Married White Male
EMILIO CABRAL
I
On paper, my five boyfriends are the same: between forty-five and fifty years old, white-collar workers who make six figures a year to abuse the company’s coffee machine, pale skin littered with freckles and sunspots, wedding rings identical to those their wives sport in the pictures on their nightstands, “married white male” in the biography of their dating profiles. It’s different in practice, though. Things change when you’re in bed with men who haven’t been touched by their wives in a decade.
Bruce (5’11”, 180 lbs, 6” cut, versatile) collects Superman action figures. They watch us fuck every Tuesday and Thursday from their perch on his dresser. John (6’3”, 200 lbs, 7” uncut, vers. bottom) believes extolling the merits of his wife’s book of the month subscription, penis pressed against my lower back, is aftercare. Peter (5’8”, 130 lbs, 6.5” uncut, versatile) spends five minutes thanking me each time I show up on his doorstep. Todd (5’10”, 180 lbs, 8” cut, top) insists on sharing life updates before we take off our clothes. His daughter’s chances of winning the state tennis championships are “high.” Frank (6’1”, 150 lbs, 7” cut, versatile) introduced me to his wife after we’d been seeing each other for two months. He said it wasn’t right to lie to her about something so important. That’s why he’s my favorite.
II
We met at 9th Avenue Saloon—one of half a dozen gay bars in Hell’s Kitchen that won’t throw you out as long as you have a passable fake ID and a well-fitting pair of jeans. It was a Saturday night in the middle of June and the bar brimmed with a mix of consultants from Murray Hill in pressed shirts and three-hundred-dollar khakis, fag hags already five shots deep, and jocks whose cutoffs rested low on their hips to give the bartenders a glimpse of their underwear.
I wasn’t nearly as brave. Instead, I sat between the karaoke machine and the bathroom and pretended to be absorbed in the nineties’ music videos playing on the flat-screen TVs mounted above the bar. Every so often, a couple would shuffle past me on their way to the bathroom, hands traveling up the inside of fitted cotton V-necks, and I would be forced to move and pretend I wasn’t angling my ear toward the door.
There were easier ways for an eighteen-year-old to find queer validation, but I wouldn’t have given up my spot along the wall for anything. Though nearly everyone was, at the very least, three years older than me, chances were someone in the scrum would take an interest. Boys at my high school uptown flirted with me, but their canned pickup lines did nothing to convince me I was desirable. I wanted someone to put their hands on the skin peeking out from beneath the hem of my tank top each time I moved my arms, and 9th Avenue Saloon hummed with that possibility.
I’d been standing for an hour before I noticed Frank watching me from across the room. He was dressed in a button-up whose short sleeves accentuated the well-defined curves of his biceps and a pair of jeans so worn anyone younger than him would have thrown them out years ago. His thinning blond hair glowed green beneath the bar’s flickering lights, and he stood two heads taller than the girls reapplying lipstick to his right. We made eye contact, which prompted a smile as he made his way over to me.
His age was more apparent up close. Wrinkles clustered in the center of his forehead and the corners of his eyes. The five-o’clock shadow blanketing his jaw was liberally sprinkled with gray. Patches of uneven skin poked out from beneath the folds of his neck.
“What’s a pretty boy like you doing standing here all alone?” He put a hand on my shoulder. Light glinted off the gold of his wedding ring.
It was the ring that made him sexy. I’d never harbored fantasies of older men—my relationship with my father was too ambivalent for that—but the band on his finger meant he was risking something by being here. I wanted to know how long he’d waited for me to see him, thrilled by the possibility this wasn’t the first time I’d caught his attention.
“My friends didn’t feel like coming,” I lied.
“Can I buy you a drink?” Frank said.
“I’m eighteen.”
Frank slid his hand off my shoulder, but he didn’t back away. He tucked his hand into the pocket of his jeans and leaned against the wall beside me. Each time I exhaled, our shoulders brushed.
“It can be overwhelming in here,” he said. “I wasn’t brave enough to come when I was younger.”
“I like it,” I said. “Everyone is so free.”
“Is that why you’re here? Freedom?”
I didn’t know how to answer. It seemed childish to admit I wasn’t there for any existential need for community.
Frank cleared his throat. “I’m sorry if I overstepped.”
“It’s just hard to think with all the noise,” I said.
Frank pushed off the wall and lifted the bottom of his shirt to wipe sweat from his face. “I know a diner down the street if you want to get out of here. Unless you have somewhere you need to be?”
