Title Card

For someone so academically achieved, I am a fucking idiot. The more money I get from extorting men through this erotic blog shit, the worse everything gets. My new roommate bought a soft, upholstered pink bed frame. Because money makes you stupid, I erroneously had offered to build it last night. We’d been chatting on the floor in the hallway while waiting for a locksmith I’d called, since she had locked herself out of her bedroom.

Considering my historic punctuality, my timing is otherwise awful. Obviously, I’m not sobbing in this chick’s room because I’ve got to assemble a simple bed frame- another thing I historically know how to do is screw. Instead, I’m crying because I’ve finally succumbed to texting the Crossdresser, and admitting that “My life took a pause in February.” He’d have no way of assuming what I actually mean.

It’s fast and loose to word it so frankly, particularly given his tendency to harbor guilt, but I don’t mean to imply it was his fault. Only partially. What had rattled me harder was the waning euphoria of finally escaping my public trial. As the champagne hue of exoneration faded, I was left with nothing, aside from a commemorative ounce of pride. Nothing really happens anymore. Nobody gets mad at me, unless they’re really confused. I don’t ever go on second dates, and sex is restricted. It happens during the blackouts.

Not pharmaceutical in nature, the blackouts occur when I nearly realize how empty I am rapidly becoming. Sometimes they result in brief romances, which are always tragic, the result of my Blanche DuBois instincts. Forgetting so often makes it hard to blog; all I can produce are vignettes.

Moving Uptown (Finding a New Liquor Store)

In the viscous summer heat, I am trudging uphill. Sweat collects across my powdery white forehead, tinged red from the beating sun. I never peel- I don’t spend long enough outside for that, only long enough for the cancerous rays to spur genetic mutations in my skin cells. Rosy cheeked, I am damp and carry a flush of embarrassment, looking mortified and perhaps as if I’d just been struck open-fisted for speaking out of turn. My noxious sweat clings to my hair, tangling the overgrown locks into matted knots. Rode hard and put up wet, I feel like a camel in the Bible. Whipped and weary, I am forging towards Bethlehem in order to deliver gold, frankincense, and myrrh to baby Jesus.

Scarlet goo rushes through the sore, burst blisters oozing blood and indiscernible clear body-fluids into the gauze pads shoved down my stockings. The pain, after some time, becomes manageable, before I begin to forget the pain at all. I don’t mind, since today, I’ve stuffed enough gauze behind my ankle to prevent any blood from staining my cheap stockings, or worse, pooling into my pleather, six-inch Demonia doll shoes. It is noble, I decide, to suffer such martyrdom in exchange for beauty.

Since early spring, I had given up on beauty. I needn’t anticipate any surprise pick-me-up visits from the Crossdresser, who’d for the first time ever, actually maintained a sturdy boundary. This was made all the more apparent by his husband, the Sommelier’s, decision to publicly announce the pair’s holy-ish matrimony on social media. At least I can build a more accurate mental timeline, I reassured myself, avoiding sarcasm while continuing to tread north.

The next day, I return to work, and begin to notice that my physical indifference is not solely triggered by overbearing warmth. When I leave in the early afternoon, I intentionally forget my umbrella, and allow dirty rainwater to warp the edges of my pizza box, its sides falling flaccid as it begins to emit the bile-like odor of wet cardboard. The cool sensation of downpour pelts me inevitably, and I surrender. I am baptized once more on West Twenty-Eighth Street, expunging my sins in real time as water squelches out under each stomp of my black, ribbon-clad flats.

96th Street

Just a quarter past ten, I receive a rare, nonchalant inquiry from the Crossdresser as to my whereabouts. His message reaches me kneeling behind the hostess stand at work. Gulping water, I am losing a futile battle as I sweat through my Victorian lace bed jacket and slimming green polyester flares. I’ll be finished for the evening soon enough, I tell him. He proposes a midnight rendezvous at the 96th Street station. This evening he’d been uptown, likely being subjected to the ill influence of his debauched, transgender friends.

96th Street bears a stale air of familiarity. The last time I’d trotted out of this station, the Crossdresser and I were high on acid, fleeing south for no discernible reason after we’d once again broken up mid-copulation. I pull at the pink, powdery ribbon securing my bed jacket, releasing the thin garment so as to let my damp underarms breathe in the humidity of the evening. The Crossdresser lingers outside of the station, just across from a homeless woman shooting up in her ankle. “This bag is insanely heavy,” he begins, “I had to bring my mahjong set to Ennui’s.” “Very opium den,” I smile, and he returns the gesture.

Along with the mahjong set, the Crossdresser has a bag full of tulle robes, all with flowing trains. There’s a rabbit fur cuff, too, and some feather boas. “Ennui had some things I thought you’d like,” he explains. I’m unsure how to acknowledge this. Clearly, Ennui was unaware that his precious négligés were now mine- he would never have allowed it. A majority of my spats with the Crossdresser were a result of my hiddenness. I can’t say this either, but the secrecy regarding our relationship, and the lengths he took to conceal my existence, were uncomfortably close to the tactics of a child groomer. I shake this thought, and play a safer card. “I know Ennui hates me, but I got this top from his store,” I declare, pulling the bed jacket back over my shoulders. “It was sort of delicious to go there and spend so much money, even though he’d have no idea,” I smirk, and the Crossdresser supplies a wry chuckle. “God, that place is so overpriced,” the Crossdresser replies, skimming past my residual bitterness towards Ennui.

The Crossdresser leads me away from the station towards a bench along the waterway. Cars speed by on the freeway, and the concrete road provides a harsh, unnatural barrier between the grassy park and open waters. After a brief silence, punctuated by the whooshes of the freeway, the Crossdresser speaks. “So, what did you want to talk about?” the Crossdresser asks. I writhe and stutter, suddenly illiterate. As I calm myself, I respond, “I didn’t really plan for that.” It’s true, partly because I hadn’t believed he’d actually meet with me again, and partly because thinking about speaking to the Crossdresser is too laborious. I will never approach any of the topics I’d like to. I cannot directly mention that I still resent Ennui. I absolutely cannot mention that every man I’ve lusted for since the Crossdresser left me looked exactly like his husband. The Crossdresser is too sweet outside of sex, so it would be cruel on my part to shame him for the way he’d fuck me, with his wedding ring in my mouth, moaning that I’d never be loved like this again. It is my fault for ever consenting.

“Are you sure you don’t have anything to say? The way you write about me sounds angry,” the Crossdresser states, without implying hurt. “It isn’t angry,” I retort with haste, “I wish people would stop saying that. I’m hurt and upset, but I don’t want to inflict hurt. I would if I was angry. All I want is not to be left, and that option isn’t particularly on the table.” The Crossdresser extends his arm around my shoulders, and my body wants to reject it, but I force the bile down and stay as still as possible between anxious twitches. “I’ll always be here to talk to you, and I support everything you do. It isn’t healthy for you to hang out with me though, not at this point in your life,” the Crossdresser remarks, his fingers strumming my shoulder as his grasp lingers. “I don’t disagree. Every time we see each other, we just fuck or break up,” I attempt a crooked smile, continuing, “but I guess at least it’s nice that we didn’t do that today.” The Crossdresser laughs, and mutters, “there’s still time,” before immediately dropping his grin. “Sorry,” he says flatly. He tells me that it might be best if I wrote about him less, but I know I won’t do that. I am not a poet, but I have an obsession.

We rise, making a slow return to 96th Street. I drag my feet, taking sharp breaths through my nostrils as the Crossdresser attempts to inoffensively fill me in on the last months. Every time he says his husband’s name, I shudder. As we encroach upon the station, the Crossdresser tells me, “I hope you know I’ll see you again.” The churning in my intestines begs me to scream and ask how he could know that, but instead, I only nod. His train pulls away, and I begin to realize that I’ve never seen his face disappear without hearing, “I love you.” I board the uptown 1 train, and there is an unidentifiable ache in my loins.

I arrive home at 1am, and immediately strip nude. Splayed across my bedsheets, I am starving, but I’m too lazy to cook. I’m also too cloudy to choose a restaurant to order from, so instead I lay. I do not think of the Crossdresser, or of much at all. Attempting to numb myself, I stare into my iPhone, but there is nobody I’d like to call anymore. By the time my hunger grows unbearable, I scavenge the kitchen for the melted sorbet I’d refrozen, and a stale box of cereal. According to the microwave, it is somehow already 3am. In my bedroom, I sit on my cowhide rug, pouring the rest of my vodka into a mug, and topping it off with two shots of water. The sorbet is foul, but I still attempt to chase it with the vodka-water. There has never been a more putrid flavor in my mouth. The liquid ejects from my mouth, almost involuntarily, and I begin to spit it all over my hardwood floor. Still too fatigued to do much of anything, I simply remove my sock and use it to mop the spillage. My bare foot kicks the mug away as I curl on the floor, slowly falling out of consciousness, whispering prayers to my taxidermy rugs. The next morning, I will rise, carrying my sore body to the shower, and then down to the train for work. As the train screeches to a halt for a brief moment at 96th Street, I have an urge to vomit. Something in my stomach is telling me to shove my hands down my throat and bat at my uvula until I puke up whatever sickness is left in me. I am not convinced that it can get any worse than this.

Summer Numb

What is there to write about a death which I am not allowed to mourn? This is the last thing on my mind when Matt calls me with the news. With the now year-long concubine affair finally resolved, I thought I could breathe normally. I would like very much to leave my house without sweating through my clothes, and running home in sheer embarrassment. Instead, I am catapulted into the second death of my young adult life. The more geriatric of my coterie used to joke that to mature is to watch your friends marry and die, but I thought that would take at least another decade. I have always moved too fast.

For the first week, like always, everybody treats me with grace and dignity. At work, I am sensitive and sweet, so my employers never fail to accommodate my periods of grief. I am given the week off, and I spend it on the first bender I’ve had all year. At the memorial, I drink from my US flag patterned flask and beg officers in Seward Park to arrest me. They refuse, as hard as I beg, to check my bag. Usually, I don’t carry an ID so that my body is harder to identify. Today, no holds are barred.

I do not want to talk very much about death, and so I will not. It gets me in too much trouble, anyway. For a week, I remain drunken and dormant, and then I return to work. My psychiatrist stopped picking up the phone long ago, but luckily, I also stopped taking my meds. My shaking hands break the seal on a bottle of beta blockers, and I am careful to inspect the little blue tablets, ensuring they’re not the sedative antidepressants that I mix with vodka to fall asleep.

Though I’ve been slacking, I finally open my school inbox. I stare, dead in the face, watching mindlessly as the mandated yearly DEI instructional video plays. It finishes, I click to confirm my understanding of our extensive discrimination policies. My bleeding elbow bends, and I waive my health insurance like I do each semester. With that out of the way, my scholarships will continue to carry me through undergrad.

Assuming I’ve done enough, I click off and open photos. Recently, I’ve been working to compile a folder of every selfie I took while dating men who hit me. My body is so much more fragile when I am in love. I look thinner, less gluttonous, less entitled. If my body will not contort to the shape that I demand, I can at least outfit it well. The prospects of my pending fatherhood are ever waning, and I lose motivation to save for a child. Instead, I spend erroneously, breeding a family of trinkets which I will hoard until they suffocate me. There’s a Valentino coat on the way, a Dior perfume, and some latex trousers. I got a long scarf, and I wear it like Isadora Duncan.

P.S.

Links below to relevant multimedia:

Card Declined - Charli XCX

Bennington (2007) - John Maus

I Don’t Like Mondays - Tori Amos

Little Children by Tom Perrotta

Pretty Poison (1968)

HOMO-PESSIMISM (PROLOGUE)

The New York Times had been parading hetero-optimism, but I was more concerned with homo-pessimism. Truly, it was the best time to be straight and narrow. Urging towards modernity, the facade of sexual liberation led only to cannibalization. There was hardly any denying it anymore. On the subway, the ads no longer touted interracial gay families living in nuclear units. For the first time since Stonewall, the gays were being honest. A gay model sold out to the cybernetic capitalist regime and launched another online platform for queers to mingle. His app, however, was unique in its dissuasion from casual sex. The reception was uncanny and grotesque. “Funny for him to do now that he’s already prolapsed,” one bitter, resentful fag opined. “So, there’s no point then?”, asked another sardonically. In the comments, a choir of harpy fags all agreed that they’d be fellating each other within twenty minutes of downloading the program.

They said we were supposed to learn from the past, but we clearly hadn’t, since polyamory was still en vogue. Open marriages fatigued me, but it seemed near-impossible for a homosexual to remain chaste in the face of even the slightest temptation. The only men with inconsequential love for me were twinks who saw themselves in my writing, and falsely assumed I held some sort of knowledge. We had nothing to offer each other. Men, generally, were lazy beasts. Gays maintained an attention to aesthetic detail, which carefully hid the fact that they were ultimately still men. As much as gays had stolen from women, they never inherited the sacrifice of matriarchy, and could thus never play the role.

Sometimes, I argued that gays hadn’t even earned the right to get married at all. No marriage was all that valid in my eyes, but particularly so-called unions between homosexuals. I longed for economic dependence, and the gravity of it all. Every time I had sex, I pictured my bedmate standing across from me in a chapel, wearing a bowtie. I never could imagine what I myself was wearing- always too indecisive. That was precisely why I wanted a holy union. Sex had been enshittified and commodified, and bore no emblem of dependency or commitment. How could I allow more men to penetrate my thoughts, let alone shoot their indiscriminate seed at me like a full metal jacket?

WHAT SHALL I RENDER?

As much as I loved to sit around proselytizing, getting fucked was hardly a concern. Recently, I’d made quite a killing. My daily witchcraft rituals had taken effect, and I woke up one weekend with an innocuous boredom. I texted Geneva to hang out, and she quickly invited me to accompany her on an apartment tour some seventy blocks uptown. By the time we’d left, the pair of us each filed applications for the cheapest bedrooms, haggling the rent down twenty-five dollars below asking. The Russian realtor always put a space before using any sort of punctuation in all of his written communications.

My current home wasn’t terrible, but it was fucking gross. Thankfully, I almost always had a braver-than-I roommate to excavate the mice’s stiff corpses and flatten the guts out of our roaches. Still, the accumulating dirt was more nauseating by the day, and my revolving door of housemates never felt indebted enough to vacuum the rug or wipe the counter. They seldom pulled their tangled, soppy hairballs out when they began to clog the drains. My new apartment would be much nicer, newly renovated and all. It was high enough in Manhattan that everyone spoke Spanish, and grocery prices decreased drastically.

Career-wise, I felt invincible. Yes, I was still being contracted for loads of Charlie Kirk slopumentaries, but nobody was yelling at me anymore. Somehow, my playful effeminate disconnect finally satiated the liberals, and the conservatives always loved me in my mini-skirts. I’d booked a few readings, and early cuts of my shorts were being sent off to festivals. When Woah Vicky came to read her poetry in Chinatown, I begged the Politician to get me a press pass. He’d had a billion connections, and seemingly endless resources for supplying undergraduate incels with top-ranking staff positions. While we were dating, I could barely get the Politician to put in a good word for me when I’d apply for media jobs.

Two days before the reading, the Politician finally responded, and told me that I could receive a pass so long as I had a reputable publication behind me. Frantically, I thought of the smallest micro-publisher I knew, and messaged Ethics Magazine. The Editor responded quickly, grateful to connect, and assured me that she was also looking to secure entry. It was a perfect match. I told the Politician that I’d need a plus one for the Editor, who was keen on shooting the event. “You didn’t ask me to shoot it,” the Politician quipped. “You haven’t shot professionally in a decade, babe,” I told him, “but thank you.” I reached out again to confirm the passes, and the Politician responded on the morning of the reading. “You’re in,” he stated, “don’t be late.”

It was sweaty and dank in Chinatown while I waited in line for the reading. The Editor arrived minutes after me, appearing either Jewish or transgender or both. “I’ve been wanting to start doing event coverage,” the Editor said, semi-smiling. “Perfect,” I chirped, following her as we slunk towards the entrance. I gave my name, and then the Politician’s. We weren’t on the list. From the corner of my eye, I spotted Ryan. Formerly the president of the NYU Republicans, Ryan was one of the Politician’s lanky muses. In an act of appreciation, the Politician had landed him a role assisting Woah Vicky’s all-star gay agent, Mitchell. “I’ll take care of this,” Ryan assured me, and I absolutely believed him. Unlike the gays who controlled us, Ryan had ambition.

Returning a moment later, Ryan raised a palm in front of the Editor. “I apologize,” Ryan calmly announced, “only Chris is on the list.” I expected something to go wrong, as I was reliant on a favor from the Politician, yet I still froze and looked submissively to the Editor. “Do what you have to do, see if you can get me in,” the Editor sighed in disappointment, unenthusiastically ushering me forward. I shot her a look of pity, but my puppy-dog eyes clearly communicated that I was the victim. She lingered outside for a couple of minutes as I did my best to squeeze through the musky collection of young, wet bodies, before sending me a curt message. “Probably not publishing any coverage if I can’t shoot it,” the Editor typed, before swiftly removing me from the company’s accounts. All’s fair, I thought, and did my best to enjoy the show.

The night was aptly clunky, never occupying one corner of zeitgeist for more than a few moments, before catapulting into something completely new. Some readers were obviously performing some sort of mimetic theatre. Sotce haunted the room in a multicolored pastiche of fabrics comprising a dress, never actually taking the microphone to share prose. Caroline Calloway spent ten minutes assuring the crowd that she’d translated six Latin poems; by then, she only had time to read three and a half of them. Fitting, too, that the catty token gay man opened his reading by insulting her. Inarguably the most legitimate author on the lineup, August Lamm shared a delicious short story- somewhat of a concubine manifesto, painfully erotic. Woah Vicky, the evening’s headliner, shared a couple dozen short poems, broadly ranging in topics. Over the course of the poems, Vicky: espoused forgiveness, advocated for the disabled, lamented her father, paused to hold prayer circles, forgave her newly-sober mother, and the list continues. Sonically enthralling and abrasive, there was never a moment without laughter, choked gasps, or outbursts of excitement. “What shall I render?” Vicky repeated, growing louder and more frantic each time. The crowd echoed each escalating chant, uninhibited by their sweat-logged tank tops and peeking over each other’s heads to catch a glimpse of Vicky. The shopkeep from le PÈRE guided Annabel by hand onto the counter and I scurried up behind her, fanning myself with an empty notebook as the rapture swelled into an incidentally-antinomian trash can ending.

FIVE MILLION FUCKS TO GIVE

The next week, everything got horribly busy again. I got hired as a hostess at a restaurant, and my last training shift was slated for that afternoon, but I couldn’t resist flirting with scandal. It was a hot morning, but I was too nervous to wear my shorts to court, so I settled for a pair of Brandy Melville jeans with a long-sleeve, striped henley shirt. Nothing dressy, but respectable, and at least the garbs hid my skinned knees and elbows. I forgot to bring my pen, a Kaweco brass fountain pen that the Politician had gotten me. Whenever I’d visit his apartment, he’d send me home with a few refills of my ink cartridges. I wouldn’t need it that morning anyway- after less than half an hour, the Politician’s defense attorney would conclude her opening statements, as would the litigator of the Republican Club.

Honestly, the case itself wasn’t much of a spectacle. The Politician had served for years on the board of some Republican Club, and apparently recent shifts in leadership had raised speculation. The Politician alleged financial misconduct, particularly in relation to the Club’s annual winter gala. Despite erroneous Twitter and lolcow.farms allegations, I wasn’t there, thank God. From a distance, it appeared unsightly. At the time, I was in DC drinking in the apartment of some queer Fox News contributor. One of the Club’s photographers sent me frantic texts that the evening was disastrous, and she had fled without pay. Online, videos began to circulate of men in Nazi armbands heckling the protestors outside, much to the chagrin of the more-modest conservatives in attendance. It was shocking that condemning the event could result in a five-million-dollar punishment, but the Politician knew how to push people’s buttons.

After court, we meandered outside to take photographs with the Politician’s hotshot free speech attorney. She had interned in more continents than most would ever step foot in, and would only have been overkill if the Club weren’t stupidly over-patronized. The Politician tried to pull her into a video with him, and she recoiled. “Ask a journalist to reach out,” she stated without inflection. We got some photos of the Politician donning his campaign merch outside of the Supreme Court, and I took some videos of him providing a short, dramatic retelling of the morning. He planted a kiss on my cheek, and we headed for the train back towards his apartment.

Later, once I’d flown off to work, the Politician texted me. He wanted a quote with my thoughts on the opening statements for some right-wing outlet. I provided a sloppy draft and asked for direction, then refined it based on his notes. The next morning, the article was live. After closing the red, white, and blue pop-up ad bearing a photo of Donald Trump, I skimmed until I found my name. “‘The judge appeared visibly exhausted by the mess and the obvious revenge of the case they tried to hit Lucian with.’ Christopher Bray, a culture writer and college student who showed up to the hearing after following the case online.” I was aghast. There was more, but I could barely bother to read it, realizing that the Politician had grossly butchered my words, hallucinating new sentences. It was nice that they called me a culture writer, but I felt “following the case online” was a rather inappropriate way to frame sleeping with the defendant. Whatever. The sentiments held up, even if I didn’t find the words to be in my particular register. The Politician called me later that evening, begging me to retract my statement that the fascists had minced my prose. Radical honesty was a virtue, I told him.

Mitchell, Woah Vicky’s agent, asked me when I’d have a review of their reading published. I told him it would be a while, given the hectics. We jested about our mutual admiration for the Politician, and Mitchell teased that his greatest flaw was bringing twenty-year-olds to dinner. “I tell him this all the time,” I coyly responded. Some people never do grow up, I figured. Not even when there’s five million fucking dollars on the line.

P.S.

Links below to select relevant multimedia:

Harpies in the Forest of Suicides by Gustave Doré

“Everybody’s Talkin’” by Harry Nilsson

“Pourqoui tu me fous plus des coups ? (Radio Edit)” by An Luu

“Dirty World” by Emile Haynie

“Gallon of PCP” WKUK

“Whiskey” WKUK

Good Housekeeping

I preferred the word apartment, because my house was not a home. My expectations were erroneously high, given my particular fortune for securing a sublet. First, I’d moved across Brooklyn, fleeing a humble, seven-person artist’s commune occupying the second floor of a crumbling industrial building. Then, I’d landed in Little Haiti for a while, before swindling my way back to Manhattan. Chinatown this time, a two-bedroom unit in a massive co-op. The place cost over a million dollars, but the Landlord was constantly abroad on government business. Thus, she needed a houseboy to water the plants and withdraw cash for the maid.

