Human Man

My boyfriend is a nice man, but I know that I would like him better if he was a stingray. Softened skin brushing on mine, smooth and wet; almost genital. No more beard to trim or hair to shed.

He could still communicate, my ray boyfriend. I love the growling sound he makes when our human bodies touch, and his infectious bubbling laugh. I love that he calls me Baby, even though I tell our friends that I don’t. To see his tiny wet eyes stare up at me from the bottom of a paddling pool, and hear his tiny ray voice growl, bubble, and murmur about me—his Baby—would be wonderful.

The only problem I foresee is that our dinners could become monotonous. My ray boyfriend will eat mostly mollusks. Shrimps, too. Maybe little fish. That said, I will happily shuck, peel, and debone them all to feed my beloved ray.

I hope that we can collect disability after the transformation. Society does not cater to cartilaginous fish, and the money could make up for what my boyfriend has lost in his floundering online blackjack career. I might even be able to get a different job and stop working at PetSmart six days a week.

I do not mean to complain. I am happy to make sacrifices for our relationship if it means that my boyfriend will be a ray one day. Even if one of those sacrifices is selling hamsters to children that want to microwave them. Even if another is giving my boyfriend my paychecks to fund his online blackjack career.

Neither of those will matter when he is a ray.

I would sacrifice anything to make it happen. I would give up the room we share in my mother’s house. I would sell my Honda. I would drive my ray boyfriend and I around in the Pontiac with the smoking engine that he inherited after his grandfather died. My ray boyfriend would have to sit in an inflatable kiddie pool in the trunk, and he would hate that because I am such a bad driver.

But I will be a better driver when he is a ray, I think.

I would microwave a million hamsters, work one hundred and sixty-eight hours a week, and shuck oysters until I cut every one of my fingers off at the bone to make him a ray.

His ray life will be better than his human life, because I will dedicate every second of my time to him. I will swim alongside him and every so often I will reach my hand out to reassure him that I am there. I will wear an oxygen tank, run out of air, and get the bends on my ascension just to touch him.

I will fight predators tooth and nail to protect my ray, but if a porky white seal takes a bite out of him, I will stick my ray to my belly and let him suck out my lifeforce. I will keep my ray boyfriend alive with my warmth and by leeching out little bits of my soul. I will never let him die, or grow old, or gamble away our money in online blackjack, or feel sad.

Everything would be the same, except I will be the one throwing him into the water when we are at the beach. I will point at him flying through the air, and say to the people paddling around with their noodles and waders: “There goes my boyfriend!”

I will watch him glisten as he flaps into the surf. I will lift him up by his tortilla chip sides and hold him to my face and kiss his lily white stingray stomach lips. I will say, “I love you! I love you!” so that he knows, with his eyes on the other side of his body, that it is my mouth kissing his underside. I will mean my “I love you”‘s more than I have ever meant them before. More than I could ever mean them now, today, with my boyfriend a human man.