Page 67 of The Build-a-Boyfriend Project

Eli shakes his head. “No, just thinking. I mean, yes. There are regrets, things that I didn’t realize were happening right in front of me until it was too late. Keith was controlling, telling me what to wear on date nights. And any argument we had . . . everything always seemed to be my fault. His mood swings could get pretty bad too, and I’d have to tell him to go take a walk and calm down before he came back to the apartment.”

“Jesus. That sounds scary.”

“Again, love can make you blind to a lot of things. And it wasn’t all bad—those moments happened between the times when Keith and I loved one another, shared nights together, made dinner, went to North Beach to wait two hours in line for brunch. And I wasn’t a perfect partner; I saw afterward how I ignored Keith, putting my needs before his own, how selfish I tend to be.

“But I don’t regret the actual relationship, if that makes any sense. I learned a lot being with Keith—what I appreciated and wanted out of a relationship, what I expected. How I like to love other people, how I enjoy spending my time. It was messy, but I learned a lot about myself.”

“I guess that makes it worth it, huh?”

“It’s hard to rationalize that. Like you said, it’s easy to think that, at the end of a relationship, there’s nothing to hold on to. But my time with Keith changed me, taught me a lot, and I liked who I became after it ended. It took a few weeks, but I liked myself.”

“What do you think you’ll learn after we’re done ‘dating’?” Peter uses air quotes around dating.

Eli swallows, still keeping his smile. “You’ve certainly taught me about communication. The importance of giving second chances to the people who prove they’re worth them. Oh, boundaries, you’ve really helped me there.”

“You’ve gleaned all that from me?”

“Of course! Why wouldn’t I?”

“I . . . I guess I didn’t expect this to be a learning opportunity for you too.”

“I think every relationship, platonic or romantic, gives someone the chance to learn more. About themselves, about other people. And that’s valuable.”

“I like the way you think about these things.”

“What can I say?” Eli offers, trying to play off how deep he’d allowed the conversation to get. “I’m good at what I do.”

Peter laughs, finishing the bottle of lemonade he’d had with his lunch. “Did you have any ideas for our next date?” Peter asks suddenly, and his boldness surprises Eli for a moment.

“Uh . . .” Eli chews his food. “Nothing yet. Why?”

“There’s a jazz club I want to take you to. It’s down the street from my apartment.”

“I’d love that, actually.”

“They’re having a big show at the end of the week?”

“Sure.”

“So . . .” Peter steals another fry. “If you love movies so much, have you thought about writing about them? Instead of being . . . you know, here?”

“I gave it some thought,” Eli says. “It never really went anywhere.”

“Why?”

“I guess the writing got to be too personal.” In the middle of what other people might call his more serious work, Eli has a whole slew of articles about queerness in horror films, particularly the trans history of horror. From the 1930s Hitchcock classic Murder! and Paul Bartel’s Private Parts to more widely recognized examples like The Silence of the Lambs, Sleepaway Camp, and Dressed to Kill. How the genre and history attempted to vilify trans people—especially trans women—for so long and yet trans people seem so drawn to horror because of how they’re so often seen as the other.

He even wrote a full essay in college on how the Child’s Play franchise, of all things, helped him come to terms with his gender identity by having the first non-binary main character he’d ever seen on the screen.

Of course, that character is a British doll that other characters call Shitface for most of the movie, but the point stood. Eli can recall that character so clearly on his television as he watched through all the movies one by one, his mother objecting to them but his father sneaking them into the stack of VHS tapes and DVDs procured from the rental place down the street from their apartment.

“Shouldn’t writing be personal, though?” Peter asks.

“Maybe.”

“I think so,” he says. “One of my favorite authors says that some of their best writing is fact mixed with a little bit of fiction.”

Eli can’t help a smile. “Got that from all of your tech billionaire biographies?”