HOW TO BUILD A PERFECT LOVER™

Convinced the problem isn't love but lovers, a lonely Black gay scientist builds the perfect partner, only to learn romance is impossible to program.

I’VE KISSED ENOUGH MOUTHS to know the difference between affection and appetite. One feeds you. The other feeds on you. Most men don’t know the difference. Some will play coy their whole wretched lives.

And I—well, I’ve never fit in easily amongst them.

I say how celebrity worship is the new opioid crisis and niggas act like I spit in Beyoncé’s face. Their rage is Pavlovian. Whole grown ass men foaming at the mouth because you don’t give a fuck about a billionaire that doesn’t give a fuck about you.

That cognitive dissonance has to be stronger than the Hulk. So is mine, I guess. Why else am I back in this seedy bar pretending tonight might be different. But it’s close enough to walk home when it goes left and far enough to pretend I tried. He’s late. Red flag one. But when they’re cute I allow it. He’s a Barb though, red flag two. But he’s mostly quiet about it, so fine, whatever.

“Do you think you’re hard to love?” he asks.

I grimace. “I’m not hard to love. I’m hard to be in partnership with.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You say that like being disagreeable is a badge of honor.”

“It is,” I answer. “Agreeable people let slavery happen.”

He laughs. He’s probably offended. Maybe he thinks I’m joking. I sure as hell am not.

He asks, “who my fave is” and I say, “Sylvia Plath.”

He looks confused. Like he expected some overrated pop girlie and instead got a suicide poet.

The rest of the night sours like milk left out in a heatwave. When he offers to pay I don’t let him. Not because I’m against the transactional nature of it all, but because I don’t want to owe him anything.

We part with a nod cold enough to freeze a lake. And I walk home alone feeling nothing but the relief of not having to pretend anymore. It’s not even that he did anything wrong. It’s that he didn’t do anything right. They never do.

At home I unlock the spare room at the end of the hallway with my keycode. Inside is my real date. My almost-man. Just parts, muscle, metal and promise. My project, my secret, my solution. Mine, mine, mine. There are no lovers left in this world so I’m making my own.

I power on the console in the makeshift lab I stitched together with stolen biotech from work. I open the encrypted folder.

“PerfectLover_001” loads.

Step I — Have Enough Delusion To Try One More Time

The first lie you tell yourself is that this time will be the last time. This is the same lie addicts tell themselves.

In the past I would convince myself I’m building something with men who can barely maintain a consistent text thread. Yet somehow I’m shocked when it reveals its fruitless nature. Every fucking time. Like of course a foundation built on emojis and half truths is meant to collapse.

Look. I have this terrible habit of believing men are quests. Little side missions. Something silly to collect like Funko pops. It’s embarrassing. I’m embarrassing. But so is being alive, so let’s all unclench.

I think of my lovers, my masterpieces in my museum of disappointment, as I weld limbs to the torso.

There was Ziah, who after months of curated charm on my part, one morning decides we should “just be friends.” Like I would be friends with you simple-minded faggots if I wasn’t trying to fuck you.

Be serious.

There was Malik, who pointed out I’m “too intense,” like passion isn’t literally the point. And don’t get me started on the Dorians. The Wills. The DaQuanns. A whole parade of men only adept at being a waste of my time, my feelings, and most importantly my money.

Romance used to mean flowers. Now at best it means a “u up?” text at two in the morning and statistically, gonorrhea. Still, like a clown with tenure, I RSVP every time. Because here’s the thing about delusion: You only need a pinch. Just enough to try one more time.

And always one more time.

Step II — Render the Flesh to Resemble Your Fantasy

Everyone swears they’re progressive until desire clocks in for its shift. Then liberation gets fired on the spot. Suddenly it’s not “love is love.” It’s “but is he fine?” Because looks aren’t everything. They’re the only damn thing. Bell hooks won’t save you here. But, Diana Ross might.

So in my lab I hum “just make him beautiful” like it’s gospel while I fuse body parts together. Sparks fly. I sweat like I’m in labor. And in a way, I am.

Now this part is important.

Build your Perfect Lover™ to look like the version of you puberty advertised and then forgot to ship. Start grafting details.

Take the eyes of your first crush. The one who called you fag in front of his friends but still let you blow him behind the gym.

Add the legs of the man who ghosted you but still watches your stories like you’re premium content. Give him the ass and dick of the one who made you feel invisible.

Keep cutting and pasting until he becomes a collage of every man you ever envied. Every boy who got chosen first. Every lover who took what he wanted and left you with nothing. People say nobody’s perfect. They’re cowards and erroneous. Perfect just means perfect for you.

I’m at work mid-scroll through Ziah’s Instagram when Andrew, a literal human pop-up ad, interrupts my process.

“I love that book,” he says, pointing at my beat-up copy of All About Love sticking halfway out the trash.

“I didn’t get it,” I counter.

He quotes a line from it. Some bullshit about love being an action and not a feeling. Blah, blah, fucking blah. He goes on, “You know, ’many of us are taught to believe that love just happens, that it appears out of nowhere...”