Porsche, the maid, and I didn’t talk all-too-much. I knew that she had a son around my age, and sometimes her daughter would accompany her while she worked. Porsche liked my platform boots and provocative clothing. She didn’t understand why the Landlord furnished the kitchen with such expensive appliances. “Mister Chris,” Porsche once called whilst I lay in bed, “what is this?” I rose into the kitchen, where Porsche stood befuddled next to our new KitchenAid stand mixer. “Look at this,” Porsche waved me over, and showed me an Amazon listing for the mixer. Four hundred dollars, not counting all of the attachments that the Landlord had added. “She no cook,” Porsche exclaimed, “I wanted a Dyson! Ask her please, why I no get Dyson!” Porsche was correct- even when the Landlord was on domestic soil, she seldom lifted a finger in the kitchen if not to untie a box of freshly-bought pastries. She’d likely then plate them on one of her many polished silver serving platters, and perhaps add some powdered sugar as garnish to soften the edges. This way, the pastries would look homemade.

Recently, I’d been waking up every morning in Harlem. There was always less fabric on the bed when I woke up. Occasionally, this was because I had manic spurts of energy which I used to hang my few pieces of clean laundry. The rest of the time, it was because I’d sweat through even more clean sheets. Before, I could twist my skeleton around the mattress, floundering from wet spots to dry spots like a beached whale. With my laundry machine is broken, I couldn’t replace the sheets as easily. I hadn’t in weeks. It didn’t matter anymore if I were resting on a dry or wet spot- the whole thing was contaminated.

It was worse that I was waking up in my own bed, because I physically struggled to do so. My psychiatrist constantly adjusted my dosage of sedatives to counter my insomnia while avoiding night terrors, and it made me prone to collapsing. Sometimes, the pills didn’t work, and for two or three days I couldn’t sleep very well outside of hallucinatory nightmares where old friends tried to violate me. When the sedatives worked, they knocked me dead at the kitchen table, and my drowsy body succumbed without hesitation. For a few hours, I’d get my best rest, before waking up to clean whatever shit I knocked off of the table while passing out. Once that was done, I could retire shamefully to my noisome mattress to anxiously toss for a few hours more.

When I’d wake up officially, the process was much less urgent. Finally in my bed, I was at least where I was meant to be for the ritual. I’d run my thumbs under the waistband of my boyshorts, and imagined that anyone else was delicately tracing my pelvic bone. I imagined the Millennial, in all his shiny-bald, Mr. Clean glory, working those thumbs up my figure until they flirted with my nipples and my collar. He knew where I was most sensitive. The last time we saw each other, we had copulated in the most legitimate sense. The Millennial constantly made playful jests about how I’d aggrandize his sexual prowess, but our sex didn’t even count, since it wasn’t penetrative. Too many rules.

Beta Bitch

On our final encounter, I introduced the Millennial to Caveh Zahedi. (Sorry, Stefan, for having taken one out of your playbook. I hope Hell blows you a cool breeze when I write these things). After The Sheik and I, the Millennial unwound me on his sofa. He pulled off my shirt, but I was too unfocused to work at his, instead writhing my skull around, eyes-closed as my arms flew north to embrace his restraining weight above me. He lifted me by the thighs and carried me to his bedroom, removing my shorts in the process, and stood me in front of his mirror. Silently, we held this position for a moment. He stood behind me, right hand securely grasping my throat, as we admired ourselves in the mirror.

The Millennial lifted me again, this time placing me vertically across his bed. He had been out on the island, as 40-something-year-old gays always are in the summer months. Given his absence, I was particularly hungry when the Millennial mounted me, a hunger which only grew as the act intensified and I rolled atop him. We made eye contact for a moment, in between sloppy French kisses, and mutually understood. “I want you to,” I told him gently. Then, very briefly, and for the first and last time, the Millennial and I fornicated. As per usual, he didn’t speak. His breaths became labored, in tune with the motion of my body, as if I myself were pulling oxygen from the air and pumping it into his bloodstream.

After we fucked, the Millennial was back off to the island, but I had nothing to do. If I invited my friends to smoke weed or day drink in the park, they’d surely say yes, but I’d risk boring them with the same mundane ventures and complaints. Nobody cares about your boy troubles- if they did, they’d read your blog. Having recently become a famous actress, it made sense to use the time to invest in my career. Reputation already sullied, I appeared pro-bono in a political documentary that held the capacity to make things much worse. At least I had a photoshoot coming up, and if I was a very good assistant, I would be paid in a pair of red Dior pants.

One morning before the shoot, I found a strange bag of powder in my bag. Not ketamine, I realized upon inspection, since the grains were finer. Using test strips I’d gotten from a narcan vending machine in DC, I determined it wasn’t fentanyl, either. Boring, but at least I had party favors. In the grown-up world, I learnt from the Politician, drugs were the highest form of social currency. His best friend, an elder Cuban transsexual, apparently taught him this lesson when he was my age, and that’s why he kept his medicine cabinet full. It was why his parties were so popular, and why all of his friends called so often to request parcels be hand-delivered in exchange for cash. I absolutely loathed this, but I could barely morally object to participating in the sale when I’d happily get high off the supply. When I resisted, the Politician never took me seriously, dismissing me as emotional and upset about something erratic from earlier in the day. Half of the time, he might have been correct.

To be a drug mule was to be a beta bitch. When I justified it to myself, I remembered that it was worse for human trafficking victims. I was coerced at best, not forced, and I never did much to advocate for my own consent. Human trafficking victims got balloons in their stomachs that might rupture and kill them, and dealt with Border Control. All I ever had to do was write a name on an envelope, place an inconspicuous bait object inside along with the product, and walk downstairs in my boxers to hand it off to a bicycling courier. Still, I imagined that one day, the ethnic bicyclist would throw their helmet down, brandish a DEA badge, and put me in cuffs right there in the street.

Doubling Down

The shoot passed, I got my pants, and I was glad to be relinquished of the ominous white powder. The Millennial was still weekending, but we kept up over text. He was doing mushrooms and ruminating about the big things, and I was having after-hour drinks with the girls from the shoot. It sounded like he was having some pretty big revelations, which was my least favorite thing to watch someone do on psychedelics. “You are a very stimulating person and I’m happy to spend time with you,” he told me, and I might as well have ended the conversation there. I let him continue for a minute longer, and he explained that he was so very confused about what he wanted to do with his life. “I’m going to stop you there. This has been nice, so maybe I flatly believe that we need to stop talking,” I responded. He offered to talk it over in a few days over grilled cheese, because my illustrious presence would be missed, and we could still be friends. Some people never learn, and I guess the Millennial discounted my destructive ability to sleep with my friends. “To keep this pure, don’t even respond to this message. Goodbye. I love you,” I drunkenly capitulated. I looked to Adeline and shed a tear. Then, I ordered another drink. Gulping it down, I was unperturbed.

In the evening, once I’d sent Adeline home, I opened my laptop to The Cut, and re-read Natalie Beach’s hit piece for the first time in six years. At the time, I remember the onslaught against Calloway, and the countless think pieces analyzing her every movement. While I didn’t doubt that Calloway was a searing shrew, Beach chose to be a beta bitch. Nobody wants a Judas at their dinner party, but simultaneously yearn for take-downs of former mentors and muses. In response to Beach’s article, Calloway penned a graceful letter which surmised to say, ‘thank you, former friend, for telling your story. I love people telling their stories! Link in bio for my story!’

Feeling unburdened by the court of public opinion for the first time in months, I appreciated Calloway for doubling down. She continued to write her somewhat-alright books, flirted with new controversy to stay relevant, and continued to respond to criticism with un-phased pleasantries. A girl really can make a career out of getting bullied, I realized. If her career could exist purely in reaction to hatred against her, I didn’t have to worry about the fragility of my own. I was not a beta bitch, I was wearing a slim-cut suit as I marketed you my upset.

P.S.

Links below to select relevant multimedia:

“Mind Playing Tricks On Me” by Geto Boys

“Ocupa Mi Piel” by Mon Laferte

“Dumbest Girl Alive” by 100 gecs

The Sheik and I (2012) dir. Caveh Zahedi

Persona written by Aoife Josie Clements

Travesty

It was November, and Stefan was dead. He had just died. Actually, he had died a month ago, or at least I had found out the month prior. The Politician brought me back to Pittsburgh, this time for Thanksgiving. His childhood bedroom was the same, albeit it now housed giant prints of lewd young men the Politician had photographed when he was still an artist. He wasn’t an artist anymore, but I didn’t realize that then. I never considered that, years later, he’d become a real politician. A candidate, at the very least.

The morning before, we sat on his sprawling childhood mattress, which occupied a large room on the second floor. The house was cozy, a two-family build, with a half-finished in-law suite in the basement. Using the Politician’s old tools from high school, we filled empty pill capsules with ground-up psychedelic mushrooms. His mother dropped us off at the Botanical Garden, where we took the pills. It wasn’t enough for me to feel much at all, but the Politician quickly donned a wide, illustrious youthfulness in his pupils. We walked home as they wore off, and ordered delivery from an Italian spot. Along the way, he pointed to different houses. “My father used to own that one,” he’d told me, motioning toward a humble abode across the pavement. The Politician told me that after his parents’ divorce, his father would leave him alone in that house with no food. His father would leave with his girlfriends, and give the Politician a proper whooping whenever he protested. This was, in all regards, the reason for his mother’s doting nature and inability to criticize her son. How could anyone witness such abuse, and not try to give the victim, a helpless child, whatever they wanted? When she came into the basement that evening, it was that exact denial which blanketed her from confronting the fact that the Politician and I had taken handfuls of additional mushroom pills once we got back.

The next day was Thanksgiving, and I got to help with the stuffing. Thankfully, there were numerous stuffing options, since I was rather shit at it. Working alongside the Politician, his mother, and his brother, I tried to enjoy the family dynamic, but was too on-edge from the Politician’s teasing nature. When I got too stressed, I went into the bathroom and squeezed the back of my neck. Sometimes, when I felt compelled to ball my fists and slam them against my cranium, I would ask the Politician to apply similar pressure to the back of my neck. As an alcoholic, I was convinced that I carried my trauma in my spine. I hated the slender bone. I wanted to squeeze until I crushed it into powder, or for a strong man to come along and rip it right out of my back. Hopefully, he’d take a few ribs out, too. I’d always wanted a flatter chest, proportionate to my little gut.

While I was in the bathroom trying not to beat myself, my phone rang. I had new messages flooding in from an account called Travesty44. “You’re his next victim, I see,” Travesty wrote, attaching a photo of the Politician locking lips at a film premiere I’d invited him to. Seeing as it was a holiday, and the picture was admittedly quite flattering, I responded in jest. “Help me, help me!!! I’m in the dungeon,” I replied, “he’s got me and the other twinks chained to the radiator!” The interaction was enough of an oddity to reset my mood, and I ascended back into the kitchen. The Politician’s mother smiled warmly, not speaking or pausing her paranormal-investigation podcast. She had been really into that stuff, always uncovering orbs and energies, sort of like myself. I set a bowl next to her iPad, and began to mix torn-up sourdough bread with bits of apricot and pecan.

Phone-off, I enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner with their family. We spoke only of things we agreed upon, and for that which we were thankful. Travesty, however, was seemingly a bastard ingrate. While I ate, Travesty continued messaging into the wee-hours, taking intermittent pauses before continuing to harass me. It ended at some time around four in the morning, and resumed oh-so-often the next day. When he resumed the next day, he changed his account name from Travesty44 to Balloonboy400. Balloonboy was much crueler, more direct. In the Travesty messages, the anonymous, omnipresent voice spoke in a tone of concern. “You seem very kind and sweet, you don’t deserve the abuse coming your way,” one read. I didn’t entertain it, chalking it up to a nutty far-leftist with residual spite toward the Politician. People had plenty of nasty things to say about our relationship. In an article, Sam Venis called me the Politician’s handbag. My friends didn’t like how often I called, bruised and sniffling, to explain what I had done wrong this time, and why I’d set him off. My mother didn’t like that I now jumped when men walked past me, though that had started years prior. Once, we even got a Ziplock filled with dog shit in the mail. Now, Balloonboy criticized my pathetic performance as “a broken sycophant to a maniac’s whim,” and declared that “[I] deserve the pain that’s coming.” It began to hurt, just a little. “Perform for your master, please him with your genius wit,” Balloonboy continued. “Sick fuck. Enjoy being a pedophile’s prey,” he capitulated.

Petra Cortright

My hypnotherapist alleged that I seek out addicts as partners, and my friends just called them pedophiles. “Actually,” I’d jest, “my boyfriends are ephebephiles. I don’t look that young.” I started reading The Incest Diary, and declared that I had wanted a husband to raise me, too.

I’d only once had sex with a guy my age, and he was lousy at it. It was back when I lived in Chinatown, right after I’d broken up with the Politician. All I did back then was drink and fuck, sexually experimenting in an act of revenge against the Politician, who refused to penetrate me, instead masturbating himself silently before finishing on my chest. It humiliated me to see the terms he’d use in porn searches- I loathed that he always had his browser on display. The boys he watched were young like me. The ones he bullied and tugged himself off to on Character.AI were programmed to look nearly identical to me. Puzzled, I couldn’t understand why he seemingly wanted to fuck these imaginary boys more than he wanted to fuck me. I didn’t like to be penetrated, but I wanted to feel lusted for.

The Politician’s violence against me was only troubling because it never resulted in orgasm. Too confused in his own sexuality, too light-headed off another bump of cocaine, his erection never lasted long enough for anything exciting. He’d throw me around a bit, knocking my legs into his bedside table or window frame. I liked hickies, but he seldom gave me those, unless I had to perform onstage. Then, he’d suckle his hardest at my chin, trying to give me a big fat hickey on my face. The rest of the time, I just got bruised from his drunken antics. By the time I was ready for anything past foreplay, the Politician would be asleep, half of a now-unlit cigarette still dangling from his thinning fingers.

Sometimes, the Politician would let me puppeteer him. To everyone who witnessed our dynamic, I was written off as a whipped donkey. In private, I had much more power than it seemed. The Politician didn’t give me sex, but he gave me control of something much more delicate: his image. When he computer-generated a new speech or social media dissertation, I’d carefully review it, reformatting his sentences while maintaining his voice. I even had the passcode to his Twitter, and was signed-in to his email. When the Republican Gala rolled around, Jim Hoft bought us a table. Technically, it was under the Politician’s name, but I got to hand-pick the guest list. He explained that he wanted “new-age, internet people,” and that “they didn’t have to be right wing.” He followed my instructions, and invited the provocative fashion designers and internet-artists of my selection. I was silently thrilled when I overheard the Politician brag that he’d gotten Ryder Ripps invited. It was my idea, alongside Petra Cortright. When we threw dinner parties, I always wanted to invite Petra Cortright. As a birthday treat that year, he followed her on Instagram to satiate me- I’d constantly nag him to befriend her. Looking back, my admiration of her was rendered far more tender than his love for me.

Believing Women

The Politician didn’t believe any of my accounts of sexual improprieties. Half of the time he wasn’t listening, but when he did, he found the narratives of assault to be too fantastic. At the same time, he was fond of claiming the same victim status. He used to boast that two of his current friends had molested him; one was an Indian chick in college, and the other a perverted, washed-up gay actor. I only met the Indian chick once, but apparently she had drugged the Politician in order to fellate his flaccid, medicated penis. As for the actor, he had minor success being type-casted in crudely homosexual roles, and was now pursuing theatre while dominating a helpless Latin twink. I felt bad for the boy, he was even more indoctrinated than I’d ever been.

One night, after performing in a variety show I’d arranged, I publicly dumped the Politician. The actor, that loose faggot, sent his boyfriend home on the New Jersey Transit, attempting to facilitate a rebound threesome with the Politician and our friend Keith, who’d also attended my show. I believed the Politician when he spoke about the actor, because gay men had always been fucking deplorable. I was unsure when he spoke of the Indian girl, though. He spoke of her with a nasty tone of pride. “Darling,” I’d scoff, placing a hand on his too-skinny forearm, “for some people, it’s triggering to hear random accounts of sexual assault.” He didn’t understand.

All Better

When I started to sleep with the Crossdresser, it was somewhat of a sexual awakening. His husband, a Sommelier who I’d first acclimated to, was reserved and anxious. I was convinced the Sommelier had a fetish for college-aged men, and a particular taste for Asians. I fulfilled at least half of his fantasy. “How aren’t we going to have sex tonight?”, the Sommelier would ask me as we clung together, shirtless on my shrunken twin trundle bed. “It doesn’t count this way,” I smirked as we manipulated ourselves into orgasm. Afterwards, I always took a shower to wash away any impropriety. “I’m all better,” I’d declare, with pale skin and dark hair still wet and shimmering.

With the Crossdresser, sex was never scandalous, even when he’d want to rape me. Unlike with his husband, the Crossdresser and I had created a private inner-world. We existed in secret, communicating love in instances of dim stillness. His disapproving, democrat friends only knew strategic lies about me, and we most often stuck to my flat for our encounters- it made his husband too sad to see me in their home. To him, I presented a great danger. I was a ghost to him, a reminder of the boy they shared before me. Worse, I carried the capacity to harm them again.

All of that was just fine, since husbands and friends were agents of the outer-world, and together, we evaded that. To be with the Crossdresser was a high better than ketamine; it was as rapturous and toxic as to be subjected to a pedophile’s compulsion.

He Liked to Read Stories

One day, the Crossdresser and I were spooning in my trundle bed, reading stories to each other. We were mostly reading about women who had fallen in love with computers, and quickly the topic devolved into our own sexual oddities. It wasn’t an unusual topic for the pair of us, and I’d achieved a new pedigree of experimentation while we were together. Unprecedentedly bold, I began shopping at the sex store off of West 4th. Decently kept, it was operated exclusively by transsexuals. They’d offer me modesty bags to hide my new Wartenberg wheel or body safe candles, but I was always too eager to forward a photo to the Crossdresser. That sort of thing excited him, and compelled him to see me sooner.

That day on my bed, the Crossdresser told me that he liked to read stories on the internet. “My husband doesn’t like it,” he started, “doesn’t like when I talk about them.” First, I made him promise to never look at pornography again. “At least do your best not to let me find out,” I cautioned sternly. Then, I made him tell me everything that he would read about, no matter how grotesque. I was hesitant, yet relieved when he told me that the stories were never anything criminal. The Crossdresser read stories about guys who were kidnapped. He liked to read about guys who got raped, and guys who came to like the sensation. “Do you imagine yourself as the rapist, or as the…” I trailed off, unable utter the term victim. “I don’t really think about that,” he stated honestly. He told me that he’d like to rape me, if that was okay. I never asked him to fuck me again after that. “Rape me,” I would beg him, while his feral mouth worked away at consuming my enslaved body.

Sometimes, and always afterwards, the Crossdresser would be very gentle. He was handsomely tall but thinner than Karen Carpenter, with a figure that’d make Schiele kill himself. We kept matching stuffed otters, and he reluctantly told me that ‘Otter’ had been a nickname for him and the Sommelier’s past concubine. “Don’t worry,” he smiled, reassuring me, “it’s like you’re reinventing things. Now we have new things that can be special.” It was sweet like aspartame. “Are you my baby?” He’d ask me a million times each visit.

In between our meetings, I used to think of the Crossdresser’s big, blue eyes and slightly out-of-place blonde swoops of hair. The endearing dots of blood on his neck where he’d inevitably cut himself shaving. The loud colors of his pattered gowns rapidly announcing themselves in the distance, signaling to me before even the details of his face could un-blur in my vision. Eventually, I started to consider the not-nice things he’d say. The things he’d say when he’d rape me. The way he’d call me a faggot, or tell me “nobody will ever love you as much as I do.” The way he’d assure me I’d never be able to have sex again without thinking of him. The way he transformed from something soft and feminine to something masculine and dark with such ease, and lack of complexity. I was unsure if I should bask in admiration, or cower in terror.

Exoneration

After a month of hypnotherapy, and consistent increases in my medications, I was able to complete classwork again. Very quickly, I finished my portfolio for Poetry Workshop, and the majority of my written exams. In the meantime, I’d even won over the favor of my African Literature classmates- particularly the international students. Their Euro sensibilities were sympathetic to my very-American cancellation. Moreover, I believed that I was finally past the era of scrutiny. It had been at least a week since I’d been called in to justify my manic shitposts. After so long, I could get back to sexually revolting, while the neoliberals around me lay dormant in their capitalistic priapism.

The fear returned one Friday morning. Stepping off the southbound M3 bus, stoned and in the sweltering heat, my phone chirped- I’d gotten an email from my institution. ‘Decision Letter,’ the subject line read. I prayed to the Lord as I immediately slid my phone back into my pocket, cranked up the Manson track I’d been looping, and beelined towards my office.

In the office, I plopped down next to my coworker in our shared, unmarked cubicle. “I don’t even want to open it,” I groaned, “can you?” Abby lifted the phone from my fingertips, and began to read the declaration. The letter began, “Dear Christopher: We have completed our investigation and are writing to notify you of the decision.” Aptly formal. It continued with a list of six policies I had allegedly violated, and a brief summary of relevant details. “While initially reluctant,” the letter explained, “you ultimately agreed to be more mindful of your behavior moving forward.” I never remembered making that exact concession, but close enough.

Ultimately, the letter stated, “there is not sufficient evidence to support a finding that Code of Conduct has been violated and the investigation has been closed.” Abby squeezed my palm- we seldom touched. “I knew they couldn’t do anything. You’re allowed to have provocative ideas, like that Milo Yiannopoulos guy,” my boss smirked. I didn’t bother explaining to him that his statement was derogatory; he had good intent. Instead, I stood before our industrial-grade fan and raised my arms in elation, bathing my exposed midriff in the swells of cool air. It had actually fucking worked. I forwarded a screenshot of the decision to the Millennial. “Mashallah,” I texted, “I am free.”

Victory Lap

The next day, I flew out of bed. Acquittal felt like morning cocaine and dancing to disco music. Suddenly, I felt urged to sway to disco. It was hypnotic, sensual, and arguably in my blood. Though I never got to claim any wealth or nepotistic access over it, Donna Summer was, in fact, my great-aunt. I chose one of her tracks to listen to in the shower- “I Feel Love”. It’s so good, it’s so good, it’s so good, it’s so good. Perhaps Aunt Donna was correct.

