YO! I'm back in black ma reader-peeps, and I'm bringing another chapter of original awesome from the ghettos of the STREETS. Snoogans…
Anyways, this chapter includes some ZIM, cos you can't have an IZ fic without him. After all, the fandom's named after the dude!
Erm… yea, 12 reviews for the first chapter in only a few days… I think it might be the single most popular start to a fic I've ever had. Also, I seemed to have tapped into the seemingly waiting market of asexuals on which is great because after so many fics talking about homosexuality of bisexuality there's finally a serious fic about asexuality.
But really, I'm just glad there's people out there like me who not only appreciate what I'm writing here, but also giving feedback from how they feel and their opinions on Gaz's (and to some extent my own) experience in dealing with their sexuality. If there's something I love more then anything else about writing, is when people give me their opinions back to me.
But enough of my rambling, lets boogie!
(P.S, I own no characters in this thing)
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Gaz walked into the busy school dining hall with her eyes not focusing on anyone. Her black backpack, decorated with metal studs and chains, hung on her shoulder and her boots clicked heavily on the dirty tiled floor.
Around her the stupid and the stupider enjoyed their ignorant but blissful existence. The cheerleaders, the jocks, the film nerds and anime geeks, the punk rockers and the goths, the emo kids and the scene kids, the wanna-be gangsters and the wanna-be rap artists, the cartoonists and the writers, the so-called 'individuals' with all the other 'individuals'.
She knew that some of them had the same look on life as she did, mostly the artists and the writers, but she still didn't like any of them enough to want to hang around with them.
Instead she sat, like she'd always sat, with her brother, who was still the freak amongst freaks, with Zim across from them.
Zim, that green skinned moron still acted almost exactly like he did back when he'd first arrived, the only change being his height so that he was now only a few inches taller than Gaz. The girl let a small smile form on her lips as she wondered how he'd react to Dib going on a date with Gretchen instead of trying to stop whatever stupid plan he'd tried this week.
She sat down at 'their' table, aka, the table that no one else would sit on due to the collective student body's petty labelling system and the natural human want to be accepted by everyone else.
Gaz looked up to see Zim sitting across from her poking at his 'food' with a plastic fork. He was wearing a red and black striped shirt with baggy black pants and boots and he wore a pair of black gloves on his three clawed hands. His black wig had improved after Gir had apparently ate the last one, meaning it was now thicker and longer, more natural looking and sometimes drifting over his blue contact eyes. His form was thin, but also suggested that he was not without muscle.
He looked up. "Where's the Dib-stink?" His voice was still scratchy and nasally, it almost didn't suit his now more mature looks.
Gaz shrugged and placed her bag on the floor, reaching in to take out her Gameslave three and a turkey and lettuce sandwich.
Gaz was something of a neutral ground between Zim and Dib. She hated humanity and cared little enough for Dib for Zim to allow her to talk with him, while at the same time sometimes helping her brother whenever Zim actually got too close to destroying the earth, but only because she couldn't stand to actually see Zim win at something. She considered her role to be one of keeping a balance between the human idiot and the alien moron and stop them from ever actually winning over one another.
Zim poked at the food again before looking up. "He didn't try to stop my amazing plan last night. Lucky for him the generator-"
"Shut it," Gaz ordered. She didn't want to hear Zim's pointless ramblings, "He went on a date."
"Date?" Zim questioned, "Date? Date… as in, that thing you human pig-smellies do with other human pig-smellies of the opposite sex?"
"With Gretchen, of all people," Gaz replied while munching on her sandwich.
Zim's eyes widened, "What?! Since when did he have time to do stuff like that?"
Gaz raised an eyebrow at 'stuff' but shrugged, "Since he became a teenager I guess."
Zim scratched his chin. "But are you not a 'teened-ager'?"
"Yes." Gaz replied slowly, wondering what Zim was getting at.
"But you haven't gone on any 'dates' to do stuff like the other sub-monkeys of your pathetic race," Zim wondered out loud.
Gaz's eyes narrowed. "So?"
Zim played with the plastic fork, balancing it between his black gloved claws while a smile slowly formed on his face, "Why not?"
Gaz shrugged, "I don't like anyone."
"Really?" Zim chuckled wickedly, "I thought all you humans thought about past smeethood was mating and producing more of each other. Your very society seems to evolve around that goal." Gaz narrowed her eyes, Zim's statement had hit a bit harder than she'd expected it to. The alien knew it and he carried on, not caring what Gaz would do to him, it was rare that he could land such an insult on her without it being paid back immediately. "That means," He looked back to the fork, smiling, "That you are different from society, a broken human…" his grin grew wider, "Or as we irken's call them, defectives."
Gaz slammed her hands down, letting out a dangerous growl. "What about you? All you irken's think about is killing and conquest."
