ONLYFRIENDS

I’m not a porn addict, okay?

If this was about that, there are thousands of sites where I could check out all manner of bizarre and fantastic stuff. I’m not even trying to deny that I’m a pervert, because I am. It just feels important to clarify exactly what this specific thing was.

Meeting new people is hard. You’re in your late thirties and you’re busy as hell, and all your old friends are busy as hell, and there’s no real work culture anymore. I go to a punk show on the weekend over at Scrimley’s and I have fun, you know? But I don’t talk to anyone. Everyone’s already talking. Or hiding. And I’m hiding. It’s like asking a rabbit to approach another rabbit when we see everyone as a lion.

Apps suck. I’m not opposed to dating, but it’s not really the point. Some of the apps are more friend-oriented, and that’s cool, but it just ends up feeling like Facebook. People wanna see a number go up. They want a quantifiable measurement for their likeability potential. Connection is a theoretical prospect. Effort is viewed as a loss opportunity. No one wants to actually trade in the emotional stock market. The fantasy of striking it big is what’s sustainable.

I subscribed to a girl’s OnlyFans. Just one. Algorithm shoved her in my face, I guess. Mid-twenties. Her face carried a sort of sad friendliness to it. She was cute, but that’s not really the point. She seemed safe, a fellow rabbit I could see as a rabbit. Her stuff was softcore, solo, amateur. Human. I think the only thing I wanted was to feel close to something human. I was willing to pay for that.

Her name was Onyx Black. Obviously not really—just a performer name. I thought it was incredibly dumb in a sort of adorable way, and I teased her about it the first time I messaged her. She wasn’t defensive at all, but she didn’t kiss my ass either. She thought it was funny, almost a parody of the assembly line goth girls the content farms were pushing out. She wasn’t assembly line. She poked fun at me for being lonely in a way that made me feel less lonely. She sold me $5 bundles of charmingly poor-quality photos and clips. I want to tell you how beautiful she was. How her neck seemed to stretch so long, how she always turned her head to the left at a very specific angle as she slid her slender, manicured fingers inside herself. The way her toes curled but not all at once, instead cascading as though they were playing runs on a small, invisible piano. The way her black hair draped over her breasts. The blotchy birthmark just above her right hipbone, shaped like a chocolate baby elephant melting against her fair skin.

I want to say more. Her favorite film was Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the ’56 one with Kevin McCarthy. The Donald Sutherland one was just a little too hopeless for her liking. She was raised by two moms, and she had a little brother in high school who wanted to be an astronaut. She wanted to save up for a van and travel the States. She was interested in getting into nail tech professionally, and she wanted to try streaming games, but she was afraid she wasn’t interesting enough to be anything but naked. That’s what her ex told her, anyway. I told her to add a capture card to her wishlist, and I bought it for her. I eventually asked her what her real name was, and she locked it behind a $20 post. I said I’m not paying to know who you actually are, and she said, Yes, you are, but my name is [REDACTED]. After a bit longer, we exchanged numbers. Addresses. We played Baldur’s Gate 3 together. She was a druid, and I was a necromancer.

After a while longer, she stopped messaging. Well, she’d send more photos and clips, but not new ones, and when she messaged on OF, it was off. She stopped answering texts. We stopped playing together. I figured she’d just gotten bored with me, like most people do. I knew she lived in Vegas, though. I took an extended weekend. I could just say I was in town. Try to play it cool.

When I knocked on the door to her apartment, a teenage boy answered. He looked a bit like a very, very young Gerard Way.

Who’re you?

I told him my name and asked if I had the right place, if this was where she lived.

Fuck, he muttered. Come in.

He told me she was gone.

Wouldn’t say how. Or why. I asked him if he was her little brother, the one who wanted to become an astronaut.

Yeah, he said. Not sure that’s gonna pan out though. He glanced over toward a handgun lying on a desk in the corner of the room.

Wait, I said, how’s her account still active?

That’s me, he said. Maybe I wanna keep her alive somehow. Maybe I need the money.

That’s fucked.

I’m the one who filmed her. Don’t gimme that shit. He booted up a PS5 and flipped over to the Baldur’s Gate 3 icon. Wanna play?

I nodded yes. He played as his sister’s druid and I played my necromancer. She Wild Shaped into a sabre-toothed tiger and got herself killed. I couldn’t bring her back. She was more of a healer than I was. I didn’t have Revivify, and all of my stuff only worked on the undead.