Gardenia. Named, appropriately, after the vibrant flower. And she was a flower. She only opened up to you if you fed her daily, typically with affirmations and fun facts about aquatic mammals. The Internet’s name for her was not at all as apt nor as beautiful. Rather ribald, really. The “Throat Goat.” The Throat Goat is what they called her. Because, apparently, she also opened up physically. I had to look it up, but apparently, “Throat Goat” meant she was phenomenally talented when it came to oral sex—goat being an acronym for “Greatest Of All Time.” No gag reflex, is what MattTheRapist69 commented. He said “I bet this bitch got no gag reflex Fr.” Unlike MattTheRapist69, I am not interested in casting such lewd assumptions.
Gardenia was smart. Smarter than I was at her age. She had a strong understanding of what was happening in the Middle East. She had a favorite Rohmer series. She knew not to be afraid of spiders because it is clear that they are far more afraid of us. She was twenty-one years old when I first happened upon her Twitter. She had a large following due to her unabashed and unfiltered portrayal of her wild sex life. “This dude just spelled my initials with jizz on my stomach,” accompanied by a red heart emoji, was the first tweet I read of hers. She was funny all right. But most of her stories specifically centered around her success when it came to blowjobs. This is what landed her the aforementioned sobriquet, which I was never actually sure if she minded or not. Her bio provided a link to her Instagram, which I found far more tame.
Pictures of her covered up at the beach, pictures of her laughing with friends, pictures of her college graduation from an Ivy League school. Caramel-skinned, brown-eyed. Sweet, sweet smile. Her Instagram bio provided her email, which I utilized pretty much immediately.
Gardenia,
My darling. Smart, funny, beautiful. It’s difficult to imagine you’re real outside of my screen! I’d love to take you out. Coffee, tea, a real stiff drink—pick your poison! All I want is the chance to know more about you. Get back to me, sweetheart.
With love,
August
xxx
Nineteen minutes later, I was notified with a reply.
Dear August,
It’s great to make your acquaintance! I’m not often hit on in such a polite way. Thank you for that. Of course, I cannot go on a date with you. Not without first learning some things.
Gardenia
We emailed all night. I told her whatever she wanted to hear—I’m an open book! I told her that I was a sixty-one-year-old man living in the Southwest. I told her that I was a physical therapist. I told her that I enjoyed murder-mystery books. I remember her calling me “basic” for that. Almost every time I asked a question of my own, she found a way to evade answering. I didn’t entirely mind because some people need to tell you things on their own time—questions can be more of a deterrent than an encouragement, and I understood that. Still, we talked. Talked about politics and culture and religion and art. God, the breadth of her knowledge! I found myself, at many times, the conversational weak link. Especially when we spoke of her work. That was one part of her life she was more than happy to share with me.
She was a lab technician. She made medical implants out of cow collagen, specifically used for brain tumors. She compared the work to arts and crafts, saying the collagen looked and felt like wet Play-Doh. She was saving lives and comparing it to a children’s toy. I almost fell in love with her right then.
I began to email her every day, and she’d always email back, although she was never the first to initiate a conversation. I was able to break down her walls over time. I’d call her beautiful, and she’d feel inclined to tell me a new fact about herself—almost like Pavlovian conditioning now that I think about it. Of course, that’s not why I’d call her beautiful; it was simply a happy bonus. She told me she was an only child. She told me she wanted to marry a tall man with an odd face. She told me she didn’t have much luck with dating in her life, and she used Twitter as a means of catharsis, as crude as it may have seemed—her word, not mine. There seemed to be one man in particular who made her life a living hell. She called him “Nick” in her tweets, although I’m not sure if that was his real name. Tuesday morning, 8:57 a.m., she tweeted, “Nick cancelled on me last night. I waste my everything showers on the worst people bruh.” I didn’t know what that meant, but I could tell it had negative connotations. The next day, 3:36 p.m., she tweeted, “Nick texted me a dick pic, then said ‘wrong person sorry lol.’ AND IT WASN’T A JOKE.” What a scumbag. Unworthy to have her number, definitely unworthy to be making her feel this way. I emailed her after I saw she tweeted a link to the song “Yellow” by Coldplay.
My Gardenia,
(If you’ll allow me to call you that)
Why, oh why, must you choose such horrible men? I don’t know if I’ll ever wrap my head around it. Please leave Nick. Not even so I could have you, but so YOU could have you. You deserve better than this, my angel, my beauty. My Gardenia!
As always, with love,
August
xxxx
Minutes passed, then hours, then days—no response. I thought I had ruined it, I thought I had gone too far, I thought she would never talk to me again. But she did stop tweeting about Nick, so evidently, I did have one positive effect. But also, she simply wasn’t tweeting at all. Three days and nine hours later, I received an email from Gardenia. Thank the heavens.
