Rabbit Trap

Part 2: When properly baited the Rabbit will often consider the entrapment its own choice.

If you have not yet read PART ONE you can read that HERE.

There are friends we go to when we want to be talked into something, and those for when we need talking out. One is silver and the other is gold, or whatever we used to sing in kindergarten. Believe me, I’ve eaten enough glue to learn this lesson. A shrewd individual recognizes that both have their place. There will always be a use for your ‘yes men’ and your ‘no men,’ and the wisest of engineers learn how to employ each appropriately. 

I’ve always felt that the human will is fairly implacable, and as a generality, most people asking for advice are always going to do exactly what they were already planning. These conversations serve as little more than speed bumps, they are the necessary yet cumbersome prerequisite to expressing our own innate impulses. This slight social friction is purely performative and done merely to experience the “doing.” Sometimes, we only ask to hear our own voice or to check off a particular decision’s vetting process. A passing off of authority. It is often token consultation to ask for anyone’s input or opinion— as if their outlook could ever supersede our own preferences. Even if you aren’t willing to admit it aloud, we all weigh our own predispositions more significantly.

Take something as trivial as which haircut to get. If offered as an ultimatum, stuck between short cropped sides or a longer touseled look, one is looking less for input and more for a reaction. Your mind has already been made, but you seek particular counsel from those who will offer your precognated choice.

When looking for the answer you want, you can approach two types of people. There are the impulsive ones and the ones who are more measured. You’ll go to your spontaneous and impulsive friends when wanting carte blanche for a major chop. These are the people who lead you to a 2 a.m. bleaching from Sally Beauty Supply. I believe, emphatically, that every person with a shaved undercut is a direct result of this brand of friend. Recklessness begets recklessness. When you are looking for a response that aligns with your more measured and conservative inklings, that is the type of friend you seek out. This friend encourages you to “just wash your hair” or “wait it out.” It is important to have friends who are like boulders. Sometimes all you want to hear is to just stand still.

You might be the type of person who claims not to do this kind of calculation. Perhaps you regard yourself as someone who looks to your friends in earnest, you are devout to their opinions, and you actually care a lot. But ask yourself, by looking for others to solve your dilemmas, aren’t you too seeking a specific answer? I’ve always been troubled by the people who say, “Just do whatever you think is best,” to their stylist. Surely they must have some preference, do they really not care or are they too performing the part of carelessness? No one is that easygoing. By handing over the reins, by opting out of choice, aren’t you just enacting the outcome you have already selected? You may say you care to hear other’s opinions, but really you just don’t want to be held accountable for your own decisions. And there is very little nobility in inaction.

It is widely accepted knowledge that twenty-three-year-olds are innately self-serving. The sooner we can embrace that fact the sooner we can drop all other pretenses. 

This is the framework through which I approached discussing men with my friends. When seeking counsel, I was sure to handpick those who would facilitate a particular decision I had already made my mind up on. Miguel, I now see, fell into the category of self-selected recklessness. He was my version of the big cut, a self-sabotaging version of male bangs.

“I have a date this weekend,” I told my friend over a burrito bowl with far too much cilantro. (In my opinion, any cilantro is too much, being that I am one of God’s favored children who taste soap whenever they eat this herb.) They were happy for me, but unaware of the role they were about to play. A role which I had unwittingly cast them in. 

“His name is Miguel.” I selected this little piece of information knowing that a name reveal carries with it a significant weight. It was my way of saying, he’s important.

If I was only planning to hook up with this man, I would not be sharing his name, that’s only insignificant information that takes up more than the acceptable amount of shared memory in a friendship. To expect a friend to remember every man I’ve been on a date with is an absurdly herculean task. The truth is, the names of the majority of the men I have slept with are unknown even to me. Sure, I can vaguely describe them all, the moles on their backs, the smell of their Honda CR-Vs, how long it took them to finish—but what’s in a name and all that? 

Offering a name was my way of leading this careful dance. It suggested a deeper connection and heavily implied the direction of our conversation. My friend was unaware of this riptide.

