Great story. You are obviously not afraid of vulnerability. I admire that.

I get it when it comes to the problem of squaring the person you thought you knew with who they are based on the things they have actually done. My brother is a level 1 sex offender in Florida now on probation and looking at a long time on the registry of whatever state he goes to after probation. His offenses were limited to downloading kiddie porn, but still I spent a long time getting up each morning, looking in the mirror, and saying, "My brother is into kiddie porn."

As a condition of probation he is forbidden to use the internet. Of course he had no internet access in prison either. I edited and published his prison memoirs here on Medium under the name Atwo Zee. Writing helped keep his mind occupied while he was in prison. It was a lot of work though because he had to send it to me handwritten then I transcribed it in order to put it on Medium. It was interesting to see what kind of attention it got and who started following him.

He has trouble understanding why people do not want him around their children. He insists that he is not a danger to them. This may be true but still just the notion that he is probably having lustful thoughts about their children is enough to creep out most people. I’ve spent a lot of time explaining this. I still don’t know if he gets it. He insists that his feelings in this regard are a mental defect and incurable. He wants people to see him as complicated while at the same time seeing “normal people” as one dimensional. The problem for me anyway is that he’s still creepy, but he’s also my brother. It’s unresolveable.

Our culture shamelessly sexualizes children, then severely punishes people who fall into that meme to the extent that they, say, download sexually suggestive content involving children. Of course he guilty and knew that what he was doing was illegal but did it anyway. The way he got caught was so stupid that I can’t bear to recount it.