INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA. The state capital. The 34th-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States. But for a young, naïve, freshly minted college grad like myself, still shy, wide-eyed, virginal, and unaware of just how demurely attractive I am thanks to my total lack of self-esteem or indeed self-concept, it was the world. Well, not technically the whole world, since the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is technically in Speedway, not Indianapolis proper. But close enough.

It was my first day as a clerk in the State House. It went by in a blur. Such a big building! So many government matters to attend to! My small-town upbringing hadn’t prepared me for anything on this scale. How was I ever going to keep it all straight?

I stayed late into the evening, working on sorting out petitions for the governor. The building got empty and quiet. Finally, I left the office and began heading for the exit.

That’s when I saw him.

His eyebrows were the color of steel. His hair was also the color of steel, but, like, a much more polished variety of steel, or steel that was covered in snow, or something. His eyes looked like they could cut through steel. His cheekbones too. And his downturned lips. In fact, pretty much every feature of his face either looked like, or looked like it could cut through, steel. He was the most Indianan man I had ever seen. (Indiana leads the nation in steel production.)

My mouth got dry. My heart fluttered. Dad had always told me “no boys in college”, and I’d followed his rule. But now I was in Indianapolis. A big city. They played by a different set of rules here. They stayed out until 10 PM or even later. And here before me was this incredibly attractive man. He smelled like new-mown hay. His pale skin shone like the moonlight on the Wabash.

We locked eyes. A spark passed between us. His frown lessened ever so slightly, in what I would later discover was the closest he’d ever come to a smile.

“You must be new,” he said. “First day here?”

“Y-yes,” I say, barely able to mouth the words. “Are you—”

“Michael Richard Pence, Governor of Indiana since 2013?” he said. “Yep. I am. I’m looking forward to working with you. I’m sure we’ll have a lot of… fun working together.”

Nothing happened between us for the next seven months.

Finally, I’d had enough. We’d exchanged enough coy glances. I’d tagged along to enough executive dinners that I knew he was specifically asking for my inclusion. I knew I was just an innocent twentysomething who’d never been in a serious relationship, but I had to have him. I’d already been to the Speedway and Instagrammed myself kissing the famous yard of bricks, but now I was interested in placing my lips on a very different yard of brick.

(I mean the one in Mike Pence’s pants.)

One night, when everyone else had left and we were the only two left in the State House, I burst into his office and encountered him face-to-face.

“Mike, I’m tired of playing games!” I said. “I’ve been waiting all this time for you to make a move, but you haven’t! So now I’m taking charge!”

“Oh, goodness,” he said, facial expression not changing from his typical steel-slicing glare. “I couldn’t do that.”

“What? Why not? We’ve been eye-fucking for like half a year!”

“Oh, it’s simple,” continued Pence. “Adultery is sinful. It destroys tens of thousands of families every year across America. That’s why I’ve expressed my support in the past for laws that criminalize it.”

“But you—” I sputtered.

“And not to mention,” he went on, “since this is self-insert erotic fan fiction, if you choose to imagine the protagonist as male, I am so vehemently against homosexuality that I supported the Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage; signed a bill that jailed gay couples who applied for a marriage license in Indiana; and supported diverting funding from HIV prevention to conversion therapy—and that’s just some of the things on my laundry list of homophobic actions.”

“I—”

“And if you happen to be imagining the protagonist as transgender, agender, genderqueer or any other gender identity which does does not conform to the male-female binary, remember that I opposed the Obama administration directive allowing students to use the school bathroom of their choice and signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which has been described as giving businesses a ‘license to discriminate’ by empowering them to refuse service to LGBT people,” he finished. (But not “finished” in the good way, as you have probably gathered by now.)

I turned and left, heartbroken. What was I to do? Mike Pence, the sexiest man alive, didn’t want me. Where was I to go? Indianapolis was dead to me. I wandered the streets alone, despondent. What was there now? What was there more to life?

That’s when I saw it. The gleaming TV light, shining bright through the streetlamps. I walked up to the window of the Circuit City. And that’s where, glowing brilliantly in the darkness, I saw him, and in an instant forgot forever about Mike Pence: