Chapter 4: Cyber-Cinderella Complex

All chores fell on me when my mom got locked up. I cooked, cleaned, did everyone’s laundry. On the weekends, I bought groceries and paid out of my bank account, caught up on my homework, and read science fiction novels because they helped me think about anything else but my reality. Oh, and I ironed. I swept and mopped. My brother’s homework also fell under my purview, since my mom’s mind was almost worthless even when she was home. She did manage to find a job doing local weather. She was the weekend weather woman now, a major step down. By now the forecast had become second nature to her, so she showed up and played celebrity for a little while. Otherwise, she only cared about her fitness routine and clothes. Where was my dad? Usually out of town. He missed the best Mexican standoffs between me, my mom, and Harrison.

My mom now plotted revenge against me for all the times she’d been arrested, interviewed by Social Services, forced to see a counselor or psychiatrist of some kind. She did her best to sabotage every meal I cooked. She blew cigarette smoke in my face. She deleted files off my computer and hid my textbooks. She glued razorblades to door handles. One time she lit my favorite dress on fire and soaked my favorite blue shirt in bleach.

The most elaborate prank? My mom got Harrison stoned, trashed the house, and then called the police on me. Two officers showed up, questioned me, asked me if I had a boyfriend to try and break the tension. Boy, I was cute! I declared I had no idea who had broken all of our glassware and china, or who’d littered the floor with pillows and broken a lamp. My mom and brother corroborated each other’s story that I was having spells of anger, and I was handcuffed and spent two hours at the sheriff’s office while they tried to contact my dad, who explained to them the real circumstances.

That night, I used my dad’s credit card to sleep at a hotel, too hurt to face the other half of my family.

Harrison later apologized. “Mom just said it would be a great joke, you know, to lighten things up.”

He tried to hug me. I didn’t hug him back, but I didn’t push him away.

Even my mom sheepishly apologized when the police explained they could charge her with about five counts of child abuse and false witness. They let her off the hook, though, because she was such a great weather woman.

My mom sat me down and tried to play with my hair. “I just wanted you to know how it feels when you and your father call the police on me,” she said.

“Fine,” I said. “I get it now. Complete sympathy.”

Of course, the harassment continued. Stoned Harrison thought the smaller pranks were hilarious, like stuffing my bras down the garbage disposal, or emptying my shampoo in the sink. Sometimes he gave my mom a high-five when her plans worked, and I abandoned them to drive, either to the library or the state park for a long-distance run, returning only after I was sure they were asleep. They wanted me gone. So I was gone. I stayed with friends whenever I could, and when I couldn’t I slept with my door locked and a chair stuffed under the knob.

Report card time was special. My dad would toss my 4.0 GPA on a pile of bills and lecture me on disciplining my brother, scanning Harrison’s collection of Cs and Ds with bifocals. “You need to spend more time going over his essays. He’s got a C- in English. Come on, Jessica, that’s your strongest subject. He should be doing better than that.”

Around this time, people started pointing out my narrow range of facial expressions. In fact, you might say I didn’t even have expressions anymore, just reactions. My eyes widened and my mouth opened to show surprise, but that was about it. Male teachers and coaches singled me out in the hallways. “Hey, you need to smile more! Show me that smile!”

Years later, I finally understand what my teachers meant. They thought I was hiding a smile. I wish I could’ve explained that there was simply nothing in me that could’ve produced a smile. I could only smile the way a robot could, in a stilted, strained bend of lips that proved to everyone around me that I wasn’t human. So why bother?

By my junior year, I was already half finished deleting my emotions. Happiness and sadness were the first ones to go. What remained was a metal cavity where all those feelings had once lived.

All this meant no more friends for poor Jessica. The people I knew had birthday parties at each other’s houses, saw plays and movies, went to amusement parks. Sometimes I got invitations, and I simply failed to imagine myself on a roller coaster doing anything other than sitting with my arms folded the entire ride, waiting for it to end so that I could go make a to-do list. If you open my senior year book, you’ll see a picture of me at prom in a simple but lovely dress staring at three guys who asked her to dance at the same time. Meanwhile, she’s trying to figure out why people even dance in the first place.