“What kind of name is Miguel, is he Cuban?” They joked back to me quoting a line from our favorite campy movie. A part of me felt vindicated and proud of my own ability to orchestrate this exact reaction. I was beginning the process of creation, and it made me feel a bit like a God. Without the knowledge I shared, my friend would not know a thing about Miguel, before me he didn’t exist. I got to decide every aspect of his self; create a personality, a back story, a version of perfection that aligned with my own preferences. In this way, he became perfect. In this way, he became an idea.

“Okay, but for real, show me a picture.” This is always so important, I guess it’s nice to see the face of the person who will be inside of your close friend over the weekend. A face to a foreskin or whatever. This too gave me another opportunity to direct, as the simple selection of a photo can sway the opinions of others quickly. Choose a picture where he looks wrong (which is to say in contrast to the character I had created) and your friend, who has been explicitly selected to agree with your decision, may offer opposition. Select the right photo and suddenly your friend is entirely on board with your self-sabotaging. It’s an art form, one which I have slowly and painstakingly honed over the years of using countless dating apps.

I’ve made this mistake before, shown the wrong friend or confidant a man only to receive a: “Are you sure?” Or worse yet: “Just be sure to share your location with me.” My takeaway from this mistake was not to conduct myself more safely, but rather to become more insular and more secretive. I’d rather sneak around than hear advice that questioned my decisions. In this way, I stopped offering any information at all. I removed myself from these conversations entirely, because who has my best intentions in mind more than me? I am an incredible judge of character, so how could I ever get hurt?

I had several images I could choose from for our little show-and-tell, but this selection process was incredibly integral. You see, the photo often finalizes the creation process, it is a verification of existence. Without a photo, this imaginary man reads more like “my Abercrombie Model boyfriend who is totally real, but just goes to a different school.” I could speak ad nauseum of his character, but without an image to cinch the truth, my friend would never buy into the fairytale. Deciding what kind of man a lesbian would think was suitable for me was an entirely separate challenge. They doubtless would not want to see me with the Hanes underwear version of  Miguel, they’d probably want me with someone sweet and wholly safe. They’d like to see me with a ‘take home to mom’ type or at the very least a ‘showers weekly’ type. They favored men who looked all together when all I ever wanted was pieces.

“Alright Miguel,” I loved the way they dragged out his name, the almost growl that accompanied the ‘el’ of it. “He’s so handsome,” they were looking at a fully clothed photo of him, one of the very few I had. One where he looked interesting and academic like he bought produce from a local market and knew how to julienne his own vegetables. It was the right image to procure. My friend’s finger hovered over the image on my phone in an effort to swipe for more pictures.

“Don’t swipe though,” I said in haste.

“Not like it’s anything I haven’t seen before.”

“Still.” I cared less if they saw my own nude images than if they saw his. That was not part of the careful narrative I was crafting.

As an aside, you should never swipe through the images on a gay man’s phone. And if you do, know that you are taking full responsibility for everything that you are about to see. The camera roll of a gay man’s phone will have the most vile and medically absurd collection of penises imaginable right next to a wholesome series of our kitten in a jaunty Christmas hat. If you are not prepared for folsom and wholesome (or wholesome and holesome) then kindly stay away from our photo galleries.

There is no fear greater than having a family member take a group photo on your phone. They snap the picture quickly and then select the small frame in the corner of the screen that brings you to your photo album to review their handiwork. For a moment the Sword of Damocles hangs over both of our heads. The image the land upon may be innocuous— a few underdeveloped snaps of the meal I had eaten the night before, or it could be something far more lurid. I am suddenly hyperaware of my own asshole.

“When are you going to see him,” they ask. 

“This weekend.” The words hang for a second. 

“Isn’t that—”

“Valentine’s Day, yes. But that doesn’t mean anything. It’s not like he’s getting me a dozen roses or one of those massive teddy bears from Walgreens.” Secretly I hoped he might. I hedged my bets by dropping that idea for my friend. That way when he does even the smallest gesture I could return to my friend in shock and awe, I mean can you believe it? Expectation setting is key in controlling a narrative. 

“Still sounds like a cute little date for you. Are you excited?”

“I don’t know, I’m trying to go with the flow, just see what happens organically.” What a crock of shit. 

