by Zachary Doss
I think your dog hates me, the man who is not your boyfriend says.
Yeah, you say.
Embodied
YOUR BOYFRIEND IS leasing space inside your body. The rent you charge is reasonable, a steal really, but since you’re in a relationship, you decide you’re not going to push it by asking for what living space in your veins and between your organs is really worth. Your boyfriend comes and goes as he pleases through a slit in your back, parallel to your spine.
Sometimes, during the day, you feel a kind of heat on the inside of your skin, and you know that he’s sitting or lying there, right inside your body, and you touch or stroke the spot to let him know you know he’s there. He’s very considerate, keeps the volume down on his television, makes sure everything is clean and well maintained. You’ve been breathing a little bit better lately, your heartbeat less erratic, and you know your boyfriend has been lovingly scrubbing your lungs and arteries, polishing each surface clean and gleaming, like he has removed decades of soot from a dirty window.
When you ask him to meet you for dates, he emerges from the slit parallel to your spine and he is covered in your blood and the other viscous fluids of your body. His hair is matted to his head and his hand is too slippery to hold. He shivers a little bit when he’s with you, like being outside your body brings on a chill, and you take pride in this evidence of the heat of your viscera.
When your boyfriend starts to cancel dates with you, or doesn’t show up when you’ve made plans, you are worried. Any number of things might have happened, like he has found someone else, or he has taken ill, or he fell down in the tub. You know from the warmth and pressure building along your tibia that he is still inside you. When you call him on the phone to ask why you haven’t seen him very much lately, he says that he sees you all the time. In fact, he says he sees the parts of you that you can’t see, and from the inside, with the light shining through your skin, your body is a cathedral.
You don’t have much to say to that; you find a needle and thread and sew yourself shut.
One Word for It
YOUR BOYFRIEND IS trying to learn how to un-name things. You don’t take this pursuit any more seriously than his other diversions, but he devotes hours of study to the practice. He just got fired, and you think he wants to unname the restaurant he worked for to fuck with his old boss. This is an awful lot of trouble to go to, you say.
It’s not about that, he says.
His first few efforts are an awful lot of trouble. The first try involves strange-looking glyphs, a bucket of oranges, a homeless black dog, and a knife. It is extremely messy and at the end, neither of you can remember what those things are called. You know, those things that are like cupcakes but . . . not cupcakes? Immediately, it seems like un-naming is very irritating. The word for not-cupcakes vanishes from bakeries and signs and advertisements and people take to ordering frosting-less cupcakes or bread cupcakes or just making a little outline with their fingers. I’m not sure I’m in love with this as a hobby for you, you say to your boyfriend.
I’m sure I can get it right, he says.
Subsequent attempts are more successful, although mostly they create more confusion. You find yourself con stantly trying to talk around things. You coin terms like lawn hair and glass fish cage and foot glove. Your boyfriend does eventually un-name the restaurant he worked for, but shows no sign of stopping. You try to convince him that he is just making it more difficult for people to exist in the world, but he’s convinced that he is acting for the public good.
It’s true the language has taken on a strange, almost Shakespearian complexity, and everything sounds lovelier this way, less precise but more emotional. Still, you are wholly unconvinced you want to live the rest of your life in an undergraduate creative writing exercise. Your aggravation manifests itself in a series of increasingly obtuse arguments. You can’t quite say that he’s doing it on purpose, but your boyfriend keeps taking away your ability to communicate, reducing your pool of available nouns. When the black dog corpses piling up behind the garage begin to smell, the only way you can articulate your outrage is by saying, Stop doing that thing you keep doing, it’s not great.
You think he should understand but he doesn’t, just shakes his head at you as if you are being deliberately obscure. You resort to inarticulate screaming, and to be completely honest, you are surprised by how deeply satisfying you find it. You scream, again and again, imbuing each scream with incredibly nuanced emotions you find it too frustrating to communicate in any other way.
