mouse papers

We corresponded on multiple platforms, exchanged countless texts… I can’t remember the exact number but in emails alone he sent me a number of letters approaching 200. It was a lot. When you interact with this many words from a person, i think you cannot help but feel an attachment. But who was i attached to? Was any part of who he showed me actually Real?

I described this to a friend, and they said, ‘Paul, have you ever been Catfished?’ And actually I will say, i think this is a valid description of the way i feel i was Used. A year ago i would have said ‘no no, i have never been Catfished.’ Now, i am not so sure.

I was very sensitive to the fact that I had had an intense emotional attachment to this person’s work when i was in my 20s, before i understood them to be an Abuser. I was clear in the 2020s that this made me vulnerable to manipulation, but I was also clear that morally, it felt like I had an obligation to defer to the Julian he said he was, before deferring to my own interpretation of him. I did not want to be Parasocial, after all, by believing i ‘knew’ Julian just through his albums and a smattering of letters from over a decade ago.

Yet the Julian he said he was (and here i am describing the question of identity largely independent of the question of abuse), was exactly in line with the Julian my Fandom said he was. He encouraged me to believe this, saying it actually felt Hurtful when he was read as something other than the character he presented onstage.

This had a profound effect on me, as someone who (then) believed uncritically in the Parasociality Paradigm, and as a fellow Autist. Often as Autists, we do struggle with Identity, and the only place some of us can be anything that feels like Ourselves, is on the stage. Yet Fandom cultural norms, along with the Parasociality Paradigm, insist that there is only one right way to relate to a creator, and this is to first *disbelieve* what they tell us of themselves through their art. If their art suggests they are gay or trans or autistic, for example, we are told we are still never to ‘speculate’ (or ‘headcanon’) on these identities. To do otherwise, we are told, is to lose touch with Reality itself—to inappropriately ‘force’ our own experiences on that person.

And yet i am all of these things, and in my heart of hearts i KNOW, viscerally, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that if i were to create art, i would *want* that speculation to take place. His words made me realize: if i were in his shoes, it would harm me terribly, and silence my Voice, if oddball Q/ND fans were too frightened to see themselves in me.

In other words, who does it benefit, when we assume someone is (for example) straight until they tell us otherwise? Who do we harm when we refuse to hear the artist’s own voice? I felt utterly humiliated—I had always been told i was ‘protecting’ creators when I refused to credit my own eyes and ears, and yet my very own heart itself knew this wasn’t so for everyone, only for those who weren’t like me—those who were Normal. And here was Julian Koster himself telling me directly: ‘i wish you had trusted your instincts—for some of us it does a greater harm when you do not.’ (Paraphrasing, but still).

I still believe in this, despite what proved to be his unutterable motivation for being perceived in line with fannish interpretations of him. I mean in retrospect of course a serial child sexual abuser wants us to see him as Harmless and Sweet-natured, since he needs that camouflage to cover for the evil he perpetrates. Yet I cannot ‘unsee’ the fact that i, too, would be hurt by others’ overcompensation for their fears of their own feelings and interpretations widely deemed ‘parasocial’—too often such a determination is made by people with zero experience of being Q/ND in this world. And so the Grief I feel—it is just so much more Personal. My perspective on Fannish standards of propriety has changed forever. It is therefore not the old philosophical viewpoint i grieve.

It is only my friend i grieve.

I still miss this person every day. He was very real to me, even if he was never real to this cruel unfeeling Julian. I do not know this horrible man who has taken his place—someone i am not even certain is autistic, who may have simply been reflecting my own characteristics or those of someone else. Someone I do not trust with children, or trust with my wife, someone who wrote words like ‘i love you’ and ‘i care’, and knew they were lies even as he wrote them. I cannot fathom such a person.

The man i knew was, apparently, not Julian Koster, not even close. For Julian Koster shows us every day he is a man without mercy, without scruples. This was not my friend. He shows us a man who enjoys power and cruelty—this too was not my friend. Julian Koster IRL is someone who cannot find it in his heart to honor even the scared little boy he himself once was. My friend, my Julian Koster, was this boy—someone who suffered at the hands of queerphobes and of bullies, who knew what it was like to be Hurt, humiliated, exposed in this way. The Julian Koster who sleeps soundly tonight, comfortable among his lackeys and handlers, content to be their little forest sprite, is not my friend. That is not my Julian.

And it’s odd, because i was prepared for my friend Julian to be a hundred horrible things. I watched him melt down and knew i could receive a fist, or worse. I was keenly aware he outmatched me, and I wished that weren’t so, but this is what we do for one another. This is how we stand strong in the face of each other’s Storms.

