100 Boyfriends

by Brontez Purnell

I WOKE UP ALARMED. I didn’t know where I was at first.

Ok Liz Phair

I got in his bed and he motioned me closer and put me in a bear hug; I was taken aback because it had been a very long time since someone had touched me like this, let alone a really hot person in a cast.

All these vowel-dominant (though otherwise unintelligible) moaning sounds, punctuated with “yeah,” “more,” and “that feels good, dude.”

The woman at the restaurant who took my order asked for my ID when I presented his debit card, and I said, cool as a cucumber, “Oh, it’s not my card, it’s my boyfriend’s, he broke his leg and I have to do, like, everything for him now.” She didn’t even blink before she let me sign the check. Did she notice how much I was glowing inside when I said “my boyfriend”? Fake or not, something about saying “my boyfriend” just felt good.

His doggy-style game was so on point; his dick and technique were also of note, like, you could tell he fucked for a living. I bottomed like a porno bottom to impress him; I tried to impress him to the point where I was like, “Wait—I’m paying him, shouldn’t he be impressing me?”

The first time we met I was on my knees sucking him off and he saw the tattoo of a woman’s name on my chest. He asked, “Is that your girlfriend?” “No,” I replied, “it’s my mother.” His body visibly convulsed and he jizzed all over my tattoo. I was too young to know that I should have not made him a repeat customer.

I wanted to be hurt but the fact was that that man was a stranger and not my real father. I would soon know all the ways in which men were not to be depended on. I walked away that day.

He explained to me what my feelings were, often. Oh my god, he was everything I couldn’t have but the second I did have him I knew I didn’t want it anymore.

It was with little effort on his part, I knew this much—his wish was my command, even when he had nothing to say. He was never the boy who everyone could love. He was kind of an asshole, but more importantly he was something that God had tailor-made just for me.

He wanted to play house. It just worked. Or rather it worked for longer than I thought it would.

I remember him saying to me once, “I just like that you’re from somewhere—I don’t feel like I’m from somewhere.” I remembered the scene from Thanksgiving and understood what he meant. But this was one of the many holes he had in himself that he always made visible to me.

My relationship to him was always a very specific kind of mindfuck—behaving as boyfriends when we weren’t but actually were. We did all the things two people who know each other too well do. We took turns being bored a lot. Whenever I was present, physically or mentally, he wasn’t—even when we were at the same table eating or in the same bed fucking.

He had an outline of some Aztec warrior god along his clavicle and neck, and I remember the line work of the god’s hand sits perfectly on top of the part of his neck where his jugular vein would pump bloody murder whenever he was high. I would sometimes just watch it move up and down and up and down and damn near hypnotize myself.

Mickey glanced over at his grandmother going to town on a full plate of fixings. He looked down in her purse and, as expected, she had already found a way to sneak a hellified amount of fried chicken in there, all wrapped up in napkins, the grease from the chicken turning the napkins translucent. His grandfather was smiling at them both, sipping iced tea.

He put on the BET tape and rewound it to his favorite spot—the Janet Jackson “Pleasure Principle” video. What wasn’t to love about Janet Jackson? She had it all: she had bangs, she drank water out of a bottle (this baffled Mickey), and she was a dancer who lived in a warehouse. Was this a thing?

I work at a nonprofit. I’m sitting at my desk in the back of the office, tucked into a corner. From this vantage point I can see all movement in the office, and so naturally I am masturbating at my desk.

“I mean, we’re both pushing forty, girl! I just want you to find happiness like I did! You can’t troll a bathhouse forever!” He is actually giggling as he says all of this and this is why I am fucking his husband.

I have half a mind to ask him if he wants to skip lunch and go fool around in a public bathroom but I know the answer will be yes so I am immediately bored by the prospect. But I do have this warm feeling inside knowing that I work with a buddy who would readily entertain the idea, as it is always the small victories in life that speak power to truth.

I could easily think of countless people I wanted to murder, sure, but countless people in any given algorithm that I would go out of my way to fuck? Fuck no, no way. There isn’t enough instant karma in the world that would make me that friendly.

I wanted to pick apart all the projected reasons I would have around why basic bitches like Sean get wifed up and why jaded, judgmental borderline misanthropes like myself end up fucking in shit-scented public restrooms, but I didn’t have to ask—I had already answered the question.

He could look into Matthew’s eyes and see that he wanted a white-walled, white-doored, white little house in the New England countryside. They would make their own jam together. Every time Matthew crawled on him at night he could see in his eyes how he wanted to make sweet boyfriend love. It made the boy sick. He went out at night and had nasty whore sex behind Matthew’s back.

I felt raw. He had left me gagging for it … the truth. This had been the same mistake I always made, that is, expecting more: this was the last time I would bother myself with trying. I was annoyed by being imprisoned every time he touched me. Would this touch be different? The one that would be here for the day but gone for the week?

My roommate intrigues me. He is a conventionally attractive boy, he could, as the pecking order goes, be a lot more selective than he is—the diversity of his trade is virtually unchartable. But no, he’s a ho, like a real ho, like he will fuck virtually any man in the neighborhood who asks nicely; I have an undying respect for him because of that.

The open window reminds me of that saying, “Where God closes a door, He opens a window,” but all I can think about is, like, But wait, the window is on the fifth floor and the house is on fire. To which the Almighty replies, “That’s just some GOD humor—good luck!”

It felt like I was refusing my life; I was exhausted from the task of having to respond to stimuli. I had fucks left to give, of course, just not this week, and perhaps even the next. It was going to be a slow burn for sure.

