May 2, 2015
PLAY(ed)BOY is a zine for the lovers out there,
the ones of us who are, more often than not,
better described by the term “heartbroken” than
“heartbreaker.” It aspires to be simultaneously a
safe space and a public one, to give the spotlight
to vulnerability with the goal of subsequently
creating community. Conceived in some part as
a reaction to a writing course, “Writing About
Love,” in which there was a 15:1 female to male
ratio (professor included), PLAY(ed)BOY was
made to provide a counterargument to the largely
gendered conversations about heartbreak that I’d
been hearing. In said class, it often seemed as if
women had some sort of monopoly on heartbreak
and romantic sensitivity, something I personally
knew to be untrue. And likewise, it seemed equally
PLAY(ed)BOY unfair that what I’d call the “normative conception
of heartbreak” pegged women as being uniquely
susceptible to romantic irrationality and heartbreak-induced hysteria. This zine aims to dispel
such inaccuracies by showing that the stories of
heartbreak we are often told are not accurate
portrayals of the ones we personally experience.
There are, for example, plenty of women who
aren’t needy. There are plenty of men who are
objectified. And there are plenty of people, regardless of orientation or identification, who get
hurt and don’t quite know how they should feel
about it, if only because they haven’t heard anyone
share similar feelings before. Though admittedly a
more a creative venture than a socially or politically-oriented one, PLAY(ed)BOY exists to bring
those realities to readers’ attentions. It is my hope
that this zine stands as proof that the differences
between each of our own romantic tragedies are as
myriad as the differences between each one of us
as people, that personality and character, not gender or sexual preference, define what heartbreak is
to individuals.
PLAY(ed)BOY Huge thanks to all of those who have supported, critiqued, contributed to, and spread word of
PLAY(ed)BOY.
Specifically, a very special thank you to Rishi Bandopadhay for, along with doing the above, helping me
navigate the world of InDesign and bring this idea to
physical fruition
TABLE OF CONTENTS
pearl onions - Reid Williams.......................................1
A Living Dead Man Does Not Want to Remember
- Adam Joseph Elkhadem..........................................2
In Flux - Marc Alphonse Dessauvage......................3
Untitled - William Kammler.......................................4
Ode to Moses - Leah Simone....................................6
probably altoids - Reid Williams................................8
The Sixth of May, 1808 - Dom DeLuqe................10
The Barber’s Man- Hudson Brown........................11
Grasping - Jade Wooton...........................................12
He Took His Heart Out for a Walk Today - Ben
Koepp..........................................................................15
Soup - Jasmine Rice...................................................16
First One - Sean Pritchard........................................18
I thought of you - Francisco Navas........................20
Nudes - Anonymous.................................................22
Don’t Play Games Pt. 1- Eliot Thompson............24
The Ex-Files - Sasha Leshner..................................25
Part 2 - Eliot Thompson..........................................26
Excerpt #1 from Loose Bricks - Hal Baker..........27
staying in - Aleksander Sierkierski , D.D.S.............28
we will never go to San Francisco - R. Williams...29
Excerpt from Little Flower - Kelly Lundy.............30
The Ventriloquist Act - Migeul Coronado.............33
messy hair - Reid Williams........................................34
PLAY(ed)BOY
Next to me there is a human breathing Dylan Beach................................................................36
Spirit Vibrations - Noah Engel................................38
Excerpt from As I Sit Here - Emily Drouillard....40
Excerpt from Loos Brick #2 - Hal Baker..............42
on trying to stop hoping you’re watching me Reid Williams..............................................................44
Self-Portrait as a Son of Man - Marc Alphonse
Dessauvage..................................................................45
PLAY(ed)BOY
Pearl Onions
- Reid Williams
the table’s sticky
so I wipe it down
the sun sets much earlier now
and a home has to be clean
I eat cold beans out of tupperware for dinner
and save the pearl onions for us
for when I cook that pasta we like
I haven’t cooked for you in over a month
but one never knows
the least one can do is keep his home tidy
PLAY(ed)BOY 1
A Living Dead Man Does Not Want to Remember
- Adam Joseph Elkhadem
A living dead man does not want to remember
The days when he was alive but dead
Knowing that he now is dead forever
A living dead man does not want to remember
Short was his dead life long is his live death
He wanders about from place to place aimlessly
Working and keeping silent and longing
But he cannot forget and his haunted existence
Is death suffering but he cannot die
There is no joy in the days wasted before
Only is there suffering ever more
A living dead man is what he says he is
He struggles sometimes with his memory
A living dead man does not want to remember
A living dead man can never forget
PLAY(ed)BOY 2
In Flux
- Marc Alphonse Dessauvage
PLAY(ed)BOY 3
Untitled
- Williams Kammler
I met him at home. The summer before
junior year, or may have been senior. He went to
one of the all-boys Catholic schools, I went to
another. I had never known but we lived blocks
from one another; same neighborhood, different
sized houses. Different friends, different interests
too. We had nothing worthwhile in common on
the surface. And nothing worthwhile deep down
except that we were both hiding something. We
sought solace in each other, confiding things
in each other that we had never even realized
ourselves. I told him how I scared I was to tell my
brothers. He told me he’d never tell his parents.
