I Fucked my Reply Guy and it Broke my Brain

January 10th, 2025

Corey’s first appearance in my IG DMs was in response to a story post where I was wearing a respirator: it was our part of the city’s turn to be ravaged by fire. When he messaged me he was bleary eyed, having been in the mutual aid trenches for days, getting masks, water, and supplies to his neighbors in Altadena. In my preferred trauma response, I fled east and didn’t stop driving, as is my super power. His initial message was one of commiseration and solidarity in what at the time felt like a crisis that might never end– a blur of survival and chaos. From there he made himself a cozy spot in my inbox, regularly responding to my various shit posts and selfies.

June 24th, 2025

I posted something about attempting to date again on my stories, reminding my audience (then of probably 1500 people) that I am a bottom and to not waste my time with any fake top bullshit. He responded promptly. I let him know that I don’t really date cis men, but let him know I was flattered, and appreciated how he came correct about it. He thanked me for my clarity. He continued to be in my DMs, occasionally sending reels or memes he thought I might appreciate, responding to various posts. He was funny and kind and engaged, but never lascivious, and respected the boundary I had set.

June 11th, 2026

A year and a half after Corey’s original outreach, I returned home from a very traumatic work trip that would send me into a month-long existential crisis. I knew part of what would help me feel like myself again was having sex with someone other than the client I had traveled to New York with; that a new experience would help me to re-baseline and stop ruminating on that bad interaction. As is commonly known: “the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else”.

Even though I identify as a queer woman and haven’t had sex with a cis man outside of work since I was in a similar situation during covid, I was willing to make compromises given the circumstances. As many other queer women know, cis men tend to be a less complicated endeavor and in a pinch can scratch an itch. I spent the next few days rummaging through my mental rolodex of men I thought might be willing to fuck me.

June 13th

After staring at the walls for two days in a state of traumatized dissociation, I messaged Corey on IG.

I found his confusion earnest and charming.

He showed up a few nights later carrying a big bouquet of peonies and roses, flowers I had told him were my favorites. This level of effort was endearing, as we had previously determined we would be casual– but casual doesn’t necessitate being callous or disrespectful, and I liked that nuance– it felt honoring, old school– the kind of shit that in queer company I am often embarrassed to admit I like.

I kept giggling at his physical presence– Who designed such an unnecessarily large animal and who let it into my tiny apartment? I know straight women like this sort of thing, but to me being over six feet tall feels bordering on ridiculous, like when you go to an all you can eat restaurant and things turn from indulgent to camp somewhere between the third and fifth plate.

I was shocked by our compatibility. He was happy to lead, but wasn’t bossy. He attuned well to me and asked for eye contact several times which I thought was both erotic and ingenuous. I was so used to being with women I literally forgot about penis-in-vagina intercourse until he reminded me, after I had exhausted his hand, that we had further recourse.

June 15th

Corey texts me, letting me know he might need to discontinue our rendezvous, as it was likely he would develop feelings for me. I was disappointed, but I had no interest in hurting him, and asked him to let me know what he decided.

July 3rd

As I often do for the fourth of July, I was looking to get out of my neighborhood. The residents in my area loved to set off fireworks in their backyards well into the morning, and I was sure to have the sleep of a combat veteran. I booked a hotel downtown, assuming less backyard pyrotechnics since there were no backyards.

Corey met me at the hotel bar, again with flowers. I bought him dinner, again shocked by his size and also what it required in volume of food in order to satiate him. We didn’t discuss the decision making that allowed him to see me again. I decided he had gotten right with his god about it, and truth be told, I didn’t want to ask any questions that might impede me getting what I wanted. Upon reflection it’s a bit weird to me that I didn’t ask myself why I was soliciting round two: I chalked it up to a good first match and the allure of a hotel room.