I look down and notice that both of his wrists are slashed and dripping blood onto my vintage Hello Kitty rug. I am immediately caffeinated with hate and vengeance. I don’t think he understands that that rug means more to me than his life. I have half a mind to go back to sleep and let his punk ass die but of course I’m all like, “OH MY GOD!!!!! BABY, ARE YOU OK?!”

Heaven help me, I stayed because I am nothing if not the worst mix of willfully nonjudgmental and horny.

A year and half later I was sitting around a fire in a drum circle in Colorado. I was washed out on acid and very drunk—at the apex of my trip I felt the hand of the ancestors tap me on the shoulder and say, “Girl, take your Black ass back to college—you don’t even like these people. He just fucks good.”

Q: Where do hippies fuck and how is it? A: IN TENTS MAN, INTENSE!

He marveled at how all reluctant thespians had the same complaint: “I don’t like being watched.” He knew this statement was a cop-out. He could usually cure the novice actor with one sentence. “You’re not afraid of being watched—you’re afraid of watching yourself be watched.” The student would always get this confused look and then more often than not a series of breakthroughs would start.

He was always taken aback by the beautiful landscape of the area and also by the cultural disconnect of the California backwoods. It was somehow still redneck as all hell—he even saw Confederate flags on bumper stickers here and there. He remembered that an hour outside any city it was business as usual in America.

Every once in a while some random two would pair up and monogamy about it. The rest of us talked shit: “Not cool, not anarchist—hoarding all that dick like that. Sexual cap!”

looked at him and saw the same thing I saw when I looked at my right hand: a lifeline, running strong and clear through the center.

I could say I deserve better than this—but do I? Really?

“I get fucked a lot, Doc,” I said. “Like, SO MUCH— figuratively speaking I don’t have a mother, a last name, or a goal or purpose in life. I’m just a hole.” I stopped just short of saying, “My only desire is to be desired. I feel like the whole equation cancels itself out and what it really means is I have no will—I can (at will) rip out all sense of self just so a boy can have one more hole to fuck me in. I’m afraid of this terrible power I wield, I just wait to be wanted, it’s killing me, Doctor…”

I took a bit of bourbon from my backpack and put on my headphones and decided to drink and meander home the long way. I was not hurt, distressed, or even bothered, only filled with a weird feeling that was somewhere between a premonition and déjà vu, like this was a day that had happened many times before and would also, one day, repeat itself.

I understand that life is by design a competition—okay, this other bitch won, that’s fine. But it was twisting the knife to make a boy who you are leading on carry the bed you and your boyfriend are going to fuck on every night.

What are the mechanics of desire? In what feels like all of three seconds my mind spins into a hard flashback on past lives—men I loved, some who I eventually hated; they are all still there somewhere, all hovering around.

“The new poems—what’s the journey?” he asked. (I hated when agents said the word “journey.” No, literally, like, barf.) “I don’t care for a journey,” I explained. “I’m just making a map, something that says, ‘You are HERE.’”

He knocked on the door because he knew that I knew that he knew what I was doing. “The benzos are on the top shelf, baby, take a few for later.” “Okay, thank you,” I said. “I love you, little boy,” he said. “I love you too,” I said. “The new poems are good—if I make you rich will you take care of me?” he said. “For the rest of my life,” I said. I took the blue pill.

Before I could get too pleased with myself, he finished in me. He gave that god-awful grunt that men do when they want to say, “Ok, let’s stop now.”

I should leave, but at this point I was feeling too horny to go anywhere. Why couldn’t he just fuck in his apartment? Ah, he lives with his boyfriend—or someone. Anytime a grown man can’t fuck in his own house there is always some kind of backstory. And it’s never a really interesting one.

fucked him doggy-style because it’s the easiest way for two strangers to cum. He was facedown pretending that I was someone else. I was watching him facedown pretending that he was someone else. He was facedown pretending that he was someone else. I was watching him facedown pretending I was someone else.

“No, like, can we pretend to be boyfriends while we fuck?” Again, I was serious. “Suit yourself,” he said, and his entire face softened and he began again. “How was your day, my love? I’ve missed you.” We kissed and I was excited because it felt like something really dirty and desperate was happening.

“Where you going mate? Your hour’s not over yet”—he was breathing heavily, facedown and into the comforter on the bed. I had never witnessed a person’s fake orgasm taking so much out of them.

The theme song went: “MY BUDDY, MY BUDDY / WHEREVER I GO, HE GOES / MY BUDDY, MY BUDDY / MY BUDDY AND ME.” It was short-lived and by the nineties all men had completely cut out their hearts and little boys had to be ready to do the same—none of that faggot-ass playing with dolls bullshit.

Mr. Raleigh bent over and was taken aback by the fact that in twenty years he had never been fucked in a shower at the gym. He remembered that his body still had one valuable gift: it was available.

He was getting older, and all the houses on his side of the block were going up for sale. His house had bad plumbing but good vibes. A shining castle. It was the most in danger. Either way, like the person he was he tended to his garden, if only in spirit. He would stare from the sundeck, overly caffeinated and ridden by spirits, and say shit like, “I wish that would grow more” or “I wish that would grow less.” (Attempts at control were frequent.)

I also casually mentioned my drinking problem and he explained to me that maybe I just had excellent neurological uptake and I thought how that was so much sweeter than him saying, “You’re a selfish man who can’t change.”

During the dinner, when the Daddy would be sizing me up, I had the dual occupation of being present enough for him to assess, and also being able to sink into the background enough so as not to take up too much space at the table. I had to treat myself like I was something on the menu he had ordered. Like I was on the menu.