100 Boyfriends

by Brontez Purnell

  This one boy caught my eye and we began a correspondence that ended some half an hour later with me sitting in his living room in a fancy apartment on a not-so-distant side of town. He said his partner was away and I could only imagine that this was the partner’s apartment as I was sure his hooker salary wasn’t footing the bill here, or at least I highly doubted it.

  The guy had not been a male cheerleader, in fact, but had for a number of years worked as a flight attendant. I was trying to fill in all the dots by myself and I assumed his flight attendant job was how he landed whatever partner footed the bill for this house—but again, this was all speculation. Or maybe he was a drug dealer too? I had an older second cousin once removed who was a flight attendant and used it as a cover to smuggle ecstasy across the country. He made a decent living at it, too, apparently before he got caught and went to jail, but that was in the early nineties and I can’t imagine with the way security culture runs these days that any of that was still possible. Even so, whenever I see flight attendants I equate them to drug dealers and it is at the very least an entertaining false equivalence.

  I had also detected an accent that I couldn’t quite figure out.

  “I’m Nigerian, but spent half my life in London,” he explained. “What part of Africa are you from?” he asked.

  “Alabama,” I replied. He didn’t laugh.

  In my head I rolled my eyes the same way I always do when African-born Blacks ask that question—like, how the fuck is that a real question? I had flirted with taking that weird DNA test at some point but then I thought it was silly to spend three hundred bucks just so someone could tell me that I’m from someplace in Africa. I already wore the Mark of Ham, I already knew I was “from” Africa, and besides, I thought spending that money to fuck this guy would get me way closer to my roots than any DNA test—like, for sure.

  I guess he could see me thinking all this and took control.

  “The clock starts now—what’s on the menu, mate?” he exhaled as he walked in the living room and sat a cup of tea in front of me. I was confused. Like, when was he making tea? I didn’t notice him boiling water, even.

  “Will you hold me while I cry?” I asked, like, completely dead-ass serious.

  “Absolutely not,” he replied. “Your bum is massive—I’ll start there,” he said, and motioned over as if to take off my shirt. I stopped him.

  “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.

  He led me to the bedroom, which had a sparse feeling to it. There was just a bed and a night table and a massage table. Maybe he lived here by himself and really was a full-time hooker? Like, why would a couple live in such a sparse room?

  Either way I was on my back on the bed with him on top of me. He was extremely tall and muscular. His dick was only about a notch above average, but his skin was smooth and I thought about how, in my everyday life, I almost never have sex with (or attract?) anyone this muscular—like, was his physique what I was paying for? No, that couldn’t be it.

  He was going full force on me and started to sweat, and I was looking at his face and couldn’t even feel myself get fucked ’cause my mind sat stuck on everything else. Like how muscular his body was, the horrible drab blue color of the carpet and décor of the room, and the fact that he kept whispering “I love you, boyfriend” in my ear.

  It suddenly struck me that I hired this man because I was lonely. I almost began to tear up—not out of sadness but out of complete sensory overload. Also, his dick did not feel “great.” I felt like I was a patient about to undergo surgery, and all I wanted was for it to be over so that I could say I did it.

  He faked an orgasm long and deep, and I was flushed with relief. He collapsed on me and was sweaty and breathing hard, and I could feel his heart pounding on my chest. He rolled to the side and I tried to leave the bed but he pulled me by the arm closer to him.

  “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.

  “You must be an artist,” he said. “You seem like an artist.”

  “I did pay sixty thousand dollars for a theater degree— I don’t know if that makes me an artist or not,” I blurted out, and for the first time he laughed.

  “You’re a reasonably handsome guy. Why don’t you just save your money and get a real boyfriend?” he inquired, still facedown in the comforter.

  I paused at the word “reasonably.” I just paid him—would it be too much trouble to get a real fucking compliment out of the guy? Like, fuck.

  He was beginning to feel like a boyfriend in that he was already annoying the fuck out of me.

  “Don’t be silly,” I said, getting up with force this time. “You are my real boyfriend—can I see you next month?”

  He didn’t look up, instead throwing me a peace sign.

  “Is that a yes or no?” I asked, hoping to God it meant yes.

  “I’ll be waiting right here, boyfriend,” he said, finally looking up with this weird, shit-eating grin. “Here I am, I always am,” and he plopped his head back into the comforter.

  I finished dressing and walked out his door all the way downtown. I walked from there to the lake, and from the lake I walked home, and once I was home I went right to bed.

  MR. RALEIGH VS. THE GYM

  MR. DARYL RALEIGH WAS TAKING A SHOWER at the YMCA gym and lingering in the locker room in the same way he had done for twenty years. He was feeling abandoned by the situation.

