Rabbit Trap

Part I: When positioning your snare, be sure to do so on a flat, level surface. Place a weight or brick on top of the snare to prevent other animals from tipping the trap.

After our terse date at a brown noodle cafe, Miguel fucked me for the first time. It was Valentine’s Day, but he assured me that this particularity had no deeper significance. Yet, as someone who is perpetually looking for signs, I was unable to take him at his word. 

You see, I have a terrific habit of making mountains out of men, searching for double entendres in their tone. My parents always called me a little bit dramatic, and maybe they were right. More often than not, I find myself looking through the scattered cracks in a man’s behavior and filling them with something sweeter than the truth. I always want there to be more — a hidden meaning to the unknowable ways by which they act. I follow the breadcrumbs they drop behind, because even if it is a trap, their bait suggests they at least want me enough to eat. But some men just have holes in their pockets. Some trails were never meant for you to follow. 

Call it an overactive imagination or blame it on a religious upbringing, but I am constantly seeking some greater meaning, resulting in an intense desire to fancify every situation. Each interaction gets spun out, turning the ordinary into symbolic —narrativizing my own experiences. This is why I can get hung-up over a situationship for years, and why letting go is never as easy as the little girl in the department store Elsa dress makes it out to be.

Creating a new version of the truth is a willful denial of facts, of this I am aware, but to what extent is often unclear. As you might imagine this habit has only ever brought me great joy and never a single heartbreak or disappointment. Still, to stop believing this, to stop gumshoeing through each memory trying to extract a morsel of profundity, well — that is something I could never survive. The sad fact of the matter is that I need to believe these self-made fairytales. Aren’t we all just looking for something to believe in? 

Maya Angelou says, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time,” and I tend to believe anything Maya Angelou says with authority. But believing something and doing it are entirely different things. Sorry Maya, but I’m just a man. 

For many, the unspoken part, the part we are all afraid of saying out loud is that the searching through the weeds and molding of a fictitious love is often the only love on offer. Without which, the realization — that all this was for nothing — is too overwhelming to bear. When someone never loved you, never wanted anything from you, you must satiate yourself on the imaginary. This is why I get to creating, forcing mediocrity into a soul-mate-shaped hole. I turn “not wanting something more serious” into: “being overwhelmed by the magnitude of their own feelings.” Each small cut feels more cinematic in that way. I can convince myself of most anything. When I’m home alone I really do believe these lies I tell myself, I can feel loved even when the rational part of myself knows that this “love” was entirely fabricated and self-made.

I think that somewhere deep down, I am aware that this meal is nutrient-sparse. This processed love will never truly stave off my hunger. Some loves are like eating junk food, and when you eat directly from the garbage, how can you expect a balanced diet?

I met Miguel on a dating app, no I will not tell you which one you pervert. His profile picture showed him standing rather gawkishly in just a pair of dad underwear (Hanes tighty-whities), hair plopped al dente on his head, and circle glasses from Kirkland. His room was slovenly and the spaces under his hairy feet were seemingly the only cleared area in his entire home. I realize that these characteristics on a less conventionally attractive man would read as more unsightly and unkempt, but he had something inscrutable that allowed him to pull it off. (He was ugly hot.)

Some people just have a je ne sais quoi that affords a certain brand of nonchalant slobbishness. He didn’t have to try, didn’t have to put on airs, he screamed take me as I am and did so without ever needing to say a single word. From this alone, I prescribed an essence of sprezzatura to him, considered him deeply cool and more interesting than a single photo could ever hope to portray; and like I said, I can narrativize almost anything.

When I was finally standing in his apartment for the first time, heart pounding slightly in a newly thrifted coat that had become my personality, I realized the yarn I spun had actually stopped short of the truth. His home, if you wanted to call it that, was not merely messy it was dirty.

To say its smell washed over you would be to paint too incomplete a picture, a better term would be it wafted. The smell was hot and guttural, something that came from the back of a throat still white with thrush. Nailed to his wall were a pair of well-worn Carhartts. I asked him if it was a design choice, and he informed me that it was just easier to find a hammer than a hanger. 