He sits at the edge of your bed until you are finished screaming. I’m sorry, he says. I thought this would help. He says other things, things that sound lovely to you in the way that hearing someone speak Italian is lovely. It is impassioned and elegant garbage. When he’s done, he looks at you pleadingly and you can only shake your head. You laugh uncomfortably because you don’t understand. You attempt to reassure him, but it comes out as a startled bark.
He takes your hand in his and cradles it, rolling his thumb over the skin and bone. The un-naming starts with the pads of your fingers, the ridges of your fingertips, your knuckles, your skin, each sculpture of bone. He goes up your arm, your elbow, your shoulder, removing the name from each muscle group and vein and tissue cluster, each lump of cartilage. Freckles, hairs, moles, warts, tumors, he un-names. His finger traces your jaw until you do not know finger or jaw. He un-genders you, un-sexes you, smudges away the details of your face, any softness or hardness you may once have had is now unspeakable. He whispers your name gently and then that goes too, he peels it off you and you are naked and what remains is beautiful and beyond description.
Put a Ring on It
YOU BUY YOUR boyfriend a ring, a simple affair, plain silver band. On the inside is engraved, I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. You’ve been getting all the right signals from him for a while. One morning, you wake up and he has surrounded your bed with a circle of salt. He seems alarmed when you cross it, easily, to kiss him good morning.
Later, as he waves a burning hank of sage in your face, you are thinking about the ring, which is tucked inside a pair of underwear in your dresser. I’ve been thinking lately it might be time to talk about a long-term commitment, you say out loud. He chants back in Latin, his voice low and sonorous, something Deo, protego something, omnis immundus spiritus.
Come to bed, you say to him.
Adjuramus te, he says.
The ring was really more like an impulse buy, and you’re a little concerned that maybe you aren’t ready. But you’ve come to appreciate the little things he does for you. Most nights, you come home from work to a black goat, throat slit, its blood pooled in a wide, silver bowl beside your bed. He plants a circle of vervain around the house you share. He carves runes into the lintels of the French doors.
You wait for exactly the right moment to take the ring out of your underwear drawer. The lighting is perfect; your boyfriend has filled the room with candles, and two priests are holding hands and chanting. The air shimmers with heat and the chanting has a dulling effect on the senses. Your boyfriend holds a silver dagger shaped like a cross and an ornate chalice filled with water.
Will you marry me? you ask.
He splashes you in the face with the water and presses the blade flat against your cheek hard enough that two thin lines of blood appear. His hand grips your neck below the jaw, holding your face still as he draws the knife down your cheekbone.
You know, you say, this only works if you believe in it.
On the Outside
YOUR BOYFRIEND WAS raised by sexy wolves. The sexy wolves live out on the edge of town, in beautiful open-plan lofts with real wood flooring and big floor-to-ceiling windows. The sexy wolves are super sexy, and they teach your boyfriend to be super sexy too. The sexy wolves go to the gym at least twice a day. The sexy wolves make chicken in big batches and portion it out for the week, six ounces at a time, and pair it with some vegetables. The sexy wolves do yoga class, Pilates c
lass, water aerobics class, fencing class, tennis class, ballet class, CrossFit. The sexy wolves wear tank tops, crop tops, short-shorts, cute hats, colorful high-tops, tiny underwear that doesn’t cover much. The sexy wolves get their bodies waxed, expensive haircuts, buy only the best moisturizers and hair products. The sexy wolves respect the whole package; they are educated, hard-working, talented. The sexy wolves have interesting and diverse hobbies that they pursue, are passionate about one or more charities, are well-versed in the arts. The sexy wolves know that kindness is sexy, confidence is sexy, intelligence is sexy, geekiness is sexy. They have big books where all the rules and laws related to being sexy are laid out.
You meet your boyfriend at a charity marathon. I like to combine my love of physical fitness with my love of charity, he says.