My parents thought I was on a date and expected me back before midnight. But if I provided a passable excuse for missing curfew, they’d be satisfied. Their second-generation American status meant they were lenient on principle—an attempt to rebel against the cynicism my Dominican grandparents had ingrained in them. I’d once considered telling them how I spent my weekends but didn’t follow through. There was a world of difference between fictional dates with nice Dominican boys I invented for their benefit and nights spent sneaking into bars frequented by men sporting leather harnesses.
Regardless, I had no real reason to turn down Frank’s offer. As uncertain as I was about whether or not leaving with him was a good decision, the thrill of possibility was stronger.
“Sure,” I said. “I’d like that.”
III
Frank is the one who introduced me to dating apps. He likes to watch me talk to other married men. It’s about power, I think. Only he knows the others exist.
Sometimes, he asks me to tell him about Bruce, John, Peter, and Todd while he slips a hand down the front of my pants. He peels my clothes off layer by layer as I describe Peter’s erectile dysfunction, Todd’s back moles, Bruce’s daily good morning texts, and John’s rambling speeches on the importance of urban farming. It’s become a routine for us. I don’t understand why it’s so important for him to hear the minutiae of my other relationships, but I don’t need to. All he cares about is the routine itself.
“They don’t compare to you,” I say dutifully. We’re lying naked on the couch in his living room. Monday evening news drones from the TV.
“Then why keep them around?” he responds.
“Says the man with the wife.”
Frank lurches forward and fastens his lips to my throat. I reflexively arch my neck for ease of access. The night we met— after we shared a basket of fries and a beer I pretended to enjoy—he invited me back to his apartment in the East Village. I told myself I wasn’t there to have sex, yet let him undress me anyway. He went down the length of my body with his hands and then with his mouth. It was both overstimulating and not enough. I wanted to verbalize the feeling somehow but ultimately stayed quiet. Better to wait and see if the contradiction resolved itself than interrupt my first time with a sentiment Frank would tell me everyone experienced but knew not to say aloud. Now, the sensation is temporary, overshadowed by how warm Frank’s body is when pressed against mine.
High heels clicking on the hardwood floor echo from the kitchen. “I didn’t know C was coming over.”
Two months into our relationship, Frank took me to a Mexican restaurant in Williamsburg and told me he’d invited a friend to join us, someone he trusted to be discreet. As nice as it was that he had progressed from fucking me to buying me dinner, I was uneasy at the idea of existing outside his bedroom. Part of what made him desirable was that the time we spent together existed entirely removed from the other 167 hours of the week. I could have sex with him and nothing would fundamentally change. But meeting his friends was a definite step forward, and it took him hours of needling to convince me. I expected a man his age to be waiting for us, but the person sitting at the table was a white woman wearing an orange sundress a few shades lighter than the curls tumbling from beneath her wide-brimmed hat. A wedding ring sat on her left hand.
I sat down, and she reached across the table to shake my hand. She introduced herself as Alice, Frank’s wife. “He’s told me so much about you.”
I’d heard of open marriages before but assumed the majority involved gay men in their late twenties. All the married couples I’d met thus far were friends of my parents: high school sweethearts who met their freshman year. The extent of their sexual experimentation was a stray finger up the ass. I couldn’t imagine my parents opening their marriage, my mother calmly introducing herself to my father’s eighteen-year-old boyfriend.
Alice had no problem with my age. “I always hated math,” she said when I told her I was taking statistics. “The teacher sent me to the principal’s office at least a dozen times for reading while she lectured.”
“I don’t remember the last time I read for fun,” I said.
“Why don’t you come over tomorrow, and I can loan you some books?”
I assumed it was an empty gesture. But the next day, Frank led me into their living room, and there Alice was, a stack of paperbacks in her arms. Though she’s popped up periodically since, offering advice and baked goods, today is the first time she’s walked in on us.
“Sorry,” I say, pushing Frank off me and reaching for my pants. She waves a hand dismissively. “I’m just grabbing a bottle of red for girls’ night. I’ll be in and out.”
“Are you sure—”
Frank wraps one hand around my throat and slides the other beneath my thighs. We’ve had sex with Alice in the house before—part of me relishes the possibility of getting caught—but I never considered this could happen. I crane my neck to gauge Alice’s reaction. She is entirely unaffected.
“Am I distracting you?” Frank says.
My eyes don’t leave Alice. As if she can feel me staring, she turns back toward us. At the same time, Frank maneuvers me around so that I am splayed across his chest. He places a hand on my head, gently applying pressure.
Alice looks almost content watching me mouth my way down her husband’s body.