It took about twelve hours for the illusion to shatter. Once news of my supposed vindication had spread across campus, it wasn’t long before I started to receive anonymous messages. A former classmate informed me of a forum website dedicated to our school, where I was once again being doxxed. “I’ve got two classes with him. He seems rude, but generally harmless. People speak about him like the devil incarnate, though,” one student wrote. Another replied, opining that I “obviously promote harmful ideology” on my Instagram. That part elicited a snicker out of me. Though I wanted to respond, as soon as I acknowledged the posts, they were swiftly taken down.

The bit wore off fast, and I could detach easily from this round of bitching and moaning. On paper I was innocent, so screw what the birds thought. Plus, returning to the Millennial’s orbit had (for now) provided me with a new, physical fixation through which I could release my tension. My hypnotherapist was very proud of my progress when we met last, and eager to explore new areas of disturbance. We spoke about my upbringing, and the fact that I struggle to remember most of it. He erroneously assumed that most of my previous relationships had been with addicts. “Only if you count nymphomaniacs, and love addicts,” I retorted. He laughed and told me that my homework was to define love. “To receive love,” he emphasized.

Just beyond the scope of my bedroom, summer had grown white hot and sticky-wet. The ice cream truck rolled by as I closed my Zoom therapy window and signed out of my school email for the semester. With the most asphyxiating months of my life entirely behind me, I staggered out and lit a victory joint. Pseudo-smug, I huffed while suppressing hacking coughs. Was I actually proud of myself? Sure, I got a couple film roles out of it, but I died on the hill of… what? Being misunderstood? Flirting with far-right aesthetics? For months, I believed the delusion that my ethos was an avant-garde attempt at resistance. Frankly, I’d done very little other than to emotionally disturb a bunch of bisexual white chicks, and become a sore subject in other people’s troubled marriages.

Diddy Games

A man should be verbal during sex, since it’s sexy to be expressive. While the Millennial barely spoke during sex, his fluency in the medium prompted a particular vocabulary from me. “I think of this… so often,” I moaned, as the Millennial thrusted above me, and his lips grazed upon my powdery collar like gluttonous, starving cattle. He moved towards my nipple, and I recoiled in playful hesitation. During intimacy, the feminine urge is to escape, while the masculine urge is to capture and dominate. The Millennial’s hand snaked underneath the pillow, taking hold of mine as he climaxed. I didn’t finish, but that wasn’t the point. I was excited just to make him orgasm.

After that, the Millennial got lousy with replies, and I got desperate. Sodden in my short-shorts, I’d forward him depreciating self-portraits, tongue wagging as I contorted my frail body in the mirror. While I waited on his reply, I fell on old friends to fill the time. Geneva had moved uptown, even farther than me, and had invited me to come to the park. As per usual, I rolled us a joint, and made my way uptown. On the northbound M7, I read Tiger, Tiger, and kept the back cover firmly pressed to my lap. It concerned me that the only blurb featured contained the word “pedophile” in bold text. “Have you heard of Dave Blunts?”, I asked Geneva. She told me she hadn’t, to which I grinned. I began karaoke-ing along to “White Chicks”.

Once properly stoned, Geneva and I made our way to Fordham, where we visited Camila. They grew up together, and had moved to the city together while attending different academies. In some senses, they were a female foil to Josh and I. We convened in Camila’s living room, taking swigs of vodka and cranberry juice. Camila added sour mix and ice to hers, and I cooled mine with frozen sorbet. The party grew to include Camila’s roommate, Rocio, as well as their friend Isa. Taking advantage of the landscape of the Bronx, we opted to seize Applebee’s for margaritas.

The next morning, I woke up with a pit in my stomach. I was unsure how I’d made it home, but I was sure I’d committed some sort of evil. The beef jerky I’d bought in bulk at the Bronx Aldi’s had disappeared, and I couldn’t quite find my copy of Tiger, Tiger. Upon inspection, I located my bookmark and a collection of Post-It notes in the doorway, and the book jacket-less in my refrigerator. Oy fucking vey, I thought, what have I done now? At least now I really knew peace- without the jacket, nobody had to know I was knee-deep in a molestation memoir.

P.S.

In honor of making it out alive, I’ve compiled an auditory companion to this Substack post. The following tracks are referenced above, or were on repeat as I blogged.

“The Backyard” by Robert Ashley

“I Feel Love” by Donna Summer

“Bad Girls” by Donna Summer

“In the Shadow of the Valley of Death” by Marilyn Manson

“Pretty As a ($)” by Marilyn Manson

“Heart-Shaped Glasses” by Marilyn Manson

“Diddy Games” by Dave Blunts

“First Day Out The Hospital” by Dave Blunts

“White Chicks” by Dave Blunts

“Don’t Smoke Government Weed” by Vegan Vampires

“A Timelapse of the Spring” by Sweet Joey Vermouth

Amid the reign of terror, my attendance grew spotty. Certainly, I had brought scrutiny upon myself, but I still felt righteous in my state of persecution, if not martyrdom. The outside world felt unsafe, particularly when my work was being cataloged with malevolent intent. It’s unnerving for a girl to have her sanity questioned on account of her thirst traps. This is only amplified when they’ve been printed out in full color, and compiled into a manila folder. After being serially investigated, I couldn’t leave buildings. Indoors, I was fine, but outdoors, I was vulnerable to attack. Snipers were on the roof, it felt, and they had eyes on me. They set their scopes on me, my naked body, and my porno blog. It rendered me more immobile than any sexual assault I’d ever faced. In middle school, I was attacked in a Walmart bathroom, but the man wore a hoodie and had a black eye. I told my friend’s mother too late, and though police were eventually called, they never found him. At least I could render him faceless, and blame myself, as I would at every subsequent unpleasant sexual encounter. All sex was rape, and violation was synonymous with intercourse, but not like Dworkin. Classic Waif Syndrome, I was raping myself.

Despite living in a surveillance state, I still wanted some fun. If I was going to call out sick every day and request endless extensions on my assignments, I might as well occupy my time. Luckily, I caught a flu for a week, and got to validate my pathetic lethargy. Eventually, I’d have to submit my midterms, though. The semester would end in just a couple weeks, and I was upwardly mobile. The surveillance state drove me to near-insanity, so I got a psychiatrist to feed me happy pills, and a hypnotherapist to dissuade me that there is evil working against me. The hypnotherapist did the opposite. Jealousy, he warned me, could motivate smears against me. Admittedly, I was in a stronger state than usual (that being one of utter acceptance), yet paradise was fragile.

On weekends, I filled my time by rediscovering acting. For Pratt, the last institution that still regarded me kindly, I lent my musings to a documentary. I pranced in my stockings across the Politician’s apartment, since it was a better background than my own, and narrated the last three or so years of my sordid affairs. It wasn’t all pseudo-introspection, however, and there was a divine irony when I received the script for a thriller project. Finally, something that wouldn’t self-metabolize, and yet was written so deliciously, provocatively, for me. I took my happy pills each morning, reviewed my call sheet, and took a swig of vodka. Fuck the French, I thought, but soigner le mal par le mal.

To satisfy my interpersonal needs, I rearranged my lifestyle. The Republicans weren’t funding me, and the Politician had gone independent. It was cute to dress up, and I felt properly like Jackie O; widowed and all. I wore my tuxedo and mink with vintage leather gloves for his campaign launch. At school I flaunted his semi-ironic, occasionally funny campaign pins on my skimpy outfits. It was futile, though, as I had been saying all along. I knew I’d probably get in trouble for acknowledging the chaos, but I committed myself to diagnosing the culture. Everything about the Politician put me in more danger, even his associates. Mateo lived a particular lifestyle, one that I couldn’t sustain with both of my parents alive, and the Politician condemned it. Anyway, Mateo hadn’t put any pressure on me at all, but I was never the type of girl to say no. The offer was dangerous, as was the mere possibility.

There existed a version of myself who would’ve gone past pornographer to full prostitute, but it wouldn’t happen so easily. I knew my true escape: Real Luck Cafe. It was a fully-nude gay dive in the heart of Pittsburgh. When the Politician brought me to stay with his mother, he brought me as he once had Mateo, and the boy before him. A rite of passage. The Politician got me drunk and afraid, making up stories to terrorize me about how each go-go boy was a prostitute. He narrated false epics about banging them in corner booths when Real Luck was his high school stomping ground. At one point, a sweaty Bengali man approached us, and asked for our names. Sadly, the Politician provided them, and the man sat next to us. “They make a lot of money here,” he began, “hundreds a night.” The man offered me a rushed smile before continuing, “and you, you could really rack it up, Christopher!” I hated that he knew my name, but I still believed him. Fie on the Politician, I muttered, when we left the bar and I realized that the Bengali man had already found my LinkedIn.

I could only lose myself indulging in masturbatory fantasies about running away to become a pastor or pornstar for a few hours each day, so I needed other exit routes. Apparently, I couldn’t vacation at Bellevue, because I wasn’t addicted to crack, nor was I a cutter, and I genuinely wanted to live. My problem was that nobody believed me when I said it, and perception shapes truth. The more I was confronted as a wild, fascistic woman, the more I dissipated into a caricature of self-important leftist hatred. If nothing else would work, I figured, I could raise my age bracket and put my faith in mankind. Specifically, salvation in the form of a human man.

Cue the Millennial. While many of my men have been millennials, they were either too on-the-cusp or merely too immature for distinction. The Millennial was different. Freshly forty-one, his head was shiny-bald in a sexy way. He ran two dozen miles with ease, and liked to take his vintage bike for rides on Fire Island. He was left-leaning, it seemed, but engaged with my Eva Braun references and mild slur usage. Even better, his photography job was professional and stable, and he occupied a gorgeous, sprawling Upper East Side apartment. I loved a fuckable apartment. I had a realization recently in Bushwick, and it came right when I arrived to my first day of filming the thriller. The director’s apartment reminded me of my old artist loft, with a grand piano and lofted ceilings. Regardless of the owner, it was the kind of apartment you can imagine getting fucked in, in a variety of positions. The Millennial’s apartment had lofted ceilings too, and two different showers, and a fire escape. There was plenty of space to get creative.

For the sake of honesty, I must say, there was an erotic pleasure that when the Millennial chose me, I really felt chosen. We were a good pair, both stoners, and frankly, he was great at sex. I’d been indebted to him for his forgiveness, having already stood him up once. Back when I was still sort of doing polyamory, the Crossdresser loathed that I was spending time with the Millennial. “I want you to meet other people so that you can move on,” he’d tell me flatly, then follow it with, “but it makes me really uncomfortable when you see other people.” Worse, one of the Crossdresser’s transsexual friends was obsessed with the Millennial, and absolutely hated me. Hating me was a common thread amongst his friends, and I’d lie if it didn’t feel orgasmically dirty to take from them. All I ever wanted to do was take, rob, and steal. All that mattered was that I got mine.

This year, Easter fell on the last day of Spring Break. Apt, perhaps, because I’m always feeling crucified, and I’m always needing to repent. I had planned no holiday, nor did I orchestrate any plans to rave from home. Instead, I’d known that I would stay put and over-consume to my regular degree. At the very least, I’d not wasted my time. It was very gratifying, I thought, how I began watching movies and reading books on my volition again. It gave my brain some fodder to escape to while I drank.

On the first day of Spring Break, I woke up and stripped the bed. The sheets were moist, sweat-logged, and stinky, clinging to my mattress as my pajamas did to my shivering frame. It started with clammy palms, then became a matter of damp underarms. Now, I’d been getting night terrors, and the sweat came out all over. I’d wake up confused, unable to recall whatever sordid dream I was just in, but resting in its aftermath. I pummeled the sheets into my puny washing machine, showered off, and took a lap around the block. On the corner, I stopped at Uptown Liquor and Wine. I didn’t need to speak, only nodding in affirmation as the clerk reached for my usual two-liter plastic bottle of bottom-shelf vodka. “Thanks, boss,” I muttered. It’s the one phrase I’d say aloud that day. When I got back, I spilled my happy pills on the table and counted them out. Feeling perpetually groggy, I struggled to recall whether I had taken them. That morning, I hadn’t.

For the first half of the week, I continued to live inoffensively. When I smoked, I did it in the shower, or in the far corner of Morningside Park, where no children could inhale secondhand fumes. Eventually, though, I decided that my misery deserved company. As always, I called Ethan and asked him to take me to a gay bar. “I want to meet people who will love me,” I told him plainly. Ethan reassured that he and my other friends already loved me. “I want to meet people who will love me, and then fuck me,” I retorted.

Ethan brought me to a timid hole in the wall, just three blocks south of the Cathedral and the park. All the bars here were the same, attempting to manufacture kitschy decor and arriving at plainness. Each had their own gimmick, whether it was furniture or teddy bears strewn from the ceiling, and some bullshit menu with Asian-fusion appetizers. We made it at 4pm, because Ethan had to catch a baseball game in the evening. We spoke little, instead only drinking and glancing occasionally at our cell phones. Ethan walked me home through the park. I lay atop my bed in denim cutoffs and rewatched Tariq Nasheed’s Buck Breaking.

Over the course of Spring Break, I watched Buck Breaking five times. To do something as useless as watching an erroneous, conspiracy-laden documentary was an act of protest and defiance. Of course, I didn’t sympathize with Nasheed’s arguments that gay white men invented heterosexuality to rape women, nor his idea that the CIA invented the pullout method in an act of white supremacy. I was, however, compelled by Nasheed’s dedication to his neurosis and to proving his crackpot theories. If I could commit half as hard as him to my mental illness, I thought, maybe I would finally have the courage to die.

The film ended, and I took two shots of vodka. Ethan’s game had ended, and he shepherded me back to the bar. I wasn’t particularly hard to convince. We sat, again in mostly silence, and I slowly got drunk enough to feel uninhibited, or at least to the degree of slurring my words. It’s freeing for a tense girl like myself to get white girl wasted, but only under careful supervision. After the Crossdresser left on my birthday, I could drink as much as I wanted. Without a man to live for, my health was absolutely none of my business, and I had no motivation for sobriety. Just my luck that the Crossdresser also fancied a drink in West Harlem.

When I escaped Ethan, there was divine intervention. In front of the Cathedral, my phone rang, and I answered to the song of angels. The Crossdresser was in my neighborhood for drinks, and he wanted to see me, if I wanted to see him. Obviously, I had. It was all I thought about, unless I was thinking of the Crossdresser’s husband. Within three minutes of entering the gay bar, I did not find the Crossdresser, but the bartender asked me to leave immediately. My acute inebriation was “incredibly visible,” and the bartender didn’t want to serve me. The Crossdresser found me lay in the streets of Harlem, kind of like Violet in Toni Morrison’s Jazz. Toni Morrison was brilliant. In Jazz, Joe Trace saves his marriage by fatally shooting his younger side piece. The Crossdresser didn’t shoot me, he just took a photo of my state, and sent me up the avenue back to my apartment. In a fit of misfortune, I made it back alive.

The next morning, I woke up feeling ill. I never got hungover. The last time I’d felt that sick was over the summer, and I refused to get out of bed. The Crossdresser was due on the Upper West, but detoured to my old Chinatown flat just to surprise me. He wore thick pink knit socks with a long green skirt and a flowing pink blouse. He brought me Virginia Slims SuperSlims, the special extra-skinny ones, and a few bags of sour candy. He couldn’t stay, but he crouched down next to me while I smoked a SuperSlim on my balcony.

When I finally ran out, I put the empty carton in a treasure box buried in my closet. It held all of my special relics, from tickets to galas I’d attended with the Politician to postcards the Blackshirt collected on Coney Island. It’s where I kept the puppets that the Crossdresser had gotten me at IKEA the day before he surprised me with the cigarettes. I’d always wanted to go to IKEA to buy puppets and eat meatballs, and the Politician constantly failed on his promises to bring me. The Crossdresser made sure I had everything I wanted. I felt incredibly spoiled. Sick girls get spoiled, but girls who make themselves sick don’t deserve to get spoiled. That’s why I felt so fucking ill the morning after I lay out in the street, and it’s why I was still out of SuperSlims.

PRE-SUICIDE EUPHORICS

A pack of well-groomed, thin students visited from Rice University this month. Rice is a prestigious research university in the part of Texas where they pronounce ‘Houston’ incorrectly. Max, my longest friend of the bunch, had pitched to me, “drinks with three short Asians.” That didn’t sound bad at all. Max was a writer, and the smartest person I’d known. His friends were subsequently the second and third smartest people I’d known. They’d curated a philomathic urge, hot takes on Dworkin and monotheism. As we shuffled from Betty’s to Clockwork, they argued abstractly that one should only strive to live ethically, without attention to moral reasoning.

My epistemophilia began when I was sixteen, and a wide-eyed, know-it-all acid hound. Birthday cash from my high school friends accumulated into stacks of bills I’d fork over to a butch dyke in exchange for tabs of LSD. She’d meet me in the parking lots of grocery stores and gas stations, her femme girlfriend riding passenger, and I’d pull up in pastel leather roller skates. It never felt like a drug deal, or doing anything illegal whatsoever. Her appreciation of the cartoons drawn on each new set of dime bags was near-childish. When I’d get home and dissolve the tabs in my mouth, I only ever read, played Sudoku, and wrote in my diary. Diaries were fascinating to me, attempts to chronicle a personal history. I obsessively pontificated on every shallow happening of my angsty teenage life, each sensation from awakening until I retreated into my acid-dungeon of a bedroom at night.

Lately, I had done no acid, nor very much reading. When the students from Rice materialized, with their primed intellect, I finally felt stupid how a student should. Aiden, Max’s sleek, personable comrade, told me he appreciated my subscription to his art criticism newsletter. “I’m sure you didn’t read it,” he laughed innocuously, though I read his latest, unfinished essay twice over, and took photos of the works he referenced. Obviously, it was a futile battle towards semantic meaning, but the lyricism of the piece compelled me. Like a Lanthimos film, or a Houellebecq novel, the essay bore an appreciation of its own form and genre that joyfully escaped its subject. I knew nothing about Judeo-Christian art, nor the theory behind photography, nor monotheism. Still, the pages were alive. In my creative writing program, students couldn’t write with precision, let alone assurance. They only took an interest in crafting poems in which figures of speech could flail in negation, making use of the same tired, intangible images. During critiques, it was useless to explain why a student shouldn’t write ‘empty words that say nothing and mean everything’ in their misshapen sonnet.

My peers weren’t half as smart as Max or Aiden. Seldom were my classmates possessed by the medium, or bedeviled by the strength of their own convictions. To be frank, I found the creative work to be dismal. The prose was formally nightmarish, and the institution’s ethos was built through lethargy. Everyone seemed to write because they wanted to convey the absolute strongest feeling, but nobody wanted to do the labor of explaining how they arrived at such profound overwhelm. Instead, they delivered shock pieces, beginning in orgasm and ending in death, with no consideration for the pathways to these destinations. At the very least, I used to look up to my poetry professor. He wasn’t the textbook academic, rather a former basketball coach in a sweatsuit with a chip on his shoulder. In critiques of student work, the Professor was the department’s most meticulous editor, though his exterior musings were sparse.

The Professor gave very few insights outside of immediate feedback during workshops. Of the few, I could only recall one kernel of anti-wisdom. “Perspective and good writing,” the Professor explained, “are products of pre-suicide euphoria.” He discerned this as a teenager. At some point prior to the development of his prefrontal cortex, the Professor took his bitch ex-girlfriend to see Paris, Texas. “That screening was my experience of the sublime,” he added. He’d wanted to die, and apparently, his bitch ex-girlfriend had wanted to kill him. Frankly, I wasn’t sure how he arrived at the diagnosis of pre-suicide euphoria, or how it registered as sublime. Perhaps he wasn’t really suicidal back then. He might’ve felt that he didn’t have perspective or good writing, and that was why he taught. His reckonings were moot, as the sublime for a geezer like him earnestly could’ve been a gander at Nastassja Kinski’s breasts.

Glorifying suicide concerned me, but I continued to respect my professor in spite of his haplessness. He was in dangerous proximity to the truth. Suicidal ideation only produced capturing work because it enforced a close relationship with death. The sublime didn’t reside within the act of yearning for death; rather, an awareness of death’s indiscriminate omniscience conjured it. When I finally grew contemptuous of my professor, it was because he called me into his office before one of our workshops. “Chris,” he began, “I think you could be nicer.” For a moment, his breath became unsteady before continuing, “you look at poems like psychological games.” He went on, something about how my dry, faggy affect makes him feel threatened. I wasn’t listening, just preparing to swivel right back out of his office. Knowing that I’d have to find another new father figure, I decided that I’d like to die. Not enough to do anything dramatic, just enough to wish it were an option.

AMERICAN ANTHROPOCENE

In order to stay alive, I got a prescription for two kinds of happy pills, and convinced myself that my problems were part of a mass spiritual warfare. Earth was under attack and all of humanity was suffering, thus my unrest towards being alive was normal. I had to go home for a weekend to pick up my insurance card, so that the state would cover my comatose. On the Metro-North fleeing Manhattan, I asked my sister, “Have you been seeing a therapist?” She hadn’t, not recently anyway. I told her I’d been considering a psychiatrist, that talk therapy didn’t work for me, but perhaps she would like it. The skin around her eyes cooled from a pink simmer back to her powdery, clear complexion. She blinked slowly, and her eyes appeared less teary. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say to me,” she said. I wasn’t sure either, knowing only that I could identify and locate a unique tension. Maybe I was projecting my own stresses, but I considered our high-strung sensibilities to be shared- biologically predisposed.

Conversation then succumbed to the theoretical. “People have been saying that everything feels bad recently, like its Revelations, or we’re feeling the Anthropocene socially,” I mumbled. “There has been a lot of darkness,” my sister agreed, smiling in non-understanding. “When conservationists talk about the Anthropocene, the New Age approach is to assume there’s no pristine land left. They believe the amount of land that’s been untouched by man is so minuscule that we need to ignore it and focus on promoting biodiversity in our molested, humanized ecosystems.” I took a breath, knowing my sister had likely disregarded most of that. “I’m following,” she affirmed. “There’s not any pristine concept of Americana left,” I continued, “like we’re all Blanche DuBois flailing in the absence of a fallen South. Instead of the South, though, it’s just any tradition or pride or sense of customs from the last generation of America all disintegrating without true replacement. America doesn’t have a concept of sex anymore. I liked the idea of men who felt emboldened to protect and women who held the capacity to nurture. There’s no authenticity to the new caricatures of hyper-masculine violence and feminist spite.” I finally stopped, and my sister deflated in relief. For a moment, I considered parting my lips and explaining why this was fatalistic for gay men, too, though I had already been rambling about myself the whole trip without actually saying what I’d intended. Selfishly, I did not care about the Anthropocene. I only cared that the Anthropocene dissolved manhood, so a man couldn’t rush in to save me from it.

