Cortez is a writer in Brooklyn. She was named a finalist in the 2023 Honeybee Literature Prize in Fiction and her work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail. She is the co-founder and co-editor of My Boyfriend.

I like to braid my boyfriend’s hair. My boyfriend is my favorite daughter. My upstairs neighbor is a psycho bitch because she doesn’t have a boyfriend. I threaten to send my boyfriend to her when he misbehaves. I have a boyfriend because I am beautiful. I am beautiful because I drink my boyfriend’s blood. I fatten my boyfriend up and then I put him on fad diets. My boyfriend finds me insatiable. My boyfriend studies the golden ratio. My boyfriend ponders the existence of one true and pure feminine ideal. My boyfriend suffers from the Madonna/whore complex. Imagine for a moment a world without boyfriends. One anonymous mass of sad girls slogging through a thick mist, an eternal pilgrimage into nothing. Imagine something even worse. A girl without a boyfriend. Imagine the skin of that poor unloved creature! Numb and colorless from lack of touch. I derive all power from my boyfriend and he from me. We feed on each other like leeches. My boyfriend and I are the source of all earthly life. Thank god I’ve always had my boyfriend. Thank god I never walked this virgin planet naked and alone. Thank god from his rib I grew a cathedral of ligaments and bones that tower over him now. Thank god I surpassed my boyfriend. Thank god I saw him, saw that he was good and named him Boyfriend. Thank god for his blonde head at my bare feet.

Imagine for a moment a world without boyfriends. White and void and nothing. Imagine I never built this Eden for you miserable people.