He said he was going to get married to a woman
when he got older. He said he’d still hook up with
me though. I laughed and he didn’t get what was
funny. We would sit in the backseat of his Lexus
or lay in my room on the blanket my mom made
me when my parents got divorced. His backseat
would get sticky with our sweat and my room
would grow smaller with our secrets. We talked
about what it’d be like to have a boyfriend in
middle school, to hook up at school dances, to ask
another boy out to prom. We thought about these
while we got hickeys from girls we didn’t know,
PLAY(ed)BOY 4
while we tried jacking off to straight porn, while
we smoked weed for the first time and kissed our
best girlfriend, thinking it would finally help make
it bearable.
We graduated from high school. I went
to New York and he went to Philly. We still spoke
everyday. He came to visit New York and I left my
friends in Brooklyn to go see him. He had a hotel
in Midtown, I took the F train to get there. I was
drunk from the party in Gowanus. I think it was
90s themed. We fooled around and I fell asleep.
It was a king sized bed; mine at home was only
a queen. The sheets felt expensive and soft, my
sheets at home were only starchy. When I woke
up we were having sex. I pushed him off of me.
I took the F train back to the Village, he took the
Acela back to Philly. I didn’t really talk to him after
that. I blocked his number but he continued to text
me for months after. I still got them on iMessage
on my laptop, I just pretended not to see them.
PLAY(ed)BOY 5
Ode to Moses
- Leah Simone
The pomegranate seeds squirt slowly
into my mouth &
the charcoaled wood stops burning—
I frown at my meek fire building skills.
You said that sex can be a means of self-destruction;
like picking at a scab—
We spoke softly about intimacy,
the ways we use other bodies to cum.
I laid my head on your lap
and grassed my lips over your knuckles.
I’ve always valued a good fuck.
Your lips were soft and wet down by the water.
So slowly, I pressed onto them with my fingers.
How were you feeling in that moment?
I wonder if you could be any abled body—
any hardened cock or scruffy chin.
I masturbate to you sometimes.
But I can never imagine you naked—
You’re teeth were slippery, and I traced each ridge
PLAY(ed)BOY 6
Hoping to gage some form of entry
I chose your mouth
I won’t forget how soft your breath felt, under the
stars.
PLAY(ed)BOY 7
probably altoids
- Reid Williams
your breath is
never bad
even in the morning
you probably don’t believe me
just like I don’t believe you
when you say
the same thing
but I really don’t say it
to everyone
and am not saying it
to anyone else
//
you had a dream
about having too much
of something
last night
it started out
that you had some
and then lost them
and then got some more
PLAY(ed)BOY 8
and then found the first ones
again
and in the dream someone yelled at you
for having too much
and you told them
it wasn’t your fault -that you couldn’t have known
//
I am your box of mints
and am happy to be
in your dreams at night
and mouth in the morning
but I’m waiting to hear
what happens
now that you’ve found
your first tin
was never really gone
PLAY(ed)BOY 9
The Sixth of May, 1808
- Dom DeLuque
In my angst I’ve learned
to be patient
Nothing has tasted as sweet
As the taste
of Watermleon Four Loko
on you.
