And I thought I had trouble with women

Nothing is more reassuring to someone who was painfully shy and awkward around women for much of his life than hearing about a group of people who are even more painfully shy and awkward around women. Like, for example, people who have relationships with body pillows covered with eroticized anime images of little girls:

Nemutan doesn’t really have a leg. She’s a stuffed pillowcase — a 2-D depiction of a character, Nemu, from an X-rated version of a PC video game called Da Capo, printed on synthetic fabric. In the game, which is less a game than an interactive visual novel about a schoolyard romance, Nemu is the loudmouthed little sister of the main character, whom she calls nisan, or “big brother,” a nickname Nisan adopted as his own when he met Nemu. When I joined the couple for lunch at their favorite all-you-can-eat salad bar in the Tokyo suburb of Hachioji, he insisted on being called only by this new nickname, addressing his body-pillow girlfriend using the suffix “tan” to show how much he adored her. Nemutan is 10, maybe 12 years old and wears a little blue bikini and gold ribbons in her hair. Nisan knows she’s not real, but that hasn’t stopped him from loving her just the same. “Of course she’s my girlfriend,” he said, widening his eyes as if shocked by the question. “I have real feelings for her.”

How could I not blog about this? It makes me seem so normal! Isaac Asimov wrote novels in which robots became so "humaniform" that someone could fall in love with it. I guess what he didn't realize is that with imagination, one doesn't need to go nearly so high tech. Read the whole New York Times Magazine article before it disappears behind a subscription wall or something.

This reminds me of the whole "Real Dolls" [NOT SAFE FOR WORK] thing I blogged about a while back.