LOVE BITES: LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! This issue of Love Bites exposes dissimulations, deceits, and subterfuges of all kinds! Whether it be a pair of wandering eyes or a made-up history of sexual conquest, the subjects of these harrowing tales grapple with what it means to be deceived, misrepresented, and bamboozled. From mendacious phone calls to duplicitous gaslighting, our contributors share their encounters with relationship Pinocchios. Despite the fabrications and simulacra, may all those who have suffered from fibs continue to have faith, and may they rise from the ashes of a pair of burnt, corduroy pants.

Ariadne Coventry

I hate this liminal space. One moment you’re in my bed telling me my skin is so soft and the next you’re smiling at another girl basking in the sun. If only I had a prescription to make my eyes only see what I want. Instead of the pretty girl staring into your eyes, laughing at your jokes, I’d see you talking to a flag pole. I’d rather be told lies if it meant I didn’t have to bear witness to your attraction to pretty white girls, the pretty white girls that haunt my dreams and my childhood. You are too funny and charming to repel her. White girls must love you. I guess I’ll have to sleep with someone else to make myself feel better; I guess I’ll accept the tears during sex that signal to me that the person inside me isn’t you, but instead a foreign body who only sees me for that soft skin you mentioned. You see me for my skin on a deeper level too, but her skin is a transparent eggshell. I hope she doesn’t hatch into you. I cut myself on a loose staple yesterday, by accident. I’m not built for this.

Saidah

Four years leading up to a phone left off the hook. Four years of will they won’t they but you knew we never would. I twisted the fantasy and you spun me ‘round till I fell. Each turn I see the beginning and the end but what’s the middle? What was I to you? A lie? A promise? A hope? I pray I wasn’t an embarrassment. How is it that I worried about embarrassing you? How is it that my reputation is nothing to me unless you’re apart of it? I can’t stand that. You were the one with the crush. You were the one calling, texting, leaving voicemails… Then. Just. *beeeep*

Penetrhater

Twice now, some little gay boy has told me they’d fucked before when I was really the virginity-stealing slut.

The first was that early college boyfriend, the one for whom my skull caved in and my ribcage cracked open. Ravaged by bodies that disgust me now, I crawled to his doorstep, black and blue, and found some peace against his neck and under his striped comforter. He told stories of grandiosity: a closet body with boobs not balls, pairs of lips doused in different shades of lipstick, a monster cock attached to a therapizing college student.

I told him stories of truth: bareback in the backseat, eating ass against concrete, begging a brick wall for commitment in a classroom I linger in still. We fell in love in a crooked sort of way, balanced for a brief moment or two before things exploded back into chaos. I stifle and wish we’d never met, because moving on doesn’t actually mean being grateful.

The second was a summer fling (though he didn’t feel like that then) with big lips and a thick skull. He thought his own face was perfect, he “really fucked with it,” and I did once too. I creeped up his legs and into his soul, sweetened him from the inside out, then left him out to dry under the setting August sun. Now he’s stuck somewhere in between loving my soul and hating my guts.

He lied through his teeth, fictions oozed from his pores about his parents, brother, friends, and whores. He’d only fucked once before me, contrary to the endless tales of intercourse and tom foolery he shared on our first date. He lied like it was a competition, like he was trying to prove he’d out fucked me. Poor boy. His confidence was alluring before the facade faded, and behind the curtain sat a scared little boy on a velvet stool of vice.

But maybe that’s love, maybe that’s heartache, maybe vulnerability is deception, maybe romance is manipulation. Maybe to be fucked is to be hated, to be penetrated is to be obligated, to fall in love is to fall deep into the depths of hell. And maybe I’m just not the kind of lover you can trust.

Anonymous

...a voice so gentle and raspy. It almost sounded like the vodka had scratched his throat. I cried and he lifted my head to the degree just right for my eyes to meet his; so full of orange hues and catchlights and my dad and my first boyfriend and—I fell crying on his knees. I bended over into a child-pose and plopped my head on the muscles of his thighs. His pair of pants was coarse and too corduroy for my skin, and I was clearly not flexible enough to curl my torso; but it didn’t matter that my spine was cramping, because I get to touch him and hold him. I was begging him to pay attention to me. I was yelling for him to hear me. I could pretend to like him and say everything I wouldn’t say to him sober. I find excuses after excuses. […] He intentionally played me easy to end the game faster. Fuck. I drop a glass, I fall off my bed, I get on my knees, all fours; I tie the leash around my neck and clap my palms together and perform like a seal. My dignity was not worth as much as him—him as a voice, him as my source, him as mine. I need to possess him and force him in my suitcase, ship him back to my home… He told me once, then repeated, then threatened, but I wouldn’t listen. I figured the least I could do was be his […], be his. He was tipsy I was drunk—he had the upper hand—so I let him leave.

LOVE BITES EDITOR: Andrew Lu

ARTIST: Alaina Cherry