Reimers 35

Honey I Love You But I Just Can't Smile

By Oliver Reimers

Content warning: Self-harm

I don’t realize I’m part of Soup’s polycule until I see he’s Tumblr liveblogging our hangout and tagging every post with #pot of soup. I’m in the Karma Coffee bathroom stalking his blog with my burner account. His last post reads, i could listen to him talk for hours OMFG im so fucking gay, which already makes me want to choke myself with the can of Hawaiian Aloha Febreze on the toilet, and then there’s the tag: #pot of soup.

I’ve spent enough time scrolling @idiotsoup to know this is how he tags every post about his ever-growing polycule. Among his other frequent tags are #simmer down for textpost rambles and #heating up for discourse. I reload his page. Now he’s reblogged a finely rendered Procreate painting of a nude Achilles showing full hog, tagged with #boiling over #o_O. I wonder if he imagines my face on that body when he jerks off. I dig in my pocket for an orange Dramamine chew and grind it between my molars.

Back at our table I find Soup stirring his oat milk matcha latte and licking his lips at me. I pick at my croissant. I don’t know how to bring up the polycule thing or the misgendering without revealing that not only am I aware of his Tumblr blog, but I am also intimately knowledgeable of his tagging system and fandoms and takes on microlabel discourse.

“We should go back to my place,” Soup says.

I bag my croissant, and we get in his Prius. He plays the Be More Chill soundtrack while he drives and sings along in the crackly tenor of someone one year on T. “I fucking hate Christine,” he says when we get to an upbeat pop number.

“Huh?” I say.

“Christine,” he says. “I hate Christine.”

In his studio we sit in bed and watch Game Changer on his laptop. A collection of digital art prints covers his wall: a naked satyr with top surgery scars, a maximalist graphic of a needle dripping testosterone. Seven glasses in various states of crust form a thicket on his counter.

Halfway through our second episode I’m about to claim a family emergency, but Soup leans over and puts his lips against my ear and tells me he’s super fucking horny. “Oh,” I say, and soon my hand’s in his pants while Brennan Lee Mulligan mimes breaking down a cardboard box. Soup barks and I reach for my phone with my free hand. “My mom texted,” I say. “My sister’s cancer came back.”

Soup hornyposts until about three A.M. and even writes a #simmer down about how he thinks I might be into puppy play. I refresh his blog seven times before shutting my phone off. In the dark, the fluorescent afterimage of his Picrew profile picture burns my retinas. What did I do to deserve being in Soup’s polycule? As I fall asleep, I see our future: me and Soup mixing bath salts, me and Soup attending mindful masturbation retreats, me and Soup participating in queer-friendly wine tastings. I wonder how many of his partners have committed suicide.

I wake to Soup’s cracked fingers stroking my forehead, soaking up my sweat with his fingerpads and drawing it down my nose. His breath falls in hot cascades down my cheek. “I made you lasagna,” he says, then kisses me on the chin. I ask him to leave, and he does, and I put on a sleepshirt and open Soup’s blog:

im literally fucking crying rn he’s so perfect like wtf?????? #pot of soup
guys i think i can see his cock through the sheets… #pot of soup #boiling over
sometimes i can’t believe how lucky i am. i love him so fucking much im not even kidding.

I try to picture the world Soup inhabits, so different from mine that the chance at our having a relationship can at all be described as lucky. I put on two layers of oversized shorts and go into the kitchen. Soup rifles neck-deep through my fridge. The counter’s smeared with marinara sauce and mozzarella.

“Did I invite you over last night?” I ask.

He pulls out a stick of butter and nestles it in his armpit. “You’re not vegan or some shit, right?” The toaster oven rattles, and he takes out three pieces of sourdough, which he rubs his armpit butter on and plates along with the lasagna.

“You better clean this up,” I say. “Andromeda will be pissed.”

“This is why I don’t fucking date women.”

I’d hate to be the one to tell him.

After breakfast Soup jerks himself off while I send him an anonymous ask: this guy fucking sucks! he will never love you!

Two minutes later he answers with stfu, and I marvel at his ability to type with one hand.

