160 W Center Promenade
I do not think I was being mean, and I doubled down on this, when I used the words “projector ride” towards him: the man I drove to visit, who said that he was only into cuddling. Naked cuddling he said, and I thought that sounded tame, and as I drove, he invited me to enter his door, which would be unlocked. “Face down, ass up,” I texted my friend, that there was a dissonance here: a staunch cuddler; a vibe already set for a particularly uncuddly session, as I walked toward the front door of his apartment complex, waiting for him to unlock it, and, ultimately, two members of a family (a mom, a child) looked at me skeptically, opened the door, and we all waited for the elevator together.
The child beat himself with his water bottle until it hurt. Borderline or boredom, who knows, as he avoided eye contact, and I avoided his, and the elevator went down below us, then to our floor, and I walked out the elevator and into his hallway, anxious. “Home sweet home” a doormat said, and “the Davids home,” declared the one to its left. Flowers on some doors, and summer decorations on others made the building, a modern structure of rectangles, feel lived-in. Down the rectangle hallway, oppressive in the smell of cleaner, until I showed up to his apartment, trying the unlocked door and entering.
“HELLO,” a man said, and I knew, I just knew, I wish I had the courage to turn around and exit that door, despite the nothing-wrong that this man had done: I just knew that I had made a mistake, inside a room as sparse as a hotel room, with ambient music playing: as clean and sterile as a place where nobody actually lives.
It’s the type of ambient music (I hope this is clear later) that takes your brain and shreds it with an aural sandpaper. I swear. It takes your brain by a numbing grip and refuses it: it plays one droning, happy chord for hours, and hours, saying “this is all you need. This is true. This is truth.”
He said hi, “nobody really joins me for cuddles on the apps,” and I said, “it was really strange. I did not expect it, but here I am, I guess. It’s a strange ask.” And he said, “most guys say it’s too intimate to cuddle and to kiss, but I think that’s dumb,” and he’s right: I don’t particularly enjoy the fucking machine type of guy, but sometimes that’s alright.
So he asked that I join him in bed for cuddles, which I did, and he asked me whether I had a boyfriend. “HAH, nope,” I said, and he was like “when was the last time you had one?” and I said, “never!” and I asked him in return, “when was your last boyfriend?” and he said, “oh I kinda had one,” and I said, “Kinda??” and he said, “he was toxic,” and I said, “that’s still a boyfriend,” and he said, “oh when was the first time you played around with another guy?” and I said, “20 or 21,” and he said, “oh,” and I said, “what about you?” and he said, “14, but it was with an older man,” and I said, “oh,” and he said, “but it was not traumatizing,” and I thought of how at least traumatizing is a pretty low bar for sex to not be, and that this was already a bit too intimate for me. I imagined being a hipster, riding my bike away from this apartment, saying, “I don’t really even know you, dude,” as he wrapped my arms around him, and began to kiss them, and turned to kiss my lips.
Imagine, and I am being realistic, a goldfish with a tongue. And with that tongue, the goldfish approaches you, sticks out its tongue, and licks you, before retracting the tongue, pressing its lips onto you with no other motion, before the tongue comes out again, and this becomes its mechanism on repeat. Well, a human is no goldfish, and I do not know where someone learns to do something as strange as that, but this man said to me, “you’re a great kisser,” and I owed him nothing so held my silence, before cuddles became less about cuddling and more, for him, about him bottoming. I felt misled.
Because this goldfish kisser did two things: first, he talked about how he was not out to his family, but that it did not matter, because people can guess, everyone already knows probably, and there’s no point being out, and I could feel the anger boiling inside of me, as our country takes a political turn to bonkers land, and so I said, “I don’t think I understand you,” which is a nice way to put it, but you could feel, as he pulled me closer, that it put distance between us, as it should have, and he fumbled a bit to explain, and I said, “did your parents know about your toxic boyfriend,” and he said, “they didn’t like him,” and he turned to gulp my lips again, and he shut up finally, so I finished in him, imagining that he was someone else.