MAYAN POETS

Back in New York, there truly was a dense misery. The spring crescendoed between unifying and isolating without discernment. Everything was status quo, days unfolding with rhythmic sameness like Mayan poetry. No disruption, just thrashing back and forth in the pantun. The Politician had been calling more often, circumstances ever dire. In the mornings, he’d ring me to lament the hours he spent partying the evening prior. Somehow, he’d talk me into skipping class and breezing downtown, warm breakfast in tow. A cinnamon bagel, toasted, with strawberry cream cheese. Then, I’d clean up after whatever transsexual, up-and-coming journalist went skiing on the Politician’s side tables. Once the afternoon sun faded, the Politician would finally rise. Some days there were errands, and the Politician would request a chauffeur. He couldn’t possibly make it all the way to New Jersey by himself to pose for his campaign photos; he would get distracted, and then lost. On other days, the jobs were more domestic. His bookshelf and both closets had to be emptied and combed through. Undergraduate students ran the Politician’s campaign, down to the campaign manager, who was a freshman. The Politician believed that one of them had stolen his rare book about Nazi design and architecture.

The Crossdresser called sometimes, too, but never with intent to convene. His calls were brief and usually riddled with utterances of, “I’m not sure that this is the right thing to do.” This kind of fretting never moved me, because I was already too existential, and because the Crossdresser and I were the same sort of cucks. Only uninhibited under the protection and guidance of another man, neither of us had a will to live without direct submission. The Crossdresser was lucky to have met the Sommelier back when he was my age, so the safety of their marriage predicated all of his formative romances. After each heartbreak, the Crossdresser could return to the Sommelier, and a confident machismo would hold him together.

People are often concerned with how they grow to resemble their parents. Since I didn’t have a father, that wasn’t my worry. Instead, I had to avoid mutating into the much-older men I’d dated to compensate for paternal lack. I stole something from each boyfriend: an obsession, or addiction, or a vocal tic. From Stefan, I absorbed suicidal ideation. I wanted to be loved like a dog, too. I wanted to be told; never to decide. In Spain, they euthanized a girl. Her parents alleged that a pack of migrants raped her. She wanted to die; her condition was malignant and irrevocable. The Spanish court ruled in her favor, and she got to die. Sometimes I felt jealous of her. Others, I felt just as raped. I never knew whether it was right or wrong for the government to euthanize the poor girl. I wondered what Stefan would argue.

Instead of mustering up the courage to die like Stefan, I’d been smoking a lot more. Too lazy to walk to the sink, I cleaned my ashtray with spit and declared that it now smelt like oral sex with the Crossdresser. In the mornings, I’d sit with the ashtray next to me on a boulder in Morningside Park. Toes held two inches above the water, I felt the spirit of all the lady poets before me. They were brave enough to fill their pockets with rocks and waltz into the water. I’d only ever be brave enough to wait, begging for death, for once without the stamina to execute.

VALENTINE’S DAY

In February, I didn’t want to go home and hear the absence of bells from the cathedral across the park. Instead, I practiced bobbing for apples, nosediving into another ecosystem. In a generous interpretation, I was fishing for moldy, worm-ridden fruit. In a realistic interpretation, there were no apples, and I was just waterboarding myself for the love of the game.

When I rose for shallow breaths and returned to my compact shrine of a bedroom, it was usually only to sleep. Adamant on being away as much as possible, I had maintained no upkeep. I never decorated much, not outside of what felt practical, like coat hooks and curtains. To cover the window next to my bed, I stuck on sheets of imitation stained glass. Above my bed, I had two devotional cork boards. One for Jesus Christ, with three rosaries and a crucifix hanging alongside some of my prayer cards. The other had gifted pins from galas where I accompanied the Politician, and love letters from the Crossdresser. He scribbled the letters on placemats from the Ukrainian restaurant where he held his wedding, and where I made him order for me on our date.

If I wanted to, I could’ve made things look nice. If I straightened the sheets, I could’ve unburied my stuffed animals, whom I’d been suffocating for weeks beneath my pillows. I’d also had some posters I could put up. The Crossdresser gave me one from the film Confessions of a Concubine when we broke up on Christmas, and another signed by Tuesday Weld when we broke up on my birthday. I didn’t feel bad for my stuffed animals, since they probably hated me for raising them as bastard children. Plus, I couldn’t hang a picture frame alone. My ineptitude absolved me from tidying up.

Most often when I dunked my head into the water, I ended up at the Politician’s apartment. This wasn’t my fault because I never asked to go over anymore. Instead, I merely waited for the service bell and responded with attentive placation. On Valentine’s Day, I arrived at his studio in the same outfit I’d worn for the holiday when we were still dating. This year wasn’t romantic. His mother was in town for the launch of his campaign, and we were on an assembly line making button pins. She’d propped up her iPad, watching some podcast as she cut out paper circles. My job was to pull the girthy lever that crimped together the mylar film, button face, and middle pin backing. The Politician worked quietly on his computer, occasionally topping up his glass of whatever gross, warm brown liquor, and refilling mine upon request.

It took at least two hours, and countless glasses of petrol, for the Politician to realize I’d set all the buttons lopsided. His response was at least subdued by his mother. She brought an air of calm to the apartment, one that deeply contrasted with the usual smoke-heavy, red-lit mise en scène. There was no exasperation; instead, he collected the off-kilter buttons into a Ziplock and told me I could distribute them to my friends. We ceased operations there for the evening, and his mother tucked herself into the couch. We needed good rest; we were in for another day of cosplaying electoral business.

My friend’s documentary had a screening downtown, and they picked the Politician to moderate a panel afterward. Thus, our day primarily orbited around preparing him. While he dressed, I made more buttons. “I’ve seen the film twice,” he told me, which was false. He’d seen it once. “What do I ask? Do I just let people in the audience ask questions?” He posited, and I told him that film audiences are retarded and never have good questions. I rattled off a few ideas about the film’s distribution and reception, but the Politician chose a Madea-themed bit instead.

As he stepped out for affirmations on his outfit, the Politician’s swivel paused midway. “Can’t wear burgundy,” he said, “too kitsch,” gesturing with a slight smirk towards my same-colored shorts. The levity in his tone dueled with a thick top note of inconvenience. For a moment I considered playfully rolling my eyes, or making the anticipatory remark that it had been just like old times. Instead, I guzzled a sip of indistinguishable dark brown liquor and gave the lever another pull. I’d grown fatigued from the Politician’s solipsistic world. His persona was naturally domineering and invasive; his aura preceded him. Nobody with that much breadth could have the fortitude to think of anyone else, I figured.

I skulked out of the theatre drunk, famished, and with runs in my stockings. Down one mink stole, lost somewhere among the audience, my prodigal return home was not only timely but urgent. Some of us, I considered, actually had to think about other people. Really, nothing was changing much, merely put on pause. There was no prodigal upheaval of my sinful nature; at most, I had an undue growing contempt. The only true similarity was that I’d be feasting on a fattened calf. When I made it to my apartment, I downed a gaunt, soggy cheeseburger.

GAY BAR

I ate my cheeseburger sloppily, with a side of vodka-water, as I watched the Crossdresser’s GPS location. This was a perverted act, but it wasn’t a new behavior. It was simply that my preoccupation had grown exponentially. While still having an affair, the Crossdresser and I made up for our implicit separation by following each other’s locations. He knew when I got to class in the morning, and I knew when he left for the gym at night. Occasionally, he’d ask me where I was, and then tenderly make note of the redundancy. Tonight, he was out in Bushwick.

Sober in the morning, I found a string of missed calls from the Politician. First, he’d misplaced the craft supplies for his button pins, and then lost both of his Bard alum sweatshirts. I advised him to check the laundry and then urged him to bring his mother to the Museum of Natural History. With that, I pulled my lethargic, sweaty body into the shower. I needed to freshen up before I went out for my morning smoke and stroll, lest the neighborhood forget I was still its boy de jour.

In the evening, I desperately needed attention, so I forced my friend Ethan to meet me at the gay bar. Every table surface was waxy, if not viscous. I’d never been to this bar, only the joint Indian restaurant upstairs. The Crossdresser and I recently ate dinner there the night before my birthday, and it was a shame that the food was so spectacular, because I couldn’t bring myself to order again. I could, however, bring myself anywhere with liquor, and the prices at this dive were peculiarly low. I sat with a double tequila soda, massaging the tip of the stirrer in light circles with my tongue, attention occasionally drifting upstage. It was karaoke night, and at the end of the narrow room stood a meek stage for the busty drag queen hostess to flaunt, inaugurating the event for gaggles of shrill white ladies.

My drink tasted a bit like dirty metal. Gold didn’t have a taste, I’d learned, and instead carried the flavors of the mercaptans and thiols clinging to unwashed gold. It tasted like the Crossdresser’s wedding ring. He put the ring in my mouth once while we were having sex. At first it was the whole ring finger, and I wasn’t sure what he was aiming for until he slipped the ring off. “Suck on my wedding ring,” he ordered. I happily obliged, working the ring around my mouth as he thrust below me. He was the most delicate man I’d ever been with, and yet the most willing to aggress me properly. “Nobody will ever love you as much as I do,” he told me. “Whenever someone else fucks you, you’ll think of me,” he continued, and I smiled. I knew he was right.

By the time I finished my first drink, I assumed the murine-ish crowd would be weak for fraternization. Most people, like Ethan and me, had come in some form of a group, isolated and occupying some insular corner of the bar. There were plenty of men alone, too, but the gay men in my new neighborhood took little interest in twinks. Back in Chinatown, the men were hedonistic and sexually mettlesome. These gays were moralizing and pompous upper-twenty-something’s, wielding mustaches nostalgic for a forgotten era, one that was never theirs. They represented a confused transition from Millennials to Generation Z, marked by their compulsive insistence that they resonated most with the former, yet never lived in the America which Millennials mourned. They never saw an America that held the capacity for optimism. This wasn’t something I could help them with, and I at least found their mustaches erotic. Of course, none of the mustached men reciprocated my ahegao eyes. At most, the drag queen hostess brushed my navel as I handed her a stack of singles.

Despite the peasant pricing at the bar, I hadn’t gotten drunk, and thus was forward-thinking enough to order a wealth of Chinese food. There was a storm on the horizon, a real nor’easter, and anyone with half a brain in Manhattan was picking up bean curd and bok choy while the retards ravaged Trader Joe’s. Tipsy, I swayed on my heels as I watched the men behind the counter frolic, their short bodies flowing across the petite restaurant as they woofed at each other in Mandarin. Eventually, the man running the register returned to confirm the name I’d ordered under. He gave me a puzzled look, emitting a low grunt of confusion, before bursting into laughter and retrieving a taut bag from below the counter. His English was unrefined, but I chuckled back and yelled, “You got me!” He threw his arm towards me in a limp salute, as if to say, ‘You should have seen your face.’

NOR’EASTER

The storm wouldn’t start until later the next evening, but the atmosphere was already preparing to collapse when I woke up. Something was falling from the sky, not quite snow, but denser than rain. Smoking in the wet debris, I looked up at the cathedral and imagined it’d look beautiful while the snow fell around it. In the morning, it looked dreary and omniscient. I was crushing the butt of my joint against a lamppost when the Politician called. It was a conference call with a potential new head of media for the Politician’s campaign, and I lingered with an absent mind. The Politician was catching the media guy up to speed, firing through a list of active crises. The media guy didn’t seem to follow most of the Politician’s frantic summations, which reassured me. I had never been omitted from the information flow. There was no organized information flow to begin with.

The Politician needed someone to shelter with during the storm. He’d work through it, and thus drink through it. Somebody had to maintain accountability, and the state of the apartment. Ever willing, I packed all of my silk pajamas into a big green tote bag with matching knee-highs and garters. If I were going to be put under house arrest, I still had to be beautiful. I had my dignity, if not my freedom.

On the first evening, the snow piled higher than I’d ever seen it reach on the fire escape. The Politician was on a research kick, convinced he’d found a glaring episode of hypocrisy in one of his democratic rivals’ interviews. “You should have interviews,” I reminded him, “you’re a public figure.” In the meantime, I was scouring the Politician’s internet footprint. Each time I flagged something of concern, I’d vie for the Politician’s attention, and he’d tell me I was excellent at spotting indecent collegiate memories on his Facebook wall. After teaching him to privatize his Venmo transactions, we crawled into bed. “Have you seen Force Majeure?” He asked me, loading the movie onto his piracy server. I shook my head no, having only learned the term hours prior while reviewing contracts for the Politician.

Fifteen-or-so minutes into the exposition, I was wholly unconscious. The Politician turned the movie off, replacing it with numbing television I wouldn’t mind sleeping through. It was apparent that he’d slept much later than I had. At seven, I crawled out of bed and assessed the studio. Half a cigarette dangled unfinished from his ashtray, and empty bowls harboring teeny, white puddles evinced late-night cereal. I deduced from the speckles of soppy brown flakes that it was Wegmans’ Maple Pecan Crunch. Levitating through the morning stillness, I collected half-empty glasses and swiped piles of loose tobacco onto the floor to feed the Politician’s robot vacuum. The robot couldn’t clean as comprehensively as I could, but it spoke more foreign languages.

Once I shined the marble on the Politician’s Knoll pedestal tables, I finally stripped out of my pajamas. The Politician’s apartment still had its layout from 1900, so the only bathtub was in the middle of the living room. I huddled nude in the tub, hosing myself while crouched on my tip-toes, careful not to let too much skin touch the walls. I knew how infrequently the Politician cleaned the tub; the first time I shaved my legs at his house, it gave me folliculitis. After that, I learned to use his hair laser instead.

The Politician first parted his groggy eyes while I was still in a grammar class. They’d moved it online to account for the blizzard, which I didn’t mind. The Politician’s artwork made for an engaging Zoom background. “Chris,” my professor exclaimed, “it’s like you’re in a museum!” She demanded that I give a proper tour, which I hesitantly provided. Angling the camera to avoid any gratuitous penises or swastikas, I let her survey the Politician’s vast collection. It was at this point that he broke slumber, flailing an erect arm right-to-left, mumbling that I needed to stop talking. He’d appreciate the praise once he woke up, I reminded myself. On break from grammar class, I hovered over the Politician’s bed with a hand tracing his shoulder. “You won’t sleep tonight unless you get up soon,” I hummed. “Ten more minutes,” he grumbled, face smooshed between pillows.

Of course, ten minutes passed, and then ten more. Then, it was nearly dinnertime. The Politician finally relented, his hunger spurring enough inertia to pull him towards the refrigerator. He got these two big octopuses to cook, but in his near-inhuman state couldn’t fathom dedicating himself to such a task. Instead, he pulled a pair of steaks from the freezer and set them on the counter to thaw. I didn’t speak to him, offering only a cheery mhm when prompted. The Politician was always unpleasant for at least two hours upon rising, and very unforgiving.

While the steaks sat in the sous vide machine, the Politician rolled cigarettes and spoke, often to himself, expelling his thoughts. My stomach dropped a bit when he announced Mateo would come for dinner. Though the Politician knew Mateo and I had long-settled our dispute, he certainly wasn’t aware that we’d gotten intimate. He’d not care much, outside of finding it mildly curious. At most, the Politician would judge me for sleeping with Mateo since he wouldn’t sleep with Mateo anymore, at least he proclaimed, but that was hypocrisy to me. The Politician had slept with Mateo first.

Mateo arrived with mushrooms to sear on the side and a head of lettuce for a salad. The mushrooms were slimy and browning, but the lettuce was salvageable. Mateo joined the Politician in the kitchen, washing the vegetables before attempting amateur dicing. I watched the two men move around each other; I’d never paid such attention to their contrasting appearances, not side by side. After Mateo and I slept together, he fell asleep, and I thought he looked just like the Politician. That was just the faint shadow of his stubble mimicking that of the Politician, I decided as I leaned against the radiator. The nozzle spat warm steam onto my thighs as the two men juggled cutting boards and square-danced around the kitchen island. We’d all eat together, but as they worked, I pretended that their labor was just for me.

Over dinner, the Politician put Force Majeure back on. He never liked conversation at the table, preferring a television dinner. Mateo and I sat together on the couch, my legs tacky and sticking to its black pleather. He finished his plate first, motivated in part by the heaping mounds of ketamine he intended to snort afterwards. The Politician followed suit, clearing his dish and immediately returning to his bed. Mateo shuffled to the bathroom, as if it were indecent to use ketamine openly in the apartment. When the bathroom door swung open, following the sounds of loud sniffles and no running water, I shot Mateo a knowing smile. Graciously, he offered me a bump while he took a phone call. I excused myself to the bathroom, and Mateo turned on the speakers for privacy. He looped White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter; the song rang from each corner of the apartment. After taking my allotted ketamine, I dropped bare-ass onto the Politician’s fancy, heated-seat Japanese toilet. Giving Mateo another moment to finish his call, I navigated through my iPhone to check the Crossdresser’s location; I hadn’t looked since we started eating. He was home, obviously. Anyone in their right mind would be home in the middle of a snowstorm.

Emerging from the bathroom, Mateo had relegated himself back to the couch and was puffing from a thick, black vape. “Have you tried opium?” Mateo asked me. I hadn’t. Mateo beckoned me towards the couch. “It’s like a painkiller,” he said. “I’ve never taken painkillers,” I told him, not knowing if that were actually true. Mateo took long draws from the opium pen, rolling his eyes back as if in orgasm before he exhaled. Mateo’s composure was always orgasmic; his natural response to most sensations being a subtle, high moan. With little reservation, I lifted the pen to my lips. Nothing changed. I tried a few more times, breathing deeper with each pull. In disbelief that heroin was made of opium, I leaned back into the pleather couch.

Tilting my head towards Mateo, I spoke out of turn. “I heard you changing the playlist when I was in the bathroom. I heard you say that your friend made this, and she passed. Do you know about my ex?” Mateo didn’t know that Stefan had killed himself, so I pointed to the bathroom door. “I was in there when I found out,” I told him; “It happened a few blocks down from here, more towards Alphabet City.” Mateo apologized, and he told me he was proud of me, though I wasn’t sure what for. “I think we understand each other. We get each other as Aquarians,” he mustered through his drawl. Mateo outstretched his arms, beginning to recline onto the couch. “You can take the bed,” he told me, and I felt a guilty tinge of irony for assuming that fact was a given.

Before I left for school in the morning, I did my usual arranging of the apartment. I quarreled for a bit with the thought of leaving a note for the Politician, my signature, though I had very little to say to him. It was only when I gazed down at Mateo sleeping on the couch that I felt compelled to leave a message. Ripping out a piece of my notebook, I scribbled a thank you note to Mateo for teaching me how to do opium like an old Chinese man. The Politician got one too, in the interest of equity. I placed their respective notes on the pillows beside them, planting gentle kisses on their foreheads. First the Politician, and then Mateo. As I gathered my cigarette smoke-tinged silks and lace, I felt lucky to escape before the pair woke up. The Politician was angsty in the mornings, and Mateo’s West Coast disaffection carried a sarcastic, dry wit. He had the sort of personality I could only withstand in dosages, intimidated merely by his posture, let alone his tongue. Mateo, when sober, was ephemeral and callous, dense like thick nectar. That night, however, Mateo understood me as an Aquarian. I felt closer to him than anyone else.

Partway through American Psycho, Patrick Bateman hires these two prostitutes and names them Christie and Sabrina. He tells one of them to lick the other’s “cunt,” and then describes the ensuing act as, ‘lapping like a dog.’ When my mother brought me to Barnes & Noble to purchase the novel, I was in the seventh grade, and hadn’t heard the word cunt before; let alone in a context so graphic and anatomical. It felt sort of like when, in the prior year, one of Stephen King’s many depictions of sexual abuse introduced the term ‘fellatio’ into my sixth-grade dialect.

The scene in American Psycho was the first I’d opened the novel to in the store, and I quickly shut it. The c-word was an eyesore, too incendiary for even my mother to miss, despite her glaring lack of censorship of my entertainment. She bought me the book, and I still have it stacked on a stack atop my dresser. While the greater majority of my peers, fellow up and coming gay guys, paid tribute to Patrick Bateman with half-baked Halloween concepts, he always just made me think of the c-word.

It was two days after my twenty-first birthday when I thought of Patrick and the prostitutes without hearing the c-word. Instead, I heard Mateo below me, speaking in his West Coast restraint, drawing out each word with disaffection. “You really want to get fucked,” he said, and the observation took little estimation. My palms held my torso above his, knees parted beside his waist as I straddled him. I’d been breathing softly, yet in an increasingly doggish pant as he adjusted my body to his pleasure. Our faces met, yet not in any sort of traditional kiss. Our mouths were both wide agape, his somewhat overtaking mine, colliding diagonally with my upper teeth. We breathed into each other for a moment, and with his words still remnant in my mind, I slid my tongue out of my huffing mouth and into his. Lapping at him, I felt uncontrollably canine.

I’d met Mateo a year prior when I was dating an aspiring politician. Mateo also dated the Politician some number of lifetimes before I had, and like me, the Politician kept his previous bedmates at hand. An incessant buzz rang through the Politician’s studio one night when we hadn’t expected company. Upon opening the door, Mateo usurped the apartment without proper introduction. He was in a bad way, inebriated and lamenting some incoherent conflict that occurred earlier in the evening. As Mateo continued to explain how he fled from his apartment after his roommate used their bread loaf as a projectile, I remained meek and shy behind the Politician. At one point, Mateo’s attention turned to me as I rubbed the Politician’s shoulder. “Don’t massage him. Don’t pretend to be stupid. You shouldn’t try to act stupid,” Mateo told me, but I was always good at that.

Then began a period of mutual admiration. We didn’t speak again after that night, instead performing a scrying game of sorts. Whenever I published any sort of writing, I’d be sure to check all day until I’d gotten confirmation that he’d seen it. In a fetishistic sense, one can’t bludgeon the feeling of being utterly desired while imagining Mateo compulsively searching their name. Eventually, even after I split from the Politician, I was still captured by Mateo. In godawful poems, I’d include references or messages for him. None of this obsession felt inherently sexual, observational but not yet nearing voyeuristic. Recently, we made nice after a proper introduction at an art gallery. We exchanged contacts and ketamine, and I thought little of it.

