5 stories about men

Jason (If It Makes You Happy)

Jason and I go for snowcones, sit on the wooden steps, and try our best not to let the sticky syrup drip down and stain our shirts. He tells me about the boy he’s seeing and how he’s thinking of leaving him. I tell him he should, “If you don’t love him anymore, it's better to let him down easy.”

We finish and throw our styrofoam cups into a trashcan swarmed by bees. He drives back to his place—busted A/C, windows down. “Loving someone’s easy,” he says. “Staying in love feels harder.” We take turns stripping down, changing into swim trunks, and lathering our bodies with sunscreen.

“Do you think he’ll hate me forever?” He asks me, but I shrug. ”I don’t talk to my last ex, but pretty sure he doesn’t hate me.””But, like, do you ever miss him?””Sure,” I say rubbing a white stick of sunscreen over my face. “I miss him.””How often?””I’d say about twice a month, maybe more.” ”Fuck,” he says. “That’s a lot of time.”

In the passenger seat, I dab a towel across my forehead, trying not to focus on the heat. We drive south down to the springs, hoping for a small after-work crowd. He plays Sheryl Crow’s If It Makes You Happy from a bluetooth speaker resting precariously in a cup holder.

“I just think sometimes,” he tells me. “I’m not cut out for loving someone.””Yeah,” I respond. “It can be pretty hard.”

Luis (francis forever)

We had drinks outside and I asked Luis what he thought about Jared. It was midday, the hottest of the summer, and each of us was smeared with a sticky combination of sunscreen, spring water, and sweat.

“He was the first man I ever loved,” he said. “And after we broke up I spent half a decade trying to understand everything that happened.”

Luis took small sips of his drink, a fruity IPA that tasted, to me, like skunked beer—though he seemed to enjoy it. I drank in big gulps, an unfortunate habit I picked up early in my teenage years that never quite went away.

“When we first started dating, I knew immediately we would never stay together. I had no delusions you know? I was twenty and the concept of a forever love seemed ridiculous to me. How could you love the same person for the rest of your life? It didn’t make any sense. Still, I also just knew we would know each other after we broke up. Or, after he broke up with me. I knew from our first meeting that he’d be the one to break up with me. I felt it in my heart or somewhere deep in the emotional part of my brain. It didn’t matter how much he loved me, I was never going to be his final love. I’m not sure he could have a final love really. He seemed to me the type that needed to love multiple people, but never at the same time.”

Conscious of my nervous gulping, I pushed my beer away, focusing instead on the sweat dripping down my forehead. I thought about my time with Jared—how it seemed so different from Luis’ experience. When I knew him Jared was obsessive and singularly focused. He devoted his romantic attention only to me, and the intensity of it often overwhelmed me.

“But I imagined a future together regardless.” Luis continued. “Not living together, not of marriage. I never even thought about marrying anyone until I met Kirby. I thought we’d have what most first loves have: we’d fall hard for each other, we’d express our emotions and our desires in an unhealthy way, and eventually, we’d fall out of love. It would be hard. We’d go back and forth exchanging text messages or angry rants. We’d go to therapy. We’d work out. We’d fall in love again. We’d learn how much separated us. We’d learn that it was impossible for us to ever stay together. But, we’d stay friends. Or we’d find each other again. We’d learn to love the parts of us that had changed. We’d grow. We’d accept that what was in the past was in the past, but cherish how much it changed us. We’d accept that the soft words we whispered to each other in the early morning were true. We’d meet at a dog park or a coffee shop or out late night at a bar and things would be different.”

“Did that second part ever happen?” I asked him. Luis chuckled at the response before shaking his head.

“No, he vanished. Or—” He took another sip of beer and cracked his knuckles. “That’s unfair. He didn’t vanish, he stayed right where he always was. But, it felt to me like anytime I approached him he bolted.”

Bolting seemed familiar to me. Jared never stayed in one place too long and he told me several times about his avoidant personality type. If his emotions got too high he’d go for a walk or a run or he’d leave and I wouldn’t hear from him for hours or even a day or more. I was the opposite: all anxiety, constantly trying to work things out. I pressured people, pushing them and squeezing them till they popped. I wasn’t proud of it, but it was hard to change.

“There were times it seemed like he was genuinely interested in a friendship or a relationship or an exchanging of apologies,” Luis said. “And so I’d keep holding out hope until I finally realized one day that it wasn’t worth it, he made his decision, I was just being naive.”