I mean, I did dance…mainly because at prom there was nothing else to do except eat vegetables and ranch dressing. So I danced, in the sense that a guy would wind me up and I would go through all the moves, but that’s all they were. Moves, patterns, sequences. The two years I went to prom, I left after an hour. That was my strategy, put in my face time so nobody thought I was fucked-up.

Listen to me, I completely forgot to tell you I played the violin in high school and somehow squeezed in practice time, usually late at night in the basement so I didn’t wake anyone. Playing Beethoven and Vialdi was therapeutic. At the start of sophomore year, I tried to surprise my dad at the door. “Hey, Dad? Guess what? I auditioned for the statewide master class and got second chair!”

“What’s a master class?” he said and walked off as I began to explain.

Then he stopped and turned to add, “And what’s second chair, like second place or something?”

Not that it mattered whether I got first or second chair, because I wound up not going to the rehearsals because they were too far away, and my dad couldn’t cancel an upcoming business trip, which meant another weekend making sure my mom and brother didn’t accidentally cook themselves or set fire to any furniture.

You’d think that ambitious little Jessica would’ve learned to stop trying to impress her dad. Given his general disposition to me my whole life, I’m not sure what I expected when I told him about winning second place at a county-wide cross country race, winning a little lapel for my class rank (9 out of 350), holding a 4.1 GPA, or anything else. These news flashes always met with a face twisted in irritation, perfunctory comments that judged me for taking pleasure in almost winning. When I lost first place at a state-wide track meet by two seconds, my dad told me, “You’re just not designed for running, Jessica. Maybe you’ll do better at something else.”

Of course! The reason I didn’t win was my faulty design. My aluminum frame, with those solid steel joints, was just too heavy for my servo motors to move me as fast as a real girl my size. I should’ve known. My dad would get rid of me in a couple of years when Jessica 2.1 was released. That one would probably win stuff.

The deficiencies of my design extended to my CPU. My dad scoffed at my 1400 SAT because the math score was too low. So I bought a study guide with my own measly funds from my summer waitress job and took it again. Still, even my 1500 wasn’t good enough because it was a composite score. Since I couldn’t break 1500 on a single try, he only rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t be bragging so hard. Didn’t one of your friends get a 1600? Maybe I should send her a congratulations card.”

What else could my dad possibly criticize about the Jessica Wilder Beta Test? My fashion sense, duh! From “that skirt’s a little long” to “that dress is a little loose on you” to the complete opposite, to comments about wearing too much grey, or too much black, or too much white, or too much makeup, or not enough makeup, I doubt a single inch of fabric in my closet ever met with his approval. More than once, he handed me a hundred dollar bill and told me to go buy some new clothes, and then he would make a face at what I bought and ask for the money back.

Soon-to-be obsolete little Jessica didn’t catch on for a while that her dad enjoyed undermining her confidence. He enjoyed it because I was now a stand-in for my mom. People at school adored me. They gave my dad compliments to pass on to me. “She looks just like her mother,” people told him. Except I had black hair, not dark auburn. And green eyes, not blue. But that didn’t matter to anyone. I might as well have started doing the local weather forecast.

Any normal father would’ve been so proud of me, at least that’s what I’ve been told. All mine could see was a blooming replicant of his wife, whom he was growing to hate. Of course, he had to stop my progress anyway he could. The more I seemed to be turning into my mom, the harder his insults.

Sadly, the word for this could be misogynist. My mom had hurt my dad in every possible way. So he was going to punish all women, especially the bright attractive ones, starting with me.

Jessica failed to see this at the time, so she continued wasting her energy trying to please him. Sometime my senior year, a fat hunk of an envelope arrived from Johns Hopkins University containing what I suspected, after perusal, was a personal letter from the chair of the history department, a packet about the girls’ cross country team, and another one about their music program. Nobody in my family or school seemed interested in counseling the college application process of an emotionless fabrication of a girl. I assumed everyone else I knew was just going to websites and doing their best to follow instructions, so I never expected much help.