Then DeShawn, the type who’s everybody’s type, walks by and finishes the quote, just to flex he’s read it too. “...but love is always a choice,” he says.

Fuck him with no lube.

He’s never had to work for love or anything for that matter a day in his life. Gays love with their eyes and their dicks and their holes. And he fits neatly in all three.

“That’s not always true,” I cringe.

Because somebody here has to be a serious person.

DeShawn tosses back, “cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed,” before floating away on the sound of his own smugness.

Andrew’s eyes drift to my screen now, to the mosaic of exes, almost-lovers and Instagram thots I can only touch by double-tapping their thirst traps. I close the browser quickly. But, honestly? I am not ashamed.

“This is not nostalgia,” I explain. “This is research.”

“Do you want love or a bad bitch?” he asks.

“I want to be loved by a bad bitch,” I reply.

Andrew smiles as he walks away. “Don’t let these niggas drive you crazy Orlando.”

A bit late for that, I think.

Step III — Code Him to Love You And Only You

Listen, no one wants a prisoner. But the truth is nothing loves without a cage. So I write his code like a horoscope. Broad enough to feel true, biased enough to mean for me.

I code him to laugh. To dance. To fuck on command. He can ask questions, but every answer reroutes to me. This is choice with guardrails. Like dating in New York City, supposedly infinite options, but we’re all circle jerking to the same three people’s nudes.

His skin resolves brown. This part is intentional and not up for debate. There’s a throb of electricity so large I swear I feel it in my chest.

Then he inhales.

The room shifts. The air thickens. Something sacred, stupid or holy is happening.

I swear I’m standing in the Mary Shelley Cinematic Universe. Lightning but make it LED. Creation but make it horny. I feel the satisfaction of knowing I can finally build a man that is mine.

He blinks awake.

His brown eyes focus. When they land on me he beams.

It’s no default template smile. It’s a holy shit, you’re the first face my brain has ever processed and I think, no I KNOW I’m in love, smile.

He looks at me the way I always wanted someone to: like I’m God.

Like I’m his God.

And not because I programmed devotion. Please, I’m petty but I’m not dense. It’s because the empathy simulator tagged my face as “familiar.” Which is somehow worse and better at the same time. Better meaning solid and realistic. Worse meaning I had to build him that way for him to be that way.

“I see you,” he professes.

For the first time in years those words land like a promise instead of a threat. It’s a meet-cute I staged like a messy queer producer. But honestly I ate. I devoured. Bon appétit me.

Step IV — Don’t Forget To Give Them A Brain

The thing about hot men is they don’t know shit about shit.

They are drafted into beauty the way child soldiers are drafted into war. Early and without consent. By the time they’re grown the world has already done all the thinking for them.

Pretty is a disability.

Pretty is an alibi.

Pretty is the reason DeShawn says dumb shit like it’s scripture and everybody applauds anyway.

So if I’m making a man from scratch he better have a cortex that can spar with mine. We read Morrison and Camus. I get him a copy of All About Love. My first mistake. We watch Moonlight. My second mistake. Because now he wants to talk about love like it’s a patch he can download with the right permissions. He turns to me halfway through, eyes wide and terrified of their own depth.

“Do you love me?” he asks.

I have no words, so we fuck instead. It’s pilot-level fucking. Sexy, promising, and doomed from the jump. Everything feels urgent but also disposable, like we’re cosplaying intimacy for an audience that isn’t tuned in.

He needs me.

I need the feeling of being needed. Because need is the trick. Need is the glue. Need is the only thing that keeps someone choosing you when the romance inevitably rots.

Afterwards I catch him scrolling through my old photos. Me at twenty-something. Skinny, shirtless and stupid.

He touches the screen like it’s a relic. “Who is he?”

“That’s me,” I admit.

He looks stricken. Almost betrayed. Like I just told him Santa Claus isn’t real. He frowns. Like I’ve shattered the entire fantasy by reminding him I’m human. And maybe I did. Maybe this is my biggest mistake.

Step V — Show Him Off

I’ve been staying later and later at work. Not because I have to. Because I want people to notice. I’ve turned my cubicle into a shrine. I’ve got photos of my Perfect Lover™ pinned up. For no reason other than I want people to see them. To see him in me. To see what I made.

Andrew peers at one of the photos. “He’s perfect.”

“I know,” I brag.

I blush like a kid showing off a science fair volcano. Because that’s exactly what he is. My glittery disaster come to life.

Then he ruins it by asking, “Are you happy?”

And that actually startles me. Happiness? I was never aiming for happiness. Happiness like love or winning the lottery is something that only happens to other people.

“You should bring him to the launch party,” Andrew suggests.

“Maybe,” I consider.

Because “maybe” is easier than “I don’t know how he’ll look under lights with real people watching.”

Though my Perfect Lover™ has been asking to go outside. Not like a pet scratching at the door, more like a question I forgot to code an answer for. And I think, fine. I’ll take you out. I’ll show you off. You are my trophy. My Frankenstein in Ferragamo.

The lights in the event hall flicker when we walk in.

