By Jacob Moniz
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sexual situations
Warm, golden light illuminates the bright green grass of a public park in Indiana, stirring back to life the macro and micro inhabitants of the turf-soil system: fungi, algae, earthworms, ticks, and ants. Children run barefoot across its surface, weighty and alive, unconcerned with the world beneath their feet. At the edge of the park, canopies of trees planted evenly along the roadside soften the intensity of the light, protecting passersby who tread below. All who stop to stare upward at the sight know that there is nothing more serene than sunlight shining down through a canopy of trees. Water takes on a mystical quality as it sputters and spurts from public drinking fountains. It catches the sunlight, glittering, and it’s as if the light itself has quenched your thirst. The excess, the water that misses its mark or slips foolishly from the shining metal basin, falls to the dusty pavement below, to shadows, no longer in possession of light. You see a dog, a golden Labrador, run up and lap happily at this dirty, earthen pool. Sunday, first week of spring. You wander along the unnervingly smooth pavement that curves around the park, the latest result of city-wide revitalization, staring at your phone. The brightness is raised as high as it can go, but with the sunlight baring down, the screen remains dusky, difficult to read. Your friend, a boy you know from school, someone you’ve been speaking to more frequently, has texted, asking what you know about a name. It’s windy on this Sunday, this early week of spring. It whips coldly at your hands, feet, and legs, pressing the thin fabric of your clothes against your body, almost to the point of indecency. The air catches in your nostrils, your throat, it forces its way into your body by any means possible, until breathing becomes so difficult, you’re gasping for air. The name belongs to another boy from school, a man, the one who sent you nudes on Grindr, lifeless and pale with poor lighting. When he arrived at your apartment to fuck, he was nervous and smelled like fresh laundry. You did all the talking. You offered him a drink, just water from the tap, and sat him on the couch to start, easing into a beginning. He remarked on your potted plants and the quality of your good lighting. Mood lighting, he said. You responded with something clever, something charming, then proceeded with your monologue, the one you’ve performed for a series of men since turning twenty-two. The monologue consists of several anecdotes from your life, fun and bittersweet, stories intended to endear you as layered and complex, a multitudinous man in possession of his soul. At the close: silence. He said nothing and every passing second stung like a nick into your flesh. That was when you kissed him. Next, you took him to your bedroom and pressed him down against your therapeutic mattress, on which he finally opened up. You fucked him, then out your cotton sheets to wash. One fuck turned to two, then three, then a fourth fuck with drinks, another fuck with dinner, until at the end of last semester, you arrived at a night with no fuck. You drove him to this park on the longest night of winter and paid the $20 fee to skate the park’s 16,000-square-foot ice trail and pond. You’re terrible at skating, but you knew he wanted to go. His body moved with ease. Afterwards, the two of you shared dinner. Chicken and potatoes. Something hearty. That was last semester, on the longest night of winter. What followed was a separation, a distance caused by different destinations for the month-long break from school. Messages became infrequent and you both fucked other people. There were no promises made. By the start of the new semester, you and this man had returned to being strangers, barely acknowledging one another as you passed hastily through buzzy campus halls. Spring, an active word for an active time, yet you fail to act in this moment. Your friend, the one you know from school, the only other gay man you’ve developed a relationship with away from apps or alcoholic nights in town, has asked about a name. It’s the name of your ex-lover, the one from last semester. He and your friend, the one you harbor feelings for, fucked the night before. We matched on Tinder . . . I went to his place after the party . . . Why weren’t you at the party? . . . I stayed the night . . . We both follow you on Instagram . . . He asked how I knew you . . . I said we were friends . . . I asked how he knew you . . . He said, just friends. Daylight. It darkens your phone screen, but the messages are there. A broken bottle lies on the edge of the path. You stop and stare down at the bottle, at the daylight refracted through its curved, green glass, upset and emotional. You try to breathe, but a wall of wind has split the air in half. You’re jealous. That fucking wind. You’re jealous of this man who stole your friend, the one you harbor feelings for, the one who came naturally into your life, the boy you think about at night. You return to the darkened screen and text your friend back, writing: LOL!! I fucked him last semester. XD Wild. I can’t believe we’re Eskimo brothers! A beautiful day, besides that cold, cutting wind.
Jacob Moniz is a writer and visual artist from California. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Catamaran Literary Reader, Penumbra, Chicago Quarterly Review, and The Ocotillo Review, among other journals and publications. His short film script “Mother of Mercy” was an official selection for Best Short Screenplay at the 2020 Rome Independent Prisma Awards. “The Pacific End,” a short film based on a novel-in-progress, won Best LGBTQ Short Screenplay at the 2020 New Renaissance Film Festival in Amsterdam. He is a Fulbright Scholar for the 2023/2024 cycle, which will support a multimedia arts project titled “Someplace Else,” based on his family history in São Miguel, Azores.
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