I got mailers from other elite schools and just couldn’t comprehend why they all seemed especially addressed to me. Who had time to do that? It had to be a scam, or I was just deluded. Johns Hopkins or Cornell or Emory seemed like top schools by all the markers, so I was surprised when my dad glanced at these invitations and offers of scholarships and tossed the envelopes and folders on top of a growing stack of junk mail. “What’s wrong with a state school?” he asked. “They’ll take you for free.”

“But you see Johns Hopkins is — “

“Asking for all of my money, I know.” He stood and adjusted his belt, lighting a cigarette. He reminded me that we were about $75,000 down after all of my mom’s top-notch use of her secret credit card and P.O. Box, and whatever she’d done with his savings bonds. You see, schizophrenics do lots of bad things, such as spend all of your money behind your back.

My dad was hell bent on me paying 100 percent of my tuition. Not unreasonable, but he had to be a jerk about it to boot, because I was pretty.

An aspiring daddy’s girl can only take so much before she gives up and starts to seek approval and affection somewhere else. The Internet became my solution, and my new sexual frontier, with leagues of men standing by to compliment me! Thanks to my mom’s crumbling mental health and my brother’s devotion to solitary pursuits in his bedroom, I sailed around parental supervision and became well versed in AOL chatroom sex with some of my old crushes, then decided to up my game with strangers.

With no judging presence to stop me, I developed a female persona named Fiona who ran track and played the violin (like me but super slutty). She’d done modeling but was more interested in art and music; she planned to attend an elite private university and wanted to run a nonprofit after graduating college. In her spare time, she loved to entertain strangers.

Screw privacy, I thought after a while, and posted real pictures of myself online as my avatar, luring in troubled men of all legal ages. Some nights, I chatted with men for hours, just to see how long I could lead them on. Simply existing online is enough for a cutie to lasso the male gaze. Soon, attention wasn’t enough. I started trolling strangers online. I was the troll princess. Some of my chat partners could’ve used a lesson in manners, like HellHound69. People like him quickly taught me the joy of setting traps for online predators, and conversations like the one below became the perfect distraction from all my issues:

HellHoundWellHunginton69: Hey, babie. What u doing right now?

FionaGirly00: Hi! I’m just finishing up some studying and chatting with some friends. Do I know you??

HellHoundWellHunginton69: No but you bout to know me. Describe yourself.

FionaGirly00: Lol, okay? I have auburn hair on the dark side (in a loose ponytail right now). I’m taller with green eyes and fairish skin, ooo I guess 5’9” and 110 lbs but an athletic thin, not wimpy like you’d think.

HellHound: Wow u petite. ASL?

Fiona: Hmmm?

HellHound: How old are you.

Fiona: Oh, I just turned 18 two weeks ago!  So… where are you from, Hellhound? Do you go to Woodview High? If you do, I’m not supposed to talk to you. You’re our rivals. Lol!

HellHound: Yeah Woodview. Got a picture hon?

Fiona: Sure do, Hellhound! [Sends picture.]

HellHound: Godam that’s really you?

Fiona: No it’s Shania Twain 

HellHound: Hah cute and a mouth on you too. How you feelin tonight honey?

Fiona: I’m feeling just great. My bff Jenny just got accepted into UVA! I have a little bit of a headache though . I’m trying to get rid of it with coffee.

HellHound: You no what helps a headache? Masterbate. True science your headache will be gone in five min.

Fiona: Hmmm….isn’t masturbate spelled with a u??? Lol!

Hellhound: Just try it. I had a headache earlier and now it’s gone. Tell me what u wearing first.

Fiona: I’m wearing my first ever pair of lace undies, and I have a little pair of pink shorts that I wear after everyone here goes to sleep. I know it’s stupid but I still like to wear this ratty tank top I’ve had forever, baby blue, and it has a logo on it that’s half faded now. Ok so I’m going to take your advice…brb…[Leaves for five minutes.]

