It started with boredom.
And a Reddit link.
And the kind of poor impulse control that made Alistair click on things labeled "NSFW" while eating cereal at 2 a.m.
The link took him to a subforum called r/GayStoryHub.
The top post?
"My Straight Roommate Accidentally Sat on a TV Remote and Discovered More Than Premium Channels"
12.4k upvotes.
487 comments.
Alistair should have closed the tab.
He should have gone to bed.
He should have made better life choices.
Instead, he clicked.
The story opened with a guy named Bryce (because of course it was Bryce) who had "never questioned his sexuality" until the fateful day he sat on the remote, which somehow led to an awakening involving his roommate, a broken futon, and what the author described as "the most spiritual experience of his heterosexual life."
Alistair sat there, cereal spoon halfway to his mouth, staring at the screen.
"What the fuck did I just read?"
He scrolled to the comments.
They were feral.
“I had to take a cold shower in holy water.”
“I’ll never look at a remote the same way again.”
“FUCK.”
“What is wrong with people?” Alistair asked his empty apartment, which wisely did not answer.
He clicked back to the main page.
Mistake.
More titles.
Each one more deranged than the last.
"Straight Marine Finds Out He's Gay After His Commanding Officer Teaches Him the True Meaning of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'" (8.9k upvotes)
"My Completely Heterosexual Gym Bro Spotted Me on the Bench Press and Also in His Dreams" (11.2k upvotes)
"Straight Cowboy Learns About Lassos, Rodeos, and Homoerotic Tension (A Three-Part Series)" (15.7k upvotes)
“Oops, My Straight Roommate Accidentally Sucked Me Off Again” (25k upvotes)
Alistair stared at that last one for a full thirty seconds.
“Again?” he said to his screen. “AGAIN?!”
He should have logged off.
But instead, he did what any gay man with too much time and not enough self-preservation does.
He clicked on the cowboy one.
Chapter One: The Lasso Incident
It was Wade's first day at the ranch, and he'd never felt more like a man.
Dust on his boots. Sun on his back. A lasso in his hands and absolutely zero awareness that his life was about to get very gay, very fast.
His boss, a rugged rancher named Hank, watched him from across the corral with eyes that could only be described as "smoldering" and "possibly illegal in several states."
"You ever rope a steer before, boy?" Hank drawled.
Wade swallowed. "No, sir."
"Well," Hank said, stepping closer, his voice dropping an octave, "let me show you how it's done."
He moved behind Wade, his chest pressing against Wade's back, his hands covering Wade's hands on the rope.
"You gotta feel it," Hank whispered. "The tension. The release."
Wade's brain short-circuited somewhere between "tension" and "release."
And that's when he realized.
He wasn't just learning to rope cattle.
Alistair was losing brain cells and gaining emotional damage at an alarming rate.
He closed the tab.
Opened it again.
Read the next two chapters.
And then, against every instinct he had, he scrolled down to the comments and began typing.
A stunning exploration of the American West's most enduring question: can a man learn to lasso a steer without also lassoing his own deeply repressed homosexuality? The author answers with a resounding "no." The symbolism of the rope is a masterclass in erotic subtext. 10/10. A triumph.
He hit post.
Then he clicked on the next story.
"Straight Navy SEAL Astronaut Realizes He's Gay After His Parachute Fails to Open"
Because sure.
Why choose one elite masculine fantasy when you can mash all of them together and throw them out of a plane?
He read the whole thing.
Bryce 2.0 nearly dies mid-skydive, has an epiphany mid-fall, and confesses his love while hurtling toward Earth like a closeted meteor.
Before he could stop himself, Alistair wrote another review.
A stunning exploration of masculinity at altitude. The author deftly weaves together themes of freefall, both literal and metaphorical, as our hero plummets toward earth and self-acceptance simultaneously. The parachute serves as a symbol of safety, of the societal structures we cling to, and its failure represents the beautiful, terrifying moment when we must trust the fall. A triumph of high-stakes gay narrative.
He posted it.
Went to bed.
Assumed that would be the end of it.
It wasn't the end of it.
He woke up to 47 notifications.
Forty. Seven.
Alistair opened Reddit with the resigned dread of someone checking their bank account after a night of drunk online shopping.
People were thanking him.
Praising him.
Calling him a genius.
"Holy shit this guy GETS IT. Finally, someone who understands the art of gay cowboy erotica.”
"I came here to get off and left with a literature degree."
"This review made me harder than the actual story."
"Can you review me next? I'm also falling and need someone to trust."
The author of the Navy SEAL story had even replied. "Thank you so much for this! I'm adding your review to my author's note. This is exactly what I was going for!"
