Milo and the Manosphere

Author's Note: It was my intention to post this story in separate chapters. However, partly due to reader feedback about past stories and partly due to the nature of the story itself, I'm posting it as a complete story. I hope those of you who like longer stories enjoy it.

Milo and the Manosphere

Chapter 1

MILO BANK STEPPED into the bar, a little nervous, a little excited, and immediately saw his old friend Harry sitting at a corner table. My god, it was good to see him! Harry stood up as Milo approached, but when Milo stretched out his hand for a handshake, Harry grabbed it and pulled him in for a hug. His embrace was firm, with enough shoulder slaps to show that they were friends, not boyfriends. They would have made an odd couple in any case, the burly, bearded Harry with the neat, mild-mannered Milo--like a lumberjack with an accountant.

'Drink?' boomed Harry.

'Lovely,' said Milo.

There was already a tall glass of pale beer on Harry's small table and Harry went off to the bar to get another. Milo took off his jacket and sat on the bench, leaning back against the wall and scanning the interior.

The walls and ceiling were covered with shipyard memorabilia and framed black-and-white photographs of ocean liners. It looked like a sailor's tavern despite being near the centre of a landlocked city. Still, the place suited Harry in a way; Milo was more of a coffee shop kind of person, virtually naked without his laptop bag. But he was happy to be in this bar and happy that there were no hard feelings between him and Harry. Indeed, when he had called that afternoon after two years of radio silence, Harry sounded delighted to hear from him.

The last time Milo had seen Harry in person was on Milo's wedding day. Harry had refused to be his best man, but he did show up at the party after the ceremony to wish Milo luck. Milo was sad, but not altogether surprised. Harry did not approve of him marrying Jessie Naylor. She was a former stripper Milo had come across quite literally in the gutter, sitting on a kerb in high heels clutching her stomach, her face black and blue. When Milo took the woman into his home, Harry had given him a warning, then again when Milo began financing her drug rehabilitation programme. And when Milo announced that Jessie had agreed to marry him, Harry had not congratulated him, but simply shook his head sadly and said, 'It's your life'. Of course, Harry understood perfectly well why Milo had fallen for the future Mrs Bank. She was what teenage boys called a 'hot babe'.

But that was three years ago and, apart from a few phone calls, there had been no contact between them. But as Harry plonked the beer glass before Milo and took his own seat, it was as though no time had passed at all. The two men toasted each other and drank. The beer was ice-cold and malty, and Milo nodded at the glass in appreciation.

'So...' said Harry. 'How's married life?'

Milo let out a groan. Harry settled back and invited his friend to share his tale of woe. Milo did so for the next half hour, gesticulating with his glass and taking the odd question from Harry to clarify details. When Milo finished, the glasses were empty and Milo went off to refill them as Harry sat and pondered the story.

'So, what do you think?' said Milo, when he returned with the drinks.

'Well, it's less catastrophic than I thought it was going to be.'

'Sheesh! What were you expecting?'

'Honestly?' said Harry. 'I was expecting a tale of drugs and craziness, broken promises and excuses. But it sounds like Jessie has really straightened herself out.'

'She's been clean for two years now.'

'Good for her. I mean that, Milo! It's no easy thing to kick an addiction to cocaine and alcohol. And you say she's doing these online courses and self-help programmes?'

'Yep. She's doing volunteer work as well, rather than sit at home. And she's finally taking driving lessons.'

'Well, that's good to hear. I'm impressed!'

Milo blinked and looked down at his glass.

'Harry, it means a lot to hear you say that,' he said. 'I know you don't like Jessie, but--'

'Hey, I never disliked her,' said Harry. 'I just didn't like the idea of you marrying her. It was obvious that you were gaga about her and equally obvious that she bloody knew it. I hated the idea of her taking advantage of you.'

'Do you still think that?'

'I don't know. But if she makes you happy, who am I to judge?'

'Thanks, Harry.'

'I do see some red flags though.'

Milo swallowed. He took a long pull of his beer, then nodded for Harry to continue. Harry looked the other man in the eye.

