THE BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!!!

I will start my birthday celebration the night before, at midnight. I will drink a lot of booze. Does that surprise you at all?

The booze will be reasonably classy, so I won't feel like a total degenerate. I will be lying to myself, but the combination of self-deception and alcohol will deaden my moral sense enough so that—O mirabile dictu!—I really can block out all the pain.

However, the booze won't be any classier than it needs to be. Depending on my mood, I might even opt for the real bottom-shelf rotgut as an 'ironic' option. Everyone loves a good joke! Or, for a trip down memory lane, perhaps a bottle of the syrupy-sweet Teenager's Choice vodka. The shit I used to buy for my kid brother, because I just loved him too much and couldn't say no.

You know how it goes, right? I'll begin to deaden my senses in a familiar pattern that I will recognize from past experience. I will know what to expect, and in what order. Music will start sounding slightly better, but in my addled state, I'll think of it as being a way to "tap into the spiritual meaning of things, dude". I'll want a cigarette, then another. I'll get hungry and look for a nice greasy snack with a lot of umami flavor—probably a box of Slim Jims, if history is any guide, although I'm not above dropping a teaspoon or two of pure MSG from the bottle into the palm of my hand, and slowly licking it off.

Then the weird desires will start surfacing. The kind of shit you can't talk about, even when you're behind the semi-anonymous veil of an online persona.

Or, well, you can, but if you're like me, you would disgust yourself by doing so. But, I don't know about you. Maybe you're one of those morons who thinks there needs to be a public celebration every time you fart.

I, on the other hand, am a sane and intelligent person, and therefore I hate everything about myself.

Anyway. I had something more important to talk about. Here's where the story earns its "Mature" and "Sex" tags, kids, so leave while your minds are still pure. And don't grow up in a hurry. Growing up is nothing but the slow and inexorable process of estranging yourself from everything you hold most sacred.

Now get outta here.

For you adults remaining—I hope all of you still reading are at least sixteen—and especially you men, you'll know what I'm talking about here.

Yeah. We're going there.

On my birthday, I will masturbate furiously to hentai on the internet.

I don't know about you. Maybe you're into vanilla porn? Straight white missionary all you get off to? Do you think you're any better than me because of that?

And for you unfortunate fellas who like the horses: I feel your pain. I cry for you. I used to be among you. But the anime girls, thank Jesus or the Devil or Horus or Athena, whoever is responsible—the anime girls got me off the horses.

And I'm really grateful for that, but ultimately, we're really in the same position, aren't we? You've got your thing, and I've got mine, but it's all the same thing. The thing that turns my stomach, and, I hope, in your saner moments, yours. The thing that takes a pure, innocent soul that you know deserves your protection and unselfish love, deserves the entire effort of love that you can muster in the utmost extremity of your soul, and turns the vision of that soul into a corroding and love-destroying toy that you dream of defiling because you are special, you are not just a lust-filled villain like the rest, there are special circumstances and reasons why you deserve an exemption from this weighty moral onus that everyone has felt as long as romance has existed in the world.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I'll still do it. Because it still numbs the pain of remembering every time I've done it in the past.

You really can block out all the pain.

And that's the scariest part.

And in the wee hours of the morning of my birthday, while I lay in my bed, drunk and butt-naked, with a dirty taste in my mouth, desperate to forget everything I've ever done, I'll fall asleep at some point.

And I'll wake up, and I'll be in Equestria.

I'll be in the treehouse. I know it's destroyed now and there's the Castle of Friendship in its place, but I'll be in the treehouse anyway.

I'll open my eyes, and Twilight Sparkle will be right there, sitting beside my bed. She'll look at me with pitying eyes, like a nun visiting a cancer patient.

I'll stare into those eyes, and my heart will quaver. She'll know everything about me, and I'll know that she knows, and I'll feel the tears coming and debate idiotically whether to repress the tears or not.

And Twilight Sparkle will take my hand in her hooves, and she'll whisper, with a sobriety that only the clear heart of a true Princess can possess: "It's okay."

And then?