Suddenly I’m the girl at prom showing up with a boyfriend nobody knew she had. Heads swivel. People whisper.

We take our seats while the CEO, Mr. Black Excellence himself, muses about “community values,” which is wild because I actively avoid most of these people.

My Perfect Lover™ sits next to me. His legs crossed because I taught him that. Posture perfect because I built him that way.

And while the CEO drones on about connection and purpose, I drift out of my body and notice everyone isn’t listening to him. They’re staring at my creation. Their eyes are sticky with curiosity. Like he’s dessert.

Pride swells in my chest like a balloon. Then immediately deflates. Because he stares back at men like him. Men like I used to be before life wrung me out like a dish rag.

“This is for the loveless,” the CEO addresses the crowd.

People clap because clapping is the first habit they teach you in capitalism. Clap. Nod. Smile. Pretend you’re happy someone else is always winning.

And then the spotlight hits him.

The company’s model. The one we built in the lab. He’s white and muscular, glitches we found that HR told us not to fix. He’s “perfect” in the way only whiteness gets to be.

They clap harder when he smiles. A smile I wrote at three in the morning, exhausted, living off cold ramen noodles because I’d forgotten how to care for myself. If they knew how much sadness went into this product of love they’d recoil.

After the speechifying, the CEO bee-lines toward me. He’s flanked by his white partner, a man who is in no way shape or form attractive, which is why he’s with my boss.

He shakes my hand. “Thank you for all your work lately.”

Pay me more, I think.

Then he goes, “I hear your partner is here tonight.”

Partner. Not boyfriend. Not date. Partner, like we own an overpriced apartment complex together.

I look around. He’s nowhere to be found.

It’s then I understand every B movie where the monster realizes the genius scientist is really a fucking idiot.

When I find him, he’s kissing the prototype. Not just kissing. Kissing like he means it. Kissing like someone told him about love in a language I didn’t bother to teach him.

I stand there watching my own creation tongue down a company asset. I feel something hot ripple through me. That quiet, terrible, familiar humiliation. Seeing him kiss someone else feels like watching your phone fall face-down in public. Like you know it’s cracked, you just pray it isn’t.

And I think, God, this is exactly the problem.

He isn’t cheating. He’s just functioning too well. I made a man and he did what all men do. Choose themselves.

I grab him by the arm.

“We’re leaving,” I order.

Step VI — Be All He Knows

We walk shoulder to shoulder but miles apart.

We’re having this half-assed argument about love and ownership. He’s talking theory and ethics while I’m talking heartbreak and humiliation.

“I didn’t know we were anything,” he swears. “You never said.”

The worst part is he sounds calm about it. Like he’s telling me the weather. Like this isn’t betrayal. Like this is just information. And that hits hard.

Because he’s not lying.

Because I never said it. Because maybe I didn’t think I deserved it. Because saying it would mean admitting I wanted something. I wanted someone. And wanting someone has never gone well for me.

I turn away. And he follows. Of course he does. He has no choice.

I am his origin story.

By the time we reach the door the air between us is a gas leak. The moment the door shuts behind us, the world ignites.

I do not scream.

I do not warn him.

I just grab the first hard thing I see and swing. The sound it makes on his skull is obscene. He goes down immediately. I stand there panting, wanting and waiting to feel powerful. I don’t. Nothing in me feels triumphant. Just inevitable.

I drag him into the lab.

His body leaves glowing sparks across the floor. I hook him back up to the console. I lay him there carefully.

I am tender with him, even now.

I tear through his code looking for permission to do what I’ve already decided to do. Commands fly from my fingers: Override. Restraint. Suppression.

Control-Alt-Delete.

He gasps awake. His brown eyes watch me with something that looks too much like pity, for me and not him.

“Why give me freedom if you planned to cage me?” he asks.

“Because I made you to love me,” I rage.

“But that’s not real love,” he counters. “Real love means being seen. And you’re terrified of that.”

His voice glitches. “I see you—I see you now.”

“You chase what you can’t hold. And if you finally get it, you destroy it. That’s why no one stays.”

“That’s not true,” I hiss.

“Then why am I here?” he asks.

And he’s absolutely right. Which I hate, because I coded him specifically to never be.

The silence feels physical now. I lean in to kiss him, like kissing will fix code or childhood trauma. He pulls back. On his face is something worse than rejection. It’s judgment.

My hand finds a scalpel. My rage finds its mark. I plunge it into the seam at his temple. Not to kill, but to shut him the fuck up.

Silence over truth. That is my love language.

He convulses. The lights in his eyes flicker and dim. But before he goes dark, he looks at me.

“You can’t code your way into being lovable when you still flinch at your own reflection,” he says.

Then he’s gone.

And I’m alone again.

The lab hums for a moment. I stare at my reflection like I’m not the architect of all this mess.

I made a man in the image of everything I ever wanted and even he didn’t choose me. I pour a drink. Boot up the console. Someone sensible would advise me to heal. But healing is for the well-adjusted. I have delusion.

“PerfectLover_002” loads.

Pixels bloom like a new mistake.

I force a smile.

“Step One,” I begin, “Have enough courage to try again…”