Fiction: Feeling It

By Wynward H. Oliver

“Bro, I’m just not feeling it.”

The screen goes black. I’m back at the Skype chat window.

That’s if I’m lucky. Usually, I don’t receive any explanation, neither pre- nor post-breakup.

As if I need clarification. I didn’t turn him on, and he turned me off.

Wait. This needs clarification: Within two measly minutes, he turned off his webcam. I’d seen enough in those same 120 seconds to be thoroughly taken with him.

Still, I rationalize after each bator bails on me:

Someone must’ve come home unexpectedly. That’s why he ended our sesh so abruptly. He’ll be back soon. I’ll wait.

His spotty third-world WIFI must’ve disconnected him. He’ll be back soon. I’ll wait.

Plus, the guy just now didn’t say, “Bro, I’m not feeling you.” He said “it.”

For whatever reason, he wasn’t in the mood to jerk off. Maybe he has an important meeting in the morning…

He said “it.”

But I’ve come to expect a hard pass whenever I put my art or my arse out there: Back when I was an actor going to cattle calls, now as a seldom-published writer with a pending submissions list topping fifty, and during my recent foray into cam sex.

I only made the jump to video because the once-reliable phone sex lines had become a queen-sized, cum-soaked blanket of what seemed to be the same twenty-four undesirable desperados cock blocking the party line.

I thought I needed a change of scenery—like someplace that actually had scenery, even if that vista is often only a headless torso and legless crotch sporting tit clamps and a ball stretcher.

It’s hard enough to find anyone who interests me on any line, be it a phone chat line or an online hookup room. My masturbation checklist contains multiple boxes.

So when I’m on a website exclusively for popperbators (check!) and I find a fellow Latino (check plus!) who’s willing to webcam with me, you best believe I’m on my way to feeling it.

This latest guy with get-up-and-go disposition ticks most of my boxes: young (yet of age), naturally smooth (yet with a full black bush and hairy sobacos), cut up (yet uncut), Mexican living in Mexico (yet bilingual), and a verbal gooner and edger (yet won’t give me the chance to prove to him in word and dirty deed that I’m his bate soulmate).

He’d seen my filterless photos and forthright profile posts. He knew what he was getting.

For the record, hombre, you’re the one who hit me up.

Yet as a desperado myself, I stoop to searching for answers in my subsequent messages to this guapo:

“Homie, what did I do wrong?” (Which is the pissant way of asking, “What’s wrong with me?”)

“Lemme know when you can do this again, cabron.”

“Is now not a good time for you, vato?”

“Hit me up anytime, hermano.”

I’m not so much dejected by his rejection, as I am demoralized by the futility of it all. I may be a chronic, compulsive masturbator who proudly chants, “Can’t stop. Won’t stop,” but this continual disappointment must cease.

(I suppose I could desist from allowing how others perceive my looks or my talents to define my self-worth. But, for me, degradation is as soothing as approbation—just a lot easier to cum by.)

See, I really didn’t want to be cast in that off-off-off-Broadway production of the meta-musical version of Oedipus,entitled Motherfucker. But I auditioned anyway. And never got a callback.

I really didn’t want to be published in that online magazine, which admonishes its writers that “if you do not understand the necessity for content warnings, we are not the right home for your work.” But I submitted anyway. And got a patronizing email of decline that really triggered me.

I really didn’t want to cam with that pasty perv in Slovenia. But I gave him my Skype name anyway. And got hung up on midway through my first hit of Jungle Juice.

I never wanted any of them. (Except tonight’s chilango papi chulo, whom I’m still waiting for.)

I only wanted to be accepted.

Bruh, you feeling me?

Wynward H. Oliver is a hexadactylic, homosexual writer of color and retired educator living in Los Angeles with his husband of twenty-seven years and their two adorable doggies. His work has been published internationally in The Gay & Lesbian Review, Dead Fern Press, Wicked Gay Ways, Handwritten and Co., Queerlings, Tree and Stone,  Limeoncello, and BULL magazines. Wyn’s memoir, Homo-Work, is nearing completion.