self portrait - Jacob Garcia. @annihilatia (twitter, instagram). Used with permission of the artist.

I don’t know how to explain it any other way.

One door opens another door closes. Boyfriends come and go. Your boyfriend’s boyfriend is always saying that.

Your boyfriend’s boyfriend’s got a lot to say. He’s always talking about the weather and saying one door opens one door closes just as he’s crossing your threshold. He drags the rain or sun in with him.

Depends on which boyfriend opens the door.

Depends who’s in love with you that day.

Either way, he’s coming inside. Opening and closing doors. Playing with your pet rat. All over the house you hear him shuffling and rattling and jiggling knobs and keys you know don’t lead anywhere. And yes, eventually something clicks into place.

You’re on a game show. You’re the host and you’re also a contestant. Also, you’re up next. There are two doors for you to choose from. Your boyfriend and his boyfriend are potentially behind either or both doors. Be careful. One of them has a gun and the other won’t leave the party when he should.

He makes it to every party, in fact. When the chatter slows to grunting and fucking slugs its heavy fist just to topple your new dinnerware. One door opens. Chairs scrape. Teeth clack against each other like cue balls.

There’s a big neon sign electrocuting the air above you and it burns

into the negative space behind your eyelids.

You wonder if this is true.

You wonder what your winnings will weigh tonight. A boat or a boyfriend or a heavy bag of bricks to line your pockets with. Time accelerates. A lock clicks. Safeties come undone. You, the contestant, reach for a door. The host, also you, stares knowingly into the camera.

Well folks, when one door opens.

At the party you and your boyfriends are throwing there’s a draft. Someone opening and closing their trench coat like a villain. You’re playing host to some unexpected if not unwanted reveals. Someone opens the front door. Another closes.

Someone opens the door to your pet rat’s cage. Someone else has his tongue down your boyfriend’s throat and then you feel both of their tongues lapping at your own. The buttons of your shirt slip undone.

Dishes rattle. A door squeaks shut. Something like a book drops and unravels the smallest thread at your party. Someone stepped on your rat. Someone killed her with the stamp of a size ten boot.

Everyone’s shirt is on the ground. The microphones pick up a loud squelch of mouths releasing one other. Framed shot of the pebble of blood where her skull should be. Hold. The audience goes quiet. No one says anything. Everyone asks who opened which door. Someone looks at you and at your boyfriend and now you look at your boyfriend and his boyfriend. Three pairs of hands withdraw from your underwear. Inside your brain a thousand doors rapidly slamming like a scratched disc stuck on a loop.

One door closes. You’re outside the party in your perverted little trench coat and you’re tracking rat blood all over the porch and you’re banging and you’re screaming and unhinging your jaw like a viper but there’s no one on the other side to let you in. No one left to choose the door you’ve hung yourself from and you’ve got no quarters to roll for the cab ride home.

Inside someone turns the music up. Someone cranks the volume on the tv. Applause fills the room like rainwater.

Nothing ever ends.

It swims or learns to drown.

🚪🐀