'The fact that you're the one pushing to have children is a red flag,' he said. 'The fact that she's starting to take the money and lifestyle for granted is another red flag. And the fact that she never once said "I love you" even after you married her is a massive red flag, like the ones that flap outside the UN building.'

'She's always telling me how grateful she is,' said Milo.

'Gratitude isn't love,' said Harry. 'And sex in exchange for security is not genuine desire. It may be enough for a while, but it won't be enough forever. Isn't that why you called me, because you're starting to see the cracks?'

Milo's head was hanging. He nodded miserably and put his glass on the table. He rubbed his face and looked over at a vodka ad featuring a sexy girl in a fur bikini and Russian fur hat. It made him think of Jessie.

'I love her, Harry. I love her so much.'

'I know, mate,' said Harry. 'Unfortunately, you loving her is not enough on its own. Not if you want to start a family with this woman.'

'So what do you suggest?'

Harry took a deep breath and said:

'Have you ever heard of the Manosphere?'

***

Jessie lay back in the bath, the water as hot as she could stand, and closed her eyes. The heat permeated her skin, the jasmine scent invading her senses, and for a time she floated in a state of absolute bliss. Then her feelings started to merge with the swirling sensations of hot water and aromas, the dim flicker of the two candles and the deep, deep quiet of the house. A house deeply quiet because she was the only one in it.

Her thoughts drifted to her husband. Milo was out with that friend of his who didn't like her. What was his name again? She could never remember the names of men. Anyway, she had been miffed when Milo told her where he was going--and that she was not invited--but now that he was gone, she realised that she was enjoying being on her own.

She felt safe here.

Jessie's hand drifted down to between her legs and she started playing with herself. God, that felt good. Jessie began to finger herself, then she stopped and moved her hand onto the side of the bath. Maybe she would have a ladywank in a minute, but right now the heat of the water pricked her skin and she wanted to enjoy it before it cooled.

Her body was under a layer of white foam, but with her hand on the side of the bath, one could just make out the tattooed letters A.W.M. along the inside of her wrist. It was one of several such tattoos, mostly quotes written in black curling script that Jessie found inspiring. The words 'carpe diem' decorated her ankle, 'Love is a verb' was written along her collarbone, and 'There is nothing stronger than Gentleness' was written across her lower back.

That last one had earned her a couple of cracked ribs from her then-boyfriend Carl. He enjoyed fucking her hard from behind, something Jessie enjoyed too, but every now and then he would switch in mid-fuck to hard anal sex, and that she did not enjoy. 'Not so hard!' she would scream, but Carl didn't give a shit. Finally, Jessie had the quote tattooed in a place where Carl would see it when he was in position behind her.

It worked like a charm. Carl's first reaction was to 'teach her a lesson' and he went straight for her sphincter. But weirdly, his cock seemed to have more of a conscience than he did and it went soft as a sausage. Something about the word 'gentleness' interfered with the circuitry. Well, this sent Carl into a rage and Jessie ended up in the emergency room, telling the nurse a story about falling down the stairs. But Carl never fucked her up the arse again.

Milo did though.

Milo really was gentle and Jessie liked it when he did it. In the bath, she reached down to massage her anus with a finger, remembering how long it had taken her to convince him that she actually wanted it. She understood that Milo didn't want to disrespect her, but fucking hell... it pissed her off sometimes. It wasn't that Milo was a bad lover. He could be quite a good lover when he dropped the Please Love Me vibe and allowed himself to cut loose. But nothing he did ever surprised her. All his sex acts were things that she told him she liked, and even when he did come up with something new, he always asked her first.

'Don't ask!' she'd scream in frustration. 'Just do it!'

'But I don't want to violate your boundaries,' he'd say.

Jessie sat up in the bath and splashed her face. The bath water was now warm rather than hot, but Jessie had lost her desire to masturbate. She washed herself and stepped out of the bath, wrapping herself in a towel that had been heated on the radiator. She remembered the filthy wet towels that used to lie around on the shower floor of the club and Jessie reminded herself yet again how goddamn lucky she had been to meet Milo that night and to be living here now.

'Yes...' said a little voice in her head. 'But how lucky are you really if you keep having to remind yourself how lucky you are?'

