K E P T

I am a twink.

Okay, maybe not quite. I guess I’m too short to be a real twink.

I’m thin and blond with green eyes and a well toned body. I spend about two hours getting ready before I go out. I pluck and I wax. I moisturize and exfoliate. I know the difference between fashion and style. I am the fantasy of every gay man…they either want me or want to be me.

I intended that to sound conceited. I wanted that to be the way I came across as I wrote this. I needed it to be that way because I’m really just a whore.

I’m kept.

I guess, in the past, women were kept. Men took a mistress they would hide away from their wife. I’m like that. I am a secret, an expensive secret but a secret nonetheless.

The man that keeps me is twenty-two years older than me. That makes him almost twice my age. He keeps me in a condo downtown while he lives a straight life out in the suburbs. His story is not unlike any other story about infidelity, only he’s unfaithful with a man instead of a woman.

He pays for the condo, he pays for the car, he gives me a weekly allowance. I don’t know if he thinks he pays for my silence or if he just pays for me, but there’s nothing that I want that I can’t have.

Almost nothing.

I don’t love him. Not even a little. I knew that this was a business arrangement when it started. He was like my employer and I was his employee. I was never attracted to a man so much older than me. I was young, I just wanted to have fun. I was hot as hell, I could have anyone, but I got caught up in wanting “things”. I had to have clothes, shoes, jewelry, vacations, cars. I wanted all of the end result without any of the work involved. I wanted kept.

I suppose I could make a lot of very elegant excuses about how I’m not really a whore and it’s okay to have a relationship like this, but I know it’s not. And I know that now because I met someone I actually know I could love. But that scares me. I have always had this big golden parachute of being kept and I know I won’t be able to pursue a relationship with the guy I could love as long as I’m still on the payroll.

In this world I live in where I can have whatever I want, it is difficult to be in this situation where what I want is the thing I can’t have because it takes away everything else I already have. I think it sounds like a fairytale sometimes to think about being in a position where you can have everything you’ve ever wanted as long as you do the one thing you like to do – have sex. But as I’ve grown into this I’ve learned that being “kept” is just like being captive.

So I go to the gym and sweat. I go to the bar and drink. I wait for my captor to visit me. He always tells me I’m special and he tells me he loves me. I tell him the same, but I never mean any of it. And the whole time he’s touching me I just want him to be the other guy.

Maybe I look like the luckiest guy in the world. I have everything. I am the fairytale…but I’m really just Snow White…dead to the world and waiting for Prince Charming to bring me to life.