“Do Not Open,

            I’m Sorry You Found Me.

            Please Call 911.”

Those lines were written on the back of a white business card. The card was placed inside a plastic pouch on a black duffel bag, though substantially larger than a duffel bag, zipped to the top and hulking. Two boys, standing alongside their bikes, flagged me down while I was jogging on the Schuylkill River Trail. “There’s something just off the trail over there,” one of the boys said to me, pointing over there for me to take care of it, clearly the oldest of the three of us present.

I had been running on the trail at 6:00 am that morning to work out for a guy, Alex, to show Alex what I had to offer in lieu of his boyfriend. Alex was in an open relationship. But, I thought it must mean something that Alex was still choosing to hook up with me. Other gay guys called me, “Voln.” It meant the “value over Liam Nicolloff,” or the measure by which all other gay guys were judged. It became my nickname in the community. Every gay guy had a value over Liam Nicolloff. I’m the lowest you could go and still be fuckable. I was large for a gay guy and also for a bottom, but I didn’t want to be seen exercising. I was out on the trail very early that morning. I didn’t just need to work out. I had to seriously get in shape. 

The only guy I was hooking up with on a regular basis was Alex. His boyfriend played Minor League Baseball. He was never good enough for the majors. Still, that meant he was jacked, so he was a catch, and for that reason alone was well-known among other gays. He knew about Voln. He also knew where he stood in relation to Voln. However, Alex had said he was a “vers top,” and since they were in an open relationship, that probably meant incompatible. Alex was my type, but I’ll explain more about what I mean later. What was that something else I had to offer him? Something which his boyfriend obviously didn’t have or couldn’t be. With some effort, I could do it – be a tight, fit bottom. 

I stopped running and stepped off the asphalt track into a small clearing where the giant duffel bag was laid. The clearing was just past the weeds that lined the edge of the trail. I could see the message scrawled, then placed inside the small plastic pouch, sewn into the material like a built-in luggage tag, of what appeared to me now, close-up, was a body bag. Dew had collected on the inside of the plastic pouch overnight. I read the message, called 911, and a police van drove up the trail with its lights flashing, arriving at the place where the boys and I were standing. No sirens that early in the morning. There were homes along the first half-mile of the Schuylkill River Trail closer to the city limits. 

The officer approached the bag, unzipped it to look inside, then zipped it back up. He made a call to another officer. Then, he wrote down our information on a notepad, and the boys and I departed. The police would never call me for any additional information. That morning, for the rest of my run, I didn’t think about the body bag on the trail. It was only when I arrived home that I considered the possible scenarios for how he was killed. The body bag wasn’t far from the trail, positioned where it could be encountered, so I concluded it wasn’t a homicide.

* * *

The first time Alex and I met was on a gay sex app. He called himself a “vers top.” His profile specifically said he was in an “open relationship.” At first, I believed that Alex was in a relationship with a woman, but when I searched him on social media, I found out about him and his boyfriend. I frequently searched for them after Alex and I would meet up. 

This time when I went to Alex’s page, I looked at the most recent photograph he posted, I looked to see if his boyfriend liked it, and I looked to see who else I knew who liked it. From there, I saw that Alex liked another guy’s photograph of dinner, which the other guy had made for his own boyfriend, or which his boyfriend had made for him. Apparently, the guy’s boyfriend, and the constancy of their domestic life together, were helping him through a difficult time, the untimely death of his grandmother. He’d posted about it before. Actually, he wouldn’t shut up about it. “Robert’s and my domesticity are what’s really getting me through these days,” he wrote. A man had used the word, “domesticity,” and masc, vers top Alex had actually liked it.

Alex loved some other guy’s post, again, not his boyfriend’s, this time with the other man saying, with each day that went by, he was becoming more of a Republican. I didn’t add Alex as a friend, and he didn’t add me. He was at the top of my suggested friends’ list, but then the next day he wasn’t. I wondered if he removed me, or at least I could’ve sworn that’s how it worked. I was jealous of the attention these men received from Alex, but I took consolation in the fact that Alex probably wasn’t hooking up with these guys, who he was also connecting with on social media, liking and commenting on their posts where his boyfriend could see them.

I also went to the page for the local funeral home, Gagliardi Funeral Home and Cremation Services, which had posted that they were having a service for Lawrence “Larry” Gagliardi to be held the following week. I followed a link from the post to his obituary. It said he was the son of the owner of the funeral home. It also said he was one of their former employees, the assistant funeral director. Being an employee of the funeral home would certainly explain the body bag. By the date of death, which was the same day I found him, I reasoned that it certainly could be the man in the bag. I examined the image of the man’s face on the post for the upcoming funeral service. Family members and friends had liked it, and posted their condolences below as well, which I also carefully reviewed.

