“Nngh… what… time is it?” Enna asked, her voice sounding utterly exhausted next to me.

“Morning, probably,” I answered. “Though not too late. Haven’t gotten the day’s influence to spend yet.” If I had to guess, the new influence came in at around eight in the morning or so, going by how I envisioned the sky looking at eight in the morning. Right now, it was light enough outside to light up the interior of Enna’s tent, but not late enough to give me my daily influence to spend.

I knew that the influence hadn’t came in yet because I kept on checking it out of having nothing better to be doing.

“Oh… alright,” Enna replied… before leaning up in a hurry, panicking, and rolling off from her bed in a way that resulted in her head smacking the ground first. I tried to look over the side of the bed to check on her, but I couldn’t even see her face due to her being upside down and still—well, naked. Given the size of her breasts, they sort of just… hung upside down and covered up her face.

“You alright?” I asked her.

“You—what—I—how?! What—why?!”

“You forget about last night or something?”

“Last—last night?!”

“We fucked.”

“We—we—…”

“Fucked.”

Rather than say anything else, Enna pulled the blanket off from the bed to wrap herself up like a burrito on the floor as she rolled away from the bed toward the center of her tent. It was only then that she looked at me with a bright red face and stuttered out, “I—I don’t… remember.”

“Probably due to the fact that you came so hard you passed out pretty quickly after starting.”

“No—no I—I didn’t!”

“You did.”

“Did… did I?”

“Yep.”

She retreated her head into the blanket burrito in the same way that a turtle would hide its head within its shell. “I’m never coming out of this blanket.”

“You know, you’re really adorable right now.”

“I am—am not! Do you—do you know how embarrassing it is to—to—”

“Don’t worry. I once jacked off so much that I passed out with my pants down, and my old man walked in on me and smacked me on the back of my head when he found me. Told me that no self-respecting man would ever masturbate that hard and that, if I ever did it again, he’d kick me out to the streets since that’s where beasts who give in to their carnal desires belong. If I remained a man instead of a beast, though, then I was allowed to stay.”

“He… he sounds mean.”

“To be fair, he had a point. It was ridiculous that I jacked off that much, even if the video I found was really good.”

“What… what sort of… umm… video… was it? What—what do you like so much that… no-not that it matters to me!”

“It was a video of a girl tied up by some bondage being made to cum with toys over and over again for a couple of hours. I challenged myself to cum as much as she did just to see if I could, and because I was bored. I think I knocked myself out somewhere around the twenty-fifth one, and I was already shooting blanks by that point. Meanwhile, she managed to get three times as many orgasms out during the video.”

“That… that’s a lot…”

“It wasn’t even worth it, so I don’t recommend it. To men, anyways.” I shrugged. “Would probably be fun for a woman. Anyways, the point is that I understand how embarrassing it can be for something like that to happen.”

Enna wiggled her head out from the end of the blanket burrito to look at me, only letting her eyes poke out, leaving her mouth still behind the fabric which slightly muffled her voice. “Can… can I ask you something?”

“Go for it.” I figured she was probably going to ask about how it was before she passed out.

“Can you… tell me more about your old man? You’ve brought him up a few different times, so I know he’s important to you, but I feel like you’ve never really explained anything about him. You always make him sound mean, but… at the same time, you sound like you really loved him and were thankful for him.”

Or not. “Well, I won’t deny that he was definitely pretty mean.”

Enna wiggled herself upward so that she was sitting up while in burrito mode, finally letting her mouth out from behind the blanket.

“I said before that he took me in, right? I asked.

Enna nodded.

“Well, I was just an orphan. My parents had me in the States to use me as an anchor baby. The law said no. They were supposed to leave with me, but left me behind since they had no interest in ever having an actual kid. They were just a couple of assholes who thought that having an anchor baby would be the fastest way to get to stay in America. They were wrong. So, the government raised me up and I hated every single second of it. Whenever we weren’t being neglected and left on our own to just do whatever, we were being ordered around and told to obey because we have to without any reason, and I hate following orders without good reasons behind them. If you can’t give somebody a good reason for why they should follow an order, you shouldn’t be ordering them to do it. The government disagrees with that, which should come as a surprise to nobody.”

“I… I see…”

“So when I was a teen, I got out. Ran away. I had no intention of sitting around letting them boss me around until I was old enough to kick out. Figured I would just beat them to the point and get out on my own. It sucked. It really, really sucked. Didn’t take long at all to become cold, hungry, dirty, and sick. There were some gangs in the area, so everybody I tried getting help from just assumed I was with the gangs and wouldn’t help me out. There were a few nights where I was tempted to go back and beg the government for help, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. That was when he found me.”

“Your old man?”

“Yeah. He owned his own woodworking shop that was in violation of a few hundred different building codes, but he was able to intimidate away any official who tried checking on his place. Took me in, behind the government’s back, and took care of me. He taught me all about what it means to be a man. What it means to be an American. What it means to be free. He was harsh, a huge jerk at times, and stubborn in his ways, but he was also fair, respectful, and kind. He never told me to do anything without explaining why—without telling me how it would benefit me. He always treated me with the same amount of respect that I treated him with. If I was respectful, he was respectful. The moment I acted disrespectful, he returned the exact same disrespect. And, he always gave me a chance. He took care of me and helped me get on my own two feet with every resource available to him that didn’t involve the government. He taught me the skills that every man should know, taught me manners, bought me books to educate myself with and made sure that I read them—you get the point.”

