never fucking a guy who has a podcast again

His mouth was bleeding, but I was waiting for hours and hours. No no no, he texted me.

*

He lives underground. It’s always dark. He lets me smoke his Parliaments. I hear the rattle of the train; I wonder if he heard me outside on his stoop on the phone, drunkenly gushing to my best friend: I really like him.

*

Everyone calls my writing “detached.” All of my friends tell me to stop getting so “attached.”

*

We stay up until 3 or 4 A.M.; I drink a whole bottle of wine, chainsmoke while we get to know each other on his stoop—though I’ll forget everything by the next morning—and we fuck twice until he falls asleep.

His alarm goes off and he says: You know it’s 9 A.M., right? I groan and ask what we talked about when I was nearly blackout drunk. Let’s see, he says, You told me about Father Flanagan’s, you explained to me who Ian Cohen is, you wouldn’t accept the fact that I don’t like Tigers Jaw…

*

To the listeners out there, we’re not douchey enough to be in our 30s and have a podcast—a weekly podcast—where we dive into Hunter S. Thompson… we talk about shit like, how I went to the dentist yesterday… let’s see, what else do we talk about… how I was supposed to get a double suck but then that didn’t end up happening… real shit, important shit.

*

My stock went up, he says, and then looks at me and reminds me: I’m old.

*

He told me that he goes to the cafe on Wilson, and I said no, no, not anymore—like I knew what would happen. He refused; he’s been here longer, and they like him there, but they like me, too. We walk there together, and I sit outside ready to work while he finishes his cigarette before his dental surgery. He tells me he doesn’t have insurance; I assure him that I can insure him.

I open an email from my professor asking if I want to read at an online school event with six undergraduate students and six graduate students. I don’t want to, I whine.

You should do it, he said, flicking his cigarette into the street.

*

You don’t need to have bad forgettable sex so you can immortalize it in writing, my friend tells me.

*

As we walk to his place from the liquor store, two days after his dental surgery, he tells me: If we make out later, it has to be soft and slow. I say: Oh, you’re vanilla, huh? He says: Yes, I am. I’m not the type to hit a girl on a first date, he jokes, and I blush, remembering us in his bed the night we met, his hand hot and fast against my face.

*

I have Stockholm Syndrome, I tell my friends because I’ve fucked three people on Stockholm Street.

*

His birthday is a week before Valentine’s Day, but he’s no romantic, I find that out very soon. She’s not my girl, he says on his podcast, She’s, uh, doing the Lord’s work for me.

*

You can escape me but you can’t escape my writing, I tell the world. He likes it.

*

When I ask him if he has any Halloween plans, he says: I was invited to a party, but I can’t imagine going and not being able to smoke a cigarette. He has to wait until Tuesday, when his mouth is fully healed, or something like that. It could cause “dry rot” if he smokes now. That even sounds gross, I say about the two words. It sounds like the name of a hardcore band. Days later, I stumble upon @dryrotsc on Twitter—a “screamo/hardcore” group from South Carolina called Dryrot.

For my Halloween, I stay out until 4 A.M. at a bar, where my friends warn me that he’s trouble. You should assume that he’s talking to at least three other girls, I’m told, but I shake my head, I ignore it, I’m cynical about everything but I’m naïve with love and sex.

I smoke a whole pack of Parliaments that night; my friend says, You know you can do coke out of them? Because they’re ventilated.

*

He asks: Do you have to drink the whole bottle? I do, and I’m glad I do; the altered state of consciousness prevents me from sincere and vulnerable intimacy with him—it shields me, it protects me, it is the only protection we have in that moment.

I like you, I said and this exchange is the only memory I have before everything else turned into a blackout blur—

He replied, and I know this is what he said, this is the one thing I am sure of: I like you, too. Maybe he meant it; he probably didn’t. We were both indulging in our intrinsic destructive natures, but I remembered a Louise Gluck quote a friend read to me: “Beauty dies: that is the source / of creation.” From our mess, something could be created. I convinced myself of this.

*

He tells me that I can ash my cigarettes in the plants; it apparently helps them, gives them nutrition. Cigarettes are good for you, I figure.

*

His pinned tweet reads: Staring at a condom like it’s a fax machine

*

Why am I far removed in my writing? Why am I detached? Instead of using my writing as an outlet for my emotions, I use people themselves—I give them everything, people who don’t deserve it, people who don’t want it, and then they become shadows in my essays, shadows outlined by my feelings, empty inside, hollow.

*

He tweets: Everyone wants to be on my podcast but no one wants to listen, 5 likes.

I tweet: never fucking a guy who has a podcast again, 46 likes, 3 replies.

*

I ask my friend: How do I not take it personally? He says: It’s like the way your fingers get callused from playing guitar. It takes practice. Don’t romanticize everything. Stay far removed. Expect the worst. Fake it till you make it.

*

The only thing that stops me from drinking is the sickness that follows—the accusations from my body, the pain of withdrawal, the shaking, the stomachaches, the alcohol in my breath, the near-death feeling.

Instead, I fill my breath with smoke.

*

Honestly this dude sounds like he’s 32 going on 17, my friend tells me. See the red flags. He asks why I always ignore red flags—and the question itself feels like an accusation, or maybe it’s just because I know the answer all too well: I am a masochist, I am begging to be hurt. I am always at the bottom of the power dynamic, submissive and waiting for him to hit me another time, flinching at the sight of his hand, half out of fear and half out of excitement. He is twelve years older; I am inherently naïve and predispositioned to be fucked over.

*

My best friend says: No more guys who are comedians or have podcasts bro

*

Guy 1: …all of it seemed so gross… I feel like the correct response is to catcall. That’s the only one… if a dude did that on camera, at least it’s the only one that seemed like it would have any type of dignity… If that’s what I look like when I stare at asses, then…

Guy 2: How nice was this ass? Was this kind of like a spectac—

Guy 1: Oh, spectacular.

*

We were in this open thing… but she started catching feelings and I noticed that she started catching like deep feelings. And I got a little scared that she was doing that, so I went and quickbanged someone to go and guard myself from the feelings. But since we’re in an open relationship we had to tell each other when we have sex. So that night before I even had sex with the girl I was like, “I’m thinking about having sex with a girl. If this bothers you, I won’t.” She’s like, “No, it’s your life, you do what you want.”

So, I had sex with this girl, and then that girl happened to listen to our last episode and texted me and was like, “So, you’re fucking me and I listen to your podcast and it turns out you’re fucking someone else? What’s up with that?” So, Danielle, if you’re listening, I haven’t texted you back. I’m sorry. I mean you know what I mean. We didn’t have a thing going, really.

So, anyway

*

I collect the threats my friends offer me about him: “I’d fuck him up for you,” “i’ll kill him,” “Let’s cancel him”

*

On Myrtle and Stockholm, I will come to you and make all of your unfunny jokes unfunnier. I will make your gums bleed harder. I will steal all of your cigarettes and light you on fire.