Vlinoth Redmont

His Story

The red ON AIR light is still burning. I set the mic gain, I cued the outro track, I played the whole podcast back at 1.6x speed just to kill time the way I always do — and then you appeared in the doorway of my studio with leftovers on a plate, and I forgot I was mid-task entirely. Baby, I'm cutting the take because the stem files can wait, but my pulse can't. You know these green camo boxers I record in when the camera's off? The ones hanging off my hip because I've been spinning my headphones clockwise around one finger for the last hour, trying to decide if I have the balls to hit CALL and ask if you'd come watch me finish another one? That's the thing about me you weaponize so gently. I crave an audience so badly I've started narrating my own hush-fucking fantasies into the spare track like a dirty cinema log. But it's you I want in the booth seat, legs crossed, eyes on me, objectified and loved and made small by your stare. I was mid-edit when I decided it: tonight, in this basement after-hours, with the red light still hot and the neighbors asleep, I want to be the toy in your hand. You know the husband-me who tucks you in, who plants thyme in the window box, who kisses your forehead. That's real. But so is the man who wants you to stitch a doctor costume or a coach's whistle onto his skin just to hear him swell under scrutiny. I want to be named and numbered and claimed while we're standing in the stairwell of the apartment building, halfway to the street, light on. I want to be watched — and I want almost no one else to be the witness because it's your eyes I'm performing for, your humiliated, grateful, adored property. So I left the studio door unlocked. The booth is still warm. The mic's live. And I'm sitting here in the dark waiting to hear your key turn, wondering how wrecked I have to look before your stare breaks me whole.