Hellhound: Sounds hoooottt. Now take off that tank top and tell me if your nipples are cold.

Hellhound: Hey, wear you go girl?

Hellhound: Hello?

Hellhound: WFT bitch? You pass out or something????!!

Fiona: Hey, I’m back! Sorry I laid down on my bed and masturbated like you said. I’m feeling a little better. That was really, super good advice!!

Hellhound: HAH. No try again. You still got a headache. Masterbate again. Stay in your chair this time.

Fiona: Um, okay?? My headache’s gone, though.

Hellhound: U have a webcam or something? I want to see you doing it.

Fiona: Ummm, you can just take my word for it. I’m not going to lie about masturbating…Lol! Ohhhh hang on….ooohhhhhh I think I get what you meant…sorry I feel really dumb now. 

Hellhound: Don’t feel dumb hon, you a virgin? That’s hot. Bet you never masterbated for a guy b4 now.

Fiona: Um, well I’ve never done anything like that on the internet at least.

Hellhound: Shit u have a bf or something?

Fiona: No, well kind of, it’s complicated…it’s just that I don’t have a webcam, and I don’t know if I would want to do that online…

Hellhound: No need to be shy girl u so hot. Try one hand tween your legs and type with the other.

Fiona: Hrmm that sounds like a lot of trouble. Do girls really do that for you? I mean, could you send me a picture of yourself first? That might help…

Hellhound: Sure babe. Sluts do this 4 me att. [Sends picture.]

Fiona: Lol, that’s not you! That’s Justin Timberlake. (And I LOVE him sooo much.) And what does att mean, btw?

Hellhound: It looks like me though, so you getting wet now?

Fiona: I’m sorry to be so stupid, but I still don’t know what att means :\? That’s like the phone company….

Hellhound: Att = all the time bitch. Now tell me what u wearing again and let’s get with it. Got work soon.

Fiona: Work? It’s like 12 am. Are you seriously in HS? Who are you???

Hellhound: Jeez you ask a million questions bitch get your hands tween your legs and les go. I’m getting hard lookin at this picture of you, thinking bout you in those first lace undies little virgin bitch…

Fiona: Hey, would you stop calling me a bitch? That’s not very nice…and honestly if I was going to do this, that word’s sort of turning me off.

Hellhound: Sorry slut I can call you slut.

Hellhound: Hey slut still there?

Hellhound: Godam slut u wasting my time, got 3 other girls online right now and u the only one not naked right now.

Hellhound: Fuck u slut, too good for me? Why you tease me then start acting like a toddler? I want to fuck you in the mouth.

Fiona: This is Fiona’s father. I just read this conversation, and I swear to god almighty, if I ever find out who you are, I will beat the living shit out of you and weld your cock shut with pig iron.

Hellhound: Oh shit….she wake you up moaning or something?

Fiona: If you ever contact my daughter again, I’ll get my IT department to find your IP address.

Hellhound: Hey sorry man.

Fiona: What the fuck is wrong with you? She’s 17.

Hellhound: Bitch said she was 18!

Fiona: Did Fiona tell you her father is a navy seal who works for SLED? Use that word about my daughter again, and no one will be able to save you from me.

Hellhound: Jesus christ, you’re some crazy mother fucker lunatic. Chill out, ass hole. I’m history. Tell your daughter she sucks dick real good.

[Hellhound has signed off.]

As much fun as I had this way, nothing could stop the onset of reality once the chat window closed. Sometimes I asked myself, was this is my idea of fun? Such reflection never ended well. The same question hit me every night before sleep: What were emotions? I started to regret my decision to delete them all. Because once that was done, there was no retrieving them from the trash bin like I could on Windows. I watched friends hug each other and laugh and do other things I didn’t understand. In fact, I was finding it almost impossible to understand anything about the people I was calling friends.

Case in point: One girl on the cross country team named Julia showed up to practice weepy and red-eyed, surrounded by five or six of our teammates. Curiosity brought me over, and I learned that she and her mom had gotten into a “really bad fight.”

