Gay Summer Romance
Summer Leakage
In my senior year of highschool, right towards the end, I played a visual novel called "Morenatsu". Initially, I was led to believe that the game was just smut. Eager to jack off, I installed the game and the language pack needed to play it. Little did I know that it would fuck me up emotionally for a month, and change the way I looked at romance.
Before you go and look it up, it's an old dating sim with kemono-style furries. If that ain't it, then don't bother.
The stories (from what I remember) were all very sweet and sad. I'd play the game once a year for three years. Then I swore it off because I couldn't handle the grief after it ended. I truly wished I was isekaied into that shit.
I played it at a very volatile point in my life, where I was discovering who I was sexually and emotionally. I played it not long after my first experience with another guy; a short lived fling - cuddling on a couch after getting high, having an intense moment face to face with bated breath, and cowering out of kissing.
Perfect.
I was missing the exploratory phase that I needed to go through, due to being shipped to school and back every day. No free time to socialize with other people after school. I'd have to get in my moms car as soon as I was out of school, so she could take the freeway to get me home.
I had friends, but you can only get so much out of a going to a friend's house over and over.
I wish I had talked to him again after that, but school ended soon after, and I was a coward.
Then came Morenatsu.
I felt what I needed to feel through that game. I saw the sweet and tender aspects of what a relationship should be. How beautiful and spontaneous it could be. How I felt confident with my sexuality, and not ashamed of myself; neither were the characters. (Well except for Juuichi, who deals with emotional and physical repression. But that's because he feels pressured to keep his image as tough and stoic. It isn't explicitly homosexual repression though.) Having the game end felt like I had lived a lifetime with someone I loved, and had to cut ties because I moved away.
I still look back on playing that game, and try to find those tender, vulnerable feelings again.
I've only felt the way I felt once with another person. The rest of my dates were hollow. Matched with an app and solely based off appearance. No prior friendship. No spark. Just sex, clinginess, and the cutoff.
The one time I did feel that way, I was the one who was cut off. The irony and sadness makes it a sweet memory, rather than sour. We're still friends too, so it's all good.
I realized that people don't have to be miserable in a relationship, like my parents. I saw it then as a truly special thing.