Of Pride and Power - Prologue. Prologue

Prologue:

Quote

 

“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

-Jean Paul Sartre”

 

It all started when I lived and died for the first time. My first life was always weird and off-balance, like I was both incomplete and, at the same time, excessive. When I was born, I imagined the doctors first offering the usual praise to my parents with words like “Congratulations on a beautiful baby boy.” Then after some X-rays, they’d come back and offer clinical condolences, “State law doesn’t permit us to act on your behalf, we’re sorry.” My parents didn’t have much money to go out of state for procedures as they worked for the local church and they couldn’t just abandon me to an orphanage, since it would be immoral and illegal as well. Ironic, how a set of moral obligations defining how people should behave can ensnare those who use it to shame others. Suffice it to say, my parents weren’t happy about my birth, which brought on ridicule and constant gossip.

However, not all in my family shared their opinion. Upon hearing of my birth, my aunt from Austin recounted the ancient Greek myth of the god Dionysus’ origin for inspiration to my parents. Dionysus was born as a son of Zeus, but due to fear of being murdered by his stepmother, Hera, he lived most of his adolescence as a girl, he did some amazing stuff like making wine and building an insane army that conquered the world. He eventually became a male god in the end. While I appreciated her positivity, my aunt was weird. I mean can a gender-confused person, who became the god of alcoholics and insanity be a good role model for a kid? How did a god define their gender identity, like he, she, or they?

Don’t get me wrong, I liked my dick and balls, despite their size. I don’t mind the weird feelings I got when I hit puberty or the sensation from my nipples. I was smaller than most boys at five feet four inches but had mostly masculine features except a rounder chest. Not everyone in my situation would like their anatomical differences. Body shaming is a real problem for kids, especially when you get teased constantly. Luckily for me, I recognized the differences between myself and others early, so I kept to myself and limited my bathroom runs as much as I could. Even when I was bullied and teased, I knew nothing they could do could hurt the real me, beyond the physical or mental pain. I could detach myself and not feel any pain. As a result, I was able to achieve self-actualization. The key lesson for me was that hate is less of a result of self-reflection and more from how others see you. I told myself growing up, that I can’t let others' judgments objectify me, I am what I am and they are what they are.

Of course, it helped that I had at least one fantastic freaky friend named Jack. We met when we were eight. He taught me how to dig for and eat worms. He never treated me differently, despite how I looked or acted. He was usually quiet, but he offered the best advice and hugs. Whenever I needed him, like every crisis from scraping my knee to being mocked by other kids and adults for how I looked or acted, he’d be there for me. I’m not an easy person to like, beyond just the anatomical stuff either. As I grew older, my hormones flipped me from frosty bitch to gung-ho workout bro daily. People would constantly get a different side of me based on my body chemistry. I got a reputation for being flaky, but Jack stuck by me. When I was mad, Jack took every order I gave like a commandment from God. When I was just a few miles from reaching my weekly running goals, Jack would swear like a sailor to keep me going. He was the first thing in my life that made me feel complete and real, he got me. Our relationship just became a partnership naturally as a result. Yeah, I know we were a basic bitch love story, but so what if the person you love is just the person who stands by you when the world doesn’t get it. We kept being like that until I was seventeen when I died.

My death wasn’t anything special. I was hiding in some orange groves near the highway, my usual spot for reading. Buried beneath the third row of orange trees from the highway, Jack and I would hide several boxes of books and manga. Most of it was bought through my weird aunt from Austin, who wanted us to express ourselves without limitations on our intellectual development. I preferred reading manga, Jack preferred reading books. We read to each other often. I got a lot of my actual education from listening to Jack, rather than trying to go through a textbook. It didn’t help my grades, but I knew those books were more real than the stuff the teachers taught. Like, in school, we were reading about how early European settlers and Americans were “helping” black people by teaching them trade skills. In Orange Grove, I was listening to how a black man was drugged and sold into slavery for twelve years, along with the degradation he went through. If I wanted to feel good about people and the world like some kid-friendly show, then school textbooks were great. If I wanted to be real, I knew firsthand a lot of human beings were assholes, so I thought the books Jack read were more accurate to how the world developed.

On the flip side, I read the manga to Jack, like the popular That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime and the classics Neon Genesis Evangelion, among other things that opened our minds to philosophers like Niccolò Machiavelli and Friedrich Nietzsche. People think Asian manga are just abstract comic books, but the authors of these graphic novels are quite literate and educated. They bring up concepts that force you to re-evaluate your perceptions and ideals, teaching valuable lessons. For example, not everything is pure good and evil, nor black and white. Killing a lot of innocent people now may prevent more deaths later. Bad actions don’t always have to be based on bad intentions, strength can be based on belief and will. I concluded that no action, material, or being can be objectively categorized as a result, it is merely a matter of observer bias.

Anyway, back to how I died, I was lying on my back reading and waiting for Jack to come, when I heard a noise in the grove. I turned and faced my holier-than-thou father. He was an aging fifty-three-year-old assistant pastor, who had been passed for promotion countless times and barely had more than a hundred bucks in his bank account. He blamed most of his ills on my existence, which included several severe beatings that resulted in hospital trips under the concealment of “accidents.” I’ve gotten used to those and hid from him as often as I could when he was around. My mother was absent most of the time, either at church or at an Indian casino, where she could escape from her reality in faith or sin. Her gambling is what drained most of our family's limited financial resources, perpetuating my father’s anger loop.

My father screamed at me, “Eric, so this is where you have been besmirching my good family name with your sinful acts.”

I stood upright and kicked myself for digging up the box that contained not only our recently acquired reading materials, but our supply of lube, anal toys, and condoms as I was horny for Jack. Grabbing the box in one hand, I ran away from my father. It was probably a stupid idea in hindsight, but I didn’t want him to confiscate our supplies and his appearance was a shock. Without noticing that I had run into the highway, or heard the loud booming truck until it was too late, I died like so many other Isekai main characters before me. As an Otaku, I knew the most dangerous thing on the roads was Truck-kun. Yeah, my death was nothing special, but my next life...