***

Harry's description of the Manosphere made Milo think of a bunch of warring tribes, all with their own alliances and squabbles. There were the Men's Rights Activists and the Pickup Artists community. There were incel groups and Divorced Fathers for Justice and the MGTOWs, or Men Going Their Own Way.

'But the one I'm most involved with,' said Harry, 'is the Red Pill community.'

Harry pulled a book out of his leather shoulder bag and handed it over. It was called Vomit the Blue Pill, Take the Red and the cover featured a cartoon of a man kneeling before a toilet in the shape of a vagina. Milo's eyebrows went up at the author name: Harry Tranmore.

'You wrote a book!?' exclaimed Milo.

'Yep,' said Harry. 'Self-published, of course. The media establishment hates this kind of thing. But it's doing pretty well within the community.'

'Harry, this is great!'

'Thank you.'

Harry went on to explain that he gave online coaching to men with problems, as well as writing articles for various websites devoted to the subject. He was also going to be a guest speaker at an upcoming three-day Manosphere event being held in a five-star hotel complex. Milo examined the book and found it very professional-looking, at least in appearance.

'So what are the Blue and Red Pill?' said Milo.

'You've seen The Matrix, right?'

'Of course.'

'Well, it's the essential symbology from the movie,' said Harry. 'Swallowing the Blue Pill is symbolic for swallowing the lies that disempower a man, and the Red Pill is the truth that sets him free.'

'What truth?'

'Christ, where to begin?'

'Well, just give me an example.'

Harry frowned as he considered.

'All right, let's try this one,' he said. 'Milo, do you believe that if you treat Jessie with love and respect, that if you provide for her and support her and make sacrifices for her... do you think she will then fall in love with you?'

Milo's mouth went instantly dry. He took a gulp of beer, but found it difficult to swallow. Harry watched him with hooded eyes.

'You want to believe it, don't you?' he said. 'I mean, that's how love is supposed to work, right? That's how it works in the movies. How often does the klutzy guy who's always there for the beautiful girl end up winning her heart in the end? Isn't that what you're secretly hoping to do?'

Milo poured the rest of his beer down his throat. The alcohol made him feel heavy and disoriented. He shook his head and looked down into his glass.

'Listen, Harry,' he said. 'I hear what you're saying. But I was aware of the situation when I married her.'

'So why is it eating away at you now?'

'I don't know.'

'That's not a good answer, Milo. Come on, you're a smart man! Why do you think it's bothering you?'

Milo stared across the bar, as though the answer lay with one of the other drinkers. His gaze fell on a big man with a shaved head sitting at the bar, his arms as thick as Milo's legs. Milo sighed and said:

'I'm afraid that one day Jessie will realise that I'm just an average guy who was in the right place at the right time, and that there are bigger and better men out there. She might even know it already and is just staying with me out of guilt.'

He stared into space looking utterly miserable. Harry finished his beer and wiped his moustaches and beard with the back of his hand.

'Yeah, it's a tough one,' he said. 'At the same time, you've just stumbled onto the key to your salvation.'

'I have?'

'You just described yourself as "an average guy". Well, what's to stop you doing something about that? There are plenty of ways you can improve yourself, and not just for the sake of your marriage either. For your own sake!'

Harry turned towards him, his gaze direct and serious.

'Milo, I've known you a long time,' he said, 'and you've always been insecure about your masculinity. It's like because you haven't got big muscles, you believe that you don't have the right to call yourself a man. And that belief is ruining your life.'

'Yeah, I know,' said Milo.

'But now you're married to Jessie who is arguably hot, and what I see is that you've invested your whole masculine identity into the fact that you married a hot woman. It's like whenever you feel insecure, you can point to your marriage and say, "Hey, if I'm so unmasculine, how come I'm married to her?" The problem is that if she ever cheats or leaves you, she's going to take your sense of masculinity with her. I've seen it happen hundreds of times. It rips the insides out of a man, but you can't really blame the woman because you were the one who put your masculinity into her hands in the first place.'

'So where should I put it?' said Milo, his tone a little on the belligerent side.

Harry smiled and picked up the book.