“How did that feel?”

“Crushing. But also maybe a little freeing. I remember what I was listening to when it happened: Francis Forever. I was trying to piece it together but it was no use. People do things for all sorts of reasons. Things change just when you’re starting to understand them. But somehow, you have to find a way to stand that.”

Sam (rugged country)

Sam asked me who I had loved the most and I told him, “I’m not touching that.” We were both tipsy, edging towards drunk, after getting rained in by a flash thunderstorm.

“Aww, why not, are you too afraid of a real conversation?””I came here to unwind after a stressful week, not rehash the many failures of my past.””And you’re still a little bitter?” He nudged me playfully, opening another White Claw and taking a dramatic gulp.”Maybe,” I replied, and it was true. I had never broken things off with any of the men I dated. They always ended things first. I suppose, in that way, I never truly got over any of them. At least that’s what my therapist said.

“The Redhead,” I said. “He was probably the best at sex. Though we only did it once.””I don’t think you can logically make that claim.””Why not?””Quantity over quality—or something like that.” He laid back on the couch, face up at the ceiling to keep his head from spinning. “One sexual encounter is easy. Anyone can do it well. You’ve got the passion from the start, the anticipation, the awkwardness of learning each other’s likes and dislikes. You’re grading on a curve. Everything seems good.”

It was hard to argue with his logic, though that might have been my mental state at the time. “Fair,” I said. “But he had a great body and that was when I was thin and men could still pick me up and toss me across the room.”

“And you liked that?””Who wouldn’t?””Perhaps someone with any sense of self-confidence.””Ah, well, I wouldn’t know anything about that.””Wasn’t he the one with the messy room?””Oh yeah. He lived in a studio apartment there were supplement bottles and half-finished protein shakes everywhere. He did that thing that men do when they don’t know how to decorate: shoved his bed against the wall.””It’s always the messy ones that know how to have sex.””If you see a mattress on the ground with trash around it, you know you’re in for the time of your life.”

the Teacher, the Boy, the Blonde, the Man, the Redhead. Each name offered up in silent prayer: the pantheon of my love and longing, nestled high atop some modern-day Olympus. I convinced myself it had to be this way: silent longing and miracles divined from everyday occurrences. Truthfully, the Gods of old spoke little to humans; their ethereal senses tuned to other matters. I was an afterthought of their brilliance, something divinely touched but incapable of surviving in the majesty of their palace.

At least that’s what I told myself.

“The Boy was the worst at it,” I said. “But we were new to each other and to sex and to sex with a man. We fumbled around, had no idea of where we wanted to be or what positions we wanted to be in.””Huh, I never had those days.” He said. ”You always knew you were a top?””No, I wouldn’t go that far. I did flirt around as a bottom for a while—in college. But, the first time I had someone to guide me. Someone who had been there before walked me through the steps it took and held my hand when things were strange.”

I miss them all in different ways. The Boy the least of all. Each one prayed to, would offer a boon: confidence from the Redhead, accountability from the Man, security from the Teacher, humility from the Blonde, patience from the Boy. In times of strife, I offered up my lamentation to the Gods, hopeful they could hear me and take pity.

We lay on the floor, listening to Rugged Country by Japanese Breakfast, letting the room twist around us. I ask him if he wants to sleep with me and he politely declines. Still, we share the bed: him curled up next to me, me to him.

Kameron (Lazuli)

In the summer he moved back to Austin to care for my dying body. Slowly he eased my suffering, carefully cradling me in moments of great pain, delicately washing my body when I was too tired to stand.

I knew death from an early age. Growing up the long periods of my adolescence were punctuated by someone dying. Whether Kameron knew about it or not was a mystery to me. He spoke very little about his past, even when we were together. What brought him back to me I didn’t know. It certainly wasn’t my pleading. He was the last to know about my diagnosis and only learned the truth when it became impossible to deny the sudden thinness of my usually thick hairline.

On the weekends he’d play volleyball in the park, returning to my small studio apartment covered in sand to shower and cook me dinner. Sometimes he’d talk about his anxieties or insecurities. Most of the time however we’d sit in silence eating or on the couch watching old episodes of 30 Rock until my body grew too tired and he carried me to bed.

He never stayed the night but always waited till I drifted off to sleep before leaving. We would lay next to each other, his wide frame pressed gently against mine. We’d listen to Lazuli by Beach House and I, desperate for some connection would ask if he remembered what song he used to play during sex with his past partners.