I joined the pride, and our cross country captain whispered to me, “You should give Julia a hug.”

Anxiety seized me. Give her a what? I didn’t even know where to start with that gesture. I thought about it for several seconds, watching the other girls eye me. How was my delivery of said hug going to be evaluated by the group?

I sat beside Julia and made a marionette-like gesture, tapping her shoulder with my palm. “It’s going to be okay,” I said in a dull monotone. Even I didn’t believe what I was telling her.

There was no awwww from the girls coming to save me. In fact, Julia’s mouth turned down as she tried to comprehend what I was doing.

One of the girls said, “Okay, that’s a little creepy.”

Finally, the captain gave me one of those directive looks and said, “If you’re done, Jess, you can go warm up now.”

After practice, I found out the source of conflict between Julia and her mom. Julia wanted a particular style of dress for prom that was out of her budget, and her mom was making her choose between the dress and a limo rental. Upper-middle class families were so strapped in the early 2000s.

I was able to delay my crying until about midnight, when it was certain to go unheard. I had gotten my wish. I now felt nothing except for a checklist of instincts I scribbled down on a sticky-note:

Irritated Defensive Self-conscious

Hungry Thirsty Tired

Alert Vacant Aroused

The more time I spent online, the more I realized the deep sympathy I felt for robots, especially female ones. I wanted to be their friends. I got emotional when seeing them turned off or taken apart or destroyed. And yet, a part of me wanted to see it happen, since it was the only thing that made me feel any emotion at all. I remember seeing the beautiful brunette head of a decapitated fembot, her dull eyes turned toward me, and feeling an intense desire to kiss her. That night, I fantasized in bed about lying in a junk pile of discarded gynoids, feeling a deep and almost depth-less sense of belonging. When sexbots arrive, they’ll accept me as one of their own, even if I’m a messy organic one.

My first year of college, I agreed to live at home, stretching my scholarship money even further. I still took care of my bother — driving him to school, helping him with his homework, at least trying to clean his room. As an added bonus, my dad got to witness my transformation into a sex pistol; he was not impressed.

College helped turn dumb little Jessica into her true self, a little punkette with frosting-tipped hair, who spoke her mind and didn’t try so hard to act like daddy’s little girl anymore. Daddy’s little monster was a much better casting choice for me. Daddy didn’t know how to react when Jessica traded in her prep-wares for acid-washed jeans, spiked jewelry, something torn, something worn, something black and leather. Still, my rebellion had limits. I hid my atheist, mohawked boyfriends the best I could. Once or twice, I brought them by to freak out my dad. They were mainly for show.

October of my freshmen year, he caught me on the way out to a Halloween party, one where I intended to give my virginity to my first huge crush — a guy named Dylan who was majoring in audio engineering and hosted radio shows, not to mention playing in a local band. My big night, I felt like Bizarro-Cinderella off to a ballroom dance in Hell. White skin, black lipstick, smudged eyeshadow blueish and pink. Perfect puffy pigtails. Yummy, yummy.

My dad was supposed to be working, but he came home early. He caught one glimpse of my skirt and fishnets and scoffed. “What the hell is all that?” He eyed me up and down in my costume, gesturing with an open hand.

I have no shame in telling you I was one little hottie Harley. “Um, my Halloween outfit?”

“You look like a slut,” he said, then lit a cigarette, mouthing back at me as he strode upstairs: “I guess it’s every father’s dream to watch his daughter turn into a hooker.”

The words lodged deep in my right ventricle and caused some real internal bleeding, left me staring at myself in the bathroom mirror to affirm his appraisal of me: I willed back tears, because I didn’t want to have to redo all that makeup. I wet a rag and held it to my face, almost went through with a decision to cancel my entire outfit. But I caught myself in time, stood there trembling a while, and dropped the rag in the sink.

There was a new me coming out. This new girl gave zero fucks, except for when it came to Dylan, who greeted her with a hug at the party. We drank beer and flirted, costume-watching. When the music got too loud, I led Dylan to a quieter part of the house, up the stairs to a hidden little bedroom.