“Do you want a glass of wine?” He asked me. I perched my chin on my shoulder in an effort to appear almost coquettish, preparing to ask what types he had.

This has never really mattered to me, and I can never discern the difference between a good glass of Cabernet and bottom-shelf Merlot. I’ve always admired those who knew exactly what wine was appropriate for each situation and knew its secret flirtatious language. Was it gauche to drink red before a date? Would he expect me to prefer a rosé? These distinctions meant something. The smallest decision could render me unsuitable, and to be wrong is to be unlovable. I had to present the ideal version of boyhood to him, had to be the right version of me, or whatever identity he had breathed into me by looking at my own meager photos and purposefully vague dating profile.

Before I had the chance to make something up, he replied, “I had this one open from before you got here.” It was 4:00pm. 

I followed him to his kitchen. There were two overstuffed bags of garbage piled up against the wall in a place where a corded phone had been artlessly removed. The roughhewn wire still hung limply from the hole, reaching for a connection, not knowing it would likely never receive a call again. I would offer to bring down one of the bags on our way to the restaurant. I thought, rather proudly of myself, that this would show my domestic worth and set me apart. Is a good deed ever truly selfless? All actions have motives, to suggest otherwise would be a lie.

I don’t like liars. At risk of sounding like Holden Caulfield, phonies actually make my skin crawl. You might call yourself a good person, hell other people might even call you one as well, but how “good” can someone be if their acts of service are merely a performance for praise? That’s one of the things that drew me to Miguel, he might not have been polished, but at least he was real. There was no cabaret of character with him. What you saw was what you got.

I suppose we are attracted to the things we ourselves lack.

In his chrome sink sat dirty dishes and cans of cat food that had been half-heartedly rinsed. The fish and or chicken (hard to say which when it’s processed like that) splattered up the sides and the chunks immediately conjured the image of my head face down over a toilet in the co-ed bathroom of my first-floor college dorm. I pretended not to notice, though my stomach was Mighty Beanz-ing about.

He pulled out a mug from the depth that still had a ring of red staining its bottom, and poured from the bottle on the counter. Crudely, he handed it to me and waited for me to drink it all. Apparently, this occasion called for a Merlot, I never would have guessed. Though the pour was a little heavy, I could have finished it in one big swig. But that would be another tell. I doubted he’d want me to be that type, so instead, I sipped slowly, walking around and gesturing for him to tour the rest of his apartment. 

This was a character I sometimes played, the role of a wide-eyed first-time home buyer. Men love to show off, they really just want to be able to teach you something. Every man wants to do the telling, it makes them feel necessary. The part I played was a well-worn practice, one which involved me genially parading around the space commenting that, “I mean, woah, would you look at this?” I bring a similar energy whenever asking someone what they do for a job. This is a question that lacks import, asked mostly to give the other something to say. I mean seriously, what other response is there than woah, very cool. Most jobs are not woah, very cool. Most jobs aren’t even “squint and you see it cool.” But no one wants to hear that, so we lie. We pretend to be interested, nodding our heads at whatever exactly a GIS Technician is.

There was kitty litter in almost every corner of his apartment, though no cats had yet made their presence known. He assured me that this was because they were extremely skittish.

“They’re around here somewhere,” he said, though it was starting to feel a bit like A Beautiful Mind.

I worried maybe he had made the whole thing up, after all, there were all the makings of a madman in his apartment from the garbage bags to the wall pants. (And hey, that’s kind of my thing.) 

Then I saw it, a large whiteboard on his fridge, the kind you only see in a Staples advertisement or a conference room for a tech startup, and ask yourself — “Do people actually use those sorts of things?” I have always admired those who can use a calendar or planner and stick to it. I have a theory that everyone is only filling it out when someone’s watching and the rest of the time they are just carrying it around for show. If you use a planner alone in a forest, does it even make a sound? 