Dear August,
I’m sorry for not responding. I had an issue at work. I accidentally sneezed and ruined a forty-thousand-dollar lot of product. So, the jury was out on whether or not they were keeping me for a bit. It’s fine now, they let me stay, thank god.
Hope all is well.
Gardenia
Jesus! The stress that job put her under, all for a measly sneeze? Can no one see what I see? Has the world gone completely mad, completely blind? In response, I emailed her back a picture of me smiling. Then, she emailed me a picture of her smiling with a peace sign. The sweetest doll face you ever did see! Her big, button eyes. Sweet, porcelain cheeks. Long, silky hair I wanted to comb until my hand gave out. That started a chain of picture-sending, specifically pictures of faces. I did ask to see her body, but she was never interested in that, and I knew not to push it. We just sent “selfies,” as the kids call them. To be completely transparent, I did masturbate to those photos. I think that the fact that we were speaking meant that this was permissible; I wasn’t some stranger. Plus, I am human after all. Once, she sent a selfie of the lower half of her face and her cleavage—that was the closest I ever got. Her tongue was sticking out, her breasts were plump, bouncy, shining, perfectly symmetrical. They looked soft. I responded right away.
Sweet Gardenia,
I know you won’t let me see your body, but you never said I couldn’t use my imagination! Your breasts like two seasoned watermelons. Nipples like dark cherries. Labia like the flesh of a grapefruit. I could just eat you up, my dear!
Love,
August
xxxxx
Months went by of emailing her, every day, at least three times a day. Some of the best months of my life, truly. Every time my phone buzzed, I’d grow an erection just from pure excitement. I’d go to bed smiling, thinking of her words, and wake up smiling, thinking of her smile. We never did go on a date, but that didn’t deter me from talking to her. There was always some new excuse. Friend’s birthday party, family emergency, overwhelmed with work. One time, she said that her childhood hairbrush broke in half and she didn’t feel emotionally equipped to meet any new people on the same day. Whether or not any of them held any truth—I’ll never know. She was shy, and that was okay. She needed time—and that’s okay. But I always had to make myself available. I had to make it known to her that I was ready.
About eight months in, we had grown comfortable with one another, but not as comfortable as I had wanted. So, I felt the urge to tell her, to sanctify our bond. Tell her my story, tell her why I stumbled upon her Twitter in the first place. I told her that my daughter died. My daughter died when she was twelve years old from leukemia, which was two years ago. I told her that’s when I knew our connection was special, me and Gardenia’s. She was a healer of cancer, my daughter suffered from cancer—it was kismet. I told her that my daughter loved social media, but social media did not love her back. She was brave enough to post herself online during her sickness, and because everything is possible on the Internet, of course, she got hate. Hate about her appearance. People can be so cruel—a cruelty that I still have a hard time believing. That’s not what killed her, no, but it did hurt her, and I could’ve killed someone for that—nearly killed myself for that. I was an angry mess for about a year. But then I learned to stop fighting the feelings, to try to see what she had seen. So I made a few social media accounts. I found girls similar to my daughter: bright, beautiful, funny, optimistic. And I saw the kind of undeserved hate they got from men with faceless profile pictures. So, I’d comment nice things under their posts. Sometimes, I’d send them money. This was the only thing I found to relieve my grief. To help other girls, the way I failed to help my daughter.
Gardenia waited forty-seven minutes before she responded to that one.
Dear August,
I can’t begin to imagine that kind of loss. I am so sorry. Although, like I said, my work is more so aiding the process of removing brain tumors, not so much treating leukemia, but I understand and appreciate the sentiment. I’m sure she was a great girl. I have something I’d like to tell you, too, if that’s alright.
All the best,
Gardenia
Of course, I said of course. I waited patiently by my laptop, refreshing my inbox every six minutes. I knew she had something important to say, and I wanted to be there for her during that process as much as I could be, as much as she’d let me. Four and a half hours later, she emailed me a link to a three-page document. In it, she explained that everything was a lie. Everything she said on Twitter about her sex life was a lie. She said she had actually only slept with two guys in her whole life. And that she’d never given a blowjob. She said she wasn’t even all that interested in sex. I asked her why—why lie then? She emailed back promptly, saying she didn’t know. She said maybe to acquire an audience. Maybe to convince herself she was a sexual person, since that’s so sought-after in this day and age. But I still think there’s a different reason. I think it was to meet someone like me, who would prove he’d love her just the same, either way.
The next month was total bliss—we had been totally honest with each other. Complete vulnerability. I knew this was just one step closer to seeing her in person. I knew this was a necessary catharsis, and we no longer had to pretend to be everything we weren’t. It was like losing your virginity, and the girl opposite you smiles upon seeing your naked body instead of dry-heaving. It reminded me that bad things could lead to good people. I was better with my schedule, going to bed on time, waking up earlier. I made healthier meals, I moved my body more. I was more present at work, more graceful with my patients. She had made me better. She had.
