yosuke’s side intermittently.
“I was in love… until herpes.” Maybe it was the phrasing that caught Yosuke’s attention, or rather the scruffy features disguising what he could’ve swore was something like resemblance. They’d made a point of attending a tokyo session, so as to keep their identities in the clear, but the man hunched in his chair, clothes long where they covered the breadth of his shoulders– Yosuke felt the sensation that he’d seen the man before. The feeling didn’t last all that long as he was spontaneously called out by the facilitator, an older gentleman who clearly had a wealth of his own horror stories. Briefly stunned, he feigned nonchalance, and confessed.
“Chylamydia. 2008. Great ass.” That wasn’t a lie. In the throes of juvenile sexual experience, he cared little for real protection, and took advantage of his fast to grow facial hair. Even at eighteen he was often mistaken for older, and at the time, women in their twenties who could pull off leopard print were his weakness.
A long time ago Tomoya associated sex with love in the way young, loveless idiots tend to. Any person who touched him was remarkable just because they touched him--any mouth on his own was the same, any tongue tasting what he hid behind his teeth. It wasn’t that difficult to be deluded into such an idea with the tantalising nature of physical intimacy, most especially given the fact that he craved it when his girlfriend left him. Like a fool he roamed bars and nightclubs, and like a fool he dropped his pants for just about anyone who asked. Considering this’d been ten years ago or so, Tomoya’s made his peace about it and moved on. But it doesn’t stop him from staring in confusion when he sees the signboard reading ‘Sexually Transmitted Confessions’ on a door in some nondescript building.
His friend tugs on his sleeve and urges Tomoya to come with him in that buddy-buddy ‘no man goes alone on an adventure’ way of his. And Tomoya, his brows lifting because he’s starting to question having agreed to this at all, ends up allowing himself to be dragged in without much of a fuss.
They’re late, which is obvious in the way the door creaks open at the same time the words ‘great ass’ hover in the air. The facilitator lifts his head and glances at the new arrivals, and Tomoya finds himself grinning sheepishly despite himself and dipping his head in a small greeting. His friend, who’d been the one with intentions to come here in the first place, wastes no time in finding a seat for himself while Tomoya drifts to the snack table.
He can feel the eyes on him--as expected, given his idol status. All Tomoya can do is pray that confidentiality’ll win out in the end, but even then he’s not sure what it is he’s gotten himself into.
When he has to introduce himself and give his story, he’s not really sure what to say. He sits down with crackers in one hand and confusion in the other--his friend to his left and a wavy-haired man to his right (who looked no more enthusiastic than Tomoya did about being here).
Tomoya doesn’t think too hard about it. “I’m Tomoya,” he says casually, if not pleasantly. None of that idol falseness here. “Uh, I’ve seen a couple nasty dicks I nearly sucked, I guess. And I almost fingered this girl who had crabs. Does that count?” An awkward scratch to his nose follows Tomoya’s poorly-worded speech, but he laughs to dispel the uselessness of it.
“I usually like crabs, you know. The yummy ones from the sea. But it fucked me up seeing the, uh, stuff in the pubes... am I not supposed t’be eatin’ these crackers right now?”