We met Soup on Sniffies a few months ago. Andromeda was working on this art project where she photographed men she met on gay hookup apps. We’d lie on the floor and pick through profiles— DOOR UNLOCKED FACE DOWN ASS UP NEED LOADS NO PIC NEEDED JUST COME IN NEED LOADS; looking for someone to hang with and maybe j/o and trade underwear—until one looked sad enough to agree to a photoshoot. In the beginning, it was mostly old men, self-proclaimed daddies looking for sons or jocks. I’d make them coffee while Andromeda followed them through different corners of our apartment. After a half hour, they’d be comfortable enough to strip. That’s when Andromeda would get her showstoppers: seventy-year-olds bent over, necks sagging, bare asses aglow in the LED strip lighting.

Twinks were harder to convince, and when they did, their portraits were marked by dead eyes and twitching lips. “I’ll have sex with them,” I told Andromeda during one of our browsing sessions, “if that’ll make things easier.”

So we tried that, unsuccessfully. Under the stare of her Canon, I worked like an unsure mechanic at the site of a ruptured pipe; I cranked and prodded as if locating a problem area. Even after the camera stopped, my blowjobs were stiff. I glanced over my shoulder. I spewed a greatest hits record of porno lines. Andromeda proclaimed me a buzzkill and relegated me to a chair in the back of the room.

Soup was Andromeda’s final subject. He agreed to the photoshoot immediately, reassuring us his partners were fine with him exploring. The moment our front door closed behind him, he stripped to his boxers, and Andromeda snapped away: Soup leaned against the counter, tapped at his phone, strutted up and down the hall. I stirred my coffee and catalogued in my mind the snap of his hips.

It was only when he stepped out of his underwear and spread himself out on Andromeda’s bed that he noticed me. “Who’s the guy in the cuck chair?” he asked. He gestured at me, arm outstretched, and I felt for a moment I could be Adam, swimming endlessly towards the hand of God.

I’m folding shirts at Marshall’s when someone presses himself against me from behind. I look over my shoulder and see it’s Aedaiyn. He slides his hands up the back of my shirt and dots the tip of his tongue along my neck. “I’m at work,” I say. I’ve only spoken to Aedaiyn a handful of times, mostly at Andromeda’s art showcases. I’ve definitely never told him I work at Marshall’s. What have I done to spark such unbridled lust in him? Does my polo expose too much collarbone?

And then I know: he is also in the polycule.

“We should test out my new phallo,” Aedaiyn says. My ear moistens.

I let him trace the embroidered Marshall’s on my shirt while I open @idiotsoup. literally nothing like an mlm polycule, he writes. can’t wait for the party on friday.

“Eleven inches.” His hand on my hip.

I scroll rapidly through the blog—the party? What party?—but find only naked anthropomorphic dogs.

A tug at my jeans. “My thigh will never be the same.”

I debate taking advantage of my place in the polycule to fuck Aedaiyn during my lunch break—he has the kind of face that makes you want to drown yourself in ritual sacrifice—but I cannot give in. I elbow him and point to my manager. “We can’t,” I say.

Aedaiyn pulls away from me and strides over to my manager. Their lips mash together like a prophecy.

The bathhouse is empty at four P.M., so Soup and I get burgers and eat them in the porn room. I take out my pickles and set them on Soup’s paper tray while a bear gets his anus prolapsed in 1080p on a boxy wall-mounted TV. Soup sits naked with his legs at a 180° angle. He gnashes his burger between his teeth. Barbecue sauce squirts from his mouth and splatters across his bare chest.

He looks at me expectantly.

“I don’t like barbecue sauce,” I say.

The curtain at the door trembles, and a man with twin suns for pecs walks in. He stations himself right next to me and curls his arm around my shoulders. “Good to see you, Soup,” he says.

Soup nods and sucks a pickle out of his burger. The barbecue sauce starts to congeal over his nipple. I pick out a tomato and put it on Soup’s tray. The man reaches his hand over my towel, and I nudge it away. “I’m not here for that,” I say.

“It’s okay,” Soup says through his paste of meat and bun and sauce. “He’s with us.”

The man puts his hand on my shoulder and looks me deep in the eyes. “The foundation of any good relationship is respect,” he says, “and I respect you.”

I hold my lettuce out to Soup and watch as he pops his saucy fingers, one by one, into his mouth before he plucks the food from my hand. The man gapes as the bear onscreen twists to give himself a blowjob. Soup wipes his chest with my lettuce. “I want out,” I say to him.

He snorts and shoves the lettuce into his mouth. I try to stand, but the man leans over and nibbles at my burger. The beef, pink and chewy, is not unlike human flesh.