This even came at her approval. While Nesey wept alone inside, it was my place to stand alongside my friend who was not himself, to gently suggest he wait to drive. It was my place to be the steady Voice that his eloping gait could keep returning to. It was my place to say ‘do you know you might be in meltdown’ and to offer what was needed.

I genuinely did not care if this meant getting my teeth knocked out. I simply did not care. I know what it is to feel alone in Meltdown. I know what it is to feel Misunderstood. I know what it is to not feel like im in control of my own body. There is no Pain the Julian i knew could have rendered upon me in that moment, which could be worth abandoning a fellow autist to the night. None.

‘How can i help you feel safe,’ i said. I said it to a little boy. I don’t know who it was who answered. At his behest i put my arms around him, i took some comfort in the lock of silver at my neck: This is Julian, i told my racing heart. It is only Julian.

Like. Seeing how little self-respect he allows these pitiful little toadies of his to have, honestly that’s been a part of this that does bring a smile to me, after whatever chaos—imagining some butthurt loser’s whole process of Doing The Master’s Bidding. In all likelihood bro stayed up in front of the computer putting together a wholeass powerpoint presentation for ol’ Maxwell McFeelyhands, carefully arranging text in a set of slides so they could make sure he could keep on stroking his 8yo saws and never have to get his fragile little fee-fees hurt about it. This kind of stuff hurts at first, sure, but then when you realize they put like hours and hours of work into this, actually genuinely feeling like a badass, and the whole time they’re fantasizing about how proud of them a literal child molestor is going to be:

“And then i’ll go, ‘I made that mean girl you r***d cry for you, sir!’

And he’ll look up from his arm wrestling tapes with tears in his eyes and go, ‘oh thank you! Thank you, person i have to pretend to care about! You are so smart and so brave! What would i ever do without you?’

And then we’ll both hug and cry but in a really cishet way because my feelings about him are so normal. ‘anything for you, sir…’

‘… anything?’

‘Oh yes yes! I would follow you to the ends of the earth in your quest to find the lowest possible age of consent, sir! To Portugal! to Korea! to Japan! to… ohh, your saw is soo big…’”

Of course i am being generous here—this is the best-case scenario for why his cronies are so loyal to an unapologetic child predator. The much simpler explanation is that he offers them compensation of some sort, though what that might be we don’t know. Though it’s worth speculating; about a hundred times now others have pointed out, that these ‘flying monkeys’ may see nothing wrong here because they themselves have p***philic predilections, and being around him means they get to satisfy those desires while enjoying the protection his privilege affords him.

But I dunno Paul, his middle name is Matteo, maybe let’s stick to always being truthful, because lying is such a slippery slope. One minute you’re goofily making up a child abuser’s middle name, the next minute you could be purchasing old social media accounts and inventing entire online personalities and pretending that the abuser’s victims have harassed you! I shudder to think what might come next! What if we accidentally found ourselves telling lies that actually brought any of these people to justice? It would be terribly shameful!

This is ostensibly a follower of Anna’s. Previously they had DMed me regarding the unpleasant package we received, saying their brother was a lawyer and had informed them that services exist to send these harrassing packages in the mail, but not to worry, that the contents were likely fake and therefore not a biohazard. This was comforting, and i thought no more of it.

Later, after making a supportive comment on one of her posts, this person received a threatening DM from a burner accout showing their home address, and demanding they stop following her. They comply with this, and inform the doxxer, and the doxxer responds by making reference to this ‘lawyer brother’, in theory to give the impression they ‘know things’ about this person.

However, the follower claims that this ‘lawyer brother’ was an invention, who only existed in this DM conversation with me, so the follower at first seems to conclude our conversation must have been ‘leaked’. They tell me about this conversation, ostensibly worried that if i have trusted a friend with this message, then this friend is almost certainly in cahoots with team J. But i haven’t, so this development baffles me, i do my best to apologize and commiserate.

But it’s unsettling. For one thing, the follower’s immediate, uncritical compliance with the doxxer at Nesey’s expense tells me we’re not 100% safe with this person we might otherwise have trusted, and that leaves me a little cold. But worse, since i don’t recall having shown anyone, it suggests the upsetting possibility that team j has access to my DMs. But there is little i could do in such a case, and so i try to put it out of my mind. Perhaps this information exists elsewhere—though the doxxer having such access to this follower’s private info is unsettling enough.

