This is story, and while it is short, it holds a lot of truth.

It is the origin of the Ice Cream Harem.

Long ago, when I had more hair, I ran anime conventions. It was my entire life. There was no such thing as a 40 hour week, or an 8 hour shift. It was a job that required every waking moment, and it drove me mad. It wasn’t the stress, or the work, but the sense that there was no escape. No refuge. No quarter.

Late one night, when the world came closing in, I did what any queer kid would; when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. So off I went with my band of miscreant housemates to the only pace open at 3:30 in the morning. My ass flailed and twirled through the grocery store aisles, frolicking the produce section and slinging insults at the meat cases.

It was somewhere between the lonely frozen dinners and the dairy penal colony that an idea formed. A single thought, glorious in its prospect, came into my mind. I screamed at the large man with a beard who lived in my attic to get me a cart. Wrapping my arms around one of my best friends, I whispered, "do you see it? Do you see what I see?"

"Yea," she said, shuffling her feet from the obvious nature of her lie.

When the cart returned, I piled it in. 25 pints of ice cream were liberated from the store that night. 25 pints of ice cream survived the 7 minute car ride home. Popping their tops, I lined them on the counter, 5 x 5, and pulled out a specific spoon. A special spoon born of one purpose. A spoon made to murder ice cream.

 

Well, I told you my hair was longer. That was the night the Ice Cream Harem was born, and I learned I could fit 25 pints of it in my freezer. It wouldn’t be for a few more years until I understood its power, or how important it was to my well being. This is just an origin story. One that has been waiting to be told.

And I so murdered all that ice cream. It was worth it.