Static Fantasy

by Ross Showalter

When the boys start kissing, you grasp yourself through your pants. But you can’t look away from them to consider your own pleasure, the two of them writhing together on the computer screen. You’re so fucking lucky you found this video: one boy kisses like you do, his mouth insistent and wide. You make sure the bedroom door is locked, the sound is off, that none of your roommates can see you watching porn through your bedroom window. You can’t take your eyes off the boy who kisses like you. His shirt is coming off, then his pants are unbuttoned, and then his underwear is cast aside; he is exposed and erect before you, a fantasy on display, except for the thing that connects you to him, the instrument behind his ear, magnetically connected to his head.

He is wearing a cochlear implant like yours, exactly like yours, black machinery against pale skin. Both of you wear cochlear implants and he has shown you, yourself, through showing himself. There are two boys in the video, both slim and hairless. They are both beautiful, but you are focused on only one.

He could have been you. His mouth first went dry too, when he was five at the sight of sweat running down a boy’s head. He laid his head on boys’ shoulders for class photos, like the girls did, and thrilled when they didn’t push him away. He invited exasperation from his mother when he was found flipping through beauty magazines, cochlear implant stuffed in his pocket. He liked the beauty magazines because they told him he could conquer the world once he bought this lipstick, this eyeshadow, this foundation. It was another application towards conformity, after all. He cried when the hearing kids laughed at him, the way he said his sibilant sounds, because he couldn’t hear how much he lisped. He cried so much whenever he entered the world, because too many people looked at him, smiled at him, and he couldn’t understand what anyone was saying. He liked places where there was no talking—even now. He likes times when no one needs to talk. No one needs to say anything now. Both boys’ mouths are open and wanting, and both are being filled and put to work.

The boy on the screen went to speech therapy too. His lisp was ironed out by patient professionals and children’s cruelty. He grew up with parents who loved him, who doted on him, but who didn’t understand him. He grew up in a fog of confusion about himself then it all descended on him one night in college, he broke down sobbing and didn’t know what to do next, and he turned to the internet and typed in the word “gay.” He went through chat rooms and learned the times when his roommate would be fucking his girlfriend in her house, and he fucked himself with his fingers in front of his webcam for hungry men and he thought he was home.

Then he flew to Los Angeles instead of going back home to Nebraska, he took another step forward and another and another, now he is being kissed and exposed and teased; now, the other boy offers up his ass, face pressed in a pillow, and the boy with the cochlear implant devours, and you are watching all of it.

You could fly to Los Angeles, too, and leave Nebraska. You are watching him, but you are also studying the environment around him, and you know the white sunlight and manicured lawns. You think you could ask around enough times and find yourself somewhere close to him. You could sign up for a porn subscription, find his name, find him.

He could show you what it’s like. Los Angeles is the city of dreams, and he could make every dream come true. You could cease to exist, except alongside him. On every screen would be him and his partner, the ingénue and his lover. On every screen would be the picture of perfection. The two boys, smiling out into the Los Angeles skyline, their bodies lithe and on display, coveted, desired. The two boys, ready to kiss and suck and fuck and expose every part of themselves, to give themselves over completely to fantasy.

You could be part of the show, too. The show that no doubt has a million lights and a million boys, a million moans, a million cries. There are countless men, countless cocks and holes and ways to fuck and ways to come apart and be put back together and made new. The boy with the cochlear implant is fucking his co-star now and they both love it, the press and rub of skin together, the way their backs arch and their hips move. He looks at the camera, looks at you, and his gaze skates over your skin like a beckoning. You are so close to letting go. He is making a fantasy, he is a fantasy, and you want to climb inside the screen and stay with him.

The two boys are ready for you to come. They’re so ready for you. They want you to come for them. Come with them. You and him are the same. Come with us, they are saying, hands and hips moving faster and faster. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? You want to fuck him and devour him, don’t you? You didn’t know who you were before you saw him. He knows who you are. He shows you who you are. He comes for you. You can come with him. You can come for him. You can come for him. Come for him. Come for him. Come for him.

Ross Showalter’s stories, essays, and criticism have appeared in the New York Times, Electric Literature, The Hopkins Review, CRAFT, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing in UCLA Extension Writers Program.