You are struck by how sexy your boyfriend is, just in the way he stands, the way he laughs, the way his eyes crinkle at the corners. He licks his bottom lip in a way that is conscious in that it seems so unconscious. Everything about him seems low-effort but very careful and intentional and expensive, like he just happened to wake up that morning wearing the best workout clothes, with the line of his jockstrap rising just slightly above his running shorts, his fitted shirt not quite covering a strip of exposed flesh.
After the race you ask for your boyfriend’s phone number and he takes your phone from you and types it in himself, puts his name in with a little heart emoji and a little wink emoji. When he puts the phone back in your hand, his fingertips gently brush your wrist and somehow you swear you can smell him there for the rest of the day. You bring your wrist up to your nose almost inadvertently as you go about your business, at the grocery store, the laundromat, the taqueria where you meet your friends for margaritas. Your friends caution you about the sexy wolves who live out on the edge of town, but when you press them for details the discomfort is somehow impossible for them to articulate. They’re just . . . too sexy, one of your friends says, twirling the stem of his margarita glass, which is shaped like a cactus, between three of his fingers.
Before bed, you text your boyfriend: I’m glad I met you.
He texts you a response: I’m glad I met you too ;)
You go on dates with your boyfriend and you’re constantly on alert, should he be too sexy like your friend said. It’s true your boyfriend is a lot of different kinds of sexy. Sometimes he’s movie sexy, like when he winks at you and says, you haven’t seen anything yet, tiger. Other times he’s a wholesome kind of sexy, in pastel-colored button-down shirts and aviators, and he looks like he could meet your mom on Easter. Sometimes he’s jock sexy, in shirts with cut-off sleeves and workout shorts. Sometimes he’s chill sexy, he is most often chill sexy, he is so incredibly chill, smokes cigars with the boys, drinks whiskey straight, laughs at dirty jokes and talks about sports he enjoys. But despite all that, he’s never too sexy. You feel like he’s exactly the right amount of sexy for you.
You aren’t sexy at all, or you don’t think you are. You’ve always been a little buttoned-up, straight-laced. Every Sunday you clean your apartment, top to bottom, and during the week you get the same sandwich from the same deli every day and when you watch TV, it’s usually to watch a show that you already know you like. You are fit but doughy, not athletic-looking in the least. You like boring music, the kind they play on the radio all the time, and you went to a regular college and got middle-of-the-road grades and when you graduated, you got the regular kind of job that everyone has. When your boyfriend says, that’s so interesting! about your job, you assume he is being insincere but it is very sexy that he seems so interested in what you do.
When you plan dates, your boyfriend always asks you what you want to do, and you always shrug and say, I don’t know, anything really, what do you want to do?
Your boyfriend always has something he wants to do. He takes you with him to laser tag, black light bowling, mini golf, indoor rock climbing, underwear parties, underground raves, whiskey tastings, baseball games, operas. He gets you to try ecstasy and you participate in an orgy that you barely remember. You go scuba diving. He has connections at the zoo, and together you get a behind-the-scenes tour where you get to throw raw steaks to the lions, who regard you with an imperial indifference you feel down to your bones. He takes you with him to the bar where you watch reality shows with a big crowd and you have to take a drink every time someone on the TV says I’m not here to make friends. You get drunk, your boyfriend gets drunk, everyone is drunk.
While you are spending a lot of time with your boyfriend, you haven’t met any of the sexy wolves. When you drive out to the edge of town, you see them, from a distance, dancing shirtless in the street, licking melted ice cream off each other’s hands in the heat, but by the time you get close enough to see in greater detail, they’re all gone, there’s only your boyfriend, waiting for you on the sidewalk in a tight black t-shirt and jeans that are torn so that you can see part of his ass. When you ask him about his family, he just shrugs you off. I’ve never met my real family, he says, but the sexy wolves raised me. As you drive away, you can hear their sultry howling in the distance.
Is it very hard, being so sexy all the time? you ask your boyfriend.
It is, your boyfriend says, super hard.
II
And Then He Asks, What Would You Do Differently?