I don’t know
That I’ll have
That flavor on my lips
For some time.
or ever again.
But I’ll keep it
locked in my chest pocket
To remember what once was
And what simultaneously never was
PLAY(ed)BOY 10
The Barber’s Man
- Hudson Brown
PLAY(ed)BOY 11
Grasping
- Jade Wooton
She fell asleep on the mattress in the store so I
bought it for the apartment and she said we should
put the bed where the desk is and the desk where
we put the bed so I moved them and she was right
it looked a lot more spacious and she said she
loved me so I said I loved her too and I said I was
afraid of commitment and she threw her bag at
me but she decided to stay so I wrote her a note
that said I LOVE YOU MY BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS in my illegible scrawl and I stuck it in her car
window when I left the apartment without her.
I’ve hated LAX since I met her because now a
plane means loss and buildings are thieves and
how will she even repay her debts to that woman
with the burning torch I refuse to call her Liberty
she has done nothing but take what’s mine and
won’t you just stay here with me please. But I
never said that out loud I said do what’s best for
you and she said I’m what’s best for her but that’s
a lot of pressure to put on one person so I said
give in to whatever hold Liberty has on you with
her free hand and I’ll still love you from over here
I promise
PLAY(ed)BOY 12
But then it was hard and I got hard looking at her
on the FaceTime but there was nothing to touch
so I claimed that hardness as my own and I rejected the idea of “love” because I realized I didn’t
know what it meant besides this one girl who never stays and hurt and fighting about the number
2448 and sitting on this couch alone staring at blue
and grey blips at the end of the day always three
hours behind some alternate reality where I can
run my index finger along her collarbone
But I’m a man I can’t feel this hurt there are so
many beautiful girls out here and the Sun never
sets in the City of Angels sometimes I think the
Son was too pure he preached love but never felt
it between his legs I’ll find another one like her I
know I will
Sometimes I get frustrated because I still can’t
throw away her toothbrush and every time I try
to remind myself that people are expendable I see
her sitting on those jagged rocks at the beach the
passenger seat in my sedan then Aisle Seat 36F because she needed to stretch her legs and now she’s
gone and I don’t know where she’s sitting but I can
still feel her on my lap so heavy it’s almost tangible
Almost but not so just forget about it okay I’m
PLAY(ed)BOY 13
trying but it’s hard
PLAY(ed)BOY 14
He Took His Heart Out for a Walk Today
- Ben Koepp
The walk that was for the heart, who was the wife.
Don’t you think we ought to walk
My way this time? The wife said.
I ought to think so. I ought to think many things.
That a walk as this is for the good health of
My heart, which, in the end, is you.
Am I to believe that this walk is for me?
The wife asked.
I am to believe facts of course. I am to believe that
a vigorous walk around the reservoir
Stimulates oxygen flow, stimulates the blood which
carries the oxygen to cells around
The body, of course, dear wife, that is what I am
to believe.
But should I not like it, dear husband?
Should I not like the rotten smell of fish by the
reservoir where along its circumference blood flow
is stimulated? Should I decide, in all my
vascular influence, I know longer care for the position, what should happen should I
no longer care?
I should think these insinuations of infidelity and mortality petty, and I should think
No more of them.
PLAY(ed)BOY 15
Soup
- Jasmine Rice
A message on my phone
that she felt a bit
under the weather
was enough to send me to the cafe down the street
to pick up creamy potato soup
because she mentioned it was her favorite
a few months back.
Enough to send me to the
F to the L to the walk down Marcy
to catch the bus to Crown Heights,
and the five block walk to your stoop
always feels much longer than five blocks.
A buzz and four flights up
you answer the door.
The soup is cold and it’s the late afternoon.
You don’t want me to stay
because you feel
under the weather.
But that’s okay.
Because one day it won’t be a text.
It will be a call up the stairs.
PLAY(ed)BOY 16
Our stairs.
In our home.
And the soup will come from a pot on the stove
with thyme from our garden,
and it won’t be for you.
It will be for our son,
who caught a cold from another child
at the school down the road.
And you’ll want me to stay.
So today I don’t mind leaving.