“I’m a Disney influencer,” he said, and I thought, “this is not getting better,” as he pulled me tighter and I just wanted to shower, but he would not stop talking, and he asked me when I had been to Disney last (I went for the first time in ten years two months ago), and about how he does not understand why people protested JD Vance when he went to Disneyland (“he’s just taking a vacation,” he said, and I said, “well he’s also the vice president so signs himself up for public comment like that,” and he said, “in front of his family though?” and I said, “he signed up for it!” and he said, “but Disneyland is supposed to be the happiest place on earth,” and I said, “they own the airspace rights three miles around their park, so that anyone protesting is, in some way, safe from helicopters and aerial surveillance from the government—at least the government has to go through a longer process to get permission from Disney, I think, so what better place to protest the vice president: I don’t think he’s very likeable”) and I said, “normally I’m critical of Disneyland,” and he said, “well people go to experience it, and you can’t bash on people’s experiences,” and I said, “people have their experiences, but their experiences are shaped by a company or an institution that creates them. They’re fabricated. So you can critique that fabrication process,” and he said, “people just want to escape for the day and get a break from the world,” and I said, “that does not make them exempt from critique! But I did have a good time when I went to Disneyland, only because of Star Wars Land,” and we went on about the particulars of Disneyland, and I went on a rant.
“Do you like the Guardians ride?” he asked, and I said, “I think it’s fun. But it’s a bit one-note. A lot of the newer Disney rides have no sense of plot—think of the one that replaced Splash Mountain: it’s basically a grocery store in a ride, with no sense of tension or anything. Like, by the time you get to the lift to the drop, the music is happy and you’re upbeat, so the drop is not foreboding at all, and you’re not nervous or anything, which is a bit of a boring thing to buy into: that everything is constantly a bit of a party so it’s all just fun.” And he said “I LOVE TIANA RIDE,” and more, “because the movie is so good—have you seen the movie?” and I thought that it’s not fair to judge a ride on a movie that it’s based on, so I stayed quiet, as he went on and on and he said, “do you like Space Mountain?” and I said, “Projector ride!!” and he said, “that’s SO MEAN,” and I said, “but that’s what it is! It’s projector ride! It’s not mean!” and he said, “that’s MEAN,” and I said, “that’s literally not mean,” and he said, “you’re being mean,” and I said, “I’m being realistic,” and he said, “that’s mean!!” and me, “I’m just telling you what it’s made of,” (thinking, now, of this Marxist critique of the illusion of a capitalist society: that we do not see what it is made of, which is similar to a religious critique, because I thought he was being particularly religious) and he said, “like that?” and pointed to his projector of purple lights onto the ceiling, in a sort-of heart shape, and all of a sudden I heard the droning of peaceful relaxing ambient music, while he opened up his Disney Influencer Tiktok to show me all the rides he’s been on and loves, and I thought, “this is hell. Or this is heaven. This is utopia to some people,” as he all of a sudden switched to pleasing my body again, which felt good and hellish at the same time: get me out of this brain slop building, this square upon squares in this ikea-furnished display room, barely lived in. He shifted almost on top of me, and I looked into his face, which looked like death to me: the bagged eyes and skull shape, the tight skin on his face, and I wondered whether this was the atmosphere I felt the whole time. He looked like he was dying, and he was a year younger than me, and I wondered if everyone looks like that from this angle but the answer is no. He looked like death. I felt claustrophobic, as he cuddled me to stay, and for some reason he decided to blurt out, “I get my education from Youtube, so I can share with my audience as an influencer.” I sucked air in. I said, “what time is it?”
“I need to leave at 9:30,” I said, and it was 9:37, and he said, “it’s 9:30,” and repeated, “it’s 9:30,” and said it one more time, “it’s 9:30,” and I said, “yep. Welp,” and I stood up, put my clothes on, and he said, “it’s 9:30,” and I said, “yeah, I have to go,” and he said “it’s 9:30,” and I said, “yeah,” while staring at the television that showed a Zen rock garden with “peaceful ambient music” playing.
So I left, and as I left, I saw an Amazon package at his door, with no name on it, and I said, “you’ve got a package,” and put it inside, and pushed the button for the elevator. I did not want to be in the same elevator as a child beating himself with a waterbottle though—I would not take the chance; I wanted to run down the stairs, as fast as I could, out onto this empty, streetlit, gentrified street: I wanted to walk as quickly as I could back to my car; I wanted to run and run and run.
I entered my car. I put on ambient music: Tongue Depressor’s “Never Saw’m,” ambient drone with grit. Or experimental music. I’m not sure. I thought of Patrick Shiroishi’s new album. I wonder what we get to push back on the implicit closet of society, against this man’s reluctance to even speak of his sexuality; I wonder what we get to push back on the Disney brain that just consumes an experience as an escape; I wonder what we get as a push back on the infinite doomscroll commodifying our emotions. It is difficult not to burn with anger.