Mateo picked a great time to proposition me, because I had plenty of better things to do and no good excuse to blow them off. For months, I had an excellent excuse: love. I’d been infatuated with a married crossdresser, the sort of fantastical dilemma my friends snark over. The Crossdresser had left me just two days prior, in my very own home, and on my very own birthday. Without a man to idealize as my life force, I could never self-actualize. Forced to operate at limited capacity. This resounding, asphyxiating lack was radiating like an ulcer in my stomach as I stepped out and into the car Mateo ordered for me, brown leather harness fastened across my stomach.

There was no conversation, which I anticipated. Mateo spent the entirety of my car ride detailing the litany of coital acts he’d intended to commit, satiating himself in the meantime with the auto-fictitious messages. Call it manifesting, perhaps. Regardless, I undid the knot holding together my blouse as he welcomed me with a kiss. By the time he worked me to the point of panting over him like a dog, we’d burnt through the joint he instructed me to bring. Every so often, he would pull my head up from his hipline, exhaling the stale marijuana smoke into my lungs. Increasingly animalistic, I grew more primitive and retarded.

Too autistic for pillow talk, my sex noises had always been mostly artificial moans and zealous squeals. Mateo was more verbal, which I admired. My search for validation was no secret, and the affirmations themselves were orgasmic. My body felt lighter, more tender, each time Mateo affirmed that my body was perfect, and other people’s bodies were far inferior, and my body had become his new favorite hobby. It felt especially good from someone like Mateo, who had the sort of body I first developed dysmorphia over. His build was the same as the Crossdresser’s; tall (insofar as to be much taller than I), uniquely thin and corseted for a male, and spotted with needlessly-tight muscles. Even the definitions of their abdomens took similar dips and curves.

Three hours in, Mateo’s energy rapidly faltered. He fell onto the pillows behind me, pulling out of me and dropping me from the criss-cross cradle his lap was forming. Mateo told me that if I waited a few minutes, his evil roommates would go to sleep. Then, he’d go into the kitchen and warm up some frozen borscht he’d gotten from the Politician. Ironic, I thought, because right before Mateo fell asleep, he told me he didn’t understand how the Politician could’ve broken up with me- particularly because of my perfect, blue-ribbon body. We seldom screwed, and I’d been the one to break it off, I explained. Mateo was barely awake, so I quieted and teetered to the window he’d opened for me. Watching his chest slowly conquer and fall, forcing hard crescendo breaths as he slept, I exhaled the smoke of a Camel Crush. Mateo was dead out. It was nearly eleven at night, and he wouldn’t wake up, not even for borscht.

Attempting to slip back into my rendezvous disguise, the creasing of my leather trench coat woke Mateo. Still half-dreaming, he muttered, “You don’t have to go.” I told him I probably should, though, and I had a class in the morning. To this, he just whimpered, “No,” so I weakly dropped my coat back to the floor. I folded back into the bed, knowing I’d get little sleep, if any. Mateo passed right back out, though, which I didn’t mind. All of my partners had tendencies to fall asleep first; if anything, it was a comfort. Plagued with insomnia, I finally shut my phone off at two in the morning, dodging a call from the Politician. He had an event the next day, some big announcement to the public. Whatever it was, I likely wouldn’t have been able to help from his ex-boyfriend’s bedside, anyway.

Morning forced itself upon me, pouring in through Mateo’s skylight and illuminating his small dwelling. Mateo still couldn’t fight sleep, not to a useful degree that is, so I left a note on his nightstand to thank him and planted a gentle kiss on his forehead. For the rest of the day, I operated with sterility. Unsure if I was savoring the prior evening, or anxiously avoiding any guilt it might summon, I occupied myself with busywork and unwarranted process. My notes from my poetry class were tedious and repetitive. I mindlessly re-curled all the XLR cables in my office. In the evening, I had to press my suit for the Politician’s big announcement. There were other parties, shindigs in order for Fashion Week, Valentine’s Day, and seemingly a trillion other occasions all coinciding. I still chose the Politician’s event, though. Like a dog, I remained loyal.

The party, disappointingly, was not an open bar, so I drank less than I’d have liked, yet still enough. The bar was somewhere in the West Village, booked out in collaboration with some right-wing women’s collective, something for the young and hot and politically maligned. I didn’t know most of the crowd, but did my best to network. A fat man offered me his business card, and I learned that a prior fling had done a woman named Sarah horribly wrong at a bar next door. Incredibly salacious stuff.

Lethargic and spent from the previous night, I was ready to exit much before the crowd whittled. There was one guest left to greet before I departed, the Politician’s mother, and I found her sitting in the front corner of the bar. She was always gentle, and she was a superb cook. A painter, too. She was doing well, which I was glad to hear, even if, as she politely griped, her sauna still wasn’t installed. I played dumb while she glanced around the room, noting the scent of marijuana wafting about. I hadn’t the gall to admit the odor was diffusing from my breast pocket. Before I could properly fade into the night, she pulled me in and whispered, “You were always my favorite. I like to ask about you.” Silently, I smiled. I used to fear that the credulous, exonerating gaze of the Politician’s mother would stunt him. Now, for once, I could only celebrate how little she truly knew about her son, and by extension, how little she’d ever conceive of our incestuous little world.

FRIDAY

A high-profile missing persons case that took over the news cycle made me cry all morning. Lately, I’d become incredibly sensitive. When something that had nothing to do with me gave me a potent emotion, I’d juice it and chug for as long as I could. Focusing on tragedies like the aforementioned helped me not to worry about my own problems. Other ways to outsource included arrest videos of teachers intoxicated on the job (particularly when they follow all the way to the station), and some segments of John Quiñones’ hit television series, What Would You Do.

I avoided worrying too much about my life for the same reason that I stopped publishing diaries: everything was great. Nobody was dead nor dying nor doxing me, and in fact, most people were earnestly kind to me. I was young and underweight, and not even an alcoholic in ‘that’ sense anymore, despite how high-functioning I’d always remained. My problems were banal and the products of my human errors, but I still needed to do something with how upset they made me, so I somewhat immorally fixated on other people’s lives. When I finished crying, I left for class.

In the subway, I distracted myself by meditating. There’s a scene from my ex-boyfriend’s apartment that I pictured in a warm hue as I quietly released a big-Buddha-auuuuuum. Dimethyltryptamine is a hallucinogen that floods your brain when you die, and my ex-boyfriend was very into vaping it. His new fascination began around the time I’d stopped serially breaking off our relationship, and we became best friends. We tried it together when I first visited him again.

We cast ourselves atop his black bed in the corner of his studio apartment, and my fingers trembled as I inhaled. He encouraged me to take much more than I did, so I pretended to, though knew my limits. He was firm beneath me, caressing my back as I shut my eyes and pressed my head into his sweater. Apparently, he took enough to see what he usually calls “the angels,” but I was glad not to go that far. Instead, I saw almost nothing, albeit some rhizome-ish shapes. I didn’t have any revolutions about my life either. I couldn’t think about the content of my life if I tried. For the fifteen-minute trip, it was as if I were truly existing outside of time, and outside of myself. Afterwards, we affirmed our love for one another, and I departed.

When I meditated on it, it wasn’t hard to conceive that dimethyltryptamine floods your brain when you die. It made sense why I was so comforted by the resounding nothing of the experience, and I was lucky that comfort didn’t lessen my fear of death. I was also glad it didn’t lessen my fear of dimethyltryptamine, because despite the praises of whatever shamans, the elixir was above my weight class.

These thoughts concluded for thirty-six minutes, the exact length of my poetry workshop. We reviewed the syllabus and completed a twenty-minute prompted free-write. The prompt was confusing and contradictory, so I spent most of the exercise staring at the paper and angling at the prompt. Caught in the semantics. Regardless, the class ended early, though the subject of my next appointment had also been uniquely ahead of schedule.

Leaving school, I headed three blocks south to the Six train. I used to take the same route to do dimethyltryptamine with my ex, which is incredibly apt. All of my most tragic romances have failed somewhere between Astor Place and Alphabet City. Throughout the Lower East Side, my lovers have lived, taken their own lives, and even gotten married to each other. The latter was, at the time, of particular interest.

I was leaving class to meet the Crossdresser, my married lover. Before he earned that title, though, I met the Sommelier, his husband. I accepted a date with the Sommelier on a whim, mostly attracted to the novelty of having dinner with a married man. Writing about sex and relationships had always been the most publicly accepted of my work, so why not broaden the horizon a bit? Of course, my iron-clad willing naivety and my lightweight tolerance for romance left me intoxicated; increasing at a rate beyond the Sommelier’s comfort. Despite the Sommelier’s urgencies to keep our relationship slow and intentional, considering past traumas and hang-ups from his former concubine, he had also strongly encouraged me to meet his husband.

When I first relented, The Crossdresser entered late and introduced himself kindly. He sat down at the table and asked me flatly, “So, how do you like my husband?” The question felt mortifying as-asked, though I wheezed out some variation of, “Quite a lot.” We enjoyed chicken over wine, then eventually Everclear, and consummated with a game of Truth or Dare. Drunkenly, I convinced myself I could still physically withstand writhing through a threesome. This was, perhaps, ambitious for someone like myself who naturally resisted penetrative sex. Halfway through, in a manic fit of near-sobriety, I released a frenetic whimper, pleading with no apparent reason to stop.

The whole encounter was more-than stressful for the Sommelier, whom I saw alone only once or twice after my meltdown. Determined not to sully my reputation, however, I immediately prioritized the Crossdresser, who had only seen my worst. This damage was facile to undo, and our relationship excelled beyond the initial scope ever set by the Sommelier. The Crossdresser and I attempted to pull the reins on our tryst plenty of times, knowing whole-heartedly that our relationship couldn’t progress since only one husband was pursuing me. The last time I spoke with the Sommelier, he lamented his regrets. He never intended for me to be hurt, he assured me, and he wished things could’ve moved slowly. Maybe, he even ventured to posit, he could’ve loved me one day, just like the Crossdresser did. This being said, emotions were constantly running high, and the situation was fraught. Fraught all around.

When I arrived this afternoon, the Crossdresser and I had sex, and then he began work on his thesis paper. Most of our meetings followed such a structure recently: we fucked, he worked, we ate, I left. There were no more overnight rendezvous at my home, and the Crossdresser had prohibited me from interacting with any of his acquaintances. In fact, only one of his friends was privileged with the knowledge of my prolonged existence. He sat at the table taking notes from an audiobook on childhood transsexuality, while I waltzed across his and the Sommelier’s bedroom. The first, most noticeable irregularity was that their wedding photo fell, and the frame had shattered. It felt cliché to observe that broken glass is bad luck in many spiritual practices, but it’s true.

I gazed upon all the other tributes to their love and felt nothing but jealousy. Firstly, I was jealous of the ceremonial sacredness of it all. Processes and events and celebrations that I did not get to have so long as I remained a concubine. Secondly, I was jealous of their sex. I often wondered if it must be odd for the Sommelier to sleep in a bed I’d just gotten fucked in, particularly when he used to fuck me. Looking at their bed, covered in my sweat and semen, I considered when the Crossdresser once texted me, “Just railed my husband.” Initially, the vulgarity struck me until I realized I was incredibly jealous of both of them for fucking each other.

SATURDAY

After happy hour, I had nothing to do. Technically, the Crossdresser had promised to sleep over and wait until midnight for my birthday. By seven that evening, he informed me he would depart at nine, and so I waited in eager anticipation of his arrival at ten. Upon entering my apartment, we almost immediately began having sex. It should be stated that I never took issue with the sex, nor how frequently it occurred. Despite my usual reservations towards sex, I was quite comfortable with the Crossdresser. After sex, we planned the rest of the evening. We’d wait for my birthday, I’d open my present, and then we’d pick up dinner and my first legal drink.

These things unfolded in the appropriate chronology, and yet something had still been terribly wrong. Earlier, I’d seen him closing applications on his iPhone, just after showing me a string of cooking videos the Sommelier had sent him, and noticed a dating app in the slew. As we returned to my house, half past midnight, I asked him, “Have you thought much about seeing other people? Aside from your husband and me.” He assured me he hadn’t much, and inquired why it was on the mind. I told him rather plainly that I had noticed the app on his iPhone and was curious. His answers didn’t particularly satiate me, never revealing whatever urge it was that had sent him to even open the app. They varied between, “I don’t feel unfulfilled,” to, “we’ve had lots of problems,” the latter more objectively factual. The conversation had carried into dinner, and by then, we were finishing up our takeout.

He was clearly too tired to continue, and had settled down on the couch. I sat in the corner, and he laid his head across my lap. Cradling him and the Four Loko we purchased, I played music quietly from my iPhone and sang along. Upon review, the whole thing lasted longer than I could recall. Once it finished, though, we brushed our teeth and crawled into bed. As we fell asleep, we whispered to “Puff, the Magic Dragon.”

SUNDAY

In the morning, it was my birthday. My friends had a long-running joke that my birthdays were wretched days on which misfortunes and misgivings plagued our communities. Last year, my birthday party was a carnage. Adeline had sliced her finger open, ultimately reducing to tears in the living room, while a slew of plus-one men had steadied their conflict to the point of physical violence. Partygoers had urged them to, “take it to the roof,” a proposal they thankfully dismissed. This is all to say, my birthdays have historically ended in fatality.

Upon waking, the Crossdresser wished me a very-very-very happy birthday before a decent few hours of cuddling. We slept past my brunch reservation, nearly until noon, later than I had slept in ages. In the kitchen, I found him making buttermilk banana pancakes, with one already fresh off the oven. He wasn’t proud of its appearance, as it had split in two when flipped, but I thought they looked delectable. Taste was all that truly mattered in this instance. The pancakes were great, and we ate them without strain, but I was still unsatisfied with the lacking answers he had provided me the prior evening.

As he stood at the sink washing the dishes, I told him he hadn’t particularly answered my question, at least why he’d felt motivated to re-open a dating profile. He repeated that he didn’t know, now setting down the dishes and slinking towards my bedroom. We returned to my bed and had all the same conversations that we’ve had countless times before, all at once. He wanted me to see other people and believed it would be healthy for me. I didn’t want to do that, so long as we continued to have sex. He feared he might upset me by seeing other people, and I affirmed that he absolutely would. Clarifying, he told me he hadn’t been intentionally seeking other partners, though in the long term he wanted “an equitable relationship with three people,” an expression which irked me down to its composition. This wasn’t a new concept by any means, though it’s also glaringly obvious that he wouldn’t achieve that while laying on my bed. Overstepping my bounds, I brought up that the Sommelier had another partner for roughly two months after me, one whom had no interest in a ménage à trois. The Crossdresser relented and made the appeal that I’d been banging over the spouses’ heads for months; they’re obviously failing in approaching partners separately. To be quite honest, I wasn’t even sure that this admission was an actual marital consensus settled between the pair, so much as a means of the Crossdresser explaining dynamics of lust beyond any of our understandings. If I were to ask the Sommelier his opinion, I reckoned he would present more defensive.

Though I fought it, the conversation kept swirling towards our bitter divorce. The Crossdresser kept insisting that he should leave right-that-instant, but didn’t want to, and also knew I didn’t want him to. He told me he wished I could tell him what I needed and what would make me happy. I had no response. Perhaps if I said that I needed him to stay, he would’ve, but it felt as if I were being persuaded towards cosigning his departure, which I vehemently opposed. This lasted for nearly a half hour, as he slowly would put on another garment, only to pause and comfort me as I crumpled my face into a red, wet shrivel.

The Crossdresser stood in the hallway of my apartment, wearing a long red coat. It was the sort of garment that was tailored for someone as long and thin as him, like a ferret. He had gotten it last month on his birthday from a transsexual, one he’d be seeing later for a film, and one who hated me. The Crossdresser told me it was very hard for him to leave, and I still had nothing to say to that, aside from releasing the obvious chokes from harder, growing sobs. Pulling me closer for a hug, he began speaking softly, relaying sentiments that were too sweet for me to accept. I shook my head, watching down the hallway with my fingers curling behind my lower lip, gripping the backs of my teeth. He mouthed ‘I love you’ before stepping out of my building.

In the aftermath, I prepared for my birthday party with Josh and Adeline. Josh brought a bottle of champagne, and Adeline acquired two tallboys. I watched on Apple Maps as the Crossdresser ventured downtown to the theater, and then to the bar shortly after. Perhaps he was also bemoaning the tragedy to his friends, or maybe he was still too ashamed of me to admit to keeping me around. I considered my outfit for my party, taking mental note that the Sommelier had never written to wish me a happy birthday, even before the dismay. Last year, on the Sommelier’s birthday, I gave him a monogrammed dictionary, bookmarked to words that he’d often correct my usage of.

Adeline and I made it to the bar, where the waitress I’d arranged with had failed to properly book our reservation. This was no issue, as the overwhelming majority of my invitees wouldn’t arrive. For the first half hour, Adeline and I drank alone. I cried while she fingered her stirrer, avoiding eye contact. Obviously, my tears were preemptive and mostly spurred by my romantic failures. Faith was the first to arrive, and I appreciated that. We’d only met once prior, in an exterminator shop/nightclub’s rave. I’d lost all of my belongings that night and nearly committed a string of break-ins. As a few more settlers joined, Stephen brought me a prayer card, and my fashionable gay roommate got me a drink.

Eventually, Adeline left for the bathroom only to go AWOL, and our attempts to track her were pointless. She was a flighty girl. As it became ever more apparent that the evening had peaked, Anna sent a car to collect me. I held my breath as I waited, hearing beyond the thin wall as the stragglers sympathetically agreed with Keith that I was a, “sweet guy.” Oddly pathetic, I thought, although that clearly wasn’t the intended sentiment. The chauffeur to my ex’s East Village studio quickly arrived to cart me away.

In my ex’s apartment, he and his friends, who’d neglected my invites, formed a makeshift party. My ex warmed leftover borscht for the crowd on the stove, and defrosted a slice of cheesecake just for me. He did his best, and I couldn’t blame him for his reclusive ways; even if his homebody tendencies extended beyond the winter. Before sleeping, he asked me for a massage. I worked my thumbs into the depths of his shoulders, pressing down the sides of his spine. We slept sexlessly across from his new assistant, who slumbered delicately on the couch. My legs stayed crossed, knees pulled up, pointed towards the cold bedside window. In another lifetime, I used to complain about nights like those. I would, despite my sexual unsureness, plead silently to God that my ex would overtake my body and defile me.

God never gave me what I wanted, and chastity had to suffice, just like it would tonight. Eyes closed, I imagined long arms running across my stomach, caressing up my clavicle towards all the tender spots at which I flinch. I imagined taking the train backwards in time in a dimethyltryptamine black pit, and ending up in my married lovers’ apartment for the first time. I imagined I never said, “stop,” and instead, pulled the Crossdresser in for another kiss while the Sommelier was inside of me. And then, for at least a few hours, I slept in fast anticipation of a menacing, vestigial walk of shame.

Seafood was never really my thing as a kid, though I’ve done fine experimenting with gentler dishes. I’ve been struggling with the rest - the scaly, slimy, fish-smelling type of fish. Oysters are an exception; the lovely mollusks often aren’t too invasive or oceanic, and only require a dash of hot sauce or a squeeze of lemon as a complement. Perfectly inoffensive, effortlessly romantic. “Ugh, a twink’s first oyster is like a serial killer’s first kill. Beautiful girls have to eat oysters,” Cassidy told me, passing a shucked shell across the counter at Bar Belly. “People say they make you horny, too. An aphrodisiac.” At the time, this held little significance to me. I’d never had much of a sexual appetite, to the extent of situationships ending over my unwillingness to “be sexual enough.” Another safe shellfish I admire; though this a crown crustacean, would be lobster - specifically the tail. My boyfriend introduced me to the dish, leaving me in bed the morning after our premiere rendezvous to fetch the ingredients from Wegmans. One could argue the experience was biased; tainted by my admiration for the day’s work put into courting me. This is futile; however, once your tongue has touched my boyfriend’s girthy lobster tail. Prose has failed to achieve satisfying descriptors for the salivatingly buttery softness of its sweet meat, lightly kissed by garlic across its tender body. The lobster melted in my mouth, and I melted to my knees.

After lobster, my boyfriend was moved to teach me about all the other types of seafood, including his beloved tinned fish. Neither sardines nor anchovies ever piqued my appetite; their little bodies lined up like war prisoners in a sad, moist mass grave. Once, though, he got a super-duper special tin of sardines. They were, as he told me, “Almost $20, and I had to go through Amazon to find them!” However, the price of this luxury did not include removing their heads. My gross-fish-eating boyfriend impaled the plump pilchard with a small fork, the tear in its surface oozing softly. Brandishing a small kitchen knife, he sliced the sardine’s little head off, letting both the cranium and the carcass fall onto the walnut counter. Other slices were made, slices that I didn’t understand as such a puny amateur chef, leaving the body already mangled before he switched once more to the fork, tearing off a heaving scrap of sardine. “Aaaaand, have a bite,” he grinned, waving the wet pulp toward my pale-pursed lips. All I could look at were the guts, the way they’d casually spattered across the counter, and the powder-ish pink dampness slinking down the fork’s prongs.

Eyes clenched firm, mouth contorted, my head danced away from the fork as he targeted my innocent, unsalty mouth. Nonverbally, I shook my head like a refusant toddler. The reaction, almost instinctive, was the incorrect impulse. Drunkenness did not help; my plight against the pilchard only intensified in my disorderly state, leaving me floundering against the small sardine. My braver-than-I boyfriend looked at me, now relinquishing to silence. Having identified my weakness, his glance read as despondency - a punishment worse than being struck in the face. Being struck in the face, at least, would be an engagement in the power dynamics guiding both sex and seafood pseudo-wrestling. In sex, the feminine objective is escape, while the masculine objective is domination. Wrestling is mostly the same, and seafood wrestling is even closer since that’s got plenty to do with insertion and swallowing. In desperation, I lunged for the sardine and gobbled the mushy mass from the fork. The act was disgraceful - utterly unwomanly and entirely un-erotic. My boyfriend was not proud. He did not kiss me on the mouth before bed.

Mahi-mahi came next; we ate it in October, while trying a new meal kit delivery service. Ever grateful for my age, I found a student discount, so my boyfriend didn’t mind paying for the subscription. My contribution was more valuable than money, one that many endlessly splurge on, only to pursue fruitlessly. This taxation is not paid to Home Chef, a subsidiary of Kroger, but rather paid to God and merely respected by the Kroger corporate entity. I am trading my sacred, adrenochrome-laden youth for this mid-grade mahi-mahi with “roasted chile-ginger potatoes.” Fillets of ray-finned lean, clean meat, certainly well-prepared in their black garlic coating, though not with love. These fish, these common dolphinfish, are immemorable. Oysters, as promised by Cassidy, were the harbingers of sex that would enliven my nubile spirits - a superstition plaguing my placebo-ed brain. Lobster was quaint and intimate, but made big promises. And sardines, while revolting, came with a game of erotics - a test of submission. While freshly shipped and wholly organic, the prepackaged fillets were nothing compared to real seafood foreplay. Despite my resentment toward sex, I needed a fish that would get me fucked again.