PLAY(ed)BOY 17
First One
- Sean Pritchard
I checked in long after the chemicals collided
still, a motion is minor
if the movement is misguided
and if there is wreckage to sort through,
then I must have had momentum
I am glad certain circles can exist with independence
“life is beautiful,”
my bullshit brain pronounces,
“it is vapor,
or a vapid voluminous encounter,”
I correct myself
this is how I stand corrected
I am standing up straight for the first time this year
“life is funny”
all the twists and turns to the bottom
of my stomach
I am eager for love
not anxious, not afraid
understanding, amazed
that I am eager for your love
PLAY(ed)BOY 18
I will not sleep until I am satisfied
I guess my hungry heart holds true
to certain things
PLAY(ed)BOY 19
I thought of you
- Francisco Navas
Too often I’ve caught myself trapped in cycles of
selfishness and self involvement. Always prompted
by the worldly, petty pursuit of success, they create
casualties out of the most ethereal yet genuine:
friendships. By forcing myself to catalogue each
serendipitous pass someone I know made through
my brain, as accurately and honestly as possible, I
hoped to become more conscious of those I cared
about, no matter the physical distance. I wanted to
remember to call, just to ask “whats up?”
To my dismay, my favorite she, whose existence I
had managed to suppressed, began to make rounds
again, allowing me to create this sample from a
scrapbook of fragmented memories.
PLAY(ed)BOY 20
By Francisco Navas
Too often I've caught myself trapped in cycles of selfishness and self involvement.
Always prompted by the worldly, petty pursuit of success, they create casualties out
of the most ethereal yet genuine: friendships. By forcing myself to catalogue each
serendipitous pass someone I know made through my brain, as accurately and
honestly as possible, I hoped to become more conscious of those I cared about, no
matter the physical distance. I wanted to remember to call, just to ask "whats up?" To my dismay, my favorite she, whose existence I had managed to suppressed,
began to make rounds again, allowing me to create this sample from a scrapbook
of fragmented memories. PLAY(ed)BOY 21
Nudes
- Anyonymous
I always thought that I would be the one to break
up with him. Not because I ever thought I was
better than him, but because I thought that at a
certain point enough would be enough. That I I
would realize it hurts too much to love somebody
who might never love you back. But he promised
me he would never break my heart, and I wanted
to believe him, and there was never enough for it
to be enough.
PLAY(ed)BOY 22
“I want another chance, please. Please.”
That’s the only thing I said as I was on my knees,
trying to make him remember how much he loved
it when I gave him head.
“You deserve somebody better than me,” is all he
said.
I wanted my nudes back from him. I told him
to delete them, and he promised me he would. I
doubt he will. We fucked for a few days after and
I let him take a video. Afterwards though I made
him promise to delete it, and I meant it when I
said it. But I knew that he’d keep it, that he’d break
another promise.
I went home, hoping he would miss me and watch
that video while I was gone.
PLAY(ed)BOY 23
Don’t Play Games Part 1
- Eliot Thompson
find: truelove
PLAY(ed)BOY 24
The Ex-Files
- Sasha Leshner
PLAY(ed)BOY 25
Don’t Play Games Part 2
- Eliot Thompson
found: v
BOOTYCALL
DRUNKSEX
GRINDR
HOOKUP
MOVEON
PREGAME
REBOUND SENDNUDES
PLAY(ed)BOY 26
from Loose Bricks (#1)
- Hal Baker
Some people measure their relationships by numbers: the number of months or years together, the
number of dates they go on, the number of times
they have sex. Later, my friends would try to convince me that my love for her was a figment of my
imagination that I somehow had control over, they
qualified their position with the harsh fact that we
only had sex once.
PLAY(ed)BOY 27
staying in
- Aleksander Sierkierski , D.D.S.
i don’t know you anymore
i don’t know him yet
but one day i will hear his name
or see it somewhere
that man is my enemy now
every man in the street is my enemy now
they talk to her now
and i sit in my apartment now
and i want to stop
thinking about the day
when he lets go of your hand
to shake mine
PLAY(ed)BOY 28
we will never go to San Francisco
- Reid Williams
He said they would never go to San Francisco
because he was not her first and someone else was
and that’s where the someone else lived. She had
seen lots of cities and he had hardly seen any. He
thought that if he could erase one then maybe they
could be a little more even. He thought that then
he could love her more. He said they would never
go to San Francisco because she was his first and
he didn’t know enough to know how he did and
how she liked it and he didn’t want anything to
remind her of the someone else lest she compare
the two of them.