And if it came from another source, why did the doxxer choose to refer to that specific piece of info that just so happened to have been shared with me in the preceding DM and not like, their mother’s maiden name or whatever? It seemed like a doxxer who has investigated someone deeply enough to know their home address would have had more general information to frighten them, and would not have needed to mine these DMs for info. So, this made it seem like the doxxer deliberately wanted it known that they had seen our DMs—but if they had such unfettered access to my DMs, why would they say so? To scare me? And why use a follower to tell me and not just harrass me themselves? No sense could be made of it.

This morning, I think we found out. This follower has made a tidy PowerPoint asserting this discrepancy can only be explained if Nesey and i are the doxxers. Of course i messaged them, and once i understood what had given them this impression, i shared my fears as well, that my DMs had been compromised. It seemed like a clarifying conversation.

Their accusatory post has still not come down, however, despite their seeming to believe me, and despite there being plenty of room for doubt—i find this strange, as their conclusion seems logical on the surface, but falls apart after any amount of scrutiny, and yet this follower claims to have been agonizing over this for some time. At the very least, this post is careless, and is certainly experienced as cruel—more stress we certainly do not need.

And, a thought keeps bothering me. At first it felt like the only possibility was that my DMs had been compromised. But the poster does not entertain the possibility that it is their DMs, despite their ostensible fear that their entire internet presence has been compromised. They took special care to tell me how careful they are with internet security—supposedly this meant the doxxer was more formidable than your average doxxer, but it also had the effect of explaining why this person was such a stranger—they had no connection to anyone else in our circle. It didn’t seem like a burner account, but it certainly was much more anonymous than our typical follower.

In other words, the simplest explanation is actually that this ‘follower’, isn’t, and that their correspondence with us has always been intended to be weaponized as soon as it could be twisted into a narrative which would appear damning. In fact we have expected punitive pushback both from my recent post regarding the double standard applied to Julian, and my vocal presence in the comments of jcm’s utterly tasteless new podcast, taking team j to task for their complicity and silence. We nearly always experience an escalation in harrassment whenever we show unwillingness to be silent about a return to the status quo.

Now that i have calmed, I can see the fingerprints of team j’s usual accusations. When the suspicious package arrived (and the damage this harrassment rightfully did to team j’s reputation), they were already floating the narrative that we were perpetrating this harassment ourselves. Fortunately the idea got very little traction, as most could see the absurdity of our sending an envelope of excrement to ourselves so we could go crying about it to the internet.

We have no need to ruin a man’s reputation who, only months ago, outed himself as a child predator. Our struggles also demonstrate that while he may ruin her life rather freely, ruining his reputation has no appreciable effect upon him and no benefit to us except escalating harrassment towards us. He has experienced no appreciable suffering or consequences from being exposed as a groomer, so it’s unlikely we would imagine people would say ‘i’m ok with the child molestation but i draw the line at poop mail.’

Further, it’s pretty obvious we don’t need to invent harrassment we are already receiving. I doubt many would believe that these accusations would produce zero harrassment toward the victim. Do these people think we’re sitting around going ‘hm we don’t get enough hate mail and threats to make a stink about, i sure wish Julian would send us an envelope full of shit for xmas so we had anything to show to the internet. Oh wait let’s do it ourselves for the fun of it. Not only will this be worth the resources we don’t have, but it will also be worth the liability it would pose of ruining our reputation if it were discovered we were lying.’

Perhaps most tellingly, this follower’s less-than-subtle push at what they call ‘exposing their lies’ reads like team j to a tee; this post is meant to indirectly call the CSA accusations themselves into question, not to ‘warn others’ away from me, as it claims—if their goal were to protect other fans i would imagine they would be more responsible about investigating the truth of their claims, yet they seem not to have considered even the reality that we have no motivation for such behavior, no capacity for it, and no history of anything like this. This is not the behavior of someone concerned for others, and this poster has demonstrated nothing but an unwillingness to stand up to power and coercion. In other words, they wouldn’t stand up for us when team j harrassed them, but are perfectly willing to make a big stink from a handful of inconclusive DMs in our case.

Then there is the follower’s attempts at making me suspect others—‘oh this sensitive information leaked, maybe it was a friend of yours’—several times they suggested Nesey herself as the culprit. When I wouldn’t bite, they resorted to this. This stunt is to sow division. Team j understands that the community is the only support we have, and they have in fact already tried this ‘how do you do fellow kids’ tack on tumblr not that long ago, claiming to be someone who was supposedly a supporter of our family previously—it had an ‘uncanny valley’ effect to Actual Fans, though, and was generally laughed off. The focus on me also smells of team j, who have inexplicably focused on discrediting and humiliating me in particular, despite this being not just morally vile but wildly unpopular in winning him sympathy.