My boyfriend and I received another fish the following week, though I can’t recall what Kroger Corp. had prepared for us. This is frustrating; and I’ve considered lying about the fish - picking one of thirty thousand and pretending we’d eaten that one next. According to my creative nonfiction textbook, this type of lying improves writing. Some “minor embellishment,” it reads, “makes the story better.” Advice like this is terrible, and the fish in question was auxiliary.

Spring loomed, a casual shuffle to slaughter despite snowfalls and predictions from misguided groundhogs. Living á la bacchanal had tested my boyfriend and my winter hibernation - drinking too much, sleeping too little; our fridge painted with scent-stained Indian takeout containers, no room to store freshly caught fish. He’d been working hard, defining deliverables and closing contracts - doing everything I know nothing about, other than that he’s real good at it. Meanwhile, I’d been hardly working; my bohemian half-semester break becoming a long winter of wallowing. I stopped eating oysters, their salty peck had lost its sensual power against the whipping chill. Any seafood sex magic had long been drowned out, suffocated beneath the layers of beer-belly blubber we’d grown. Desperate for change, the need for some briny, brute loving was dire, but such conditions would never satiate a need for shellfish nor sperm. Remedying our sour circumstance, my boyfriend began researching gym memberships, while I researched fish recipes.

I left my boyfriend’s house on a Monday morning, and decided I was going to make us a fish dinner the next evening. Reddit told me there is no science behind aphrodisiacs, which obviously implies their power is metaphysical. It also told me that only certain sorts of seafood are considered aphrodisiacs, but this was my hoodoo-voodoo ritual, so I decidedly set my own sights. Contemplating which fish to cook as I walked home was near pointless, as I barely passed as sous chef to my Michelin-star man, so I didn’t bother trying. Attempting to divert my focus; I considered not glancing at the chaos outside of Pak Punjab Deli. There were people and ambulances and police cars, something or someone had collapsed, jumped to their death, even? I didn’t look, at least not more than a fleeting peek, which I soon grew to regret. The flash lingered when I arrived home, sticking in my mind as I quelled boredom by chatting with psychics on Reddit. I’d fallen deep into that, psychics and wiccy magic and whatnot. Some internet algorithm caught onto my frenetic paranoia, and I’d been evading tarot readers ever since. They often told me an unnamed man was thinking about me, that he missed me, that he still loved me. If I liked and shared the video, he’d keep loving me. I also received anonymous psychic guidance from a Reddit user. I asked her, "Did someone die outside of Pak Punjab, or was that guy alright?” “I’m not sure what you mean,” she wrote back. Trying again, I asked, “What fish will bring the most romance to my date night?” She did not reply, so I resorted to scallops.

The next afternoon, I narrowed down my list to a few scallop recipes and put on a very tiny outfit. For sides, I selected only simple vegetables. This meal had to be delicate, light enough to soothe our stretched-out skins. Later in the evening, I returned to my boyfriend’s home, seeking the final approval of my culinary instructor before collecting each ingredient. He’d gotten deep into his work by the time I arrived, and offered me a swig of his soju. “Do the scallops I sent sound good?” I asked. “I didn’t look at the recipe, but that sounds fine,” he replied, to which I smirked. “So it’ll be a surprise. You always pretend to hate surprises, but I don’t think anyone hates surprises. Either they don’t care, or they really like them, and you just don’t care,” I smirked wider. He told me he’ll need two more hours to work, and sent me to gather the groceries.

By the time I returned with treasures fully assembled, it was apparent that work had not nearly reached its conclusion. This is a pattern with men at work: their endless phone calls. One businessman calls another - this conversation then prompts the first man to contact a third, and the cycle repeats itself. They find themselves at the bottom of a glass of dark liquor, the type that you can’t mix with orange juice to make better, and the type that kills erections. This evening had been particularly fraught - lots of locker room talk, the sort of stuff I feign smirking at to shield my wandering ear. On the other end, another businessman was complaining to my boyfriend, taking issue with a stupid detail recorded in a Sam Venis article that quoted them. I, however, am not a businessman, so that wasn’t my concern. Patting my scallops dry, I pretended to stop eavesdropping. This was fairly easy, as I’d been preoccupied with my gripe about the article. “[REDACTED] was working the room with Chris, his twenty-something boyfriend who hung off his arm like a handbag,” it read. Yellow journalism, if you ask me. The allegations were only half true. Having been nineteen, such an accusation was at the minimum an attempt to swindle me of my waning youth. As for the latter, I had no excuse, though I found the chosen simile a bit dull. Getting more inventive, I’d appraise myself as a much more interesting object. Interesting not in its flashiness, as a handbag would be, but in its unexpectedness. Expensive still, but favoring function over visual aesthetics, I also don’t make the scene any more ‘beautiful’ when I stand next to my boyfriend. Handbags command attention, I instead am reflective, reflecting the light of his eyes in camera flashes off of my cheeks and teeth as I smile, nodding along to whatever he says. Black and bright and brutalist, I was merely his spotlight.

I was tense enough to hit myself, but I didn’t because I got over that. My boyfriend would have to lock his fingers tight behind the axis of my cervical spine when the tension got bad, pulling up at each stuck root like a tugboat pulls commercial-sized trawl nets. Wincing at the thought, I switched from scallops to asparagus, washing and trimming the green stalks as the mollusks dried. Across the studio apartment, the conversation had seemingly quieted, leaving only a few, much more fun, phone calls in the manic afterglow of the workday. My boyfriend was far less tense, having switched to whisky to get through his final meetings. He was distinctly relaxed, to the point that he could even call his father. He’d told him about the new painting, the one that’d hang above the stove. “It’s a saint,” he explained before pausing, his eyes circling the ceiling, searching for the memory. “Saint Benedict,” I interrupt, “Saint of schoolchildren and exorcisms”. He affirmed this, continuing to relay his design schemes to his father, much too busy to notice my clownish grin. Trimming the stalks of their pale tails, I imagined the painting fitting perfectly. It was very ‘on-brand’ for me, as they say.

Dinner was delicious because I cooked with love; love or intent, whichever is more powerful. Mostly, I intended to provoke sex. My boyfriend did not fuck me immediately after dinner, though, as he never did. Instead, we drank quite a bit, and he asked me to lie on the bed. “Close your eyes,” he told me. “Imagine a field, tell me what it looks like,” he asked me. Then, he asked me to describe a cube and a horse and a fence, and a few other things. There was some Jungian explanation to it all, but I’ve forgotten what each element was supposed to symbolize. Something general about my psyche. “My turn,” I said, before asking my boyfriend to describe a farm and field and flowers. “The fence is very short, and I take a lot of flowers from the field. When the farmer asks me why, I say it’s because I want them,” he told me. I laughed before explaining. “Oh my god, that’s so sad. I’m the farmer, and the fence represents your understanding of my boundaries. The ease with which you climb it is how easily you’d disrespect my boundaries. All of the flowers are other boys who you’d cheat on me with.” He did not like my version of the game, I’m fairly certain.

Eventually, we were both lying in bed, and I’d grown godawfully tired. I ate light at dinner, mostly because of the whole sex thing. It wasn’t the usual gay guy gripe, I just like to look skinny. I didn’t worry often about anal sex, because my boyfriend’s irritating new habit was not fucking me at all, just masturbating himself next to me. I logged this mentally in between seafood dinners, pondering that he might’ve truly hated me, and been repulsed by my twitching little body. When we did anything sexual, he’d close his eyes, which is statistically normal. To me, however, it was simply more evidence. His eyes were closed because he was envisioning someone so much more beautiful and dimensional than me, and also very accomplished chef.

When my boyfriend started to finally kiss me, eyes shut, I started picturing girls on the internet who write blogs. I was so addicted to beautiful girls’ blogs, and the way they’d call themselves evil, and the way they’d call their boyfriends evil. I’d stalk their Instagram accounts and watch their soft blonde curls melt into the black, inhuman fogs next to them. Those dark clouds were their boyfriends. As his tongue gently dueled mine, I opened my eyes, imagining a black cloud next to me, writhing passionlessly against my gaunt figure.

As I recalled wishing I’d eaten the sardines while my boyfriend masturbated next to me, I knew that all I’d ever wanted was to submit to my boyfriend. Submission involves respect, though, and how could I respect someone who wasn’t urged to disrespect my body by wildly screwing it? Realizing this was a grave danger, as it made me contentious to the point of yawning, or rolling my eyes in his face. It’d be very disrespectful, but I lacked impulse control. With a sigh, I rolled my eyes, my boyfriend unaware and closed-eyed. Thank God his were shut, since it’d probably feel like a punishment had he watched me. It was really scary, how the thoughtless yet oh-so-great force of my eyeroll sent my sclera spinning right down into my mouth, snapping them immediately off their optical nerves. The glass marbles were squishy and briny, briny like oysters. Maybe this is sort of erotic, I considered. I tongued them between my molars as my boyfriend moaned softly next to me, still unnoticing. My teeth are fairly sharp, so I didn’t want to risk any scrapes. I swallowed my eyeballs whole.

Entering the alimentary canal that I loathe, the eyeballs floated past my pharynx and into my cramped, wet, warm esophagus as I made fruitless attempts to entice my boyfriend’s preoccupied, grunting body with dry grinds. I didn’t mind that my eyeballs were in my esophagus; really, it was quite nice. The peristalsis contractions were like a massage, and my heart palpitations thudded in a comforting, low toll. The ripples almost tickled, the way I feel tickled on the rare occasion that my boyfriend did decide to fuck me like an animal. That feeling is very specific, and only leaves when I scratch all over as if I’d done heroin and all of the histamine I’ve ever produced was realising in one giant flood.

My boyfriend had gotten sweaty, stroking himself much faster, though by now I’ve given up hope. I was simply lying naked next to him while the eyeballs reached my stomach. It was much less cozy once the eyeballs made it to my stomach. Dark as hell, too, but my eyes could still make out the contents. Mushy peels of grapes I’d eaten out of the freezer, the scallops I’d seared for dinner, half a millimeter of my boyfriend’s pre-ejaculate. I barely even remembered any oral engagement, but it must’ve occurred at some point during the altercation to account for the miniscule amount of semen. This was not an unusual amount, though, because it’s unclassy to swallow. I’d always had an oral fixation, but not in that sense. My boyfriend complained about it a lot, because I bit my nails until they got to a point that he considered “scary” and “zombie-like.” Unlike most things in my life, it was never about submission, just putting something in my mouth.

Back in my peritoneal cavity, the stew was getting much too irritating. The pepsin mixed with salty semen and stomach acid had them so bloodshot and swollen. Given this, I knew my eyeballs couldn’t endure a bile bath once passed to my duodenum. I allowed my boyfriend to finish himself off as I excused myself to the bathroom, where I knelt over his disturbingly comfortable Japanese bidet. I tried so hard to puke the eyeballs up, two fingers stuck three-quarters down my throat, like I was a skilled fisherman who didn’t even need a rod. I only needed my hands.

Once my eyes were rinsed of internal fluids, I situated them safely back into my head. My boyfriend called from the bed, he needed a piece of laundry to clean himself off. I took my shirt, stained only lightly with scallop juices, from the hamper. He didn’t mention anything about the eyeballs or the puking, only complimenting my scallops again before tossing the rag back. Since his eyes were closed, I told myself, he didn’t even notice the gaping, bleeding wounds in my face. Or worse than solipsism, I considered, he just hated me. He thought I’m so dramatic. He was terrible, because he hated me terribly. I couldn’t submit to him, not even attempt to be subservient.

I looked to the kitchen, where St. Benedict would soon menace overhead. Oh, please, St. Benedict, I prayed, please protect me. I am still a sweet summer child. Please, make sex with me a sin. Make sex with me a crime. Any sort of sex, oral, anal, whatever. It all should be illegal, and men should face the death penalty for it. Oh, St. Benedict, please save me. Please send them to the headsman. It’s what they deserve, St. Benedict, and you know it’s what I deserve. I’m sorry, St. Benedict, but I am going to orgasm so hard when their heads fall from the guillotine.

I had trouble with my health insurance recently. My family used to share a plan, the one the state provides to poor people. My sister got a real job, the type I’d never gotten, so I’d been switched to a different state plan for poor people. Since I seldom visit the doctor’s office anyway, I figured it wouldn’t be a hassle. The registration was in my home state, so there were only a handful of doctors available to me in Manhattan.

When my new insurance card arrived in the mail, I registered online and browsed the sparse catalog of medical professionals at my disposal. Dr. Shoudu Zeng specializes in addiction medicine, and Dr. Dana B. Sarvey specializes in child psychiatry. I clicked on Dr. James Mickelson, noting that his office was closest to my apartment. His vast accreditations seemed to cover most bases- primary care physician, internal medicine physician, and certified in girl dissection. Registering for an appointment with Dr. Mickelson was simple, just a blue button on the insurance app that read, ‘Add Provider to Care Team.’

Dr. Mickelson’s intake was a strange process. As a child, whenever I switched doctors, the old one would send over my file, and the new one would catch himself up. Dr. Mickelson had a mountain of questions, and he performed odd physical assessments, too. He didn’t tap my knees with a reflex hammer or use a stethoscope to read my heart rate. Instead, he’d have me grasp at little bottles. His office had shelves above the examination table, a set of three, and each shelf was six inches higher than the last. Each shelf also housed a decanter, akin to Jeannie’s bottle in I Dream of Jeannie. During each visit, Dr. Mickelson asked me to reach higher and grasp the next bottle.

The first bottle was the easiest, because I could reach it flat-footed. It was green and contained a strange tincture with a tangy, sour scent. “Drink half of it,” Dr. Mickelson told me. Having never taken a prescription before, I was hesitant, so Dr. Mickelson grabbed my wrist and pulled the bottle back. He raised it to his lips and took a rapid gulp, his eyes brightening. “Now you know it’s safe. You’ve got to drink it quickly,” he told me, urging me to take the bottle back. Still cautious, I let the solution drip into my mouth, but Dr. Mickelson was very stern about swallowing with haste. After no more than a minute, my stomach began bubbling, and my vision grew wobbly, as if I’d adjusted the frame rate of my eyes. As the disorientation set in, I gargled out to Dr. Mickelson, questioning the contents of the vile. “It’s diluted from moldy rye bread,” he told me. “It feels like acid,” I replied, to which he clarified that the effects are the same.

Only slightly perturbed by the experience, I returned to Dr. Mickelson’s office the next week. For the second examination, I’d be reaching for the blue bottle, this time with the support of my tip-toes. More effort than the green bottle, but no great struggle. Dr. Mickelson plucked it from my hands and instructed me to sit on the examination table. He sat cross-legged next to me and explained that the tincture in this bottle would be vastly different. “We’ll each take three swigs, and you’ll hold each one in your mouth for five seconds before swallowing,” he said. I only made it two sips before the room began to fade, and Dr. Mickelson tried to hold the bottle to my lips for the final drops, but I collapsed onto him. “Too much,” I whimpered. “It’s mebufotenin,” he said, “it’s secreted by frogs.”

I laid on the table, sprawled across Dr. Mickelson as the hallucinations began to smear a thick paint across my mind. First, I saw nothing; my eyes nuzzled deep into Dr. Mickelson’s lab coat. Then, there was a blackness. In the void, I was presented only momentarily with images of my friends and family, until I could perceive nothing but myself and Dr. Mickelson. Had I not felt him beneath me, I’d probably have forgotten he was there, too. “There are so many overlapping circles,” I told him, “and they’ve got fractal designs, like rhizome maps.” He instructed me to look out the window and wave to the trees, though I was too afraid. Burrowing deeper into Dr. Mickelson’s chest, my shaking body began to settle, and the Borromean rings widened, as they’d invited me to enter their intersection. “I love you, Dr. Mickelson,” I croaked, and gently, he told me he loved me too. My eyes remained shut as I clung to Dr. Mickelson.

“That was fucking weird,” I groaned, as my brain lethargically rebooted itself into reality. I remembered school, work, and all of the other worldly structures that comprised my life. “Did you enjoy it?” Dr. Mickelson’s face was still glowing, a childish smile stained across his mouth. I nodded, finding some beauty in the ego dissolution. “Did you talk to God?” Dr. Mickelson stared, overeager. “No,” I told him, but I was quite glad I didn’t. Auditory hallucinations were too intense for me, a line closer to psychosis that I preferred not to cross. “Well, it’s not God, because He’s very busy. You can hear angels, though, or elves. It’s like a ringing, a frequency, and I decode the messages,” Dr. Mickelson explained.

In the final week’s exam, I struggled to reach the third decanter. I could barely see it above my head, hopping up and down while running blind fingers across the shelf. Just barely securing it, I teetered the red decanter to the edge of the shelf, knocking it down and catching it in my palm. “What’s this one?” I looked at Dr. Mickelson, sitting across from me once more. “It’s dimethyltryptamine, the chemical that floods your brain when you die. Follow the same procedure- three sips, and hold each one on your tongue for five seconds. Make sure you listen hard for the angels this time,” Dr. Mickelson advised. Having watched enough Joe Rogan to have heard of DMT, I was most nervous for this tincture, though I trusted Dr. Mickelson. Again, I lasted two sips before murmuring, “the angels, they told me that I’ve taken enough.” They didn’t, though I heard a faint ringing before Dr. Mickelson allowed me to spread across him again. Similar to the last visit, I floated into the void through Dr. Mickelson’s lab coat. As Dr. Mickelson’s legs wrapped around mine, a flood of light ushered in the fractal patterns, though they were no longer circles. Instead, the outline of Dr. Mickelson’s head appeared in the center, with all of the designs rooted off of it. I verbalized this, or at least tried, and Dr. Mickelson picked my head up.

“You’re so beautiful. I see so much geometry in your face,” he told me. “Half of your head is an emerald,” he continued, “but it’s the most beautiful emerald I’ve ever seen.” The distinction seemed important. He asked me what I saw, but by then, I’d already begun faltering back into perception. “I’m not sure. The angels told me to tell you I love you, though.” This was a lie, as I’d still not hallucinated any metaphysical messages, but it felt appropriate. Dr. Mickelson told me he loved me, too, and held his forehead to mine. He kept his eyes fastened on my face, seemingly unconcerned with the tears flooding his unblinking retinas. They pooled across our pressed-together noses, and he told me, “I’m looking across the room. The emerald is so clear, and I can see through half of your face. The rest is all… geometry. I wish I could take a picture to show you how beautiful you look right now.” I could only smirk, having already regained a sense of my body. Waiting quietly for Dr. Mickelson to come back, I kept my face pressed against his, allowing him to keep fawning over whatever patterns he had projected onto my head.

“What did it feel like?” I asked Dr. Mickelson. “Like we were an interconnected being, I suppose,” he told me. I quickly sketched a rhizome map and circled two distinct points. He didn’t understand the comparison, since I could only offer an inadequate description. Standing from the table, I stretched my arms and waltzed across the office, plucking a paper cup from the water dispenser. “So, the tests are done, now what? Do I get a diagnosis?” I looked at Dr. Mickelson, anxious for his reply. “That was your treatment. You’re cured now. Whatever the angels told you, that was the medicine you needed,” Dr. Mickelson proudly exclaimed. Too ashamed to admit I didn’t truly hear the angels, I thanked Dr. Mickelson for his time. He told me I could always visit the office for a regular check-up, though, and I wondered why he hadn’t just offered me that in the first place.

Recently, lots of my writing has focused on things other than documenting boys, living or dead. I did take a creative nonfiction workshop, though, where I wrote two more stories in memory of Stefan. Doing radical honesty again, or something of the sort. I hope you’ll enjoy both of these short scenes, but if you’d like to hear words on other topics, visit my Instagram highlights. I’ve been microdosing mini stories on there, and I try to diversify subjects a bit more. Enjoy<3

I.

Rutgers Presbyterian is incredibly unexceptional, which, in other circumstances, would feel blasphemous to note. Churches aren’t supposed to be so beige. They’re supposed to have stained glass windows and dramatic paintings. Nothing there tells a story, especially not a Biblical epic. Unadorned with lore of bloodshed or mercy or rejoice, it’s merely a brown event hall.

Mr. Millionaire had never been baptized, but he had every intent to, so I guessed settling for a less ornate church was only fair. If anything, he’d get into Heaven on a technicality. You go to Hell for killing yourself, but nobody ever defines ‘kill yourself.’ Instead, there are just ideas, common methods that amass the image of suicide we invent- hanging, shooting, slashing, overdosing, etc. They’re all very instant.

Mr. Millionaire was suicidal all the time, in a terribly bad way. He wasn’t a cutter, or anything like that. Mr. Millionaire was just a shut-in, hermetic and unsalvageable. There was no action taken with the intent to die, instead, he had killed himself with inaction. It seldom matters, because we’d made it to a church, even if it’s not a cathedral.

Above the pews, everything else was there: a balcony with a big organ, hovering brass pipes. White stone statues sit on pillars near every corner, the usual Christly figures. The flowers, a measly ring of white roses, were the only thing to look at on the otherwise barren altar. There was also a poster frame with a picture of Mr. Millionaire, one of the few to ever reach the public. I’d seen it a thousand times. By now, the brown curls of hair and blue, hawkish eyes were burned into my memory- the stare was the same grave one that occupied every glance he paid. The image is unrefined and undetailed, simply boring. I’d prefer to look at a body.

Sitting in the pew, I pictured a silver urn on the altar instead of some sort of casket. Cremation makes the most sense, given the evidence of decomposition in his apartment. Fairy, seated next to me, had come with me to collect his belongings. When she saw the rot, the piles of hair, and the yellow-hardened masses left on the bedsheets, she told me that she wanted to touch herself there. She had wanted to feel close to him.

The image is disgusting, though I appreciated how visceral it was. Fairy always interacted in a way that would later be conducive to her writing, which doesn’t feel performative if it’s honest. When Fairy wrote about wanting to masturbate on the bed where Mr. Millionaire had slowly decayed, I wanted to feel outraged, but I understood. She had always wanted to sleep with Mr. Millionaire, and she was very jealous that I had.