This time, he stayed the night. In the king bed, his back turned away from me, having fallen asleep instantly and breathing heavy in the dark as men do, I noticed a strange feeling. Or an absence of feeling, maybe–. I wasn’t gripping on until I could be alone again. I didn’t mind him being in my space. I even kind of liked him being there.

July 4th

Perhaps it’s the exhibitionist in me (a hold over from my stripping days), but one of my favorite things to do in early dating is go to a coffee shop together the morning after. There’s something hyper-intimate about public breakfast, the smell of sleep still lingering on you, the formality of public life with all its social rules having not quite permeated your uncaffeinated brain. You may be too comfortable, too cozy, just on the edge of inappropriate, moving a few knots slower than the rest of the world.

Breakfast in the hotel lobby together is another level. Corey wanted to sit on the same side of the booth as me; I shot it down. Where my heart is a little wary, his is open. I like that about him. An anime convention was in town and shrinking adolescents in obscure cosplay and cheap fluorescent wigs wove in and around us as we talked about our childhoods in New England. We idled long after the waitstaff cleared our plates.

I saw him off. He had been having car trouble and was borrowing a friend’s vintage diesel Mercedes. Explaining how to turn it on to the valet took a few minutes. We held each other as if slow dancing on the sidewalk, both shocked to eventually see the boat make it around the corner. I kissed him goodbye like a wife sending her husband off to work, an homage to how we had both been raised, like two kids playing house, and I went back to my room alone.

Immediately it felt like something was off. I couldn’t quite name or identify what I felt. It was as if something was missing. I was cold and couldn’t get warm. The room was too quiet, too sterile. Usually when I have a guest I can’t wait for them to leave. I am someone who loves to be alone, who cherishes her quiet solitude, who can be alone with her books and thoughts for days. But suddenly, I felt the opposite. Did I …miss him? How could I miss him? I barely knew him.

Even worse, I was having the sort of stereotypically intrusive thoughts one gets after a solid date: visions of what it would be like to be his wife, to be pregnant, to have a house together in Connecticut. To waddle around carrying the weight of his too-big children. These weren’t fantasies, they were attacks– visions running up on me in an alley, someone violently drawing the curtains back in a dark room. In the stark and assaulting light I was confronted with the idea that perhaps it’s not that I never wanted these things, it’s that I didn’t believe they were possible for me.

When I had dated men previously I had weighed these possible futures and struggled to see how I could honor my ambition with the sacrifice required to be a wife and mother. None of those previous partners, I knew, would step up in a way that would shoulder the burden– not for the pleasure of raising children or building a life together; and certainly not out of respect for my work. And so I had forgone wanting those things.

And yet. I couldn’t help but see Corey and I on the couch in our living room, playfighting and laughing. Him calling me annoyed because the grocery store was out of something. Shooting each other horrified glances while some mutual family member embarrassed us at Thanksgiving. Fantasies of the mundane. The daily intimacies of a life lived together. His sweetness had shattered something in me.

I was so embarrassed to want these things at all, or even worse, to want them too late, just before the buzzer of my reproductive viability sounded. I was convinced I must be having a psychotic break because also I’m fucking GAY. That whole thing that bisexual people say about “being attracted to a person”, which I had previously found SO obnoxious, started to make sense. What I felt transcended attraction. What I felt with Corey was calm. Ease. Not sitting by the pool with a cocktail ease, but reading the paper in silence together ease. I saw our whole lives together playing out like a movie, even the life I would most likely live beyond him one day when I inevitably survived him, after decades together.

I think of the cliches married people like to tell their single friends: “if they’re the one, there’s nothing you can do to push them away”, or “when you know you know”. I still don’t know. But it is in my nature to be skeptical. I like to lift rocks and count bugs, read footnotes. I tell Corey I’m scared. He asks why. I try to explain. He doesn’t understand, but he listens and nods, with his ever-insistent eye contact. We hold hands and walk forward together anyway.

*Name changed to protect my reply guys (he hates this pseudonym by the way)