“You… taught yourself?”

“Yep. Went to a normal school until I was a teen, then taught myself everything else—well, taught myself all the academic stuff. He taught me all the real-world skills I know. Anyways, I also learned about 4X games from him. They were his favorite, so he’d let me watch him play. Then he bought another computer so that we could play against each other, but only after a hard day of work. He was probably good enough to kick anybody’s ass in the entire universe at them, and I view him as the only reason why I’m so good at them. I was a guppy thrown into a pool with a shark and forced to survive, and he never took it easy on me. I had to study and practice on my own just to even last beyond the early games against him. But, he wasn’t perfect. He had anger issues, mainly. There were a few times where he gave me a good one right in the face.”

“What do you mean… a good one?”

“A fist. A punch. He’d slug me right in the face whenever I acted up. Part of me wants to say, ‘well, I was an orphaned teen with a shitty life before him, and I struggled to respect authority, so he was probably right to punch me in the face.’ But the other part of me knows that there is never a good reason to hit somebody out of anger, especially somebody so much younger and weaker. Hurting somebody should only be done out of self-defense. He taught me that, too. Even though he was the one who would hit me, he always knew how fucked up it was and did everything he could to teach me not to become like him. It was hard to take him seriously when he kept on doing it and then apologizing and promising that he would never do it again, but… he was the only person in my life who I respected. The only person who ever made me feel loved and protected, even if it came at the cost of being punched in the face once every few months or so.”

Enna lowered the blanket enough so that I should see her shoulders as she listened to my every word. I never felt somebody listening as intently as she was to me, and she looked… sad, for me.

“I tend to try and not think about that part of him too much, because he really was incredible outside of that. Just… he had anger issues. I guess that being punched in the face wasn’t enough to override all the good he did for me and how much I enjoyed spending my time with him. I guess that’s kind of screwed up, though. Yeah, the more I talk about it, the worse it is. If somebody punched me in the face now out of anger, I would never bother with them again. If I saw anybody abuse another, especially a child, then I would do everything that I could to separate them and protect the abused. Yet here I am, trying to justify how it was alright for me to stick around with my own abuser.”

“I… don’t know what to say,” Enna said, finally breaking her silence.

“I wouldn’t, either. Even now, calling him my abuser just sounds like I’m purposely trying to be disrespectful and toss away all of the good that he did for me. I have no doubt that my life is objectively better now because of all the years I spent with him until his death, but I know I shouldn’t think so lightly of all the times he lost his temper with me. I would say that ninety percent of the time I spent with him was positive. Nine percent was negative. One percent was abusive.”

“Even if you only get punched once a year, but otherwise have a good relationship with somebody… I believe that is wrong.”

“So do I. Just, I guess it’s a lot harder to look at somebody as what they really are when you’re the one who also benefits from all of their good.”

“I knew a girl growing up who was in a situation like that.” Enna stood up and walked back over to the bed—well, more like wiggled over as she was still wrapped up like a burrito for the most part. She then sat down right next to me and leaned her head against my shoulder. “She was really wonderful, and so were her parents. But her mom was the one with a temper and would… snap, sometimes. It was really rare, but there was always at least one day every few months where she would come to school with a bruise somewhere on her face. We talked, and she admitted what was happening, but promised that her mom was great and that it only happened really rarely. She would even try to say it was her fault when it happened. Then, one day, she didn’t come to school, and never came again. Her mom killed her, her dad, and then herself. I didn’t find out until years later when I randomly remembered my friend’s name and tried to look up what happened to her.”

“I’m sorry.”

Enna shook her head. “Don’t be. Anyways, my point is that… even if it seems like it’s really rare and that the good outweighs the bad ninety-nine percent of the time, you can never trust somebody who treats you that way even one percent of the time. If somebody is willing to hurt a child or loved one out of anger, then they are willing to do worse but maybe just haven’t been pushed to that point yet.”

“I don’t know if I would apply a blanket statement like that to everybody who has ever abused, but I don’t care enough about defending abusers to take their side even a little.”

“Unless it’s your old man’s side.”

I sighed and chuckled a little. “It’s hard not to be a hypocrite sometimes.”

“Being aware of your own hypocrisy is only a good thing.” Enna placed a single kiss on my shoulder after saying that.

“I suppose so. Anyways, without him, I wouldn’t be here. I know that much. So even if the situation was kind of messed up at times, he’s dead and I’m not going to waste too much time on talking trash about men who aren’t even alive anymore. Instead, I’m going to focus on the good without covering up the bad. I’m thankful I had him in my life, and I’m thankful for everything he did for me, but he wasn’t perfect and prone to abusive anger. He was not good man, but I wouldn’t call him a bad one either. He was simply… a man. Flawed as all men are, and neither wholly good nor evil.”

“I can respect that,” Enna said. “As long as you don’t cover up what happened and acknowledge both the good and bad… I don’t think it’s wrong to still look up to the parts that were good.”

“I agree. Speaking of good,” time to change the subject, “you were great.”

Enna tilted her head and looked up at me. “What do you mean?”

“Last night.”

And just like that, her pale skin became the color of a tomato once again as she fell off the bed and rolled toward the opposite side of her tent in full protective burrito form.

“I’m going to have to work on training your confidence alongside your endurance, aren’t I?” I teased.

The response that I got back from her could best be described as muffled, panicked, embarrassed, screaming.