Blake 2.0

We’re sprawled on Aunt Stephy’s pleather sofa watching Love on the Spectrum which she has seen three times and I haven’t seen once because dating shows usually make me want to yak. Something about the musical segues, the fluorescent colors. I talk absentmindedly about growing my hair out long, maybe down to my butt like a princess, but my aunt is so high off the joint we shared on the back patio that she narrows her eyes and says, “But princesses don’t exist.” She’s nibbling at a Mallomar, cuddled between the two dogs. The living room has beige carpeting and white bookshelves that frame the television, stacked with baby pictures of Stephy’s sons and my brother and me. The whole house smells like kitty litter, and outside, the rain is coming down hard.

It’s the middle of October, and I have ten days off from school which I’m spending in Massachusetts because my mother insisted Stephy would want to tote me around suburbia. Mansfield is only four and a half miles away by train, a small sacrifice to make for family. I’m not close to my aunt, at least not in the way a family should be, having lived so far from her for most of my life. Since starting college on the East coast, I’ve seen much more of her. She has taken me in as a confidant on all matters romantic, sexual, and depressing. Her house is classic, colonial-style, complete with a basement play area where my older cousins, Daniel and Julian, used to show me episodes of SpongeBob. Stephy lives on a cul-de-sac in a family neighborhood: turquoise swimming pools, grilled baby back ribs on Friday night, chocolate labradors, babies in double strollers. She lives alone now.

We’d spent the day together in Plymouth, even though I wanted to go somewhere with good shopping. She had insisted that I needed to see the rock. The tide sloshed through the metal bars and washed around the base of the boulder like a tongue swirling around a lollipop. The man standing next to us, dressed in khaki shorts and a camo jacket, said sixty-seven percent of the rock is buried beneath the ground.

“What the hell?” I whispered to Stephy. On the way back home, she took me to Goodwill.

On the television screen, a 64-year-old autistic man named Steve Spitz talks about his search for love. He has a thick brown mustache, yellow teeth that are even but angled slightly inward, and a receding hairline in the shape of a perfect upside-down U.

“Do you think he’s a virgin?”Aunt Stephy asks me.

“Aw, no I hope not.”

“I think he is.” Steve talks about being lonely. He has never had a girlfriend before. “See?” Aunt Stephy says.

“Maybe he got really drunk and had a one-night stand in college or something.”

“This makes me so sad,” she murmurs. “I’m just like him.”

“No you’re not!” I mean it. Stephy told me she lost her virginity at fifteen.

She sighs. “I’m signed up for five different dating apps. If I knew this is where I’d be in my fifties, I would have killed myself twenty years ago.” As if sensing her lament, Spot, Stephy’s blind and deaf dachshund, waddles across the couch and buries his dry nose into her thigh. He is white with black dots, and his left ear has a splotch that looks exactly like his own side profile. I start scrolling through my phone, looking at my own baby pictures for some reason. I show one to Stephy: I’m six with a unicorn stuffed animal balanced on top of my shiny brown bob, tongue sticking out of the gap where a baby tooth used to be. Daniel stands behind me wearing a floppy Santa hat and a red-lipped grin.

“That is so sweet! Text me that!” she says, but I don’t show her any more because when she’s high like this, she can’t keep the sadness out of her voice.

Steve Spitz is saying that he wants to find someone to grow old with.

“We’re the same,” Aunt Stephy groans.

“No, you’re not!” I remind her that just last weekend she visited Aaron in Connecticut, her friend of twenty years and the first man she slept with after she and Larry divorced. I tell her she should marry Aaron. I want to believe it’s that easy. Aaron had been there all along. They would get married and live in this house together. She would get another chance. But she shakes her head.

“We would never work. He works on submarines so he’s always traveling. Plus, he’s a drunk. I can’t handle that at my age. And I need someone who makes money.” I don’t know much about my Aunt’s social work, except that she hates it and she once took care of the woman whose face was ripped off by her friend’s domesticated chimpanzee, Travis.

Tiago, the 13-year-old chihuahua with grey hairs springing from his snout, starts snuffling in his sleep. The owner of the shelter had told Stephy he was rescued from the streets of Mexico where he had been part of an underground dog fighting scheme, hence his name. According to his papers which Stephy rediscovered years later, he was found in a cornfield in Iowa.

“Guess what?” she says.

“Yeah?”

“I ordered a Gerty.”

“What the hell is that?”

She snickers, her eyes glazed over. “This pot is strong.” She tells me that Gerty is an inflatable life-sized doll for pets with separation anxiety. She had seen it on Shark Tank.

“I swear this is the first time I’ve ever ordered something I saw on T.V.! But they gave a demonstration and it really does work. Guaranteed pet comfort in 24 to 48 hours. Mark Cuban gave the creators $500,000!”

“Do Spot and Tiago have anxiety?” I ask.

“Well not diagnosed. But they get so upset when I leave for work every day. I’m all they have, you know?”

“How does it work?”

“Basically, you dress the doll in worn clothes and leave her around the house when you’re away for the day so that pets have a comforting presence. You can even pay extra to have your face printed onto her. But that’s 30 dollars more so I just got the standard version.”

