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“Anomalous?”

“Secret! People don’t know who you are! So you can pick on people and then pretend it wasn’t you!”

“Ah, anonymous. Though your description of ‘fan-fic’ sounds anomalous as well.”

“Oh, it totally is! You could even write some if you want.”

I immediately began thinking of a story where Wolverine massacres an entire school of snobs in one afternoon, then urinates on the bodies and sets them on fire. A morality tale. Very uplifting. With laser-like clarity, I finally understood the real value of the Internet.

“Are you a student here?” I asked.

“No.”

“That’s good.”

Morgan, and I continued talking as we walked out of the building and into a lasting friendship. Not exactly the first meeting of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, but our epic tale nonetheless. And at least neither of us had been decreed by the gods to die. At least up till now.

Morgan and I bonded quickly, and we considered, for a time, becoming professional thieves. For my part, I would point Morgan in the direction of truly valuable items as opposed to the things he assumed were valuable because they were ‘gold-colored’ and ‘shiny’, and he would devise clever ways of removing them from their proper owners, usually by dangling from high ceilings like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. But since I was already fiendishly wealthy, and girls weren’t realistically interested in joining us, Bonnie and Clydelike in our never-ending run from the law, we decided to collect comics and write fan-fic instead. Which still makes you a social outcast, but at least you get to eat at home.

I became quite good at online storytelling, and even developed a following of sorts, which was anomalous in, and of itself. My fake screen-name of ‘Fool-Killer’ grew in popularity and notoriety among other fake screen-names, and given that I generally wrote to please Morgan, that meant lots of outrageous violence, nudity and sex among the heroes. Had I been a bit more astute, I might have worried about the people I was appealing to, but when you’re essentially a nonentity in the real world, you take your adoration and acceptance where you can get it—whatever the source.

Brainstorming exciting scenarios and lurid episodes for our online audience while bonding through comics collecting made for a fast and lasting relationship through our early teenage years. But eventually I grew out of all that owing to the fact that I had traveled to England, seen some of the world, debatably matured, and most comics were really terrible. My stories became more complex and sexually frustrated, like me I suppose, and the life lessons to be learned from mainstream superhero comics never really seemed to apply in the real world (as opposed to the ‘Real World,’ where the life lessons of comics gave Judd Winick lasting employment).

No woman was ever likely to discover that I was secretly cool and heroic; spandex only looked good on people who worked out constantly, and very few people felt comfortable around those who wore it anyway; when anyone was bitten by any member of the arachnid family, fever, swelling, and bed rest were not followed by the ability to climb walls, leap tall buildings, and trap thieves in webs just like flies. It was more likely followed by vomiting.

Morgan, however, as recently as last week, still secretly hoped that his mother would one day sit him down and tell him how she had, years ago, discovered his infant body in a crashed rocket ship, that he was really born on the planet Kryp-Lor (his own, made-up world of superheroes that had nothing whatsoever to do with Superman’s home planet of Krypton), and that by eating unusual combinations of spinach, B-vitamins, and Ginko Biloba, he would soon be able to knock over buildings with bad people in them. Like the White House.

When his mother did eventually sit him down one day for an important talk, he was horrified when she started discussing penises, vaginas, and ‘when a man truly loves a woman’. Parents take note: These things are better left learned in the street. Hearing