Thursday I skip work and walk to the drugstore in a cinched hoodie. I take a bag of Dramamine to the register. The cashier lays his tattooed hand over mine when I try to hand him my card. “We take care of each other,” he says, and winks.

I scrape my teeth against a handful of ginger chews and jet out of the drugstore. Nowhere is safe. The men in the Planet Fitness locker room all look at me with utmost tenderness as they towel their asses. The librarian slides me a collection of Shakespearean love poems when I try to get my late fees cleared. I call my stepdad. “Are you going to Soup’s party tomorrow?” he asks.

I lock myself in my apartment and barricade the door with the ottoman. I open my phone. Soup’s Tumblr hits me with an avalanche of posts: he better fucking like this omfg; yaoi orgy yaoi orgy; it’s been forty-seven days since i last cut myself and if this goes wrong i think i’ll have to take a grippy sock vacation.

I go on Anon. kys kys kys, I send him. I hope you get glass shoved up your ass. I hope that guy you’re dating turns out to be a woman.

Within five seconds he replies: that’s homophobic im literally a grade A faggot if that happens i will literally kms.

At midnight I bolt awake to find myself on the living room floor. My mouth tastes of blood and ginger. Around me, bodies melt and apparate. A blacklight on the ceiling carves people into slices of white clothing: to my left, a pair of shoes taps to the beat of a ringing soundbath; to my right, a t-shirt leans down and shakes me. Teeth sprout into a grin above it. “You’re awake,” he says. I blink. Is that my landlord?

I stutter to my feet. A pair of men are doing what I think is an antiquated sex act on my ottoman. I prod them with my toe. “Room for one more,” one of the men says. His bifocals are the same as my high school AP Gov teacher’s.

In the kitchen, a dozen sweaty men lap from a tub of White Claw. An ex-boyfriend, my old babysitter, DJ Sparrow. In the entryway, my third cousin by marriage guides my elementary school custodian through a trauma-informed nude Sun Salutation.

I cannot find Soup.

I sequester myself in the bathroom. In the shower, my pediatrician blows the captain of my high school ultimate frisbee team. I open Soup’s blog. Instead of the constant stream of NSFW mlm art and textpost musings, I find only still images of different sections of my skin: the scar along the inside of my elbow from a botched blood drawing, the mole on my neck, the lightning-strike of stretch marks on my left thigh. He tags each with #lid blown.

I push through the crowd and to my room, but the door sticks. The distinct groans of my mom’s Crossfit instructor vibrate the wood. I claw past the local improv troupe and knuckle Andromeda’s door until it snaps open. There, on a lone white chair, she picks at her teeth with an embroidery needle.

“I’m thinking of changing my name to Mitochondria,” she says.

I want to throw myself at her feet, beg her to deliver me, plead for her to needle me until I bleed out. At the least, I want to ask her not to leave me the only non-man in a fujo’s wet dream of an apartment.

A twinkish hand descends upon my shoulder.

“Oh no,” Andromeda says. “This doesn’t look so good.”

A single canine tooth grazes my neck. Soup pulls me backwards, away from the door, and Andromeda prods a string of chicken from her teeth. “Good luck,” she says.

When the door closes, I am alone in the hall with Soup. His bleached hair blazes under the blacklight. “Where did everyone go?” I ask. He only snares his fingers around my arm and leads me to the living room.

Everyone stands in a circle, Roger and Tybalt and Aedaiyn and Schnauzer and Justin and man after man after man after man, all clasping digits and breathing as one. “Go,” Soup says, and I duck under a pair of arms and stumble into the center of the ring.

I look to Soup. The circle absorbs him, and he opens his mouth, his teeth and eyes neon gashes in the dark. “Tell me you love me,” he says.

“I love you,” I say.

“Not like that,” he says. “It’s a game. Make us smile. Tell me you love me and make us smile.”

I open my mouth and tell him I love love love him; I trip over my own feet and hit my head on the carpet and hope for a large red protuberance to sprout; I trace the letters over his stomach with my finger. But he does not smile. I don’t think he ever will.

Oliver Reimers is a writer from Sacramento, California. His work has been featured in Prime Number Magazine, Main Squeeze Literary Magazine, Gold Man Review, and elsewhere. His short fiction was awarded the 2025 Albion Review Prize for Fiction.