  He had been to the doctor earlier that day. His doctor wanted to put him on testosterone treatment and explained it was because Mr. Raleigh’s body wasn’t really making it anymore. “Happens to a lot of us,” explained the doctor. Mr. Raleigh refused it at first because he had already been horny and violent most of his life—there was something in the cooling of his hormones that felt … nice? That same evening at the gym he was on the elliptical watching commercials playing between news segments. An ad for erectile dysfunction played after an ad for hair implants, followed lastly by an ad for testosterone treatment. The testosterone ad showed a montage of one chubby man struggling at the gym, a man with the same build as the first crying alone on a bench in an empty park, and last, a man binge eating. The ad explained that hormone treatment could cure all these behaviors and Mr. Raleigh felt all but personally attacked. The news segment then began by talking about the current drought. The drought was also having certain social effects.

  The drought had killed all the gym cruising, though Mr. Raleigh also remembered other droughts. “The droughts inside,” he said, lathering his left armpit.

  Droughts were factual and personal. Sun and no rain, scorched earth, and dry sky: whenever the news flashed the word “DROUGHT” every Californian had a civil duty and (as suggested by the news) either showered with a friend, took shorter showers, or perhaps didn’t even shower at all. Either way, most of the shower population of the men’s locker room seemed absent save for Mr. Raleigh and the five other lurkers he had got sick of boning nearly twenty years ago. He wasn’t too alarmed; he had survived these droughts before.

  When he looked down at his body he felt like it had abandoned him, too. Where had all the years gone? There were ghosts of other bodies floating in and around him. He was looking down at himself from a vertical vantage point—beer belly, modest cock, beautiful skin … it was the beer gut that he was cutting (and his hate handles) that led to this excursion of self-inflicted gym torture. He was depressed; he gained weight. He was older, and it didn’t just melt away like it used to, so now he would drag his sore body into a daily psychological battle with the elliptical and treadmills at the gym. An hour prior, he had b
een pedaling away on the elliptical, making direct eye contact with himself in the mirror on the machine, sweating like a whore in a gym, doing cardio in a fear-based manner. He pictured all the men he’d had over the years and the different phases of his body as if they were both moon cycles. But there were no stark conclusions to be made, really—he could never get any man to act right, even when he had muscles. He thought about how some love burns itself up and how some love freezes to death.

  He had been dating two men younger than him. One was Ben, and the other was David.

  Whenever he thought of Ben all he saw was a baby boy doll wrapped in cellophane. The boy was a living, breathing My Buddy doll. He had even gone so far as to date himself when he explained the reference to Ben.

  “My Buddy was this play doll in the mideighties marketed to little boys—the idea was to teach little boys that it was ok to be nurturing, loving, and that it was only natural to have a friend that you take care of,” he explained, wasted one night in bed.

  Mr. Raleigh himself had been a bit too old for the dolls but he remembered being fascinated by the commercials. 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 had somehow managed to keep his heart intact. Wherever Mr. Raleigh went, Ben went. The pair attended art engagements, orgies, and even the bathroom together. Mr. Raleigh had been over the lustful side of sex, the wham-bam of it all and the feverish high pitch that eventually washed over him after the climax. He saw in the young boy a chance to step back, to go to dinner, to be held again.

  It worked too well. Eventually the young boy held him very still, until the nights became too still, so motionless that Mr. Raleigh relied on old tricks. He saw the slow-motion repulsion in Ben’s face when he told him that he was sleeping with David.

  He saw the sparkle leave the young boy’s eyes. He would pay for that.

  David was truly his match, unfortunately. Mr. Raleigh always expected the worst, in himself and in other people. He suspected that David had never loved him—he just needed a sponsor. The second Ben was gone David stopped putting out. He even started to fuck Mr. Raleigh’s friends. The older man was so lonely and guilty he let it all happen.

  The irritating part was that when he confronted him, David would never admit to his trespasses. The boy was too noble to say, “I’m an asshole. I did these things.” That was the shit that bothered the old man. Like how David alluded to always having open dialogue but nonetheless kept deep secrets.

  In a broad stroke Mr. Raleigh thought about how the Natives of the continent were conquered not entirely by all-out warfare, but by polite-sounding treaties of peaceful words that sounded nice but were total fucking lies. Polite lies are how men conquer, saying empty things while psychically cutting their opponent’s throat through unseen actions. He hated the way David was all polite talk and manners. He didn’t understand when Mr. Raleigh was drunk and threw things or when he confronted David about fucking his friends. The boy thought this was “too emotional”; he called it “uncouth,” even. There would be no closure or resolve. It would all have to be fine.

  Mr. Raleigh noticed that he had been in the shower so long the water had turned cold. This was certainly only making the drought worse.

  He did his postgym ritual: drying off, and moisturizing, which was usually followed by deep reflections in the mirror, before escaping into the autumn evening outside.

  Mr. Raleigh was bent over and drying his toes in front of his locker when he felt it—a finger on the opening of his anus.