Then I'll be crying like a child—me, a grown-ass man—burying my face in Twilight Sparkle's chest and bawling for my sins.

And Twilight Sparkle's eyes will wet a little, too. And as she holds me close, tightly enough to protect me from the Devil himself, she will whisper something else:

"Happy Birthday."

And then my penance will begin.

I'll be given strict training in the moral virtues by the most beautiful unicorn in Equestria: Rarity, of course.

I'll remember how she reacted to the disgusting habits of the parasprites—throwing them out of her boutique, without a moment's hesitation!—and count myself lucky with an infinite, universe-engulfing luck that I have the chance to receive even a glance from her untouchably holy eyes, much less to have the chance to bare my soul before her delicate soul so that our souls will meet and the touch of her soul to my soul will remove the disgusting filth from my soul without dirtying her eternally spotless soul in the least.

Rarity will begin by asking me to tell her about all the filth—my words, not hers—nesting inside of me, eating, eating away. All of the lust, all of the broken promises. All of the gangrene and bloody deaths, all of the pain and the noise.

And I will try to tell her everything I have never told anyone.

But I will not be able to. Not without a measure of deception. Of evasion, obfuscation, and lies.

But, god damn me, I will try my best. My best will not be good enough, but I will try, God damn me.

It will be painful. It will be my crucifixion.

And I will suffer, and I will cry.

And Rarity, the most beautiful unicorn in the pure land of Equestria, will—O mirabile dictu!—lock eyes with me, her with her pure gaze, I with my evasions, obfuscations, and lies, and she will tell me that she loves me despite everything, and I will know it to be true.

And I will cry like a bitch.

Rarity will teach me about morality again, from the beginning, like a child in catechism class.

She will teach me about the good, the true, and the beautiful.

I will be hypnotized. I will feel in my conscience, at every second, the threat of the hanging executioner's sword, dangling by a gossamer thread over my neck, threatening to drop at a breath and schismatize me should I whisper a wrong word. There will not really be any sword like that, but the threat that I will feel will not for that reason be idle, because this will be my one chance to right everything I have done wrong, and such a rectification of the past will require my full attention and all the power I will be able to muster.

Sometimes the old noise, the old lust will come upon me. Even in Equestria there will be demons.

I will have visions, dreams, ones I would rather not have. For perhaps whole minutes—whole minutes!—I will feel the insistent grip of the old ways, the old touches. The old pleasures, the screaming riots of sense.

When that happens, impelled by the sword of conscience, I will run. I will run, and I will keep running, until I die or I reach Rarity.

Rarity will tell me that the world of sense pleasure is fleeting, that its impression of permanence is illusory and a source of suffering. I will complain.

"It hurts," I will say. "Jesus, Rarity, I don't know why this hurts so much. It's so stupid. But I'm in so much pain right now." I will be laying in a pathetic heap on one side, fetal position, writhing dramatically, trying my best to evoke a sense of pity. But also genuinely in pain. Funny, isn't it, how sometimes you can do one thing sincerely and ironically at the same time.

Rarity will remind me: "It's what you deserve, and so karma has given it to you. I do so wish I could help, but there is no palliative for pain of the conscience. For the love of the good, the true, and the beautiful, you must manfully endure this."

And I will be somewhat driven by her words, but I will be even more driven by the blazing light of the fire that I will see dancing behind her pupils.

And I will—manfully!—endure the pain.

And after one million years of this training, I will have become pure-hearted again.

A small, miniscule even, price to pay. The reward will have been worth more than life itself, and I will wonder how I could have ever thought the opposite.

The good, the true, and the beautiful will be so obviously worthy of all the effort of love that my soul can muster that I will never have any difficulty again in resisting any kind of filthy urge. And I will be unchanged in my outward appearance, but my soul will shine, and the perceptive and needful will see in my eyes a blazing fire, dedicated for all time as a beacon of hope for themselves.

I will say goodbye to Rarity, and to Twilight Sparkle. And they will shake my hand in their hooves, and we will be as equals.

And I will return to the world of Man, carrying the fire of love within myself, and I will spark fires in the souls of all those to whom God leads me.