“Are you kidding? So your Gerty will have just a blank flesh colored face?”

“No! She has Gerty’s face!”

“Who’s Gerty?”

“I have no idea, but apparently her face is reassuring to animals. It’s scientifically proven.” I look up a picture. Gerty appears to be in her early thirties with a straight blond blowout in a half-up-half-down. She has piercing blue eyes and a broad white smile that reveals every one of her white teeth, even the molars. I check the reviews: I thought Toffee was wayyy too smart for Gerty, but I was sorely mistaken. I showed him that she is a safe "friend", and now he and Gerty are BFFs! Kinda confused why she has breasts tho, lol.

“That is hilarious,” I say. I am not particularly surprised. Dog people will spend money on anything. I feel a writer’s desire to see this scene play out, to watch Aunt Stephy and her plastic doll and her pups. Back on the T.V., Steve is going on a date with a woman named Amanda in the Japanese Gardens of San Francisco. He stumbles over his words, there are long silences, and his laugh sounds high and strange. They sit on the patio of the outdoor tea garden, picking at onigiri, seaweed salad, and mochi balls. Steve can barely hold his chopsticks because his hands are shaking so hard.

“See, you’re nothing like him,” I say. “You make lifelong friends with strangers seated next to you on airplanes.” This has happened on more than one occasion. Aunt Stephy still gets New Year’s cards from people she’s befriended at the supermarket, the post office, even jury duty. “She’s such a people person,” my mom had said once, after the divorce. “She needs someone.” It has been over nine years, and Stephy is still alone.

“I’m thinking maybe I should submit an application to The Later Daters. The people on that show are more normal looking. Maybe they’ll take someone like me,” Aunt Stephy says to me now.

“Like you how?”

“Fat.” Steve’s date has ended, and Amanda tells the interviewer that the physical attraction just wasn’t there.

“Your mother is one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met,” Aunt Stephy tells me. “I used to fucking hate her. Your dad couldn’t keep his hands off her.”

“Wow,” I say.

The next morning, we’re in the kitchen making coffee in the Keurig, which whistles and groans like an old man. Aunt Jenny shuffles around in a neon pink robe, heating up milk in the frother and pouring kibble into Tiago’s bowl as he snaps at the hard brown cubes, mid air. I take Spot outside to do his business, warning him of my approach by waving a hand in front of his nose and awkwardly slipping an arm under his round belly. His tail wags furiously when he picks up my scent. I wonder how he imagines us human beings without having ever seen a person. He’s only touched our furless skin, felt our heavy steps, and sensed our tall, bipedal figures. He snuffles around in the grass, bumping lightly into an empty ceramic planter. What monstrosity of a creature has he concocted in his head? The backyard is large and square, the grass, brittle from the winter cold. The back end peters out into a thicket of trees. Although it’s damp and icey, I can picture the yard as it was during the summers: the Slip ‘N Slide that left brush burns on my elbows, the fire pit where we made s’mores. Daniel taught me how to stick the marshmallow into a tented triangle of branches so that it toasted gold and even. I carry Spot back inside just as the doorbell rings. Aunt Stephy goes to answer it, and I hear her chatting merrily to a deliveryman.

“Gerty’s here!” she cries, shuffling into the kitchen with a long box. She rips into it with a kitchen knife and I pull out the plastic which has been rolled into a tight tube. We spread it out on the carpet and are greeted by a 30-year-old man with dark, swooping hair, brown eyes, and a five o'clock shadow.

“That’s not Gerty,” I say.

“Ah shit. They must have fucked up my order. This is the standard male Gerty, not the original Gerty.” The two dimensional man wears jeans and a very tight white t-shirt. His long legs are pressed together, his arms are stiff at his sides, slightly lifted with the palms facing forward.
“Why does he have a six-pack?” I laugh, and Aunt Stephy giggles.”

“I’m not complaining,” she says. She decides to name him Blake, after the first man she ever loved.

“You never marry the love of your life,” she had told me a few years ago, at an empty karaoke bar in P-town. A drag queen with a coiffed red wig sang Katy Perry.

We blow Blake up using a handheld pump meant for bike tires, which takes a while because he is nearly 6-feet tall. We dress him in a ratty Boston University sweatshirt and manage to squeeze him into a pair of jeans that cut off at his calves, so we add long grey socks that cover the flesh-colored plastic.

“He still looks better in them than me,” Stephy complains. We spritz him with her cherry scented Victoria’s secret body mist. She carries him out the front door and rings the doorbell. With Tiago behind me, I swing open the screen. Spot is settled on the couch, unaware of the spectacle. Per Gerty’s instructions, the doll should initially be invited into the home like any other guest. We do this, shaking Blake’s hand enthusiastically and thumping him on the back.

“Would you like a cup of peppermint tea or Sprite?” I offer. Tiago begins to bark frantically, running around in tight circles and snarling at our new guest. Aunt Stephy steps around him and places Blake down on the couch— the Gerty features separate inflatable chambers at the joints which allow him to sit easily. Spot lounges on his plush bed, licking blissfully at his hindquarter.