Alistair stared at his phone.
"That was sarcasm," he said out loud to no one. "That was VERY CLEARLY sarcasm.”
He closed his eyes.
Told himself this was fine.
This was all fine.
It wasn't fine.
By lunchtime, he had 200+ followers.
By dinner, three different authors were begging him to review their stories.
Alistair tried to ignore it.
He really did.
“I’m not doing it again,” Alistair said.
He did it again that night.
The story was called “Straight Firefighter Quarterback Discovers He’s Actually Been Gay This Whole Time After Seeing His Reflection in a Spoon.”
Chad was both a firefighter and a star quarterback. He had everything. Medals. Trophies. A girlfriend named Britney who did CrossFit.
Then one day, while eating cereal before practice, he saw his reflection in his spoon. The curvature of the metal distorted his face just enough that he saw himself differently. Truly saw himself. And realized he’d been lying to everyone, including himself, for twenty-seven years.
It was the dumbest thing Alistair had ever read.
Which meant he had to review it.
He wrote six paragraphs about reflection, identity, and the mundane objects that force us to confront uncomfortable truths.
He compared the spoon to Plato’s cave.
He called it a masterwork of kitchen-based philosophy.
He said the curvature of the spoon represented the bend in heteronormative reality.
Then he posted it.
Closed his laptop.
And whispered “I’m going to hell” into the void.
By morning, the spoon story was number one on the subreddit.
The comments under his review were unhinged.
“This man could review the phone book and I’d edge to it.”
“I just know this guy fucks.”
“Kitchen-based philosophy? More like kitchen-based DICK-osophy because you just penetrated my brain.”
“I need him to review my life choices next.”
“The spoon is my religion now.”
The author messaged him directly. “DUDE. Your review changed EVERYTHING. I’ve gotten 100 new followers since last night. People are asking if there’s going to be a fork sequel. You’re a legend.”
Alistair stared at the message.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
He wasn’t supposed to be good at this.
But apparently, his sarcasm was indistinguishable from genuine literary criticism.
Which said more about the state of gay erotica than it did about him.
Probably.
Alistair reviewed several more over the next two weeks.
“Straight Mechanic Accidentally Sits on Shift Knob, Discovers More Than Gears”
His review: A meditation on labor, transformation, and gear-based horniness.
“My Heterosexual Brain Surgeon Rodeo Champion Roommate Rides More Than Just Bulls”
A thesis on the collapsing binary between intellect and yee-haw.
Each story quickly became number one after his review.
He'd accidentally become a kingmaker in the world of gay “straight guy discovering they're not straight after sitting on household objects” erotica.
This was his life now.
The final nail in the coffin came a week later.
Someone posted a new story with a title that made Alistair's blood run cold.
"Guy Starts Ironically Reviewing Gay Erotica, Becomes the Community's Messiah, Questions Everything"
It was about him.
He'd become a character in the exact genre he'd been mocking.
Alistair opened the story with shaky hands and read.
Alistair told himself he was only here for the laughs.
But deep down, in a place he refused to acknowledge, he knew the truth.
He had found his people.
The comments were already flooding in.
"IS THIS ABOUT THE ACTUAL ALISTAIR?"
"META. SO META."
"I'm uncomfortable with how turned on I am by a story about a guy reading stories."
"This is the crossover event of the century."
"I need Alistair to review this immediately."
"We've gone full circle. The ouroboros is eating its own ass. Wait that came out wrong. Or did it."
Alistair read through the entire story.
It was surprisingly accurate.
Uncomfortably accurate.
The author had clearly been following his reviews, watching the whole thing unfold in real-time.
In the story, Alistair's character arc ended with him accepting that irony and sincerity weren't opposites.
They were two sides of the same spoon.
Alistair closed his laptop.
Looked at his ceiling.
And laughed.
Because they were right.
He was exactly where he belonged.
He opened his laptop one more time.
And left one final review.
A haunting meditation on identity, irony, and the chaos we willingly join. The author captures the exact moment a man stops pretending he’s above it all and instead grabs the spoon of destiny with both hands. 10/10. Filing a restraining order.
He hit post.
The comments started flooding in within seconds.
"HE REVIEWED HIMSELF."
"The prophecy has been fulfilled."
"THE SPOON METAPHOR RETURNS. FULL CIRCLE."
"This is what peak performance looks like."
Alistair smiled.
Because somewhere between the spoon and the shift knob and the accidental blow jobs, he’d stopped pretending he was above it all.
He was part of it now.
Alistair the Prophet of Horniness.
Critic of Chaos.
Believer in Spoons.
And honestly?
He wouldn't have it any other way.