Miguel ate like a barbarian. Though he used chopsticks, from a quick glance it would appear that he was eating his noodles with his bare hands. His broad shoulders hunched over giving the appearance of an adult in an elementary school desk. He was all knees and chins. The Thai restaurant where we had our first date was nothing special, nowhere you’d recommend to anyone you liked much, but still, it had its own charm. The furniture and decorations were that of a yard sale, collected from various other Asian restaurants in the area that must have closed down or gone out of business. The gold Maneki-neko statue waved its paw at me, its motion catching the corner of my eye the entire time our conversation idled, and the tables were laminated giving a satisfying “thwuck” sound each time I picked up my cup of water. 

I tried to hold on to every aspect of the restaurant, each paper lantern and broken chopstick was manifold. The golden statues, I knew, were meant to represent good fortune and the arrival of luck into one’s life. With each hypnotizing wave I created new dreams and invested more of myself into this male fantasy. We met eachother on Valentine’s Day, could you come up with a neater opening to a story? Our grandchildren were going to go wild for this.

When I first arrived to his home, Miguel asked me where I wanted to go and informed me that he hadn't made dinner reservations anywhere. He assured me this would be fine, since there were so many restaurants downtown, getting in would be no trouble. There were three. Our hodgepodge Thai restaurant, a Pizza place with nowhere to sit, and an upscale American pub which was a glorified Applebees. Still, I was a paper boat on a river, highly agreeable and placid. 

“I’ll go anywhere. I’m pretty easy to please,” I thought he might like to hear that. I especially liked the weight pleasure had in my statement, I hoped he’d take that word and spin it out in his own way. Hoped it conjured images of me bent over compromisingly, allowing him to do whatever he wanted with my ragdoll body. I don’t offer resistance, I don’t talk back, I am a good boy. 

That’s how we ended up eating eleven-dollar Pad Thai that tasted like wet. Me, sat shoulders back in a torn vinyl booth trying to project manners and goodness, him hunched over eating in slurps and tears. A barbarian, I think, will always want to take the prized maiden, so this is who I become. I have never held myself with such posture in my life, I wonder if the ruse was convincing, or if he saw me like a pig in lipstick. I picked at my plate, moving a chunk of flavorless chicken to the side, careful not to eat too much in front of him. 

I’ve always hated eating in front of other people, especially those who I want to want to see me naked. Rationally, I know that these brown noodles aren’t going to change the shape of my gut in one sitting, but there's another part of me, one that is far louder, that thinks the change will be visible. I have this image of me pulling my shirt up over my head and revealing my stomach with a perfect imprint of everything I’ve eaten that day. Stretched taut under the ballon of my skin in an undigested pear, a stapler, a bowling pin, and a whole pumpkin. What’s it called if your biggest fear is becoming the Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly? Who could ever want to fuck a junk drawer?

My thought in interrupted when our waitress came over to ask if we needed a box. My meal, still largely intact, sat limply in an unappetizing globule. The leftovers were practically a whole meal, I used this as another opportunity. I went in for the kill.

“I’m all set, unless—Miguel would you want to take this home?” Men will never say no to free food, and I saw his paltry fridge a few loose cans, and takeout boxes, he didn’t strike me as the grocery type. 

“Naw, I’m all set, I’ve been eating out a lot lately.” I wished he hadn’t reminded me of his constant bookings. 

“I guess he didn’t like it much.” Miguel joked back to our waitress. My eyes widened, he had noticed how much I had eaten and I had miscalculated. Did he think I was overly picky? This would imply difficulty, this would make me a challenge. Men don’t want a challenge. Men want easy, men want soft and warm nothings they can stick their dicks in whenever they want, men want a sleeping corpse they can fuck and leave on the side of a highway. Men do not want opinionated, they don’t want recourse or opposition, they don’t want to be questioned or debated. They do not want picky. I tried to course correct.

“No, no, I loved it, I just don’t have a big appetite right now. If you’re sure you don’t want to take it, I’ll bring it home.”

“So do you want a box?” The waitress asked again, clearly disinterested in this back and forth.

“Yes, I’ll heat it up for lunch tomorrow. Thank you.” When I got home late the next day I dropped the takeout box directly into the garbage cans outside my house. I knew if I ever ate those noodles again I would be sick.