Yes Daddy.

I opted for a bottle of cheap champagne. The one my ex and I used to buy with the orange label.

In a sick way, we were celebrating after all. 

I stopped going out at the end of October after my birthday. Between catsitting, working a dead end creative assistant gig, and cursing out Dave in my head, I decided that it was time to funnel all of my energy into getting a corporate job. 

That all came to a halt when W messaged me one night on Instagram at the cat lady’s house. After my cat responsibilities were finished, a bottle of wine turned into two, then into multiple empty bottles just piled into the recycling bin. He’d gotten me at the right time.

A surface-level message, turned phone call that I initiated, turned into the real reason we were having a conversation at all in the first place. 

“Do me a favor?” 

We’d reached that point, when small talk turned into loud breaths and desperate panting. 

“Tell me you missed me even if it’s not true.”

I was willing to hear a lie. 

“Say it.”

Beg for it. 

“I’ve missed you McKenna.”

Back to Thanksgiving. 

The celebration.

That night I’d found out that my ex had been cheating on me for a few years. It started around the time I was looking for apartments in LA. Apparently he’d moved to California anyway. 

The celebration.

The fact that I was right the whole time. 

Tobeingsingle and fucktheseguyswho never gaveafuckaboutme

I toasted to myself, locked in my room. 

I deserved punishment. 

I FaceTimed W. 

“Whateveris going on here, isn’t, doesn’t Actually makeanySense.”

Who answered on the first ring. 

“You’re drunk.”

“Yesand? soWhatI’m fuckedup soWhat?”

W, who was lying down in bed just sort of looked at me.

“Wearen’t friends. Friendsdon’tfuck eachother. Andyou want to like gooutandgetdinner and stuff thatsnot whatfriends do. I don’twanta Relationship, butthisisn’t a Friendship.”

I meant that.

W told me I should go to bed, and hung up.

Which I didn’t. 

Just sent him long drunken voice memos about the cheating stuff. 

Plus a few reiterating the fact that:

We’renot actuallyfriendsdude. 

Which we weren’t. 

“So you were saying some crazy things last night.” 

We met up the next night to get dinner at this hot pot place by Bowery. Which I didn’t want, but just sort of went along with. Went along with this whole dinner-friendship-fucking thing. Went along with him kissing me on the street when he saw me. 

“Everything I said I meant.”

W ordered for the table. I was into that sort of thing. A guy who remembered my allergies. Told me where to meet him. Where to kiss him.

Maybe I confused being led, controlled, with being chosen. 

“So I just want to make it clear that I’m not looking for anything serious—”

“I don’t want anything serious —”

And being chosen with being loved.

“Yeah, but you were saying things like we aren’t really friends and–”

“Because we aren’t.”

But neither of us was leading anything. 

Just performing control while fighting ourselves. 

Calling it pleasure.

“I mean back in Philly I was open to the idea of possibly exploring what a one man and one woman situation looked like with you, from a platonic lens.”

W was holding a piece of red meat on a stick over the gasoline-filled gaping hole. 

“Look. This right here,” I motioned to him and me, “Is all this will ever be. All I ever want from you. I would never seriously date you.”

I wouldn’t date anybody. 

“I wouldn’t say never.”

Fucking your friends. Calling them lovers. 

Even though you aren’t really friends. 

And you aren’t really lovers. 

And you probably don’t even like each other much.

“Never.”

But you just don’t want to be alone.

“Okay. Fine. Also I don’t really want to hear about what happened with your ex. You know, I have to respect myself.”

W reminded me of my father. 

“I thought we were friends though?”

I wondered if all I’d ever be good at was attracting men like my father. Whose approval determined whether I was valuable. Who demanded obedience without ever asking for it. 

Or sometimes did.

“Yeah, but ahhh I just have to respect myself, and I’m glad you understand that.”

Like my father, who sometimes demanded I reply, “Yes, Daddy,” “No, Daddy,” in the house whenever he spoke to me. Like some sort of sergeant at roll call. 

“Right. I understand. I get it. ”

We swung by a sex shop near St. Marks, which always had this sad feeling to it. 

Mannequins with feet twisted the same way wore cut-up  electric blue mini suits that no one was ever going to buy. 

Fluorescent lighting illuminated the grime on the old linoleum floors. 

Clear display cases had single items that were probably the last in their stock.

I assumed people still came for the peep show in the back. The live girls had disappeared. Turned into grainy eighties sex tapes replaying the same scenes. Behind dark, dingy, booths with dirty curtains. 

 I felt exactly like the shop.

I didn’t want to have sex with men who kept me around like an old Polly Pocket. Who opened dusty toy chests they hadn’t touched in years, and played with me when it was convenient.

Who wanted to lead, convinced they knew best, but didn’t know anything. 

Didn’t know me. 

Who wanted me to say “Yes Daddy,” “No Daddy,” and put me to bed. 

Somewhere along the way, authority, punishment, approval, all collapsed into the same dead man that W had just become a placeholder for. 

And I guess it was easier to summon the dead than mourn them.

When we got to his house, I lay next to him as he ran his hands over my face, over my body, and kept calling himself daddy. 

And me, wanting this and trying to prove I was a big girl now, let him. 

I watched him sleep, wondering why I was still there if we were just friends. Laying beside him after I’d gotten what I came for.

As the sun peeked through his bedsheets-for-curtains set up, I put on my clothes to leave. 

He rolled over and asked me the eight words every girl wanted to hear:

“Are you coming to my comedy show tonight?”

And for the first time I decided I only wanted to sleep with a guy again if it meant I was sure about him. 

“No. I need some space.”

When I was done digging up Daddy.