On the day’s date, February 14th, my own name was written in bright green dry-erase marker. I probably would have used a red, tonally that just makes more sense. It’s as if all cultural mores of this greeting card pseudo-holiday missed him entirely. It didn’t take me long to hyperfixate, because you see, after my name was another boy’s name and so on throughout the week. It became clear that Miguel was indeed a very busy boy and his dance card was filled. I tried not to count the names or take mental note of how many names duplicated. If there were repeat offenders, where then did I stand? The whole thing was so brazenly analog, nakedly in the open, still I felt like I was stumbling onto a secret. I drank from my mug of wine slightly faster. 

There is no expectation that anyone is exclusive from the start of a relationship, of this I am well aware. But what is the code of conduct for this type of thing? Ethically, should we self-disclose the other people we are casually seeing? What or who warrants a discussion? I was supposed to see someone else later the following week, should I mention that — or would that be too revealing? If I share that I am seeing other people would he think I was a slut or would he ascertain that I was not truly interested? It is impossible to hold a man down if he has to question your devotion, I don’t know who said that, but I’m sure she’s a very happy woman.

I’ve always had the sense that men are only interested when you make yourself abundantly and effortlessly available. You need to be ready at their beck and call, and if not, you’ll miss your chance. Men are sort of like Halley’s Comet in that way, which I guess makes me Mark Twain. I’m constantly afraid that if I don’t give over enough of myself then I will fall short or fall out of favor. And what is it if not a failure of self if you can’t make someone love you by sheer force of will?

But what do I want? Whenever a man confesses to seeing other people from the start, that almost makes the whole situation worse. I feel I need to outperform faceless competitors, dreaming up men with everything I lack. This was made even more challenging after I was given a face along with the names. So too, I took these two-dimensional concepts and taffy-pulled them in my mind to larger-than-life monolithic characters.

For a great example of how I can blindly look past what is right in front of me and ignore my gut instincts, concurrent to these mental gymnastics orchestrated in my mind palace, I coaxed myself into believing my own special version of the truth. I told myself he wanted me to see this calendar. He wanted me to see my name, and how special I was. After all, at least I had made the list. He allowed me to discover these other men exactly because of how important I was already. He wanted me to know, but didn’t want to tell me — because these men were just names, but I was flesh and hair and mouth for fucking.

Slowly I began to convince myself that the nonchalance with which the calendar was revealed was indicative of his own comfortability with me. He already trusted me. This act was one of nobility. He was showing just how much he was willing to give up for me, the countless boys he would be prepared to drop. My own enormity was astounding.

If given enough time I could have made his choice of green marker symbolic as well, but he moved me towards the bedroom before I could finish that storyline.

“You have great art.” I calculated.

He did have interesting pieces, all of which were in haphazard piles on the floor. The word “interesting” is doing a lot of work here since the majority of his art depicted entangled male bodies with descended penises that wrapped around their necks like scarves. Musculature folded over itself revealing gaping holes and spackled hair. It wasn’t erotic or perverse in a traditional sense — the paintings skewed grotesque almost feral in their crude renderings. They were like horny cave drawings. I wouldn’t call this sort of thing casual “floor art,” but apparently, he could only find his hammer when it came to a pair of pants that needed sorting, but not for the paintings he had chosen to decorate with.

“Are they yours?” I continued.

I figured he considered himself something of an artist and so I stroked at this ego a bit, truly expecting him to list off the name of some Etsy seller or more likely a trendy little antique store nearby that he frequented. I could lie and say I’ve been as well and that it’s my favorite place in the area. Better yet I could suggest we go together, so that I might imbue the place with a memory of me, make myself a bit more permanent in his places of importance. Once he was no longer able to divorce me from all of his favorite places, then he would be unable to outrun me.

“Yeah, sometimes I get off my ass and paint the guys I’ve fucked.” He responded.

Suddenly their pendulous cocks felt more accusatory. Their bodies leered back at me, calling me a fool. These were not just anonymous concepts of men. They were real flesh and blood representations of his choice, of everything he wanted. I made it my goal to one day become one of his paintings.