Zim chuckled again. "We call it survival of the fittest. We happen to be the fittest and we're making sure that we survive."
"So you're saying that you don't exist to breed?" Gaz asked, angry but also attentive, it wasn't often she and Zim had an actually interesting convocation.
"Oh, we do breed, but we don't obsess over it like your race does," Zim smiled maliciously back, "The point in human life is to have sex and that's it." He shrugged and poked his food again, "Or at least that's what I can gather from my research."
"No its not," Gaz quickly answered, surprised at herself. She'd almost sounded desperate to say it, "There is no meaning to human existence."
"And yet you always try and stop me from ending it," Zim mused.
"No, I don't," Gaz countered, "Dib does. I couldn't care if we all died horribly."
"Even if you died?" Zim asked quickly, his voice telling Gaz that he was actually interested in her reply.
Gaz paused then looked down. "I couldn't care if I lived or died," she paused again and bit her lip, thinking of the best way of putting it, "I'm not suicidal, I don't actively want to end my life. But I accept that I will die, and I'm not going to actively try to keep myself alive just to live."
Zim narrowed one eye and jutted his bottom lip out as he mulled over Gaz' words. The he shrugged and went back to poking at his food. "Meh, whatever."
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"Today you will learn about how to write creatively," Mr Durden, the English teacher told them from where he sat on his desk.
Usually the prospect of finally being able to do some creative writing in English class would have quickly caught Gaz's attention, after all, it wasn't every day Gaz got to flex her creative talent in English class.
However, once more her mind was drawn by current topics. Zim, an outsider to Earth society, had said himself that their civilization was obsessed with sex. Yet, again as Zim had so nicely pointed out, Gaz seemed to be separated from this cultural fixation.
She had no sex drive.
The thought worried her, but what worried her more was why. Why the hell did the prospect of not finding the idea of sex with anyone scare her? She knew she was different from everyone else; it was inherited from being a Membrane. Her dad was different, her brother was different and she was different. All in their own separate ways of course, but different nevertheless.
Now she was different because she had no desire. Everyone seemed the same to her, no one seemed special or pretty or in any way superior to anyone else. Her eyes widened as she realised she'd never even felt love before, at least not romantic love, that's of course if such a thing even existed.
"Gaz!" Startled she looked up to see Mr Durden frowning at her, "Pay attention." He turned back to the rest of the class, "Today I want you all to write about how you define love."
Pieces of lined paper were passed around, one inevitably landing on Gaz's desk.
Taking out a pen she wrote the assignment title and her name at the top. Then she placed the pen on the first line, ready to write.
But she couldn't. Usually she would've automatically been able to write about how love is nothing but chemical reactions and a corporate selling point. But she couldn't write that now… because she was starting to wonder if it was actually true.
How could she prove that love doesn't exist, if she couldn't find it within herself to even try to find someone who she could test her theory on?
'Love is…' She managed before stopping; again she stared at the paper. 'None existent, an invention.' Her heart wasn't behind the words, how ironic, 'Love can be bought and sold. Love can not be understood or truly felt in a modern society. Mankind cannot define what it cannot understand.' She gulped, and wondered if she should write down what she really felt, before deciding that she had to.
"I don't know what love is, because I can't feel it?"
She jumped and turned in her seat to see Mr Durden reading out her work. One or two of the class looked up, but most didn't.
Mr Durden frowned in interest. "You don't really think that, do you?" Gaz looked back to her work, wishing he'd go away. He chuckled when she didn't answer him. "Everyone feels love Gaz, its normal. We're not machines you know."
'I wish I was a machine,' Gaz thought slowly.
Mr Durden chuckled as he moved to walk on. "Only monsters and murderers don't feel love."
Gaz froze. 'What the hell…' She looked up, her eyes blazing. "What? Are you saying I'm a monster?"
Mr Durden stopped and turned his head to look back to the furious girl, "Erm, no, I'm just saying… Love isn't just defined as between two people. You can have love for God or your family. Maybe that's how you interpret love."
"But the most important version of love is defined as between two people, right?" Gaz couldn't help answer back, "That's the kind of love you wanted us to write about."
Mr Durden now turned completely to look at the teenage girl a mixture of surprise and annoyance on his face. "Well, no, I said how you define love, if you have trouble doing the task than don't blame me."
Gaz froze, biting the inside of her lip before putting her head back down. 'If you have trouble doing the task,' She couldn't define something that she'd never thought existed. She couldn't write about something she'd never felt before. She couldn't even begin to understand something that she was afraid she was unable feel.
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Gaz sat, alone in her room, the sound of some randomly picked band playing from her computer. Outside it was dark, the night had come slowly, crawling into her room before she even realised it.
She was again, alone in the house. But this time, for the first time in a long time, she wanted someone to be with her. She wanted someone to sit next to her and listen as she tried to explain the confused chaos of her mind.