IV
Alice starts messaging me through Frank’s dating app profile. I had him create one so my phone wouldn’t save a copy of his texts. Before Alice, he and I mostly sent times and dates back and forth, scheduling when it was best for me to come over. Alice uses it to make small talk while she waits for Frank to get home from his job at a hedge fund in the Financial District.
Have you started the book I gave you?
The copy of Jason and the Argonauts she surprised me with after her wine night last week sits on the windowsill above my bed. I’ve dedicated myself to reading a chapter a night as penance for fucking her husband in her living room. I don’t understand all the intricacies, but she left a handful of annotations on each page to make it easier for me. Because of them, I can skim while sexting Frank and the others.
Yes, I started. I still have about a third left, though.
Has Medea rescued Jason yet?
Medea seems to be a hyperfixation for Alice. Each paragraph in that section of the book has half a dozen annotations, all in different colors, some with accompanying diagrams. The corners of the pages are crumpled from being flipped back and forth countless times. When she handed me the book, she said she loans it out each time a new housewife moves into her apartment building.
The story itself is straightforward enough, but not in the way Alice’s message suggests. Medea saves Jason from her family because she loves him and is rewarded with a marriage, two children, and an inevitable descent into madness caused by Jason’s equally inevitable infidelity. She retaliates by killing their two sons and his new mistress and then escaping to live a life even lonelier than the one she had before they met.
I see why it speaks to Alice. Given the situation, how could it not? But if I am the person encroaching on the niche she has carved out for herself in Lower Manhattan paradise, why play coy? Why not explicitly warn me off? It’s one thing for her to resign herself to the reality of her open marriage, but it’s another thing entirely to simultaneously warn me of my fate while also being so unfazed— happy even—at the sight of me naked with her husband.
No, I write back. I’ll message you when I get to that part.
A minute passes before Alice responds, Why don’t you hold off until you finish the whole thing? We can get some coffee and talk about it. Just the two of us.
The offer is innocent enough on the surface, another example of Alice approaching the situation—and me—with more grace than it deserves. But the thought of sitting around a pristine coffee table covered in the latest home decor magazines and New York Times wedding announcements with Alice, like I am one of her girlfriends, coalesces into a lump in my throat.
Can I get back to you? I have to check my after-school schedule.
Of course. Take all the time you need.
V
Alice reaches out the following Saturday, inviting me out shopping with her and Frank. It will be the first time we’ve all been in the same place since Alice walked in on Frank and me fucking. I tell my parents I am meeting my friends in Midtown and spend an hour preening in the mirror, the drag of my razor across the sparse hairs on my chin dulling my anxiety.
I meet Frank and Alice at the Bryant Park subway station. He makes the line for the nearest food vendor, and she leans in to tell me he’s been in a foul mood since they boarded the train.
“He saw our messages, and now he’s paranoid one of us will give the game away,” she says. “As if either of us would want to do that.”
She’s right, but I don’t tell her so, settling for a tight smile instead. If my noncommittal response puts her off, she doesn’t show it. When Frank comes back, she takes one of the three water bottles in his arms and says, as their guest, I should choose which store we start with.
“It’s all the same to me,” Frank says, passing me a water bottle.
We walk single file down 5th Avenue: Alice in front, Frank in the middle, me lagging behind. I take the opportunity to assess them as a unit. Her sundress is the same shade of beige as the chinos he’s sporting. Their matching Achilles Lows scuff the pockmarked pavement in lockstep. Although the watches on their wrists are different colors, I would not be surprised if they were part of a “His & Hers” promotional set run by the company whose name is etched on their undersides. Together, Alice and Frank are legible, coherent. Anyone—from the European tour groups parting and streaming around us to the shoppers absorbed by the Uniqlo window display—could look up and have no trouble slotting the two of them into place.
Inside Uniqlo, Frank pours over the various ties on offer, while Alice hooks her arm through mine and steers us toward the athleisure section. Though they would never risk being spotted here on their own, Alice points out sets she’s bought Frank online over the years when he is in desperate need of quick restock. He prefers Dri-Fit T-shirts but has a soft spot for cloth shorts. Briefs efficiently wick sweat from his penis, but he’s more likely to misplace them than boxers, so she always buys a pack or two of each. Her comprehensive overview of Frank’s clothing needs mirrors how my mother explains the grocery list to my father when it’s his turn to walk five blocks for the weekly haul—both preparing someone for a job they know they could do better.