PLAY(ed)BOY 29
from “Little Flower”
- Kelly Lundy
3. BB guns and night-vision binoculars and nail
polishes—
Revlon Red and Cherries in the Snow. Boxes and
tissue paper,
small gifts for stockings, candy, green holly leaves,
red berries.
Tree branches are weighed down with clothespin
googly-eyed reindeer,
popsicle-stick nativities, school pictures framed in
wreaths.
Custom lettering bears tokens of our broken
marriages—
names, dates, hearts, promises of forever.
We hang these sad and sacred relics on our trees,
braving the hope that there was something to it,
to being married. Those years weren’t for nothing;
those paper doily angels weren’t made in fairy tales
and dreams.
Christmas Day, your gift to us: you duck down
into our crawlspace, your legs bent under you, your
clothes
covered in dust, and repair the stairs from beneath.
You retreat into the long, bleak cold of winter,
and I pine for you beneath the evergreens,
PLAY(ed)BOY 30
even as I begin to understand that you are
breathing and dreaming to that same, sad drum
the men of mankind have danced to forever,
circling
around women, yelping and braying, swords or
tomahawks
or pistols held high, watching and waiting,
wondering how to fashion a tool or craft
an implement that unlocks the mysteries
of feminine wile, of motherhood’s base authority.
You clear your plate and rinse your cup.
Such consideration hides the clever boy
inside, the one still trying to prove he’s a man,
not quite able to understand
the depth and breadth
of his own sacred mysteries.
For a cowboy, each goodbye could mean
the last goodbye. One must develop stoniness,
defenses against the enemy of loosed passion,
aptitude
for survival in the bleakest of landscapes. Out
here,
you will find motherless children, eyes already
dead,
beyond lonely, merely hard and cold. You will also
find
parents who have lost their children, some to
PLAY(ed)BOY 31
death,
some to the vast spaces between states
and dreams. “Tell me again about the railroad,”
people whisper, because we aren’t supposed to
admit
we have colorful, transcontinental visions—
we still carry a few smooth pebbles of hope
hidden
in the seams of our pockets.
PLAY(ed)BOY 32
The Ventriloquist Act
- Migeul Coronado
As a poet, I throw my voice
onto the inanimate, and they speak
through me, or I through them.
When my heart speaks, asking,
“What are you doing writing this poem?”
I say, “I thought I could talk to you if I wrote.”
“Well, what is it then?”
“I was thinking—
sometimes I find it hard to believe
in the things that I know.
Of course the sun still rises—of course
life keeps moving—of course I will
get better—of course I will move on.
But maybe I’m just weak-willed.
These days I want to believe
that the heart never really breaks—
that the heart is just a heart—
that the heart is not a metaphor
for something as strange as love.
Heart, what do you think?”
PLAY(ed)BOY 33
messy hair
- Reid Williams
I know she cleaned her room
and showered
yesterday afternoon
because she told me
yesterday morning
before I left
that that’s what
she was going to do
the room was not very clean
yesterday morning
and now it’s tomorrow night
and she’s asking me to come over
and saying not to but asking me to
and saying things
I like
“my room is messy hair”
she says
and knows I get it
part of me loves
that beds aren’t made
and clothes aren’t folded
PLAY(ed)BOY 34
and everything is messy hair
because part of me imagines
that’s intimacy
but the other part of me knows
it’s because she doesn’t have the energy
to clean the place
two days in a row
and last night was his night
PLAY(ed)BOY 35
Next to me there is a human breathing
- Dylan Beach
Next to me
there is a human breathing
next to me
and I can’t sleep.
for the enormous complexity
who now sleeps next to me
hums like a machine of gorgeous immensity
within her skull servers
lined up back to back
far as these eyes can see
in a warehouse as vast as the empire
and more slow
Everything
me and my servers exist in hers
alongside
all the things
that unnerve me
like her silence
and her oncoming tears
and her shade of pale
and her disappointment
along side
all the things
that warm me
PLAY(ed)BOY 36
like how she moves
with her smile
when she opens her door for me
and getting lost in that dark tiger’s eye brown
and how she laughed at me trying on the clothes
that her grandmother sent.
her childhood in Jersey,
mine in California,
the slowly rolling cottonball clouds,
the fireflies dancing in her back yard,
the both of us in bed,
everything.