I went back to my own feed and saw that one of Alex’s friends, with whom I’m mutual friends, posted for his status that he got a new job. Alex himself wrote beneath it, “Well done. Congratulations!” The word, “Congratulations!” exploded with confetti. But worse, I saw a picture of them, Alex and his boyfriend. They were standing in a giant field side-by-side. “Gettysburg?” someone wrote under the photograph. That picture in particular was very popular. On the timeline, it seemed as if it was their first photo together posted publicly online. I hated having a digital presence, so I deactivated my account.

* * *

I went to the funeral home for the service the following week. They cremated Larry Gagliardi. From the paraphernalia that was around, it looked like the family was Roman Catholic. He had a large family, many family members who shared the heavy-browed, almost Cro-Magnon facial features of the man I’d seen in the photograph online, and a woman who stood out, who didn’t look like the rest. I assumed she was his wife. The specific details of the man’s death hadn’t been included in the obituary. I was curious if the details had been shared with his wife, his brothers, his extended family. He hadn’t wanted his family to see even his last words. I wanted to tell them, how very polite your husband seemed, a very nice guy. At the same time, I didn’t want to share the secret I had with the man, and especially share it with his wife, of how many years?

Later, I got an urge to confront Alex at his apartment where we hooked up. Anytime I hooked up with Alex now, it was always how he wanted it, rough and forced, so that happened to be how I wanted it, too. You make love to your boyfriend one way. You fuck Voln another way. It was expected. Even if he wasn’t in an open relationship, you get used to gay men who turn you into a “faggot.” I’m into it. Alex ignored me when we weren’t hooking up, intentionally looked the opposite direction when he saw me out. That was expected, too, because he had a boyfriend, plus I couldn’t pass as straight, while Alex could. When I decided to confront Alex about us, his boyfriend must not have been over, because I saw Alex active on the app looking for sex right then.

“Want to meet up?” I messaged him. “Looking now?”

“Always,” he said. “Who’s this?” I sent him my face picture. “Oh, hey man,” he said. “Yeah. Come now?” 

“For you, definitely.” I was always willing to come over for him whenever he wanted. It was going to take something for me to get a guy like Alex. I knew when you had sex with someone, there was a release of chemicals, so either way, even if your feelings for the person didn’t lead to the sex, the sex created the feelings. I knew that feeling could last. 

“You alone?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

I’ve let too many perfect moments pass. After we finished, I asked him point blank, “Are you looking for more? Would you ever consider more? I mean, would you ever consider more with me?”

“I’m in a committed relationship,” he said. He told me, “What we’re doing, this is just casual. Just sex.”

“That’s fine,” I said instinctively. “Do you at least want my number?” I asked.

“I don’t really do that,” he said.

Then, I asked, “What are you doing after this?”

“I said I’m not looking for anything serious,” he replied, but I didn’t think he was.  “So, are we cool?” He asked. He asked me if it were fine for us to continue with just sex.

“Yes,” I said. Again, I said, “That’s fine.” At that moment, I was telling him the truth. However, it was the last time we would meet up on the app. I wasn’t going to be doing this with him anymore. 

I did visit Larry Gagliardi’s spot again on the Schuylkill. Someone had positioned a rosary there, crucifix pushed down into the earth, with the beads draped over the area. A small vase of flowers were placed on the area, too. Perhaps the location hadn’t been kept secret. A little placard, with a floral design around it, was tucked into the flowers. On one side was a pre-printed message, probably from the manufacturer, because it said, “You’re the best!” and when I turned it over, on the other side, a note where someone had scrawled, “I’m sorry, buddy.”

Justin Robinette lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has previously published short fiction in the winnow magazine where he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021, and in Angel Rust Magazine, Apocalypse Confidential, Datura Literary Journal, Literary Heist, Misery Tourism, Rhodora Digital Magazine, RFD Magazine, and Sledgehammer Lit. He has published short fiction in the Erotic Review magazine, short horror fiction in Danse Macabre, Horror Sleaze Trash, Indiana Horror Review 2021, and his short story was the opening story published in the anthology, Queer as Hell (HauntedMTL 2021). Work is forthcoming in Beyond Queer Words: A Collection of Short Stories.