He smiled politely and told me he just put it on shuffle.

“I think so few people can’t be replaced,” I told him. ”No you don’t,” He responded. ”When I’m gone, who will you replace me with?” ”No one, I suppose.”

The nature of Kameron’s love for me was always suspect. He never told me he loved me or about who he loved now. Sometimes I would catch him, right before he left, taking a sharp breath in, as if he was holding some big swell of revelation in.

I don’t remember when he left me. I only remember his continual return.

C (Clean Socks)

He often thought he mistook the two: love and friendship, focusing wrongly on the former. Now, not old but older, he understood their subtleties. One could look like the other or imitate the other (you could have friendship in love and love in friendship) but they were still distinct. Chasing the former, he had found some peace but also some loneliness.

In a TikTok he watched, a woman was rehashing something she had read or seen from someone else at some point somewhere. Each person she loved, though gone, left traces of their history behind which she now stored in herself. A repeated phrase, a method for doing dishes, a unique interest, once shared. None of them belonged to her, but to others who lent away these parts of themselves temporarily for others to observe. With dread, she realized she had become a museum of everyone she had ever loved

When he thought about the museum of love he wondered if it fit. To him, his loves withered fast and disappeared. Again he recalled something else he heard (he did a lot of recalling, borrowing from others rather than reaching his own conclusions.) An advice columnist with two pieces of wisdom for anyone entering a relationship:

1. Leave them better than you found them.

2. If you aren’t friends with any of your exes, the issue is with you, not them.

These pieces of advice germinated inside him. Planted in sickly soil, they sprouted into a twisting plant of thorns and creeping vines that spread throughout his body. He might have left someone better off than they were before. But, it wasn’t a guarantee. What was he then? Not a museum, no, that point seemed clear. He was a mausoleum of love: each past love entombed within his large and vacant walls. Nothing stirred here, not love or friendship or hatred or anything else.

Melodrama. Or some feigning attempt at appearing interesting. Either one seemed true to him. He knew where his life would go from here: broken link after broken link. A job here or there. More money, less impulse. A commitment to debt or a mortgage or a standard of living, a way of being. Love, fluttering and fleeting followed by tragedy. He would love a man for a decade or more before the two of them separated, pulled apart by accident or apathy. This one, the big one, would ripple through him, making wakes in his past and present. Then he would move up north, far away from anything he knew, and try to reinvent himself.

When he was young he practiced drowning in his pool. Sinking to the bottom and letting the walls of his lungs grow tight and desperate. Afraid of dying, he would burst out and swallow deep gulps of air. Now, after the big one, he would contemplate the ritual, wondering if he could complete it. That singular thought whined in him, loud and sharp enough that nothing else could trump it. He knew it was false. He was not afraid of dying, but of living. Living was not so hard, not so depressing, not so wrong, but tedious. The process of dragging oneself through the day, of connecting and disconnecting, buying groceries, and taking the dog out felt long and endlessly thin.

At forty and life in shambles, he wondered if he would have the energy necessary to rebuild, the stamina it takes to keep on living. A century ago (or so it seems) an ex’s mother had written him a letter. In it, she thanked him for being a presence in her life and told him she’d respected him.

Respect. The word fluttered around him, hazy, light, nearly translucent in its form. For years he had fought for his right to be respected. He had tried, throwing his body again and again at the roughness of the world. What he wanted couldn’t be so simple. What he wanted couldn’t be so basic. It had to be profound, deep, rich. Still, that word would plague him, dragging him deeper and deeper into the pool of his remorse.

Finally, with nothing left, he would reattempt the ritual. Wadding first into the sea and sinking. His eyes closed and body rigid; cross-legged and calm, listening to Clean Socks through headphones. Here, he would complete what he started thirty years ago. First, the smell and taste of salt, then the feeling of thick and slimy seaweed. The familiar sensation building in his chest. The tightness of anticipation, the struggle of the body rejecting. A fight, an old fight but still a fight: body against the brain. He understood now why people weighed themselves down. Lightheadedness would come next and then a convulsion a gasp for air where none could be found and a swallowing of salt and sea and overwhelming past. He prayed for it, though he no longer believed in God. But then, a subversion. His body kicking, his head shooting up through the crest of the ocean. A big gulp in and then an exasperated sigh or guttural yell.

Nothing had changed, nothing had evolved inside him.

The ritual, almost finished, had been interrupted and now he found himself wet and floating alone.