LIFE CYCLE OF AN IMAGINARY BOYFRIEND

My heart starts cramping in my throat, that sort of bleak gut feeling. Still I don’t want to ghost the guillotine.

1. Conception

“You’re going to get abused,” my friend, junior year, tells me. Her legs balance on a hotel couch. Writing tournament. Our hands smell like notebooks, ink, sweat. Ocean Vuong is open on my lap, James Baldwin on hers. Flowers peel off the wallpaper. I blink at them until my eyelids go numb.

“Why’s that?” I ask.

She shrugs. “You don’t stand up for yourself. Anxiety and all that. I’m betting on at least one toxic relationship.”

This isn’t an upsetting thing to hear, because she’s right, and I’ve sort of always known it. So I click my tongue and go back to reading.

Infinitely far away, in the soft nursery of nonexistence, he germinates. Curled fetally in my frontal lobe are the impressions of two fists, two legs, no face. His kind develop slowly. It’s nothing to dwell on. Better to analyze my book’s brutal imagery, to hope to draw inspiration from the bruise-purple prose.

2. Birth

Michael asks for my number, and I give it because maybe he isn’t flirting with me. Maybe he’s just lonely and interested in my studies and I don’t want to be a jerk.

This part is as old as time. The messages flow in, calm and considerate. I enjoy talking to you. You’re so clever for a freshman. Let’s get coffee. My heart starts cramping in my throat, that sort of bleak gut feeling. Still I don’t want to ghost the guillotine. I put off meeting in person. Send more emojis, less depth. Go quieter and quieter as I find out he’s twice my age.

Once as I eat on the grass he spots me. The obvious, again: What’s up, where’ve you been, when can we hang?

My lips are tight. It breaks out of me like a brick through glass. “My boyfriend doesn’t want me talking to you.”

A twitch in the fabric of things. Just like that, the creature in the back of my mind matures, his skin morphing pink to white, his head blooming full of hair. He wedges himself out of the nursery and into the real world.

Michael says, “Oh. Are you sure that’s healthy? I mean, he sounds controlling.”

“He doesn’t usually do this kind of stuff,” I say, and I’ve never been a good liar but it’s so easy now. “He asked me to trust his gut just this once. I’m going to respect that.”

Michael frowns, but I gather up my lunch and leave before he can say more, and we never see each other again.

3. Infancy

I shape more of him for the fun of it. He’s still white, of course, and still a guy, because the point is that other guys will respect him and therefore I’ll be safe. He’s named Chris after the first celebrity I pretended to have a crush on. Long-distance. I comb his hair in my dreams.

A catcall when I return alone from a movie. My hand closes around my pepper spray, and Chris’s hand closes around mine. It’s warm enough to make the last few blocks on foot.

4. Puberty

Fact is, I’m not into men, and I’m not sure if Chris knows this. Would he feel betrayed, to find out I only use him to go to parties alone and ignore breaching voices? Would he get angry, that his worth to me is the strength of his shield? I pick grass stalks, wondering if I’ll ever flirt with the girl in my Lit class or just keep silent forever.

I don’t think Chris would truly get angry. The whole point of him is that he never gets angry. He would understand.

5. Adulthood

I go to Helen’s house after the pool. We sit on her porch, her still in her bikini, me in a wet baggy T-shirt and board shorts. Helen is a girl, so Chris told me to have fun and stayed at home, catching up on my favorite comics on the couch.

Helen is younger than me but not by much, and taller than me but not by much. We don’t have a lot in common to talk about, so we download an ebook app and she shows me her favorite trashy romance novels, bad heterosexual white-lady porn, excessive synonyms for things that are really quite straightforward. We giggle until the sky is dark. Say things like I don’t think it works like this and is that even physically possible? Our batteries drain, her parents doze off in the living room. She looks up from the phone and asks if she can get me off.

I panic. Chris materializes on the bench next to me and stands, fists at the ready, a pure portrait of hey-is-is-this-guy-bothering-you. He’s on the tip of my tongue. He’s right here, realer than Helen, realer than us both.

The lie—if it still is a lie—doesn’t announce itself. Instead, I stammer my way through the next half hour with Helen, procrastinating a concrete answer, managing to tell her I’m not up for it today but maybe next time, knowing I will orchestrate a complete lack of next times. Chris watches me from the corner of the porch. I delete the ebook app and let him take me home.

6. Burial

Many months and zero dates pass. We’re not far from home, but also in the middle of nowhere. We’re well-protected from the cold but also kind of bare. There are no roots locking me to the ground, that’s for certain. I feel as if I’ll flit away. 

Chris wears his usual beautiful understanding and complete lack of bad intent. He, unlike every other fish in the sea, will never cause harm, will never desire unwanted things, will never be selfish even by accident, or have an annoying habit, or start fights just for catharsis, or start fights at all. It makes this so hard. 

But unlike every other fish in the sea, he’s also plastic. I steady my breath.

“I think you’ve made me scared of everyone.”

Chris smiles a sad smile, nods a sad nod. He accepts the breakup wordlessly. It’s in his nature to understand, after all, and it’s in mine to let other people do the understanding. 

I blink and he’s gone. Only rustling grass where he sat, unbroken green blades illuminated almost apologetically by the moon and the closest dorm and light pollution. 

A breeze sweeps by. It’s gotten warmer. I hitch up my sleeves, fish out my pepper spray, and stand up to walk home in the dark.

AUTHOR: Lizzy Sazegari

ARTIST: Jacqueline Zhang