  He turned around to see a Black gentleman a bit younger than himself. He looked as if he had had a few more weeks at that gym than Mr. Raleigh did; his face was young but his hair was completely gray and there was a sliver of precum hanging from the head of his dick. He was handsome.

  Without talking the two men ducked into a shower stall together and closed the curtain. 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.

  Mr. Raleigh threw himself into the ritual—arching his back and moaning, waiting for the gray-haired gentleman to climax. His body knew this dance well.

  “The gray hair is hereditary—I saw you staring at it,” said the gentleman as he left the shower stall.

  Mr. Raleigh was proud of himself. He still had it after all.

  He escaped to the outside of the gym, en route to his car.

  “I’m never going back to that horrible fucking place ever again,” he said, walking away for what he knew would be a long time.

  THE BOYFRIENDS (CONTINUED)

  Boyfriend Double Zero / The Space Cadet

  I had seen a UFO. I had snorted half of the bag of anonymous drugs I had found at the party the night before and

  3 …

  2 …

  1 …

  CONTACT!

  The night had blended into intangible traces in a format I couldn’t have foreseen with my puny imagination alone. Also, upon thinking about the term “outer space” … hmmmm, it just felt like a double negative or something? I then saw the UFO and shit REALLY hit the fan. I kept hoping a spaceperson would hop out, but, like a fortune cookie (from outer space) spitting out a divine message, the paper spilling out of the craft read, “This is a spaceperson-less automated craft; i.e., we don’t fuck with you niggas.”

  Boyfriend #21 / The Gardener

  Perhaps the worst was behind him. The one hundred men he had left behind were still behind him. Those godless bitches were the WORST, seriously. 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.) His own personal plumbing was still fucking EXCELLENT. He could rub one out and still shoot clean over his head on a good day just like when he was a teenager. But, of course, like any realest/toughest bitch, he betted all on losing it one day, i.e., the house he was renting and also the super plumbing in his dick, but he chanted to himself on those mornings he would psychically garden: “I must not think bad thoughts … I must not think bad thoughts.”

  Boyfriend *69 / The Telepath

  He had been praying for something more angular. A stiffer collar on his polo, or perhaps to psychically know who was calling before the phone was even ringing, but like all Earth dwellers he knew all too well the limitations of gravity. Gravity … ugh, he was so fucking over her. But he settled for the small things in life, like how caller ID was as close to telepathy as he was ever going to get. “BUMMER.”

  Boyfriend #92 / The Psychiatrist

  I explained to him that I had always ended up washing my hands longer than I wanted to. I would always get hypnotized by the motion of my hands and the sound of the water running, and my mind would always double back to where I went wrong in life. It would stop somewhere in a black hole and my anxiety wouldn’t pull out of it. He said it was all related to me noticing my triggers more (he was a psychiatrist who studied neuropsychological shit). I didn’t know how to explain to him that I did not often want to talk to that part of my brain. I didn’t say it because it sounded reckless, but I was afraid that if I kept that light on in my brain all I would notice is that I’m mostly triggered all or most of the time. I’m so serious. The train triggers me, the walk to the train, the unwanted eye contact, the way my body behaves when I notice that I’m being noticed. I figure when someone like me is hyper in tune with their trigger light, it’s tantamount to a gazelle in
the Serengeti—the feeling that something is always coming to eat you. I’m sure I could separate the part of my brain where awareness equals constant panic, but naw, I knew myself. 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.”

  DO THEY EXIST IF NO ONE’S WATCHING?

  IT’S LIKE MY FAVORITE SAYING, “Where God closes a door, He opens a window,” but in this particular case the window was on the fifth floor and the house was on fire.

  The man to my right—he looks like he is ready to jump from a burning building.

  I sit listening to this awkward couple next to me as I wait for a friend at a Burmese place on Telegraph Avenue. I like listening to other people’s conversations the same way I like looking at the text messages of friends who leave their phones unlocked. I lurk so hard I almost get whiplash. I lurk so hard I should wear a cape and fangs. I lurk so hard … you get the picture.

  I am often convinced I care more about these conversations than the participants themselves do. In the case of the burning-building-jumper-man next to me, I know for a fact this is true. The man is on a date—a very awkward date—with a boy too young for him. The man looks fifty (or maybe he’s just in his thirties and had a hard life?); the younger man looks like he’s twelve, but has to be at least twenty-one because he’s drinking a mason jar full of some cocktail—he’s lit as fuck. He’s red in the face and gesticulating through his speech intensely.

  My dinner partner is thirty minutes late. I have heard the man say absolutely nothing while the boy stammers on about how his younger brother can’t find the right college, in fact REFUSES to find the right college, and how it’s making the boys’ white-ass mom sad—like, suuuuuuuper sad. Like, so sad she got the boy’s younger brother a trip to Yosemite for his birthday to clear his head.