In my defense, I was facing the opposite problem. Like Fairy, I had wanted to sleep with Mr. Millionaire now that he’d died, but I barely wanted to when he was alive. It was a dark age, a sort of celibacy in which my purity was maintained by the fact that I only ever said ‘yes’, to be nice, because saying ‘no’ too directly felt mean– spiritual self-rape. Mr. Millionaire liked that term.

Thinking about sex and its complications is too uncouth for a funeral, but I found a few distractions. I shot a glance toward Fairy, crying softly into her backpack, clutching her beaded iPhone strap. Further back, the pews were mostly empty, though I didn’t expect a massive turnout. Mr. Millionaire’s mother lingered near the back, distributing casual greetings. She was the least solemn in the room, and I tried not to envy that. Some church staff hovered around as if trying to camouflage themselves into the brick walls. Behind me, his boss started massaging my shoulder. I’m too tired to shake him off.

His boss, The Moviemaker, had posted information about the service online, but none of those people actually cared. The ones leaving blasé-broken-heart emojis cared the least, only intending to prove their loyalty to The Moviemaker. They aren’t sorry someone died, they’re sorry he lost someone. It was comforting when some rare few were honest enough to comment, Sorry, who was this? The rest are The Moviemaker’s fans and students, young and stupid and easily impressed. He liked young people; that’s why he’d let Mr. Millionaire shoot all of his important projects. He’d even been sleeping with Fairy for a while, a detail thickening the spoil-dense air when he’d helped us clear out Mr. Millionaire’s tomb.

The music began playing, not from the organ but from a speaker connected to an iPhone. They still had it blasting from the balcony as if an orchestra were washing over us. Fairy’s arm raised slowly to her mouth, taking a slow draw from the small vape wedged between the cuff of her sleeve and carpals. She passed it slowly across the pew, fingering the device across the wooden seat as we rose for prayer.

II.

“By the way,” I begin, stepping out of my loafers, “you’re not allowed to keep saying I don’t invite you anywhere.” I let my bag fall halfway down my scapula before catching it, maneuvering my hips to guide the flaccid blue sack’s route from the floor to Stefan’s couch. The pizza boxes on the floor are a bad omen, a symptom of Stefan’s recluse. My eye follows them, watching their reflection bend and contort across the polished chrome orbital floor lamp looming anxiously over the petite living space. The pile has certainly grown since my last visit, though it was the most decay I’d observed, at least while Stefan was still occupying the apartment. In his wake, the unit would appear much more derelict.

“You didn’t invite me, though. It’s my house, and I texted you. And you know I’m kidding.” Stefan’s tone is flat as it interrupts my surveying of his predicament, a spiritless line parting my judgment into equal dividends. His tone is as stiff as his hair, which, despite being curly and soft and newly cut, still looks untouched from the last time I saw him. Nothing changes much in Stefan’s house, not the decorations, not the bedsheets, and certainly not anything living. There was little alive in the house to begin with, unless you hold much weight for the sentience of fruit flies, so all processes of nature slowed to a voiding halt once they entered the sterile, still ecosphere.

“You didn’t come to my show! You would’ve seen me if you’d come to that. Plus, Kathy was there, and she invited you, and then you told me she doesn’t invite you anywhere either. It was all about your psychoanalysis stuff, too.” My body flings onto the couch, twisting unfavorably as it launches across the cluttered carpet, dodging table edges and trash piles as I land without grace on the pleather. Stefan hovers behind, his face void of anything but thought; pure, emotionless, computer-processor thought.

“It was in Brooklyn,” Stefan reasons, “and Caveh was shooting before. I usually don’t even go out every week, that’d be twice in a day. Didn’t you say it was only one act? I probably would’ve missed it.”

“That’s so not fair. You like your job. You don’t have to do anything else, and you don’t do anything else,” I pause, considering the inheritance Stefan had amassed from his aunt’s passing. “You always say you want to go live in Europe and do things differently, but you don’t really care to. If you cared, you’d do stuff. Who doesn’t give a fuck about a million dollars?” I’m not ashamed of raising my voice, because Stefan knows I’m excitable.

“My life is boring because I’m alone. I don’t want to move alone, and I’ve tried meeting people. Dating sites don’t work, I hate them, and all of my pictures suck. They’re all old. I’ve been going to gay bars for twelve years, and I’ve never met anyone. Plus, I hate the music. I don’t even drink right now. I only drink with other people, so the last time I drank was with you. I haven’t really left my apartment since, just to see Caveh.” Stefan’s speech feels delayed. It feels like watching a live text message. He takes little pauses, and you can see the draft bubble forming. Then, when he speaks, the text flows out, sans serif and operatic.

“You could’ve still totally seen my play. I told you it’d start late, and even if you missed it, you could’ve come just for drinks after, like last time. You love it when I’m drunk. Maybe you’d be a more fun drunk. Ketamine makes you retarded, and then you act like a gooner. When you got drunk after my last show, you kept saying such mean things, it was so hot that you had nuanced emotions.” The corners of my lips are erect, and I do not attempt to stifle my growing smile. I like it when Stefan knows I’m right, and I like to use his vernacular, comprised of 4chan references and Twitter diction.

“Now that you mention,” Stefan looks to his desk, “I’ve been regulating well.” His body takes a mechanical lunge forward, slowly reaching towards his desk. The box Stefan retrieves is plastic, a clear, flip-top situation with a timer and small metal lock adorning its front-facing wall.

“Ketamine can make you piss yourself if you do too much. My friend was like that,” Stefan begins beating on the front of the box, “and now he’s got to wear diapers. He just pisses himself all the time. I know I do a lot, but he was doing even more than me, if you could imagine. I’ve been using this thing so that I space it out more. Plus, it saves money.”

“Again, like money matters in your world. Also,” I reach for the box, “put that down. I’ve got a meeting later. We can go have wine or something.”

“Well,” Stefan’s tone growing slightly warmer, “last time you liked it, and you walked to rehearsal after just fine.” I roll my eyes and think of the night I met Stefan, one of Sovereign House’s few well-supplied parties. They had food for once, and I nibbled the ears off of lots of chocolate bunnies. When Stefan approached me, I was very drunk, since the bar was open, though they never charged me there.

Sovereign House had a policy back then where esoteric girls could drink and have parties for free. Then, lots of them would show up, and it would attract older, and at least mildly hot, conservative guys with a passion for the ‘arts.’ These were the customers who paid five dollars per White Claw. Stefan was the latter.

The next morning was Easter, and I woke up at Stefan’s house. It was the only time I’d let Stefan give me ketamine. Saying it like this justifies it, because even though I’m doing something willingly, I’m still ultimately a victim of the act. Regardless, I walked outside fifteen minutes later, and everybody had bunny ears on. That was, shockingly, real. The glitter in the pavement was just my imagination, though. Pleasant to recall, but not enough to convince me.

Right now, I am very cautious about what goes in my nose, and I hesitate to snort ketamine. Soon enough, though, I will remind myself in his voice that “they give it to suicidal twelve-year-olds in IV drips,” and I will be much better at snorting ketamine. For the time being, I suggest drinks again, and bite my lip in a way that would likely be very sensual, if I only knew how to adjust my face properly.

“I’ll bring you somewhere, but you need to put your jacket on first. I hate when you wear that out with me, it makes me look like a pedophile.” Stefan laughs - or performs his closest imitation of one, and I smirk with heinous whimsy.

“Oh, and that’s so funny to you? You’re smiling to yourself about that? Yeah, yeah, a real sicko. A real sicko, I tell ‘ya!” Hopping to my feet, I dance around Stefan’s small apartment, dashing the full five-foot length from bathroom to bedroom, taunting him with clouds of Miami Mint AirBar Nex.

“That,” Stefan reaches for my small, metal companion, “is terrible for you.” He holds it high above my head, laughing again, but this time less restrained, as if he doesn’t even remember to bludgeon and suppress it. I reach high, pale white provocative peeks of flesh appearing around my midriff as my old Boy Scouts shirt stretches to my loose, flinging limbs. Catching the small device in his fist, I sigh, sliding back into my loafers and leaving my jacket where it sat on the hook since my arrival.

I don’t make it four inches before Stefan stops me, two large hands pausing my motion with the grasp of an explorer examining a newfound rock. His distant unembrace teetered me ten degrees south, back to the coathook.

“Come on,” I tell him as I pull my arms through the sleeves, “We’re going.” I blow a cloud of mint into Stefan’s face, clouding his glasses before spinning towards the door. Hazy and mint-flavored in memory, the last image of Stefan’s face in the apartment remains as corrupted as the composites I’ll later form, imagining it distorted by decay in the first life process to complete itself within Apartment Fifteen. Instead, cautiously unoptimistic, I waltz unaware with Stefan to Double Down Saloon.

Staying home becomes easier as I condition myself against loud noises and large crowds, and the more self-conscious I become - as per every winter, I’ve grown agoraphobic and fat. I’m never really alone, since I almost always accompany my boyfriend. Boys are good distractions, especially boyfriends who you love a whole lot. Boys are supposed to be easy to control, or easily convinced to take control, turning you into a willing conduit.

…

Stefan was never one such boy, and we were never in an actual relationship - strictly casual. There was plenty to admire about Stefan; his universal ability to critique any medium, his awkwardly ill-timed humor, and even his firm, childish angst toward living. Pessimistic, sure, but can I blame him for being as strong in his convictions as I am in mine? His infatuation with sullen living was almost endearing, an innocent, overwhelmed persistence that nothing could ever get better. More than endearing, however, it was a mountainous drag.

…

Once, Stefan told me that all he wanted in life was to be a puppy and to be adopted by a boy who would drag that puppy out for occasional walks. This, to me, didn’t sound like love since the owner’s affection was never clear. The dog was more eager than the owner, which isn’t particularly harmonious. I could, at least, empathize with the restraining passivity. My best explanation would be insecurity, one that breeds anxiety quelled best by consistent stimuli or providing overwhelming displays of love. Given our semi-similar neurosis, it was clear our arrangement was fraught. The constructive interference of two waves results only temporarily in a larger wave, peaking in amplitude before the waves quickly split back into their respective directions.

…

Ending the romantic portion of my relationship with Stefan was much more natural than anticipated, in part because we mutually didn’t crave sex. He was a gooner, most definitely, but only serviced the flesh to distract from what he had craved - a caring presence. Even still, not sleeping with Stefan after we became just friends felt like saying no, something peculiarly brave for me at the time. I wrote before about the pleasantries of being a bobblehead; floating along when completely agreeable, the warmth of having someone want something from you - some of you - in the first place. Sex used to mostly feel like spiritual self-rape because I was either allowing sex to happen to me whilst mentally revoking consent, or the rape was more literal. Considering the former, you can’t feel too victimized after raping yourself. Even if this state was considered victimhood, the extent of your pain is still within your own volition.

…

Stefan and I stayed friends after our liasion, a decision I made all by myself, notable only because I was the one deciding. With Stefan, I could stop raping myself because someone else matched my complaisance for the first time. I’ve spent my life eager to serve, with my main repository of pleasure replenished directly by the satisfaction I bring to others. Stefan’s same selfless fawning was probably why he killed himself - a psychogenic paralysis causing inaction toward self-interest.

…

Saying he killed himself might be unfair since it implies that that’s certain. I’ll at least say that Stefan is dead, and he has been for at least three months. Too much ketamine, not enough food, and an unbearable, looming loneliness rot right through him as he lay in bed. All I know is that it happened in his bed and that his face went first, a detail I wish I hadn’t been given. The image in my head is constant and visceral - red, yellow, and green oozes leaking out between indiscernible rot. I don’t know if he wore his glasses when it happened, but I always picture them sitting weak and wiry in the mess of it all.

…

Quite honestly, Stefan killing himself reads as a fucked up practical joke, and not only because he’d laugh devilishly (charmingly, really) at the discomfort he spawned in others. It also feels like he finally did take control - both over his paralysis and of me. As a last hurrah, Stefan finally got the only thing he’d ever wanted, other than a lover of course, and I was left with rabid confusion and a lurking tinge of guilt.

…

Weeks later, I am now thinking selfishly, too busy being squirrel-headed about my own state. Attempting to return to my orbit, I write infrequently. Being alone should be enjoyable when you’ve got something to write, but the whole diaristic thing requires too much honesty to be a soothing distraction in the moment. I most enjoy mornings, though particularly at my boyfriend’s house, where I spend too much time. Despite the complications, I appreciate the ease of the mornings there. I am always pleased to wake up first, rising quickly and quietly. Silence feels good while mindlessly wiping his countertops or picking up our laundry, the mundane mindlessness of it all. Cleanliness, the results of my content morning labor, makes me smile. I enjoy this simplicity; routinely filling glasses of water before climbing back into bed, waking up again only to find his sleeping body draped warmly across mine. In this morning fog, it’s too quiet for me to be concerned about the overlapping troughs of waves or how their suffocating collision results in flatlining amplitude - destructive interference. There is no need to be distracted from the stillness - no need to be saved from my trajectory. There is only placid water, content in its form.

I don’t go out much, at least not as much as I used to. Even when I was less agoraphobic, I never wrote much about my excursions. Everybody knows that I am insanely popular. Everybody knows that my presence is requested at the function. Despite what Mike Crumplar may implore you to believe, there is no story in simply attending an event, because most events are boring. Without some violent catalyst, a happening disturbing or erotic or intoxicating enough to mar my perception, I leave each gathering with nothing but thoughts half-forgotten at the bottom of a can of White Claw. It is for this reason that I found Beckett’s request so intimidating - to report on my big night out.

To clarify, I was not ungrateful for the invitation, nor unexcited despite my apathy toward such outings. Honestly, I was incredibly excited. So excited, that on the morning of October Twenty-Seventh, I woke up early to make myself look extra beautiful. I would be the most beautiful girl at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally.

I love making myself beautiful to go out. My body is, as I have been told, ‘sexually confusing to look at.’ This doesn’t displease me - quite the opposite. Being ironically sexy is a virtue nowadays - an extension of one’s bit to a physical degree without encroaching on the territory of intentional ugliness; ugliness being one of our time’s most destructive psyops. Taking note of this, I began to plan my outfit. Keeping with the twinky Lolita thing I typically use to court conservatives, I paired my oversized “NEVER SURRENDER!” meme tee shirt with boxy blue short-shorts. This is somewhat enticing, a delicate nod to the man of the hour while retaining my irresistible sexiness, without the impetuousness of a bright red MAGA hat.

Wearing a MAGA hat at a Trump rally is ridiculous, by the way. The symbol has become too direct, staring bluntly back at you like a blinking red stop sign. Instead, you need something with a bit more nuance - a little leadup. That’s why you hook with the shirt, it’s visually interesting and establishes yourself as hilarious. Then, the shorts take a tonal shift towards the sensual as your audience gazes down your bare, shaven legs. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, your secret little weapon. Long, tight socks, adorned with giant embroidered caricatures of Donald Trump. You see, a waif’s pride is held in their ankles - the thin, sensitive collection of bone and ligament signals to masculine counterparts that you are delicate and submissive. Silly or mismatched socks have never made sense as a masculine convention for exactly this reason - masculine men and their muscular cankles have nothing to prove.

These details feel much more interesting than the rally itself. I am more concerned with the burger I ate in the Newsmax press suite than I am with the production of the rally. Newsmax has an annual revenue of over ninety-three million dollars, though they fed me a wholly plain burger. As in, just meat and bread, and probably no seasoning on the meat either. My rage regarding my Newsmax burger is incredibly intense and vivid. My annoyance at my boyfriend for not paying enough attention to me is incredibly intense and vivid. These are the strongest emotions I felt at the rally, which feels now like I’m letting you down. Sadly, I cannot simulate outrage. Despite the current climate, I cannot act as though I am offended or terrified. I cannot act as though I care enough to distinguish between satire that’s untrue and satire that’s just in poor taste.

If you want to call Trump a clown, that’s fine, but then the rally is a circus. Peggy Lee said in Is That All There Is that she never enjoyed the circus, but that point is moot to me since Peggy didn’t even write that song. Peggy probably loved every damn minute of the circus. People love a spectacle, to see a show. The culture has shifted from word to image, from information to entertainment. Nobody wants to speak, they want to entertain. When people go to our readings they’re going to a circus, and at the Trump rally, I am simply at a circus. I am laughing in amazement as TV doctors and brain-damaged wrestlers flood the stage. They are my lion tamers and cannonball catchers and slackwire walkers.

With this being said, please understand that the rally was apolitical - unconcerned with identity, or policy, or even the presidency. Words flow from each guest speaker, falling onto ears too deafened by atmospheric excitement. You see, during the headlining performance at the circus, you may hear the lion roar. Every single howl from each of the dozen chimps, however? Nobody is listening to that. If not cheering or recording or whispering amongst themselves, the crowd hardly remained stagnant, maneuvering the edges of the world’s most famous big top tent in search of bottles of pop and oversized pretzels. A few men throughout the hallways ask to take photos of my socks and sexually confusing legs, and I oblige. Leaning against the walls of the tent as they collect their images, I wonder, ‘How the hell am I going to write about this?’

There was no catalyst. Nothing was particularly disturbing, and I had the eroticism covered myself. Nobody called me a freak homosexual or assaulted me, which are the two things I am told to chronically fear from Republicans. You can’t commit a hate crime when you’re at the circus, though, because you’re too excited. Abandoning reason, you choose enthusiasm and give yourself completely to the ringleader, acknowledging the red velvet curtain while never peeking past.

I have no desire at all to attempt to ethically or morally justify a circus. I just want to tell you that I went to the circus, because Beckett told me to write about it. I want to tell you that my boyfriend looked at too many Instagram reels during the rally, because he is annoying. I want to tell you that Newsmax has really bad hamburgers, because I deserve better.

It’s hard to tell which stories about Kitty are worth telling, almost as hard as picking his pseudonym. Figuring out his name was a unique challenge, even when he tried to help me choose. Then again, we couldn't even put a name to our half-dating relationship. These details are trivial and womanly of me to focus on, though I think such simple aspects of a story are important. I enjoy certainty and am obsessed with knowing everything there is to know. If I want to know everything about the tangible world with absolute conviction, obviously I want the same assuredness about the nitty-gritty details of my relationships.

…

While throwing out potential pseudonyms, Kitty picked Red, which kinda works given how completely dorky it sounds - like a poorly conceived comic book villain. Kitty makes sense for him, so I’ll stick with that instead. Kitty loves his cat. He loves that cat so much that he always makes a point to tell me how much more important the cat is than me. I never debate him on it, but he still finds a way to soliloquize on the topic. One night, Kitty held his hand in the air, dangling above his head.

My cat, he’s up here.

Kitty dropped his hand to his waistline.

You, you’re down here. The cat has power here, you don’t.

I rolled my eyes, not in contention but rather as an expression of boredom. I never liked to be told things I already knew, and the joke became repetitive. Not that it was ever actually a joke, but rather an assertion.

…

Kitty and I are very formulaic in our dates. The ritual has eight parts:

1. I take the train an hour into Brooklyn and arrive at Kitty’s doorstep

2. Kitty puts a YouTube video on the TV, usually Bill Maher or Pawn Stars

3. Kitty and I argue (most often not in a ‘bad way’)

4. I order our milkshakes

5. Kitty and I stop arguing (the food has arrived)

6. Kitty and I eat

7. Kitty and I sleep

8. I go home, avoiding eye contact with my fellow morning commuters

…

Kitty probably thinks I’m emotionally immature because I’m young enough to employ intentional, ironic stupidity while still maintaining control. Despite our age gap, he still counts as Gen Z, something I remind him of regularly.

I was born on the cusp, so it really could go either way. It’s behavioral, too. There are lots of experts who debate about this. You guys are so addicted to your phones and vapes and everything. You can never focus on one thing for more than ten minutes. The term Gen Z is just a technical thing in this case.

…

Bill Maher was talking on the TV about something I don’t care about, which is typical. I don’t remember how Kitty and I started arguing, but he was displeased with something I’d said. I probably told him Bill didn’t interest me, which typically isn’t a problem unless I say it while Bill is still talking. Kitty grabbed my phone and held me down on the couch. My face pressed against the fabric and I couldn’t tell if it was just shitty and scratchy or if I was itching from the cat hair. Smacking his arm and shaking, I felt scared and hurt and very, very bad. I felt like Trisha Paytas.

That’s really bad. Just give my phone back and we can talk. But this is bad. That’s really bad.

Maybe a bit hyperbolic, to be quite honest, since the damage from this punishment wouldn't linger. But still, I said that, and he didn’t like that. His grasp tightened, though only a little, and my face sunk deeper into the cushion.

You don’t pay attention. I don’t care about the stupid shit you always wanna go off on tangents about. Why should I care that you don’t care about Bill? You never pay attention. You never let me make my points.

If I could breathe deeply I would’ve taken a deep breath, but instead muttered back through a half-smooshed mouth.

I do pay attention. You’re not mad that I don’t listen to you, you’re mad that you can’t change how I think.

Kitty released me, yelling something at which I probably yelled back. Kitty suggested I leave, then walked out of the living room, though immediately called out that I shouldn’t actually leave. He was right the first time, but even without his immediate change of heart, I wouldn’t have left. It was late, and I was weak and tired and crying.

…

Kitty walked back into the room a few moments later.

Are you crying?

No, I wept. Kitty tried to be nice. He used his baby voice.

Awwww, don’t cry. I’m sorry, I forget that you’re young sometimes. You’re delicate.

The problem was never that I was young, that excuse is lame and only really employed by the women in these situations. Delicate, maybe.

…

When we woke up the next morning, Kitty took me to the bodega to get coffee. His cousin was there, so I had to enter a minute and a half after he did, and then peruse the aisles as far away from them as possible. Despite hating Gen Z, Kitty doesn’t mind that I’m young, as his type is younger guys and mine is older guys. One thing he does mind is that everyone else in the world probably minds that I’m young. Looking twelve doesn’t particularly help, so I don’t blame him. When he told his cousin about me, he told me that he showed her my writing and they agreed that I’m crazy. He also added two years to my age. At least when he told his mother about me, he didn’t say that I was crazy. Or autistic. To him, the terms are interchangeable, and both apply to me. I can’t exactly deny the allegations, so I won’t bother countering. He says it a lot when we watch TV - when I interrupt Bill Maher, to be precise. Kitty thinks my autism adjacency helps my brain go quicker than his.

I’m not autistic like you. I need to focus.

…

When Kitty’s cousin left the bodega I was allowed to stand next to him. I didn’t get a coffee that morning because I was afraid I would get caffeine shakes. I waited for Kitty to pay for his coffee, standing patiently. There was only one other pair in the store, a father and his son. The boy, no more than eight or nine, asked his dad some questions I don’t remember about what debit cards do. Kitty paid as I eavesdropped, listening closely and giggling as the father started to talk about crypto.

