If It May Please You
I was a jukebox. You'd give me a quarter, and I’d sing you the exact song you wanted. But this time, let's try a couple of letters instead.
Each week, The Queer Love Project publishes an original essay. Want to submit your essay and add to our growing archive? Find our submission guidelines and more here.
Dear iHOSTNOW,
You had me at “If it may please you.”
“If it may please you,” you wrote to me on Grindr one morning at 9:31 a.m. “I want to help you get off,” you continued. “I can suck your cock until you squirt your load. You in?”
What initially struck me was how uncharacteristically polite your query was for a Grindr note (see: “If it may please you”), while remaining characteristically horny (also see: “I can suck your cock until you squirt your load”).
Also worthy of note: “You in?” So casually, you threw out that “You in?” as if you were simply inviting a friend to dinner—which, for the record, would’ve been a lovely thing to do before asking me to come over to your home to help me “squirt my load.”
Semantics and intentions aside, what I don’t think you knew when you sent this missive was just who you were sending this message to. Because who you sent this to was an extraordinarily gifted people-pleaser. “J” was my Grindr name, and performing to meet other people’s expectations was my game.
Don’t believe me? A quick review of my three decades on this planet reveal a litany of performative acts. In elementary school, when I’d take off my glasses while walking in the hallways out of fear of upperclassmen thinking I was dorky. In middle school, when I’d record myself talking on my karaoke machine, then play the tape back to see if I sounded as “girly” as School Bully Chris told me I sounded. In high school, when my mom dropped me off at the movies to see Super Troopers, and instead I snuck into Britney Spears’ iconic American film Crossroads. Because in spite of what I told my friends, I didn’t want to date Britney Spears: I wanted to be Britney Spears. And, of course, in college, when Lindsay would put my hands under her bra while we were drunkenly making out at frat parties every weekend, in spite of the fact that I’d always pull my hands away, hoping that that would be a clear signal that I did not, in fact, want to be touching anything under her aforementioned brassiere.
So, iHOSTNOW, when you asked me if I was “in,” I told you I was “in,” even though I didn’t really want to be “in.” And just as I was doing some final mental gymnastics to figure out if I was actually going to walk the two blocks to your apartment, you sent me a picture of yourself. I saw Jude Law-esque brown hair and blue eyes, and I was sold. It would, in fact, please me to come over, and just like that, I was knocking at your door.
You opened it, and staring back at me was someone who very much did not have brown hair and blue eyes, but instead had no hair and brown eyes. I looked behind you, wondering if the man in the picture was perhaps your roommate, but it quickly became clear to me that you didn’t have a roommate, and that you were the person I was messaging, in spite of the fact that you bore no resemblance to the stud in the picture you’d sent me. This is what we call a classic catfish situation, and it’s a situation I (naively) never expected myself to be in.
And yet, here I was, standing in front of you, and you said, “Come in,” and I said “OK.” Because, as we’ve established, I’m the best people-pleaser that ever lived. What was I supposed to do? Say no, and risk hurting your feelings? That would’ve required me to prioritize my feelings over your feelings, and, well… who has the emotional maturity for that?
So, in I went. You ushered me into the bedroom, and naturally, I followed. What unfolded in the subsequent seven minutes I’d rather not repeat in detail, but I will say that I received the most unpleasant, uncomfortable blowjob in the history of blowjobs. It involved teeth, and dear readers, oral sex should never, ever involve molars.
I don’t actually know if I was lying there for seven minutes. In truth, it felt like a lifetime as I stared at the ceiling, repeating two words on a loop in my head: “Smile. Breathe. Smile. Breathe.” Eventually, it was over, and I put on my clothes, politely thanked you for having me over (as one does!), then walked out of that building faster than I’ve ever walked out of a building. I held back tears as I walked home, trying with all my mental power to refrain from actually crying in public, because society has taught me that people are unsettled by the sight of other people crying in public. A few minutes later, I walked into my apartment, shut the door, and instantly burst into tears.
