PREF: My Pretend Boyfriend

New piece from the November/December issue of PREF. Buy it if you can find it!

SEX WITH MY PRETEND BOYFRIEND

Andy lives in Portland. He does PR for a middling lounge-pop band, which brings him to Manhattan a few times a year. Whenever he’s here, he calls me up. He takes me out, he holds my hand, he takes me home. He’s not my boyfriend, but I like to pretend he is.

The Hotel
Andy’s hotel room is on the 14th floor overlooking Lexington Avenue. It’s 2 a.m. We’ve been to Hiro at the Maritime Hotel all night, where we spotted Björk near the bar. We drank champagne and danced a lot, and kissed a lot, and made people jealous. I particularly enjoyed making people jealous.

The room is one of those odd old New York hotel rooms with a four-poster bed and a clawfoot tub. It’s lovely, but I can’t help thinking about all the Midtown executive types who’ve brought their mistresses here. All those suits and ties and belts thrown on the floor, the blowjobs during lunch hour...Maybe it’s just my booze soaked brain, maybe I’m just horny, but it’s like some kind of wicked sexual ghost lives here.

Andy has his old Polaroid camera in his hands.

“Mind if I take some pictures of you?”

He’s rearranging lamps, taking their shades off. I start taking off my clothes. Andy takes off his shirt. He tells me what to do, where to move, snapping photos as he talks. Watching him moving around the room, half naked, I start to think about all the things I want him to do to me. He tells me to stand in front of the mirror, and he comes up behind me and presses himself against me. He reaches around and puts his hand on my cock. He takes a photo.

I turn around and start kissing him, fiercely. I push him down onto the bed and climb on top of him. The camera’s gone, I’m not sure where. His jeans are off and we’re pressing against each other, hard, desperately. It’s then that I realize how much I love sex with Andy. I love the tumble and the tussle, the way we crash into each other like waves against a rocky coast, the way he looks at me before, during, after.

He props himself up against the head board and tells me to turn around and lean against him. My back to him, he tells me he wants to watch me play with myself. Behind me, I can feel his chest rise and fall as he breathes. I feel his warm smooth skin against my back. He puts one arm around my waist and grabs my cock with the other. I push backwards into him, resting my head on his shoulder, his cheek next to mine. He turns and kisses me, and the world explodes in bright, hot spasms.

The Blindfold
The blindfold is made of thick, pebbly leather. It’s black and shaped like a domino mask without eye holes.

“Do you want to wear it, or should I?” I ask. We’re in Andy’s bed, in his house in Portland. It’s three in the afternoon. We’ve just come home from a late lunch. We started getting naked the minute we walked in the door.

“I don’t know,” he says.

It seems like we’ve been having sex nonstop since I arrived in Portland two days ago. This weird, slow-moving city lets you do things like that on the weekend. I’m used to New York, where the pace and the pressures of living in the most ruthlessly fabulous city in the world keep you from wasting an entire Sunday in bed with someone. I’m used to the meanness and the danger. But Portland is just so...nice. It’s kind of making me homesick. I need to inject a little meanness and danger before I leave. So, the blindfold...

I slip it over Andy’s eyes and he smiles. “I’ve never done anything like this,” he says. I smile, thinking of some of the horribly perverted things I’ve done and how they might compare to this harmless little blindfold.

Andy stretches out on the bed and I start to touch him. I put my hands on him lightly, like he might break if I don’t handle him gently. I move my hands over his entire body, touching every part of him except his penis. His breathing is slow, rhythmic, and he barely makes a sound. Then I put my mouth everywhere that my hands have been. I run my lips over his skin, sometimes kissing, sometimes licking, sometimes just breathing. And I watch as his penis plumps, stiffens, and stands erect. It’s an amazing thing to watch a penis getting hard without touching it.

The Proposal
I’m having a particularly upsetting day at work. I lock myself in the bathroom and call Andy.

“You want to go to Milk and Honey tonight?” he asks.

I laugh, thinking he’s fucking with me. “Sure, I’ll meet you there at eight,” I say, sarcastically.

“Actually, our reservation is for 10:30.”

He’s not kidding. I’m confused and frustrated. I’ve fallen into some Bizzaro version of my life where Andy lives in New York and can just take me out to fabulous, hidden speakeasies like Milk and Honey whenever I’m having a bad day.

“I’m in town,” he says. “I flew in this morning.”

That night, I drink four sweet, strong cocktails that taste of, well, milk and honey. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong are playing. The bar is dark and quiet, and there’s something really benevolent and calming about our waitress. This is perfect. This is exactly what I needed. I find myself wishing that Andy could be there whenever I have a bad day at work, whenever I have a good day at work, whenever…

That’s when I realize I’m falling in love. Somewhere between the visits and the phone calls, between having sex and holding his hand, between the Pacific North West and the Big Apple, I’ve managed to fall in love.

We go back to my place and fall into bed. The sex is soft and slow, kinda like dancing to Ella Fitzgerald or Louis Armstrong. We stop every now and then, and just lie there, tangled up in each other, breathing. The weight of his body presses against mine, but there’s no urgency, no frenzy. There’s time. Because, maybe we could do this for the rest of our lives.

“You should move to New York,” I whisper. “If you lived in New York, I think I’d try to make you my boyfriend.”

He shifts in bed. “If I lived in New York I’d be too busy finding an apartment, a new job, establishing myself. I wouldn’t have time for a boyfriend.” He looks at me and something inside me falls, collapses inward.

“You shouldn’t count on me as a potential boyfriend,” he says.