All I have to contribute are stories of the other married men I’m sleeping with. Bruce and Peter wear boxers, but John and Todd are partial to briefs. Sometimes they gift me a pair to bring home, tucking the stained fabric into my pocket with what I assume is the same relish they slipped dollar bills into the waistband of a stripper’s thong on the nights of their bachelor parties. They mean it to be degrading, I’m sure. But it’s only another step in the routine. I don’t consider anything I say or do to get laid as shameful when the relationship doesn’t exist in any meaningful way once I leave their apartments. They ask me to take pictures of myself wearing their underwear, or with it pressed firmly to my face, and I feel nothing.
“Their wives probably bought these for them,” Alice says.
“Probably,” I agree.
“Do you think they went to the store knowing that one day an eighteen-year-old boy might wear them and shopped accordingly?”
“Is that what you’re doing right now?”
“Sure,” Alice says. “But most people are more attached to the sanctity of marriage than I am. I loved Frank. They love their husbands.”
Her deliberate separation of each syllable of “husbands” should come with a pinprick of shame. But instead, I’m curious. I want to know why Alice said “loved” instead of “love.” If she and married women like her ever felt the same way I do about being asked to take pictures of themselves smelling and wearing their would-be-husband’s underwear. If the requests stopped when they went from “whore” to “wife” or when Alice and Frank fell in love. If they were ever asked to do it at all.
“That’s none of my business,” I say eventually. “I’m not trying to break up their marriages.”
Alice hums. “Have you finished Jason and the Argonauts?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“You really should read it. I didn’t give it to you to be nice.”
“Am I the first person outside your girl group you’ve recommended it to? Has Frank read it?”
The laugh Alice lets out in response comes from deep in her stomach. “There’s no point. He wouldn’t understand it.”
I turn her words over for the rest of our time in Uniqlo. She takes my silence as an opportunity to maintain a running commentary on the day-to-day life of an East Village housewife. At checkout, as a reward for pretending to listen to the pros and cons of shopping in SoHo versus Nolita, she promises to buy me a full set from Saks that matches what she and Frank currently have on. I tell her she doesn’t have to go to that much trouble, but she wraps me in a hug and says it is the least she could do for her and Frank’s new addition. Frank doesn’t comment on our closeness, but I watch his face tighten over Alice’s shoulder. When we exit the store, he insists I go in front, leaving Alice behind.
VI
For the past two weeks, Frank and Alice have been fighting a cold war over the right to my time. Frank and I have always had a healthy sex life, but he’s taken to messaging me at every hour of the day, asking me to describe how well he fucked me the night before. His increased libido would be exciting if it weren’t also accompanied by an influx of messages from Alice, proof his heightened interest has nothing to do with me.
I’ve tried to split my time between them equally, which papered over the problem until Frank started deliberately scheduling our sessions to coincide with when Alice gets back from seeing her girlfriends. Every time, he pushes my head down into the mattress, forcing me to turn my face to the side in order to breathe, and tells me to be as loud as I want. I try to strike a balance—enthusiastic enough to make him happy but quiet enough not to pierce the bedroom walls— but Frank always pulls out, refusing to slide back inside me until I raise my voice. He knows chasing my release is more important to me than refusing to let him use me against Alice.
“Our neighbors are going to file a noise complaint,” Alice says one afternoon, swirling the two fingers of Frank’s top-shelf scotch around in the glass she’s holding. Today is one of those increasingly rare days where Frank is too busy at the office to fuck me. Alice let me have some scotch too to celebrate.
“Do they know?” I say.
“Know what?”
“About your open marriage.”
“That would be too embarrassing,” Alice says. “They think he’s cheating on me, and I’ve done nothing to convince them otherwise.”
“I’m not sure I understand the difference.”
“It’s worse if they know I’m okay with it.”
We haven’t discussed Jason and the Argonauts since our shopping trip with Frank—our recent get-togethers have mostly consisted of her teaching me how she keeps the apartment spotless and ready for Frank to get home from work—but it’s what instantly comes to mind. Even now that Alice has styled herself as a sort of friend, I can’t shake my unease at how casually she seems to discuss Frank’s obvious abandonment of her.
“Are you?” I say.
Alice brings her glass to her mouth and drains the remaining scotch in one smooth motion. “You wouldn’t be sitting here if I weren’t.”
I want to ask her how her open marriage arrangement with Frank came to be, but she stands up and crosses over to the kitchen, pouring herself three more fingers of scotch. When she sits back down, I ask her why she hasn’t insisted we meet to go over Medea’s story.
“I assumed you weren’t interested in what I had to say anymore. Or maybe I hoped you figured it out yourself.”
I lean forward. “What else is there to figure out? The story only ends one way.”
The only acknowledgement my comment gets is a small shake of Alice’s head before she changes the subject to the list of cities on the East Coast she wants to visit soon. “I figure it’s time to treat myself.”