Because what you didn’t know, iHOSTNOW, and what you couldn’t have known, is that when I was 21, after 10 years of living in the metaphorical closet, I told all of my family and friends that I was gay. And just one month later, I was sexually assaulted by a stranger I met at a bar, and it sent me into a decade of a different kind of repression. I slowly disassociated with my own body, learning how to bury my desires to accommodate who or what other people wanted me to be. I was a jukebox: Give me a quarter, and I’d sing you a song.
So, iHOSTNOW, on that fateful morning, you gave me a quarter, and I sang you the exact song you wanted to hear. But now I'm done performing. This jukebox is out of commission.
I’m seeing a therapist once a week now, and in learning how to process the assault when I was 21, and the catfish situation you subjected me to, I’m finding that both experiences are slowly carrying less weight for me—as if each mention of them starts to take away their power. To take away my Assaulter’s power. To take away Your power.
I never got to confront Him, and I never got to confront You, but every time I smile, or breathe, it’s me saying to Him, and to You…
“I am still here.”
“I am alive.”
And I don’t give a damn if that pleases you.
Xoxo,
“J” a.ka. No Longer “In”
Dear J,
I’m proud of you for writing that letter years ago, even if you didn’t actually get to send it to iHOSTNOW. That wasn’t the easiest of times, just months after you and your ex-boyfriend decided to open up your relationship five years into what would become a seven-year relationship. You’d entered into what your therapist called a period of “delayed gay adolescence,” in which you truly felt like a teenager as you started navigating the world of dating and hookups for the first time since you were a teenager. That said, considering you didn’t actually date or hookup when you were a closeted teenager, that more recent period was really your first time navigating dating and hookups, like, ever. Hence the term: “delayed gay adolescence.”
In re-reading your letter recently, I’m struck by two other things:
1) It makes me sad that you couldn’t believe that somebody who looked like Jude Law would be into you. But what else were you to believe when, historically, conventionally attractive guys on Grindr either didn’t respond to you, or immediately blocked you. (This type of savage blocking is a rich topic for an entirely separate letter.)
2) The use of the jukebox metaphor is interesting to me—the observation that you’d been “singing songs” on demand, but no longer had the energy to do so. Because I’m not sure that’s entirely true. It’s just that instead of singing songs that other people wanted to hear, you wanted to sing songs that you wanted to hear. (Alexa, play “We Found Love” by Rihanna.)
I hope you don’t receive the above as critiques. Because what I also see is you starting to transform into the person you are, and I am, now—
Someone who’s seeking agency over their body and their life by articulating what they want and need.
Someone who’s in a “no app” era! (Is a “no app” era even a thing? To be on the apps is to inevitably swear them off, knowing full well you’ll be re-downloading them in three to six weeks.)
And someone who’s started to feel comfortable sharing the catfish letter with friends. After reading it aloud, some of them have responded saying they’ve endured similar experiences. This makes me sad—not only the fact that it happened to them, but that they felt shame at the thought of sharing it.
Lots of folks love to share about a hot hookup they just had, but I wish we felt equally comfortable sharing the messy, hurtful moments, too—the ones that play out silently in the shadows. As an assault survivor, it’s brought me such peace to be able to talk to other survivors, so I hope we can all continue the conversation, out in the world, out in the light.
That’s what would please me the most.
Xoxo,
Jonathan a.k.a. No longer “J”
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available.
Jonathan Hurwitz is an Emmy- and WGA Award-nominated writer based physically in Los Angeles, but mentally in London. He wrote Disney Channel's first openly gay character (Cyrus on Andi Mack), and most recently wrote for the Disney+ reboot of Lizzie McGuire that infamously got canceled. Of equal importance, Beyoncé has grabbed his hand two of the 15 times he’s seen her in concert. You can find him on Instagram and TikTok (@jonathanhurwitz) living the Hallmark movie of his dreams.
Each week, The Queer Love Project publishes an original essay. Want to submit your essay and add to our growing archive? Find our submission guidelines and more here.
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