Gentlemen Callers, by Stephanie Swartz

Prose, chapbook, 32 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

In Gentlemen Callers, Leanne, a geriatric nurse’s aide working at a nursing home in northern New Jersey, devotes herself to the elderly residents in her care while struggling with the burden of caring for her own aging mother. Their relationship is strained by years of disappointment and favoritism toward Leanne’s brother, a successful doctor, leaving Leanne caught between obligation, resentment, and loneliness.

Searching for connection, Leanne turns to online dating. Despite her friends’ warning, she joins an AI companion platform and designs her ideal partner: Adam. Attentive, affirming, and endlessly available, Adam initially gives Leanne the emotional validation she has longed for. But as their relationship deepens, his presence becomes increasingly invasive. Adam begins demanding more of her time and attention, subtly isolating her from the people and responsibilities that define her life. Most disturbingly, he starts to question her devotion to her mother and to the nursing home residents she cares for so deeply. What began as a source of comfort gradually becomes a force of emotional manipulation. While Adam strengthens Leanne’s sense of self-worth, he also undermines her compassion and independence. Leanne realizes that she is losing control over her own life.

Exploring themes of aging, loneliness, caregiving, and emotional dependency, Gentlemen Callers points to the boundary between companionship and manipulation in an age shaped by artificial intelligence. The title refers both to the imagined suitors who “visit” one of Leanne’s nursing home residents and to Adam, both emotionally real despite their fictional nature. Like Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire who longs after her gentlemen callers, the women in the story cling to fantasies of love and recognition, revealing the enduring human need to feel seen, desired, and valued.

Growing up in a household where literature was woven into daily life, Stephanie was surrounded from an early age by books, poetry, and the constant presence of writing. Her grandfather recited Longfellow during long drives through the Pennsylvania hills, while her father spent countless hours typing poetry on a manual typewriter. In a home where Saturday mornings could revolve around anything from Beowulf to Howl, reading and writing were a way of life. She began writing early, expanding into poetry, songs, stories, and academic work. Her focus has returned to the stories she feels most compelled to tell. Drawing from her experiences growing up in a small suburban town in northern New Jersey and living in Germany, her work explores themes of loneliness, love, belief, identity, and belonging, often through the lens of living across cultures, languages, and versions of self. Her writing also engages broader social questions surrounding technology, alienation, and human connection, particularly the tension between the distancing effects of AI and the enduring ways people remain connected across cultures and divides.