It was easy.
I was going out with an attractive guy I didn’t particularly like, which is basically the easiest thing in the world, minus the attractive.
By the third date (or second, or first), I could tell he was ready. He wanted me.
So in the beginning, the idea to send my clone in my place seemed like a solid short-term solution. The clone would go fuck him, humming at just the right intervals, mouth-breathing, or whatever people do during sex, and I would stay comfortably at home.
Then we could switch back.
The clone wouldn’t be forever. Just for a date, or another, to buy me some time. Long enough to see how I felt without making things awkward, or drawing resentment, or the conversation called I Just Want to See Where You’re At.
Long enough to learn if he would change—ask me questions, let me answer, listen to the answer. To learn if I would change—take initiative, respond to his texts.
The clone didn’t mind. She was curling her eyelashes. Consent still felt important, even for clones, even though technically, clones only said Yes.
I told her this was for us, for Our Future. The one with a nice face pressed against ours in photos, a boyfriend to casually mention in conversation, an apartment to drop into on the Lower East Side.
I briefed her: this was our fourth date—fourth, we hadn’t fucked once, so let’s make it a good one, like something long-coming.
He was handsome and cultured and mildly unfunny. Our predicament clearly wasn’t about looks. This part I couldn’t explain to him.
“I’ve slept with far less attractive people,” I told him once, which didn’t seem to clarify things.
So I gave her the details—his height, the bands he loved to talk about, how when we met, he pushed his hand up my thigh and I loved it, and that was the last thing I loved. He was from Flatbush and had said so eight times. He had sisters. He wondered what I wrote about, but that felt trickier to answer.
Our first date, I asked who was the last person he dated, shooting for a sense of his ambitions, his style. He stuttered a response about a years-long Ex. “That’s a fourth date question,” he told me.
I programmed her demeanor—nervous, preoccupied, evasive, then charmed, then brash, then seductive, unveiling the apple of her afore-hidden desire, then open, then enthusiastic, then
Yes, Oh, Oh Yes...OH.
She could fill in the rest.
“Do you fuck people who want to fuck you that you don’t really want to fuck?” I asked a friend, eating grapes on her sofa.
“All the time.”
Today was Thursday. Thursday meant something. “All our dates have been on, like, Not Great Date Nights,” he complained to me last week over the phone, as if I hadn’t noticed, also as if I might consider quitting my job.
Also as if I owed him.
I kissed my clone hard before she left. She looked happy. I was something other than happy for her. Had I looked like that, before her? How long ago? In which photos?
Then I waited.
I started a movie about a parrot impersonating death. I made chamomile tea, popped popcorn, checked my email—It was 2:15! It was a Thursday night, goddammit, not Friday! (Although technically, now it was.) Where was she?!
Well—fucking him, like I told her to. That was the point.
At 3:00 I gave up, climbed into bed, dragged my eye mask over my eyes. I kissed her goodbye, I thought into the blackness. Then I heard a lock turning. About time.
A giggle.
“Yeah, just—that’s fine.” The sound of keys. “Mmmmm.” A yellow light in the hallway, more talking. I couldn’t make out the words.
Crouching behind the cracked door, I saw a shape—his shape—kiss her as she sunk onto the couch, saw his hand slide up over her bra.
What horror! This was not what I wanted at all!
What I wanted was time, time, I thought, creeping into the hall, watching as she tugged at his shirt, pulled it over his face, dropped it nonchalantly onto the floor, smiled as his hands found her zipper. She was perfect.
I slipped into the bathroom and began masturbating furiously.
The sound of footsteps.
I kept rubbing, one leg propped on the sink. They entered the bedroom. My skin felt raw.
There was breathing and creaking from the bed, and then—
A knock at the front door.
“Ignore it,” he said.
More creaking.
Another knock. Louder. The creaking stopped.
“I’ll get it,” he said finally, yanking his shorts on and limping down the hall.
The door handle turned. There was a yelp, something mumbled, and a voice I recognized whispering “Bro I told you.”
Then I saw him.
And the clone of him, half-naked, still hard. They looked like lovers.
The clone released an even “Yes,” then, barefoot, shirtless, backed out the door. We’re more alike than I thought, I thought, as I watched him slide off his shoes, pull his shirt over his head, unbutton, shrug his jeans off in silence.
He started, shivering, back down the hall, wearing the same blue boxers. What was she doing all this time while she waited? He passed the bathroom where I stood, one hand still stuck down the front of my pants. Then he turned, looked at me, and pushed my bedroom door open.