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Miles, Kamen, Gould, and I were like a nineties’ boy band. Kamen was the heartthrob—six foot four of hulking, WASPlicious, buzzed-headed jock. I was the boy next door—silken of hair and blue of eye and straight of teeth. Gould was the shy one—short, a little stocky, huge mop of curls. Adorable. And Miles was sort of a weird combination of the bad boy and the middle-aged, straitlaced accountant who got pulled up onstage to dance during a concert and was mortified but secretly thrilled.
Your facial hair is stupid, but I still want your penis inside me. He didn’t turn back. And then one day they’ll make our babies in a test tube and we can feed each other ice cream on the beach while our children play in the sand and then we can grow old together and fart in bed during reruns of Community. But, like, I get it. You’re straight, and it’s cool.
Pornstache vanished into the crowd without so much as burying his face in my ass and giving me mustache burns on my taint. Life was cruel.
“There was this mountain man guy there on Friday.” I fired up the laptop. “I, like, wanted to have his children and shave his face but also feel his mustache sanding my balls and have him teach me how to smoke venison. It was a bounty of contradictions.”
“Guys usually ask me how I am,” Kamen said. “Of course they do. Your profile sounds like little orphan Annie grew up and married the sun and they had a child made entirely of the unblemished souls of infant animals.”
Oh, Pornstache, I know you did not just lowercase my name.
He is a man who thinks safewords are for wimps and that you need to be tutelaged. If you get hard for him, you get hard for danger.
“This is your last chance to go home, son.” It was the loudest I’d heard him speak. I froze. Cock, meet jeans. Jeans, please contain cock.
“The Log Blog!” I made a face. “We were super immature back then.” “It was two years ago,” Gould pointed out. “Exactly. Now we’re all grown up and ready to have a serious adult blog.”
D, I mean sex. —d d, I see. —D
Why don’t you pull your pants up and come have something to eat?” Snacks before a scene? This was some new level of snack dom.
“Whatever kale chips are, I cannot imagine they would improve my life.” “I hear Davy Crockett was a big fan.” “You heard no such thing.”
I wanted him to know I could do this. I wanted, bizarrely, to make him happy. I bit down, my eyes wide. I hoped my face was nine-cents-a-day-to-feed-an-orphan heartbreaking.
As I turned for the door, he slapped my ass lightly, making me yelp. “Congrats on surviving.” I walked to my car half in love with him and half wishing he’d go climb Katahdin again and fall off.
Anyway, he looks like a young Davos Seaworth mixed with Teddy Roosevelt from the Night at the Museum movies.” “And from history,” Gould said quietly. “Right.”
“She is the worst.” “But, like, the best,” Kamen added. “I know. How can you be the worst and the best at the same time?” I thought about D. D was the worst and the best at the same time. I couldn’t fucking wait for Thursday.
I don’t want him to be my boyfriend.” “You just love him.” “Exactly. I just want to squeeze his adorable-ass guts out in a way that doesn’t hurt him and then have him reconstitute so I can do it again.” “That is not a type of relationship I’m familiar with. But okay.”
I had suspected since our first meeting that there was more to him than bacon and silence.
Sometimes I wanted to tell my friends what it was like to love them. See if they experienced it the same way—like it was something rare and ridiculous and amazing and terrifying. I was always wondering if they were happy, or if they felt lonely. If there were things each of them couldn’t share, even with the rest of the group.
“D?” “Yes.” “I want you to be an internet meme.” “I don’t know what that means.” “I don’t expect you to.”
Ricky tossed his cup into a trash can. “I didn’t know you were seeing someone.” “It’s pretty recent. It’s like a play-partner thing except I also sort of want to marry him.”
This did not bode well. But I did it. Because I was a pleasant and obedient individual who adored a man cloned from Satan.
“Son, you have a lot going for you,” D told Kamen. “A fantastic physique, a marketable brand of creativity, and a wide range of practical interests. You ought to start thinking of yourself as a ‘Matthew’ or ‘George.’”
Pornstache and Little d 4evs. I was
Maybe, I thought, there was something at least a little brave, a little grown-up, about knowing what you needed and asking for it. About being vulnerable in front of people who could cover you with a new kind of strength. A strength that wasn’t about hiding your moments of fear and uncertainty and stupidity, but was about being a whole person, boldly.