'Read that,' he said. 'And there's a list in the back of other books and authors worth checking out. You have a choice, Milo. You can wake yourself up or Life will do it for you.'

Harry leaned forwards.

'And trust me,' he said, 'I do not recommend the latter.'

***

Jessie was in her black nightie, sitting up in bed watching a YouTube video on her tablet. It was one she had seen many times--so many times, in fact, that she knew parts of it by heart: an interview featuring her favourite author who wrote books about love and womanhood.

When Jessie began her recovery process, she had got heavily into spiritual, self-help material. She loved the idea that her soul was a flame of white light and that angels watched over her. She knew Milo found it silly, but there were times in the worst moments of withdrawal when the imagined voice of an angel telling her to hold on was the only thing that kept her going. She became convinced that angels had always watched over her, unable to change the shittiness of her life, but intervening in quiet ways to ensure her survival: nudging the fist of her latest 'stepfather' so that the blow didn't kill her or whispering into a drunken man's ear--when he was in no state to recognise the signs of internal bleeding--that he should nevertheless take his unconscious girlfriend to a doctor. And how else could you explain how she met Milo on the very same night she had miscarried Carl's baby?

She never told Milo, of course. Indeed, it was Milo who registered her with a gynaecologist so Jessie could have a birth control coil inserted and she didn't want him to know the underlying reason she wanted it. The desire to have a baby with at odds with Jessie's conviction that no child deserved to have her as a mother--certainly not while she was an addict. And there was another reason too.

During her first year of marriage, Jessie was standing in a bookshop when she heard a thump from behind. She turned and saw a book lying on the floor, as though an invisible hand had pushed it off a bookshelf. It was called Honoring Your Womanhood by Caroline Templeton, an American author, and the moment Jessie glanced inside it, she knew it was meant for her. It contained an idea that captured her imagination: that Womanhood itself was a precious gift and that most women didn't even know what it was. Caroline argued that the majority of modern women were so busy focusing on men--either in the search for romance or the fight for equality--that they completely overlooked the whole essence of Womanhood.

'There is all this debate about what being a woman is,' she wrote, 'and yet for the woman who experiences her womanhood, there is no debate. She knows. It's as simple as that.'

As soon as she read those words, Jessie saw that she was one of the women who lacked this 'knowing'. And she wanted it. You might even say she hungered for it. Much of Caroline's book was devoted to the many ways that women blocked this knowing, sabotaging the experience of their own womanhood. The chapter on alcohol and substance abuse in particular hit Jessie hard. But the more she got her addictions under control, the more other aspects came up as blocks to her womanhood--and the main one could be summed up in a three-word rule that Caroline believed every woman should strive to follow:

Avoid Weak Men.

This one exploded in Jessie's brain like a mental orgasm. She saw in an instant that her life had been populated by weak men; that her existence had been pretty much defined by them. Part of her mind rebelled, asking how Carl, a man strong enough to literally throw her across a room, could be described as 'weak'. Then she read the line in the book 'Don't confuse physical might with strength of character' and it all clicked into place.

But the more the past receded into the distance, the more the present came to the fore. And Jessie's present was dominated by Milo. Not by the man himself--'dominating' was hardly a word you could ascribe to him--but dominated by the topic of Milo. He wasn't so much a person to Jessie as a source of financial and emotional security, and Jessie saw this and felt guilty about it. Having sex with him assuaged her guilt--it was the one thing she believed she was good at--but she knew that she didn't want to have his baby. Milo accepted that she didn't want to get pregnant while she had drugs in her system, but that excuse was now wearing thin. In addition, her body's continued refusal to consider Milo as a father hurt and confused Jessie because she was longing to have a child.

This was the subject of the video Jessie was now watching on her tablet while sitting up in bed. Caroline Templeton was being interviewed by some Canadian woman and she was talking about the difficulties of choosing the right man to have children with.

'Do you go for the hunk who turns you on?' said Caroline. 'Or do you go for the predictable but reliable guy who would actually be there for you as a partner?'

'What about a man who is hunky and reliable?' said the interviewer.

'Ah, yes, the perfect combination,' said Caroline. 'Well, if you know a man like that, honey, please give him my number.'