Her whole belief structure had come under attack, and it was falling. She had been so secure in her ideals. She needed no one and wanted no one, but now, for the first time, she was beginning to wonder if she was wrong in her ideas. She felt… empty. Like something inside her needed to be filled, some gap that she'd never noticed before.
But at the same time, she didn't want the gap to be filled. She didn't want to be emotionally shackled to anyone, nor did she have any urge to go out and screw someone just for the sake of having sex.
She felt, as Zim had summed up, defective. She was a defective human being.
She had realised three things today. One: that human's must need sex if they are to feel complete. Two: she had no desire to have sex as she wasn't attracted to either male or females. Three: love was needed for a person to function properly.
This had led her to her summery that she was broken. Something inside her mind was not working and that she wouldn't feel better until she had fixed it.
Whether it was the scientist blood in her, or just the way her fathers approach may have rubbed off onto his children, Gaz decided to solve this matter in a way that she usually solved most matters that troubled her mind. She would use an experiment, the scientific approach, to solve her problem.
Her subject would be herself, her experiment would be to see if she could find, or maybe even force, herself to find someone whom she could feel attracted enough towards to love, and perhaps, have sex with, although, the very prospect of sex made her feel sick to her stomach.
Gaz may be a virgin, but that didn't mean she was completely naive. It wasn't like she'd never kissed someone or made out with someone, after all, summer camps away from everyone she knew were perfect opportunities to act out of character or open up to others without having anyone back at home knowing.
However, Gaz frowned as she remembered the three boys she'd ever gotten that close to. The first being when she was only thirteen and at a youth based summer camp. They'd both hit it off immediately as being the only two in the camp to listen to heavy rock and wear black all the time. They'd gotten closer and closer, both revealing to each other how they always felt different from others and their families, until the last day when, just as Gaz was leaving, they kissed outside the bus.
She never saw him again.
The second time, a year later, again summer camp but in a different place, again another outsider like herself, dark clothes and a darker attitude. However Gaz remembered liking this boy very much. He'd been rebellious and had gotten himself, and Gaz, into trouble for causing various petty pranks on people. She'd had her first make-out session with him behind their cabin two nights before she left.
She now wondered how the hell she'd ever liked such an asshole of a person.
The third had been two years ago, again another summer camp but this one had been an art and writing camp. He'd been funny, intelligent but very skinny and quiet, almost anti-social in his attitude towards others. She'd noticed him when he wrote a story describing the pointlessness of existence, causing her to begin talking to him immediately. He'd introduced her to works such as Kafka, Dostoevsky and found answers for questions she'd always asked, showed her that she wasn't alone in her nihilist wonderings. He also self-harmed, running a box cutter blade across his arm. Something that Gaz had only found more intriguing about him, such a sharp mind, yet with such self-loathing. They'd sneak out together, into the nearby woods and sit, talk, kiss and share their musings at life.
She'd remembered reading five months later that he'd killed himself out of depression. What a poor waste of a great and talented young mind.
As she sat on her bed, her legs curled up to her chest, she wondered if by being with these three boys made her straight. She remembered liking them, but not feeling any of the so-called symptoms of love. She'd hardly missed them when she'd left the camps, never really thought about any of them much, although she did feel bad for the third one when she'd read about his death in the papers.
She hadn't loved them, or liked them enough to go any further then making out. She'd never liked anyone else that much since.
Her brow furrowed as she thought on these experiences. What had been different about these boys? Or was it more of the environment that she'd been in? Yes, perhaps it was the way she'd acted. She had been in a freer mindset, less pre-occupied with the consequences of her actions, more willing to open up.
Perhaps if she was more like that now, she'd be more likely to find people attractive, or at least interesting, enough to try and love.
She nodded to herself, but she didn't smile. This task was probably going to be much harder then she already thought it would be.
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And so, it's all over till the next update!
The 'not caring about life' thing is something I though suited Gaz well, so I put that in there and the part with the teacher asking if I really believed in the 'no love' thing actually happened to me, full on debate in English class and all.
Well, Mr Durden comes from that AWESOME film and book, FightClub (of which Gaz can actually be seen reading in the show, under the name 'PunchClub' (Episode: Rise of the Zit Boy)).
In the first chapter some of you expressed your… distaste at the highly nihilist attitudes and the anti-emotion, anti-love opinions. Well, I want to tell you all now that this story will contain heavy tones of anti-commercialism, critical views of the use of sex in our society and a negative view of different groups in society due to the real life experiences I've had with them on explaining my position.
However, the most complained about aspect was the anti-love element of Gaz's character. I want you all to know that I don't consider every asexual to be loveless or cold or nihilist, I just consider Gaz that way because of her character in the show.
The next chapter is gonna UP the maturity and throw ALL sorts into chaos, so be warned.
But in the meantime, till our next sweet meeting, R&R!