So, I royally fucked up the whole nofap thing. That’s probably not much of a surprise. I almost decided not to even keep writing my shit-strewn tale for you fucks, too. 

Almost…

But I digress. We’ll get to all that.

Back to the story…

We stand by my car . . . Jolene, Candy, and I . . . shooting the shit like we’re a set of old pals. And it’s fun actually feeling energized by being worn out in a good way. I feel surges of this new, fresh warmth and ease oozing all through my body, specifically everywhere I just got done beating to fuck with weights.

Jolene must be feeling it too, because she’s jumping all around like a spring deer.

I have to keep shifting from leg to leg, leaning on my car some, then straightening up, just to outrun this dull, deadening pain that seems to want to take my knees and back like rot. The ache definitely interferes with that shiny bright, warm feeling. But it’s cool. I’m old. I can’t leap around. I know I’ll be hurting tonight, and especially tomorrow. Whatever.

Jolene pipes up and belts to Candy, “You ever go after any of those girls at the front giving you googoo-fuck-me eyes the whole time?”

Candy jibbers and skwacks. He kind of looks like a flabby pelican who’s flown one too many times through a sprinkling stream of glitter. “I would, I would,” he says, then stops moving and goes silent as if his programming simply ceased.

“Why don’t you?” I ask, keenly envisioning the sure corruption I’d indulge in if I were a gym trainer like him. It could just be my porn mind going off of however many scenarios I’ve seen where an entire yoga class bends and stretches its way to a mass orgy centered around the male instructor. But yeah, my head gets quickly filled with imagined snapshots of myself looping between all the girls in the class we just came from, sampling tastes of each like a buffet.

“Na, na,” Candy rumbles. His face shifts from butter to firetruck. 

“Why?” presses Jolene.

“I can’t tell you, I can’t tell you,” the dude jitters, for some reason repeating every damn thing twice now.

“Alright, well, I gotta go,” says Jolene. “Dee’s meeting me over at GameStop, since they’re having this big-ass sale outside.”

“Ok, ok,” bleats Candy. Fuck he’s annoying.

As soon as Jolene steps away, I stretch my arms over my head and pretend to yawn in an unmistakable better-be-hittin’-the-old-sunset-trail gesture.

Candy doesn’t catch on. “I’ll tell you why I don’t hit on the girls,” he whispers. And yeah, he’s a completely different person now. He still looks like a fat stuffed animal that got closed in car doors one to many times. But now he’s also all quiet and mysterious.

“It’s cool,” I say as I lever away, applying a slight and constant pull in the direction of inside my car and out of here.

“I’m an incel,” he says.

“A what?”

“Incel. Involuntary celibate.”

The fuck?

I take a few seconds to roll the words around in my head. It feels sort of nice to apply my mind to something after being reduced to a spent body on the ground. “So, you’re celibate, but don’t want to be?”

“You never heard of incels, Uncle X?”

“Dude, only Jolene calls me Uncle X, alright?”

“Sorry, sorry.” He’s back to repeating. “There’s so many of us incels now, I’m just surprised you never heard of us. Yes, we don’t have sex, but not because we don’t want to. We can’t. We try, and…” he pauses, his face turning all sincere and grave as if he’s imparting me with a secret code to life (fucking dork). “...there’s more to it. I have to go, though. I’m actually on my way to an incel meeting right now.”

“You guys have . . . meetings?” The thought of a room full of Candys all harping about not getting laid does more than just rub me the wrong way, though the notion indeed seems somewhat hilarious.

“Yeah, you want to come?” he beams.

“No, I…” But I got nothing. I figure what else am I gonna do, go home and not fap?

“C’mon, Unc… I mean, C’mon, X, I think you’ll find it interesting. I bet you’ll actually be impressed when you hear what we believe, and why, and what our goals are.

I imagine their goals are the same as mine . . . get fucked sideways by nubile ass as soon and often as can be. I give in. “Ok, I’ll go.”

Candy texts me an address. It’s a Starbucks a couple miles away. So I set off to go meet him and his fellow freaks, and maybe get a handle on why a bunch of sexless losers would dare band together and announce their sad status to one another.

And that’s when it first hits me (I do get hit again later, and that one’s a much bigger hit, but we’ll get to it): I’m doing the same fucking thing as them by putting my whole sordid story out there, no? I mean, you got this recently suicidal, horny-as-fuck old shabby shithead “proudly” airing all his dirty laundry, dark ideals, monstrous cravings, and sick thoughts. Who the fuck am I to lay this horrible tripe on the world? What gives me the right?

I feel about a million times smaller than I did not long before, falling from actually being driven to plug hot whores, using sex as my driving force, to now questinging the whole thing and all my motives.

Not to spoil what’s coming, but yeah, it gets worse. And like I said, I’ll get to why and how I failed my big nofap commitment.

But anyway, I edge in through the Starbucks driveway and immediately spot Candy’s bright Jem shirt like a beacon. Seated with him are two of the creepiest, edgy young fucks I’ve ever seen. My skin actually starts to crawl as I take a nearby parking space and eye again the weirdos waiting for me.

I consider just driving away. I’ll never have to see Candy again, right? What harm could promptly escaping cause?

Instead I step from my car and reach to scratch a fresh set of sweat-induced itches at the back of my head under my new, clean grey gaiter mask.