“They also said we have to talk to him for a while so that the dogs know he’s trustworthy,” Aunt Stephy whispers. We spend the morning talking to Blake about the intricacies and possibilities of reincarnation, Spot nestled beside us and Tiago growling and pacing in the corner. That night, when we return from a day trip to Boston, the dogs lay together on the edge of the sofa, as far from Blake as possible.

“They just need some time to adjust,” Aunt Stephy says, a slight frown on her face. She scoops up Tiago and I pull Spot onto my lap. We cuddle up next to Blake, and Aunt Stephy takes his arm (perfectly bent at the elbow to allow pets to rest against the crook of the arm) and places it around her shoulder.

At the karaoke bar in P-town, she told me that the real Blake eventually married a girl he met in Arkansas, a blonde big-boobed barbie type, and he and Stephy lost touch. Decades later, after Larry, she found him on Facebook and they began messaging. A few months after that, Blake died suddenly in his sleep.

During my eight day stay in Mansfield, Blake becomes a part of our lives. Aunt Stephy clasps him in her arms while she makes stir fry, holding his hands between her own so Blake sautés the tofu. He sits with us when we eat our meals in front of the television, and we play a game of gin rummy on his stomach.

“The dogs are getting attached to him I think,” Aunt Stephy remarks one afternoon. “He’s part of the family now.” Spot and Tiago are nowhere in sight. She kisses Blake’s plastic cheek. Love on the Spectrum is playing on the television, and Steve is out on his second date with a woman named Brenda. Whoever is running the show is going all out: they’ve rented a private boat with a captain to tow Steve and Brenda around the San Francisco bay. It’s unclear if Brenda is also on the spectrum or if Steve is just making it awkward for the both of them.

“I can tell she doesn’t respect him,” I say. “She’s not the one.” I’ve become thoroughly invested in this show.

“He should take what he can get.” Stephy rests her head on Blake’s shoulder. “Luckily, I’ve found a man who doesn’t have a mouth to disrespect me.”

“He can do better! That’s not love.” The show cuts to a pretty girl named Dani who loves animation and is looking for a man who shares her passions. She has been sent to a speed dating event at a restaurant in Los Angeles.

“You’re too young,” Aunt Stephy says. “When you’re past your thirties, every good guy is married or dead. Now try to imagine dating at fifty fucking six. It’s all lonely wrinkly idiots who just want someone to save them from cold mushy meals in some senior home and guys in their forties cheating on their wives and blaming it on a midlife crisis. Or young guys looking to hook up with older women.” She pauses. “And when you’re single past thirty, your girl friends start acting different too. All of a sudden, I’m desperate. I’m a threat. My friend Alice told me her husband could come by and fix my clogged sink. The next day, she shows up with him, and when I ask why she came if Jim was doing all the work, she said, ‘You don’t really think I’d let him come here alone, did you?’” Aunt Stephy rests her empty bowl on top of her heaving cleavage. “Get them while they’re young and fresh, because at some point, men go back around the loop and it’s like they’re twenty again.” She takes a long sip from her wine glass. “Remember that.” This scared me, because there is truly nothing I can do to comfort her. What is she meant to do now? Larry was her one measly, bald shot at escaping the loop, and he’s long gone and happier than ever.

Dani rotates from table to table, from man to man. She only gets five minutes to talk to each suitor. She takes notes on a pad of paper, disarmingly asking each man to list off his life goals and ambitions. She laughs loudly at their jokes, clapping her hands together, but with the camera focused on her face, it’s obvious that the emotion is forced.

My mom told me that Larry was leaving Stephy at an IHOP when I was twelve. I froze with the blueberry syrup suspended over my pancakes. I learned much later that Larry had been cheating with a 25-year-old named Kelcey for over a year.

“My biggest regret,” Stephy told me once, “is that I kept sleeping with him even after I knew. Right up until he left me.”

That night, she brings Blake to bed. The bathroom has one door that opens to the hallway and one that opens to her room. I peer through the crack. Spot and Tiago rest on the bed at her feet. Her head rests on Blake's chest, her mousy brown hair splayed across his stomach. I watch, with my toothbrush hanging out of my mouth, as she gets up and begins to sway back and forth with Blake’s stiff body pressed against her breasts, dancing to some silent song. She presses her lips to his open-mouthed grin, slowly and sweetly, caresses his face and slipping a hand down his body. I quickly rinse my toothbrush and run into the hall with toothpaste still coating my mouth.

My aunt has told me about the men she has sex with. Some from dating apps, some old friends, a few she met in real-life on cruise ships or waiting rooms or bars. I told her when I lost my virginity my freshman year of college, and I’ve asked for advice on blowjobs and dirty talk. This is not really a measure of closeness. I know that no matter what I say, she won’t judge me, she can’t judge me. I’m happy that she experiences this intimacy at her age, but when she describes her sexual conquests, it’s all wrong. I feel something close to disgust. Or maybe it’s disbelief.

On Sunday, Stephy drives me to the Providence train station with Blake sitting in the passenger seat. Back at school, I have a nightmare that I’m Larry’s newest wife.