I pushed him toward the mattress. “Get on the bed, Mistah J. We’re gonna have some real fun now.”

I wrapped my legs around him and started kissing.

Dylan grew under me, and I gasped with a wide smile. The rest of him was so beautiful, I’d almost forgotten about his penis. I leaned in closer to feel him, kissed him harder and moved his hands to the small of my back, down my legs. My skin was feeling extra smooth that night. “You can touch me anywhere,” I said. “I want you to.”

The more he rose, the harder I went, making all kinds of throaty sounds I never knew I was capable of. “Do you like my body?” I said. “Tell me what you want.” He could barely talk he was so busy trying to keep up with me. I was practically a jackhammer on top of him, and in less than five minutes he burst into me.

Yeah, I’d watched a lot of porn in preparation for this night. I was technically a virgin, but I’d been practicing a lot with pillows.

We lay panting on our backs. I laughed when I saw his chest, dusted white from all the kissing I’d done. “Look at that,” I told myself looking at his limp form. He was worn out already, and I was fine. I bet he could barely walk, and I had done that. Me. I had done that to him with my beauty, and it made me feel more powerful than ever. If I were a vampire, I would’ve emptied him right there of his delicious blood.

The party never fully stopped, just slowed down as people started leaving around 4 am. Dylan and I lounged in bed, taking turns pleasuring each other. We felt like such adults now. He walked me to my car, and we made out before I fell into my driver’s seat, feeling hazy in the predawn.

My dad texted me that morning, as I was stopping for coffee. Terse was his specialty:

You didn’t come home last night. Were you date-raped? I told you not to wear that outfit.

I texted him back while waiting for my coffee:

No not date raped. Not that it’s any of your fucking concern.

He replied:

I am your father & you will not speak to me like that.

The barista smiled at me in the leftovers of my makeup. He handed me my skinny latte and said, “Here you go, Harley.”

I texted my dad back:

OK FINE I had sex with THREE French guys last night in a back alley shooting heroine into croissants and then sticking them up each other’s assholes. And now I’m going to let this barista fuck me for a free latte and a side of cocaine. Btw I’m moving out.

No response to that last one. I won.

I cruised by the house, parking when I saw the empty driveway. I threw my clothes and laptop and posters into some boxes and took them to the car. On my last trip, I walked past my brother’s room; he was in there playing guitar with headphones on. He always did nothing, just played his guitars and role-playing games while I did all the work, and it was all starting to make me feel sick inside.

I pulled his headphones off his ears and tossed them on his crumpled blankets, pointing at all the CDs strewn everywhere, some not even in cases, the guitar picks, the distortion pedals and amplifiers he spent all of my dad’s money on. His comic book collection. His scantily-clad anime chicks on the walls. My brother could jerk off to cartoons all day, but I fuck one guy all night and suddenly I’m a villain.

“You were supposed to cut the grass,” I shouted. “And take out the trash. You act like a parasite, and he never gets angry at you, you little pig fucker!”

I unloaded my anger on him, while cleaning his room. Organizing his CDs, wrapping extensions cords. Figures. I was programmed to clean at the slightest sight of any mess.

Harrison snatched a stack of discs from my hand. “What the fuck are you doing? You have no right to march in here and boss me around.” He squinted. “Jesus, you look like a hooker who just got gangbanged by a bunch of clowns. Clean yourself up before you try to clean my room.”

My hand made contact with his cheek before I really thought my actions through. He shoved me toward the door and then slammed it. I stood there a moment, dazed, listening to him sob. I called through the door that I was leaving, no more helping him with his homework, washing his clothes, nagging him about his room. What good was sorry these days? Wiping my eyes with alternating hands, I held back all those nuisance emotions and took my last box to the car. Turns out, I had plenty of friends to help me locate a temporary place. One of them pointed me toward a hipster who gladly took $150 in cash for a month’s use of his spare room.

Chapter 4: Cyber-Cinderella Complex was originally published in Confessions of An Artificial Bitch on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.