I can’t wait to be a parent. I already have all the love to give a child.

Kitty disagreed. I disagreed with Kitty’s disagreeing. We continued to disagree about my ability to parent a child.

I never said you’d be a bad parent. I said you’re not ready to have a child yet.

Maybe that’s true, at least in the financial sense. I don’t care much for that argument, especially in this economy where nobody can afford a baby. Regardless, I usually don’t need to fear for the wealth of my future children. As much as I tease them, I do tend to date finance bros.

…

A few nights later, Kitty was working until 10 p.m. and told me to meet him at his place thirty minutes after he got off. Of course, I complied and made my way to the train station. With two stops left, Kitty texted me to let me know he might run a liiiittle late. I am pleasant and patient. I knew better than to get annoyed, so I bought a can of Smirnoff Ice at the bodega and sat on his stoop. An hour passed.

…

Hey, I hope I’m not being annoying lol. I’m super nervous sitting out here, I don’t want your neighbors to think I’m loitering or anything. I could walk down towards you and we could meet in the middle since you’re supposed to get out soon.

I prayed that Kitty would see my text and ask his cousin to let me inside. I was cold and scared and had to piss like a pregnant woman. Kitty told me to walk down the west side of the park to reach his job site. Then he told me not to because I would probably get myself kidnapped, but this only excited me as my life had been lacking a sense of danger. I walked the west side, then the north, then half the east.

…

At 1:30 a.m., only two-and-a-half-ish hours late, Kitty emerged from the staff entrance. I waited a few feet down, knowing Kitty wouldn't want his work friends to see my too-young-for-my-age, hebephile-attracting face. I stood near the garbage can as Kitty waltzed over.

I had to pee so bad and nowhere was open so I peed behind this trashcan and then I got so nervous peeing because I was cold and peeing in public and I hate peeing in public and the feeling of it all made me vomit so I threw up behind the trash can too and-

Kitty interrupted, probably for the best. When I’m nervous I speak too much.

I got us an Uber, it’s here.

…

The Uber ride was maybe seven minutes, but it felt like half an hour.

You could’ve gone home if you were waiting for that long.

I looked at him, trying to conjure whatever ounce of sad little boy I could in my soul. I tried hard to look like I was about to cry.

My phone would’ve died, and it’s late. Please, not in the Uber. I’m embarrassed. We can talk at home.

I was becoming dramatic and womanly. Usually, he responds better to maternal scolding than sympathy baiting, so I hoped it would get him to shut up for another moment. It didn’t work.

I guess, but you could’ve stayed on the stoop too.

I told you I get nervous. I don’t want the neighbors to call the cops or something.

Well, it’s not really my fault. My bosses told me to stay late. It’s money, and with the overtime, I’ll get like $200 from those extra hours.

I never said it was particularly his fault, just that I deserved sympathy for it.

Okay, well if you said sorry I wouldn’t be upset and you wouldn’t need to explain or excuse anything. I just want you to say sorry for once.

I waited a moment before convincing myself to say more - something spiteful.

I’ve also spent way more than $200 on food for you every night. And you’ve taken my weed to work and smoked it with your friends more than once.

Kitty told me it had absolutely not been $200, but after Photomath-ing the Grubhub receipts, I can confirm that it had.

You always bring that kind of shit up.

Because you never change your attitude about that shit.

…

We got back to Kitty’s and ordered food with my meal plan, as usual. I sat on the couch and waited patiently for my milkshake. I looked at Kitty.

You know, you’ve made me cry twice now. I’ve never cried because of a guy before, and I’ve literally been raped.

Kitty laughed, but I wasn’t trying to be funny. Maybe a little, but only for myself. Maybe a type of funny where it’s only funny to me because the joke is mine and the discomfort is everyone else’s.

…

Everyone tells me I should break up with Kitty even though he’s not even my real boyfriend. I took that advice to heart and planned to arrive early at his apartment the next night. I’m not a fan of Brooklyn trains, especially not past 2 a.m., and if I were to tell him I was done I’d have a long ride ahead of me. I was nervous when I arrived at 10 p.m., and that nervousness grew when Kitty told me he’d actually be a little late. I resided to his stoop once again, this time replacing the mid-tier Smirnoff Ice with a carcinogenic can of Four Loko. I opened my phone, and I smiled at a text from Kitty.

I’m sorry for last time.

Kitty never-ever-ever says sorry, especially for things that he should actually be sorry for. Usually, he just says it’s my fault. I texted Kitty to ask what flavor of milkshake he wanted.

Strawberry, could you find somewhere with a chicken burrito too?

I ordered the milkshake (and burrito), which arrived moments after Kitty did at 11:30. We went inside and I made myself pretty in the bathroom. Kitty likes it when I look pretty - when I grew my hair out Kitty thought I didn’t look pretty anymore. Once I cut it, he told me I was pretty again. I left the bathroom and told him that I was thinking about the time he told me I was pretty again. He told me that my hair was actually too short now, so it’s still not pretty - therefore I’m still not pretty. We ate and went to bed, and I pretended I didn’t arrive with plans of leaving him.

…

In the morning Kitty slept in past the alarm like he always does. I was already awake, sitting on the couch scrolling through Pinterest. I picked up our coffees early that morning - Kitty struggles with mornings and it agitates me, so I had to make sure the apartment would be clean and ready and filled with food. He often tells me I leave in a rage, which isn’t very womanly. Kitty needs a woman, a woman to clean and cook and be maternal. I’m a boy with the brain of a lady, and that means I get to choose my role. I choose to be the lady, so I wash Kitty’s laundry and buy his toilet paper and clean his bong and get his food. When he yells, I sit and take it. Sometimes I cry and then he decides to start liking me again.

…

When Kitty read my progress on Kitty, he didn’t have many complaints.

You should’ve called me Red.

He was wrong, but I smiled because it was his largest qualm.

You also changed a few things.

Well, I can’t always remember quotes word for word.

…

Since Kitty had read Kitty and determined it was favorable, we continued spending time together and he continued liking me. There was a revelation, however, as Kitty recently discovered that he also likes Lucas. Lucas is twinky and young and buff and has a hot voice - I know this because Kitty showed me photos of Lucas and played recordings of his voice. Perhaps genuine ignorance, but more likely a gay attempt to mog. It made me wish I was a cutter, but I’m not a cutter. Cutters want attention, I just want solace. And I’m scared of sharps.

…

After cracking my phone real bad at Sovereign House, I had to ghost on Kitty and I’s hang. Finally returning home and opening my laptop, I saw that Kitty had texted me, explaining that Lucas wouldn't like it if we were more than friends, so we should just be friends now, but I should definitely still come sleepover as a friend. This seemed retarded, as it’s against my moral judgment to sleep in the same bed as my sort-of-ex, so I told him my phone was broken and I’d text him another time. I could’ve said I’m sorry, I’m sorry that I’m not sexual enough. Not fun enough, not polite enough, not woman enough. Kitty doesn't like that I don’t like sex, but if I did start liking sex then Lucas would be upset. Games are exceptionally fun to play, but this one was rigged. I was, however, enticed by the challenge.

…

I read the message again and decided that despite having no right to be angry or upset, I was both. I wanted to scream at him, to scream that I had known him longer, I had bought his milkshakes, I had put up with his pseudo-millennial bullshit, I’m only not sexual enough because he’s not sexy enough. I pretended it was cute to spell cute as coot. I behaved well, I tried my hardest not to retaliate when he yelled or got too physical. I’d probably be fine if I could bite my tongue, but when I do I bite too hard and I bleed. I bleed out and say yes I’m fine, yes it’s okay, yes I deserve this.

…

A few short days later, an unexpected invite hit my phone at 11 p.m. - Kitty had gotten home from work and thought we should talk. He told me to come quickly, as it had gotten very late, so I threw some pajamas in my backpack and headed for the F train.

Can you order our milkshakes while you’re at the next stop? I don’t want them to get here late.

The message made me laugh, both because I had never offered, and because I obviously wanted a milkshake. I’m a creature of habit.

What flavor?

…

Arriving on his doorstep, a nauseating clarity hit me. I felt… bad for Lucas, but I hate Lucas! I didn’t want to disrespect Lucas because if I was Lucas I would feel disrespected, and I try not to be a hypocrite. As he approached the door, I only had a few seconds to contort my face into something less pouty and more cherubic. Whether or not it worked, I couldn’t quite tell. He stood in the doorway and said hello.

Can I give you a hug?

I hated having to ask, but remember, Kitty still likes Lucas. He said yes and the hug lingered far longer than it should’ve before we stepped inside.

Don’t leave anything, Lucas won’t like that you were here. He didn’t like that you have a toothbrush here - I had to put it in the kitchen.

Maybe keeping it is the problem, not where you put it.

He didn’t understand what I was implying.

…

By 2 a.m. Kitty had grown hungry, so he tasked me with ordering snacks for him. An enchilada wouldn't set me back too much, so I initially obliged, growing wary only once he stole my phone to add a piece of chocolate mousse cake to the order. Chocolate mousse cake is terrible, and I am staunchly opposed to spending money on terrible things, so I attempted to remedy my cake-fueled angst by asking for another hug.

Are you smelling me?

Yes, I said, because I was. I hadn’t in a long time, and whenever I do I never know if I will again. Plus, I have a bad memory.

…

One fun detail I should add occurred right as we climbed into bed. I snaked my hand below the pillow as usual, though the path was disturbed by a small lump. Grasping the collection of strange fabric, I pulled out my hand to reveal… a fucking jockstrap. My face was filled with fear as I clenched it in my fist. I glanced at Kitty, who grabbed it from me and threw it somewhere off in the corner.

Was that Lucas’?

Yeah, I guess he must’ve forgotten it, or he left it.

…

I can’t physically touch Kitty, especially while we sleep. He told me, I don’t want to not touch you, but that would make Lucas uncomfortable so it makes me uncomfortable. Usually, I don’t like Kitty touching me anyway. He gets too warm in the night and I have a chronic fear of sweat. Even kissing was too much of a risk - when he’d request one I would provide only a restrained peck, to which he protested that it wasn’t a real kiss. That night, however, it was all I wanted. I laid there facing the dresser, Kitty’s cat settled between my calves. I knew I wouldn’t win, he wouldn’t put his arm around me and hold me like everything was normal. When he tossed and turned his arm would brush against my back, and I felt safe. It made me want to cry.

…

In the morning Kitty told me to hide my toothbrush and spray less perfume so Lucas wouldn’t know we were hanging out just as friends.

Wait, you’re not gonna tell him I was here? He knows about me, why do you have to lie?

It’s not lying, I’m just not telling him something.

…

The aforementioned urge to cry is useful both as a manipulative tool and to release tension in one’s body, but I rarely make it past the choking onset. I cried again for real the night after jockstrapgeddon, though. Waterworks and all. After my nightly ritual, I felt particularly emotional. Four Loko and a salad for dinner will do that to a girl. Although this time was not in Kitty’s presence, I still accredit the sadness that spurred it to him. For this reason, I haven’t met up with him since. This was the third time a boy has made me cry, and each time was from the same damn boy. Even though neither of us were quite sporty, we were playing a very physical game with each other, and this was his third strike. He needed to be benched.

…

Since Kitty still occasionally texted me, both memes and occasional suicide bait when he was sad, I continued providing digital counsel over the next month. Nothing too helpful, just generic Christian kindness, my best attempts to help a fairly immature man navigate his fairly simple life. While I enjoy being helpful, this was no longer my job. I sent Kitty a final message, thanking him for always inviting me over, and asking to end our new just friends thing amicably. I truly don’t care at all what happens to him anymore, and I hate lies, but the kindest thing I could do was pretend that I wished him the best. I ate up my apathy and swallowed it whole, and now I can feign knowing peace.

There was this one suuuuuper weird guy I used to know. He was born with a gift, a type of autism that empowered him to make lots of money without needing interpersonal skills. Before I quit animal therapy, the horse trainer/therapist told me she thought I had something sorta like that, but I think I’m very good at talking to people. I talk all the time, and I know that therapy doesn’t work, so I didn’t pay any mind to it.

…

Anyways, this guy was a real-life vampire. He didn’t care much for horror movies or haunted houses or Ouija boards, but he only wore black and never saw the sun. The only exception to his dress code was a collection of snakeskin belts and boots. His whole apartment was black and white, his walls practically barren albeit a dark Black Jug and Skull Picasso replica - framed opposite the lizard skeleton suspended above his bed. His skin was almost as pale and yellowed as the lizard’s dry bones. He couldn’t remember if it had been four or five years since he’d been to a grocery store. He also really, really liked Nobu.

…

Our first date was at Nobu and when I think of it I want to actually kill myself because I will probably never eat anything so good again in my life. Two $22 grapefruit martinis had me stumbling - keep in mind I’m a Four Loko patriot. He ordered for us because I was stupid and poor and didn’t know how to read the fancy menu. I don’t remember exactly what he got, but there was something lobster, something shrimp, and wagyu beef (served on a rock covered in sizzling oil). He kept telling me how good it was, and how much I liked it. Exactly, I would say and smile and nod. Sometimes, you have to bobblehead - smile and nod and look pretty so someone will want to take you home and put you on a shelf to show their friends and parents and sisters. It wasn’t hard to play along, because I did like the food. The portions were comically tiny, just how I like them. My counselor from anorexia rehab used to tell me when I ate like that I was eating “mouse-sized.” She wasn’t creative with her metaphors.

…

Today in my journalism class, our professor told us that all news is controlled by right-wing pundits. There was this video of a bunch of news anchors reading the same script, something about addressing media dishonesty. Forty or fifty of them talking in unison, all from different local stations. I didn’t follow her point, though I wasn’t trying, but she floated along until she ended up with something about Jews and Muslims and 9/11 and a one-world government. Eventually, she ended by saying that without citizen journalists, aka glorified bloggers, we would all be Handmaiden-ed.

…

That stuck with me because I don’t think I mind being handmaidened. I don’t like wearing bonnets or robes, but my life is so simple when I’m told what to do. When I do what I’m told I don’t have to think, and the teller likes me because I’m the doer doing what I’m told to do. The only exception is eating and ‘mental health’. I hate being told to eat or get better or fix myself. I’m fine and happy and healthy and normal and not mentally ill. I’m not fucking crazy. Anyways, Mr. Nobu told me what to do most of the time. He told me to vote for Trump because then the stock market would be better for him. Uh huh, I bobbleheaded. He was good at that sort of thing, stocks and economics and whatever. I didn’t have to try to understand - I just knew he taught himself how to make money on a laptop and now I got to ride in a convertible. All I had to do was bobblehead and say yes (never no - when I say no boys think I’m bad), and then he would tell me I was being good.

…

Eventually, the spark of being good fizzled out. Everything I learned about Mr. Nobu’s lifestyle seemed to trend toward the negative. While I appreciated our charade for a while, his vampiric ways became far too dreary. I don’t think about him much anymore and this story isn’t even about him. What I do think of, and what this story is about, is Nobu. I think of Nobu every time I feel empty. I don’t feel hungry anymore but I do feel empty most of the time. Empty is scary but empty feels like good behavior, and that confuses me so I ignore it. I ignore everything that intimidates me or I shoot to kill it. It depends on how strong my convictions are at any given time.

…

When I get to work I put my bag down at my desk and walk over to the rolling shelves to catalog DVDs. Nobody else likes to put the DVDs back, but I don’t mind perusing the stacks. I used to be able to put a whole row of DVDs back in half an hour. Recently I barely finished a row per shift. Whenever I bend down to find a DVD case, I rise back up into a cloud. I feel faint. I see nothing and hear ringing. I stumble back in my loafers and try to cry even though I know it’s a physical impossibility. Sometimes I bump my head on the metal shelves if I lose my footing. When I do, I don’t see stars. I see little tempura shrimp and wagyu beef strips halo-ing around my silly, weak body.

…

When I get really fainty I put away half a stack of DVDs and then sit at my desk. I’ve been sitting at my desk a lot more recently. I like to spin in my chair. It’s got a really good cushion and it’s super low to the ground so I can always reach my charger, and my legs don’t press right against the seat and make my thighs look fat. I think about Nobu and the food there and how it was so safe and small and warm and tender. I never even eat seafood. I drink 4 big gulps of water, closing my eyes whilst daydreaming of the nautical cuisine.

…

The other day, I got two coffees because I slept for about 3.5 hours. Usually, coffee has me wired enough to shake. I opened my work computer and Googled why I keep almost fainting and WebMD said I have diabetes. That made me want to kill myself. I probably shouldn’t keep saying ‘kill myself’ because people get mad when you say you wanna kill yourself. Nobody truly means it when they say it anymore, though. I say it all the time and don’t mean it. I mean some other secret thing that only yelling ‘I’m going to kill myself’ can express. I wouldn’t kill myself. I don’t wanna go to Hell for that.

…

I walked to work extra fast the day after because I didn’t want diabetes. Before turning off the avenue, I saw a woman on the ground. A lady standing over her was speaking to 911, in between sipping her straw-laden White Claw. The image of a morning White Claw, through a metal straw nonetheless, made me want to laugh. Then I saw the blood. I stopped wanting to laugh and started feeling scared. The blood was pooling on the sidewalk and it looked like the woman on the ground must’ve cut something when she fell. Concerned passersby crowded, questioning if she had overdosed and died. She definitely wasn’t dead, or at least she wasn’t when I saw her. The blood was gone when I left work and walked home. The café probably thought blood on their stoop was bad for business. I don’t think the lady was on drugs, maybe she was just sorta crazy. Perhaps she needed a snack, something decadent from Nobu, and the emptiness got to her. It happens to the best of us.

…

A lot of things trigger that response in me, those primitive monkey urges. Every time I take the six train, I am accosted by stupid Zola wedding planner ads, always with a gay biracial couple that comes off as vaguely subhuman. I didn’t particularly favor the other ads I’ve seen plastered across the train - the James Allen engagement ring ad campaign riddled with overtly sexual innuendo. Always a tan woman, always with her mouth agape in orgasmic pleasure. Draped over their nearly-climaxing faces, a delicate hand adorned with shiny silver loops and clear little crystals. I can tolerate these, despite my prudishness, since they’re much closer to reality than the wedding planner ads. They make thematic sense. If you buy your beautiful girlfriend a beautiful ring from James Allen, it’s only natural that she’d be so thrilled to let you fuck her and fake the loudest orgasm of her life - just like our forefathers had done it. It serves as a gentle reminder of our nation’s past, the many men who worked hard to buy a beautiful ring for a beautiful girl in exchange for a beautiful blowjob. When I turn to the wedding planner ads, however, I see a dystopia, an abandonment of tradition. These families are not the families I was promised. These families are gay and biracial and cross-religious and both dads have jobs. These families prioritize individuality before the nuclear household they intend to cosplay. These families are victims - both of homosexuality and my pessimism. These families overshadow the fact that gay people never even earned marriage. They barely earned sodomy.

…

As a gay boy, the problem isn’t that I don’t want to get married, it’s that most gays probably shouldn’t get married. One day, of course, I’ll be married and have kids and be super duper normal. In the meantime, I worry a lot for the rest of you. People love to make excuses for why queers are such absolute sexual degenerates - bullshit excuses about gays having been oppressed for sooo long and not being able to develop at the same rate as their normal (straight) counterparts. Yeah, whatever, Stonewall happened and you old folx had it really, really hard. That doesn’t justify a desire to suck and fuck every other homo in the tri-state area.

…

For me, thinking about getting married is like thinking about God. I don’t know that I’ll die and finally hug Jesus after ascending to Heaven. I don’t know that Jesus is always watching over and protecting me. I don’t know if my prayers are heard. I don’t know if I genuinely, naturally believe in anything religious at all. Instead, I make an active choice. I choose to believe in God, I choose to be comforted by Christ, and I choose to hope for Heaven. If I can choose to believe in something to such cosmic proportions, if I can choose to believe in what will come after my death, why can’t I believe in what will happen while I’m still living? Or at least feel hope in a way that feels physical - tangible.

…

I met a man who I’ll call Gordon. He told me he would sue me if I ever wrote about him, but that’s unrealistic seeing as I don’t have much for him to take. In compromise, I will respect his wishes with a pseudonym. I didn’t even ask if I could write about what he said to me, he just knew I liked to write - especially about men. Gordon told me over drinks that my view on life was “too heteronormative” since I greatly value the nuclear family. He opined that I’ve been wasting my youth, that I’m an attractive twink who should be “getting fucked in the greatest city in the world,” because I could if I wanted to. At the least, it was shallow of him to assume I didn’t know this. At most, it was offensive that he discredited my autonomy so boldly. I was sad about this momentarily, but only because most people aren’t so brazen in confronting my delusion. That being said, hope is delusion and therefor I am not delusional, I am hopeful.

…

It makes me sad that you don’t believe I can have a normal relationship, like one that progresses to marriage and stuff. It’s one of the few things I still aspire towards.

He rolled his eyes gently, telling me I sounded self-pitying, and that most things I say are self-pitying. That alone should’ve been enough to know he was an absolute retard. Self-pity is a sign of lacking confidence and is usually spun to seek validation. I would argue that I’m simply comfortable with my discomfort. It’s easy to confuse that with self-pity, especially in a culture motivated by competitive mental illness and anguish. Anyway, I didn’t need Gordon’s input on what dreams to chase. One should always be wary of advice from a frat bro who calls things ‘heteronormative’ - woke dialect was not invented for boys who play beer pong and slip roofies.

…

Maybe I would be happier if Gordon roofied me after that. Instead, I let him continue poking around in my brain and heart and soul, analyzing me all night until the only way to make him shut up was to turn myself off and allow him to kiss my numb, thoughtless body. You’d probably like the story way more if I got roofied, because most of my readers are proven freaks and perverts. I still would have gotten lost in the 9/11 memorial on my way home, but I wouldn’t have the capacity to scream so loud that I woke the hobos resting on the sidewalk. Cry? Maybe, though I haven’t been able to let out a real sob in a long time, only dry-eyed choking groans on the walk home from Trader Joe’s. Dead fish? Absolutely, I’m a professional beached whale. I’ve mastered the art of laying there, wilted and useless, thinking ‘no, no, no’ while never actually saying it out loud. It isn’t all that tragic because I’m doing it to myself, a raping of my spirit in which I am both the perp and the victim. The crime is self-contained, existing solely in a realm of my self-sovereignty. Doesn’t that sound like control?