I've been told I write erotica.

Which is hilarious to me, because it was awkward enough to hand a short to my teacher and say, "Here, tell me if this is too disgusting to read."

But when she told me, "Hey, that seems to me like erotica. There are tons of magazines that would pay for that," there were no words to describe it.

By the way, my name isn't actually Nolroboma. And I'm not sure how I feel about Obama, but those two words have no relation. Nolroboma and Obama, I mean. No relation. Seriously.

So the teacher tells me that I could keep writing shorts about a transvestite "getting with" a middle-aged woman, unaware that the middle-aged woman's husband happens to be the transvestite's OTHER sex partner, and he's lurking in the shadows with a gun and his daughter's panties.

No, I had a normal childhood.

But this raises the question; would you pay for that? Can you name anyone you know who would pay for that?

I couldn't sell that to someone. I would feel like an accidental serial rapist.

Could you imagine purchasing for your fine publication a short titled "Mr. Franklin's Salad Dressing Fiasco," printing it as erotica, and then a little girl gets her hand on it?

Could you imagine an angry letter from an angry mother that says, "Hi, my sweet little angel wants to know what a fucking anal fissure is."

Could you imagine, after settling out of court, could you imagine learning that the writer who almost ruined your career is only sixteen years old?

How could you live with yourself?

It's as though a drug dealer sold cocaine to children and then realized that he gave them crushed up dry-wall; so not only did he break the law, but those little children won't even have fun.

That's how I would feel.

The reason my pen-name isn't also my real name is because I don't want anyone's child to read about how the middle-aged woman's husband forced the middle-aged woman to rape the transvestite with a strap-on and then accidentally pulled the trigger as he got off.

I don't want anyone's child to read about how the middle-aged woman kept on pumping as a last demand of the nervous system, and the husband killed himself because he didn't want to have to explain the whole situation.

Actually, let me rephrase. I would love for people to read my things.

I just don't want them to know me.

Well, they can know me.

I just don't want them to ask about it.

Anyway, the point of that tangent is that I'm proud of myself. I'm proud that I maybe could have started writing erotica on accident.

But when I was doing it, I wasn't hoping to sell it to a magazine.

I was just trying to disgust myself.

And it didn't work.

This should all give you enough information to know who I am, and if that's not enough, I'd like to share with you a little story.

No, not about the transvestite or Mr. Franklin.

This is a story about me, and I hope it explains my writing.

Once upon a time, I was like two. Or three. I don't know, that's not important. I hadn't gone to school yet.

We had a backyard, and in the backyard I had a patch of dirt, and in the patch of dirt I had dug out tracks for my little toy dirt bikes, and in the tracks for the little toy dirt bikes I had my little toy dirt bikes.

I liked to dig in that little patch of dirt. I liked to play Red Dirt Bike Races Faded Blue Dirt Bike.

And, at about that time, my older sister had just bought two mice.

One male, one female.

No, this is not an erotic story. It's sort of like a piece of memoir.

But those two mice, they did get erotic.

Thirty four babies' worth of erotic.

My older sister, she played with these mice and their malnourished babies for maybe a week, and then forgot to feed them. Give them water. Clean up after them.

She forgot them.

And they died.

So my older sister, she has 36 dead mice on her hands. She's thinking, what should I do with these?

In the middle of an Arizona summer, she buries them in a shallow grave, in a patch of dirt in our backyard.

Mice have small bodies. Small bodies take almost no time to decompose-especially in 109 degree heat.

So a few hours pass, and I, the little rascal I was, decided to go play in the patch of dirt.

But, wait! The tracks! They're gone!

I should re-dig them up.

I should re-plan them and make them better.

...I should show this to mommy.

36 little mice, all stiff with rigor mortis, hair matted with sweat and dirt, half-decayed. Some fur still white as snow.

Next time you buy a mango, put it in an air-tight plastic container with a bit of water. Set it out in the sun. Forget about it.

Let it decay, rot, mold. Let the skin crack, let a culture of bacteria feed off of it, let the sun bake it.

Take the lid off when you think the time is right and gasp. Take a sharp inhale of the stench of decay.

Try to see if you can scream for help without vomiting all over the shallow grave, chunks of french toast and stomach acid slapping the dirt and drowning the dead mice in a thick, viscous fluid.

That's one of my earliest memories.

Nolroboma is a writer of transgressive fiction, erotica, gore, and other such repulsive genres, as well as scripts, screenplays and poems. He is also a terrible musician. And he has no job.

What a dick, right?