I couldn’t help what I did next. I saw how gratifying vulnerability could be, and I abused that. I was greedy—it was my hamartia. I emailed a picture of my penis and balls and taint to Gardenia at 5:25 p.m. on a Wednesday. She didn’t respond that night. It wasn’t the most flattering picture—the lighting was poor and the subject wasn’t as erect as maybe she would’ve liked. But it wasn’t about sex; it was about being honest with her. Show her who I was, so that she could love me. Or at least feel close enough to meet me.
The next morning, I had awoken to the most horrible news. Gardenia posted a string of volatile tweets, all castigating a man named August. Me, she was castigating me. I don’t remember most of the sentences verbatim, but she used words like “creep” and “pervert” and “old man.” She was talking about me on the Internet. And she was angry, she was hurt. The one tweet I remember with crystal clarity was “He’s dangerous. He’s threatening to hurt me. Be careful on the Internet, girls.” Dangerous? All I had ever wanted to do was make her feel safe, and I seemingly had failed. I felt a tooth-twisting, gut-emptying pain, the likes of which I hadn’t felt since my daughter died. I didn’t know this kind of pain was even possible twice in one lifetime. I emailed her immediately.
My love,
Why, oh why, would you do this? Did I really scare you, darling? I believed we had something. Tell me I can make it right. Tell me what I did and I’ll never do it again. Just talk to me. Talk to me, for God's sake, talk to me.
Please,
August
xxxxxx
She never did respond. I took the next week off from work. I did nothing but lie in bed, stare at the ceiling, and mentally punish myself. I deserved it. For making such an angel, a doll of a girl feel anything less than perfect and loved. But then months went by. Months went by, and I grew angry. Was this another lie? It’s not like that was exactly out of her wheelhouse, to lie on the Internet for attention. Was this all a publicity stunt? Was I just her toy? Was I just her pawn? Cunt. I couldn’t stop thinking that word, and I think of myself as a polite, even-tempered guy. I’m a feminist, for God's sake. But that girl was a cunt—she just was. To use me like that. If anything, my line of thinking was more feminist. I was worried for the actual girls and women in danger of online predators, and there she was, casting false claims, giving actual victims a horrible reputation. A couple more months went by, and I felt brave enough to check her Twitter. Her latest post had read “God, I need to stop talking to men on the Internet just because I’m bored,” and that’s when I finally realized. I realized what I should have known from the beginning: she was a girl. I thought I had found myself a woman, but she had been just a girl all along. Weak, emotional, fragmentary. Then that line of thinking faded as well, because I simply chose to focus on the good memories. I didn’t need to let one terrible incident define everything we had. And I did—I had something with Gardenia. And what a beauty she was, folks.
I’m retired now. I have a girlfriend who lives with me. She’s Mexican and has fake breasts. We like to go to the aquarium together—she’s a marine biologist. She likes to tell me which animals are deadly and which ones are just pretty, and I like to listen. I don’t use social media as often as I used to. But today, I’m scrolling through a Reddit thread titled: Anyone remember the Throat Goat? Lol, reminiscing on fond memories of Gardenia through other people. MattTheRapist69 has plenty to say, of course, but there are a plethora of kind voices as well. Yes I remember her she was so fucking funny lmao, says AlbinoRhinoGyno3. My husband went to high school with her haha. Said she was very smart and much more shy than her online persona lets on, says Woman_With_The_Most. I lovedddddd her ! She made me feel good about letting guys go backdoor on the first date!, says User6117825714. God, Gardenia did so much. Imparted such a positive impact on such a wide range of people. It doesn’t matter that her words were lies—what matters is the result. And what a result. All those lives she saved, and all of it was a joke to her, simply a means of passing time.
Gardenia and I ultimately lost contact, or more accurately, she lost contact. I can’t give up on beauty, it simply goes against my principles. But I did some digging on her friend’s social media, and I’ve found some information. She’s thirty-five now, which, I suppose, I could’ve worked out on my own. She’s a project manager at the same biotechnology company she started at. She’s married to a woman, a doctor woman, and she has two daughters, both with her caramel skin and brown eyes. Her Twitter has been deactivated for seven years, her Instagram for five. Her last email to me is dated thirteen years, two months, and sixteen days ago. My last email to her was yesterday morning, congratulating her on her eldest daughter’s communion.
Cover art: Malcolm T. Liepke, Purple Dress (2018)
real peculiar one in a good way
Ughhh this is so good! Each story better than the last. I love that you’re not afraid to write from a variety of perspectives. I feel like I get trapped in writing different versions of myself sometimes and I notice it with other writers, like published ones. This is so lovely and fresh.