How the Day Goes I
YOUR BOYFRIEND LISTENS to a lot of Fiona Apple, feels sad for no reason, lacks confidence in his writing. Your boyfriend won’t get off fucking Twitter. To cheer him up you bring your boyfriend flowers and cupcakes and a small wooden doll. The small wooden doll is the kind where you can bend its limbs into different poses, the kind artists sometimes use for models, but a smaller version, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Your boyfriend twists the small wooden doll’s limbs into a strange shape, a kind of dance. He sets the small wooden doll on one of the cupcakes, mooshes it down into the icing. Then he leaves the room and you spend some time looking at the doll dancing on top of the cupcake, trying to decide what it all means.
How the Day Goes II
YOUR BOYFRIEND IS having a hard time at his job. There are numerous difficulties, his boss, the grind of his daily tasks, the generally poor quality of the office equipment. It’s depressing, he spends his whole day on social media. I come home every day tired from doing nothing, he says, and it’s true, he has been especially tired lately. You tell him to quit, but he shrugs and asks what you would do for money if he quit. You are honest, tell him you don’t know, which is maybe the wrong answer, but neither of you makes a lot of money. He talks about getting a better job, both of you getting better jobs, but neither of you can imagine being qualified to do anything better than what you’re doing now. Together you go out to the lake where you spent much of your teen years, together you drink a case of beer and watch the sun rise over the water. You suggest wandering out into the hills, getting lost and never coming back. He shrugs. As a compromise, you leave your empty cans in the muddy lakebed, set end-to-end, spelling out HELP.
How the Day Goes III
YOU AND YOUR boyfriend go to a lot of funerals. Friends, friends of friends, relatives, people you both only barely knew from the office. Your favorite bartender dies. The bagger at the grocery store dies. The waitress who gives bad service at your favorite restaurant dies. You and your boyfriend go to all the funerals. It seems like you dry-clean your suit every week. The weather refuses to turn gloomy; it’s unusually sunny and warm for spring, you sweat through your shirt every time you walk from the small stone church to the overfull graveyard. When the mailman dies, you stop getting invitations to the funerals because there’s no one to deliver them. Instead people rely on social media. Social media will outlive all of us, your boyfriend says at one funeral. But soon after that, social media dies. You and your boyfriend agree to skip all future funerals, but later you catch him hanging out at the small stone church, wearing a freshly cleaned suit, waiting for the next funeral to start. You stay for that funera
l, and the next one, but you’ll be damned if you spend any more money dry-cleaning that suit.
How the Day Goes IV
YOUR BOYFRIEND GETS sick. It’s not the kind of sickness where he will eventually recover. It’s the kind of sickness in which you must make the most of the time you have left together, which is what everyone tells you. You are both unsure of how to make the most of the time you have left together. You take up team sports, go to cooking classes, learn to scrapbook, join a church, take a road trip. You expect the road trip to be emotionally fraught, but you’re both pretty agreeable the whole time. In Arizona, you try a burger made out of emu, which you agree is gross. He kisses you on the cheek and you take a picture with a cactus. You ask him how sick he feels and he shrugs and says, not very. You don’t feel very sick either. When you get back from your road trip, you’re both out of things you wanted to do together, so you go back to your jobs. You made the most of the time you had left, but you didn’t plan for any extra time. Thank God we don’t have to scrapbook anymore, your boyfriend says. So dumb, you agree.
How the Day Goes V
WHEN YOU GET to the cake store, the cake man, in his pastel pink cake store uniform, is standing outside smoking a cigarette. You think he looks ridiculous but you can’t tell what your boyfriend thinks anymore. As you approach the store and it becomes clear you might want to enter, the cake man shakes his head. Freezer’s broken, he says, the cakes have all gone bad.
Couldn’t you just make another cake, your boyfriend asks.
The man in the cake store uniform shrugs and takes a drag on his cigarette. He has long fingers, the tips of his index and middle fingers stained with tobacco where he holds the cigarette. From a distance, he seemed ridiculous, but up-close he is beautiful, you have to admit he is beautiful. The cake man says, Nobody makes anything anymore.