There is nothing left for me here. I stand up to leave, asking if we can meet tomorrow at noon so I can return her copy of Jason and the Argonauts. She responds with a lazy, perfunctory wave.
On the 6 train back uptown, I sit across from a young married couple. His face is buried in her neck, she’s giggling at the words he’s mouthing against her skin, both their wedding rings blink at me, accusatory.
I feel no guilt over being the dividing line in Frank and Alice’s marriage. But it’s become harder to deny this is not what I signed up for. Frank’s attention, and the sex, is not worth the extra complications. With my eyes still locked on the young couple, I slide my phone from my pocket and message Alice and Frank to tell them I want all three of us to talk and clear the air. As stressful as this has become, it can’t be too difficult to return to the way things were. While Bruce, John, Peter, and Todd would be more than happy to try and make up for Frank’s loss if our arrangement falls through, none of them are good enough in bed to be suitable replacements.
VII
The door to Alice and Frank’s apartment is swinging on its hinges when I arrive. They both confirmed they’d be home but said nothing about leaving the door open for me. In the past, I’ve always had to wait for one of them to peer through the peephole and confirm my identity, even though to get to their doorstep the doorman had to have recognized me and buzzed me up.
I step inside and call out their names. The only response I receive is the echo of my voice off the apartment’s perfectly designed angles. There may be a dozen logical explanations for why neither of them has responded, but what fills my mind, once again, is the fact that Bruce, John, Peter, and Todd wouldn’t put me through this.
The bedroom door is open as well, and the sound of their rickety ceiling fan is barely audible. Frank is always saying he wishes there were apartments with both air conditioning and pre-war exteriors in Manhattan. He most likely turned it on to cool off while he waited for me. Alice is probably with him.
I push the bedroom door open the rest of the way. It takes my mind a few seconds to accept that it is not Frank lying on the bed. Instead, it is Alice. No, it is Alice’s body. Her eyes, cloudy and unseeing, are fixed on the ceiling fan revolving lazily above her. Her blouse is soaked with blood, an amorphous patch of red spreading across the white silk from twin puncture wounds in her chest. One heel is still stuck in her flesh, while the other lies discarded at the foot of the bed. A carry-on sits beside her on the mattress. There is a train ticket to Washington, DC, resting on top of it. The edges are splattered with blood.
In Jason and the Argonauts, Medea kills her sons with a knife, stabbing and stabbing until Jason has lost his heirs. The book doesn’t mention exactly where she stuck the blade, but there’s a good chance it found its home in the same place as Alice’s heels. Easy enough for someone who cared about them to step in for a warm embrace, while keeping the cold steel or plastic in their grip tucked behind their back until swinging it upward at the last possible moment. I didn’t see a single sign of forced entry. Which means—
I drop the book and double over to vomit. But only a horrible retching sound comes out.
“Alice?” Frank calls out. It sounds like he’s standing on the threshold of the apartment. “Are you okay? I’m sorry I’m late.”
It’s impossible for him to have just arrived, to have had nothing to do with what is in front of me, but nonetheless I’m overwhelmed by the feeling that if he sees me standing over Alice’s corpse, somehow I will be blamed. Frantic, I pick Alice’s shoe up off the floor and pull the other from her chest. I tuck them behind a bin in the back of the closet. The closet is filled with an assortment of pants and shirts that are obviously Frank’s. Alice’s half only has an expensive all-white set that I know, with absolute certainty, is the outfit she bought me as a reward for humoring her. I’m not sure whether it is ironic or tragic that training her replacement could not save her. Choking down another involuntary gag, I exit the closet and drag Alice’s corpse off the bed and into the walk-in shower. With the body out of my line of sight my breathing steadies, but my clothes are now covered in Alice’s blood. Quickly, I strip and change into the outfit she bought for me, tossing the bloodied T-shirt and jeans into their hamper. Glancing at the mirror hanging above the bed, I can almost believe it’s her standing in my place.
Frank walks into the room. I try to gauge whether it is satisfaction or surprise that flashes in his eyes. I can’t tell. Or maybe I just don’t want to know. Either way, I stay silent as he pads over and presses a kiss to the top of my head. To steady my trembling hands, I reach for Alice’s blood splattered train ticket and rip it into a dozen pieces. “Hi, honey,” Frank says. “Why don’t you go get dinner started?”
EMILIO CABRAL is a second-year MFA student at North Carolina State University and holds a BA in creative writing from Northwestern University. His work has previously appeared in Miscellany and Sand Hills Literary Magazine. He is originally from Houston, Texas, where he lives with his parents and his two younger brothers.