There is the equally unsettling possibility that this person is legitimate, in the sense that this account does belong to someone who is or was an actual member of the fanbase, but who is (consciously or unconsciously) being manipulated by team j. Honestly, I might have been more sensitive to this possibility a few months ago, but we’re past that point, and im too tired to play games. If they are legit then i think we can agree this is a pretty big response to something pretty inconclusive—and that it’s convenient that this set of DMs would have happened exactly this way, with the ‘planted’ false info just so happening to be what the ‘doxxer’ chooses to mention.

And, as I think on it, i can’t help but reflect, that this is someone who complied with Team Pedophile Apologist without hesitation, and seems to see nothing wrong with that—when Nesey calls out this behavior this follower offers no self-reflection or apology but instead immediately construes themselves as the victim—another hallmark of team j. In light of team j’s track record of every single accusation, every time, being a confession—here they accuse us of self-victimization because, as usual, they themselves engage in it. There is no reason to imagine this is not what’s happening here.

Note the repetitious claims of how scared and fragile they ostensibly are, and how little there really is to be frightened of here. I don’t mean to be invalidating but admittedly it feels a little cloying; in my opinion there is a reason for this—likely it reflects team j’s mental perception of Music Tapes Autists as a bunch of sniveling, self-pitying, ‘professional victims’. They cannot tell the difference between a real victim and someone like Julian, and they assume we won’t be able to either. So when they pretend to speak as one of us, it comes out as a sort of histrionic caricature.

Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not asking what his motive was, I’m asking why so few people think to challenge his motivations like they challenge the victim’s. If she should have to justify her motivations as the corroborated child victim, then I’m curious to hear what it is about Julian that makes yall think he, as her admitted groomer, should not have to justify his? We’re just supposed to believe, despite his crimes against her, his history of cruelly manipulating her, that he reconnected out of the goodness of his heart? And then we’re supposed to doubt her because, what, she shows predictable signs of the trauma we know he inflicted upon her?

Photos of Julian Koster, Ian Ludders and Ryan Donegan from the Music Tapes’ Caroling Tour 2009. New York, 18th December 2009.

this ohc archive page sure has been posting a lot of content for some reason, often content that is only liked by the same person with an account that seems to just kinda reblog stuff and has basically no original content of its own. An account that also seems to like anything Crug or co post. Nothing suspicious at all about any of that, I’m sure. But it kinda looks like the archive is run by the only person that likes it and the person that likes it is just a front for a spy from team j, but who knows. I’m tired and sick of the overwhelming lack of transparency from a bunch of people who are literally working to defend against and cover up a confessed child groomer. How much money is he worth to you? No one who sincerely wishes to help him would be taking this course when only accountability will save his soul now.

any way, this video caught my eye because in early summer 2008 when we were packing up the house to go to Athens and get a new music tapes band together to play popfest and prepare for the first holiday surprise tour, AND simultaneously trying to record the singing saw at Christmastime album (i know, Christmas in May/June) we messed around with the wire recorder one day and recorded a fragment of Octopus’ Garden. I played banjo and we both sang, recorded to wire. The playback sounded AMAZING, and I’ve long been really sad it was never transferred and either got recorded over later or is just lost and forgotten on some little reel of magnetic wire in his storage somewhere. Our voices sounded really lovely together. We were also working on song for the planet Pluto around this time and he’d asked me to sing it with him, i kept trying to record my part but giving up because something about it was really overwhelming. Singing together was a really big deal to me, a kind of intimacy, which could be emotionally difficult for me. I think it was possible to sing Octopus Garden because it’s just kindof a silly song and I could do it with a somewhat silly voice. Of course it’s secretly a very sad heavy song about Ringo wishing things felt more like they did back in the joyful Beatle days of yellow submarine, but 🤷‍♀️

I have had NO contact with either of them in YEARS.

I have done NOTHING to "terrorize" ANYONE, in any way. No one has.

I'm not a cog in the alleged All-Seeing Eye presiding over J's life. I'm not going to bother try to debunk it either. If this secret council does exist, at least they know I have no relation to them.

This is meant for those shunned by their "friends" because they could not be molded into yes-men who enable toxic behavior.

P.S. a friend made this to cheer me up. I thought it might be relevant today.