But I must roll over, her dreams I’m not to know
in dust we are but dust, and in sleep we sleep alone
PLAY(ed)BOY 37
Spirit Vibrations
- Noah Engel
That bloom in the sky
to drink a thousand acres
of the stories called you
inwardly its hard to do any of this
A plumb moon
knowing in its shape
that reaches you
I am not
I am no where near you
like the rain is somewhere else
will it follow these dishes
a smooth one and all my metaphors are ruined by
not
I’m so swollen
I could hide
in this tree
until I feel asleep
To feel really like a harp
and be played
what are the things
I imagined most when I was younger?
PLAY(ed)BOY 38
Was it this confusing
serpentine swelling
my head halfway around my belt
and my arm’s misinformed reach argues with the
shoes
The spaces between an hour
and the rest of infinity
have drunken dry
the humble passage of the messenger ghost spirit
angel
PLAY(ed)BOY 39
from As I Sit Here
- Emily Drouillard
Now, we’d definitely finished that tango. That isn’t
to say the music won’t begin to play again, but our
choreography will be new. And I’m not a fan of
dancing. The passion there last night was strengthened by how long it’d had to simmer, waiting for
release. I think now it might have all gone out. As
we’d fallen asleep, I realized it was the second night
in a row going to bed with someone new.
There is more internal conflict: Should I
be ashamed? Should I care? Is it bad that I don’t
think I do? Can I say I’m learning anything about
love when I spend my time jumping from person
to person, unable to recall at the proper moments
the difference between connection and lust? At
what point does romantic love begin to blossom?
And how long until it begins to wither and lose
pigmentation, a grey scale splatter across a colorful
portrait? The temptation to run from the possibility of love, the very thing I think I crave, is
strong. I could choose to never talk to Reese again,
throwing away a likelihood of perpetually unmet
expectations and almost inevitable disappointment,
maybe even pain, with our parting. It would be
much easier to avoid that stress and stick with Ian,
someone I know will be there for drunken nights
PLAY(ed)BOY 40
when we both just want someone to hold. Someone I definitely won’t have to risk being in love
with.
PLAY(ed)BOY 41
from Loose Bricks (#2)
-Hal Baker
Standing on soft glass
you smiled at me through the camera
freckles dotted your face
constellations I could never know
intimately enough
I smiled then
repeating: you will regret your inactions the most
your words stung
not as a bee
sharp sure and succinct
but as a tattoo gun
piercing skin repeatedly until
the pain faded into the din
of all else that surrounded me
hoping: you’re as lost as me
his name tag read ambassador of Jesus Christ
the lights flickered off
and the hate that filled me rose up
as the subway car lurched onward
PLAY(ed)BOY 42
somehow sure of the path it carved into the
darkness
knowing: it is over
PLAY(ed)BOY 43
on trying to stop hoping you’re wathching me
- Reid Williams
I take the F train every time I leave my house. So
did you when you left it and so did we when we
left it. It has been a long and cold winter and it’s
gotten very hard to walk and the only way I’ve
seen New York has been through the F train for
a long time now. For the last few weeks, though,
I’ve started waiting for the spring. I have started
waiting and hoping that I can ride my bike instead
of take the train some places then because I never
really knew you when I had a bike and can’t be
sure of how’d you’d like me to act and I might just
do what I would on my own.
PLAY(ed)BOY 44
Self-Portrait as a Son of Man
- Marc Alphonse Dessauvage
PLAY(ed)BOY 45
if you have any stories you’d like to see in the as of now
hypothetical future incarnations of PLAY(ed)BOY, send
anything and everything to: [email protected]
PLAY(ed)BOY 46