Art by Lauren Luchs

Content Warning: explicit sexual content, sexual violence, rape culture

‘Let’s head to my place,’ Josie said, throwing her curls casually over her shoulder, still swaying from the cider. 

James watched her walk ahead without waiting for him or his reply, wading deeper into the shade of the cobblestone laneway. He followed her, keeping his hands firmly in his pockets. The sun above lingered, even as the heat of the day backed off, leaving the sky stained tangerine. Josie hadn’t phrased it as a question, but then again, she knew his answer. He could see it written in the swivel of her hips. Even as his chest fizzed with anticipation, he resented her certainty—the bitter implication that she was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Not that he had a choice. Obviously. The last time he’d made it to a girl’s house he’d been dared to kiss her on the trampoline. It was the kind of party that still featured ice-cream cake and lolly bags, all politely handed out by someone’s overly perfumed mother. 

His first date with Josie had taken place over coffee, hers poured into a keep-cup, his into paper, which he justified at length, citing sources he made up off the top of his head. You’re right, she shrugged, I’ve probably lost and replaced this thing six times. Not very environmentally friendly. Balancing drinks and conversation over a wobbly table, James expected to trip over some invisible line and never hear from her again. But that night, a speech bubble appeared next to her name—his whole heart hinged on three dots of thinking. 

Josie spun around to face him in the middle of the street. ‘This is it,’ she said, extending her hand with a flourish. 

The red brick unit was guarded by two girls lounging on a beat-up couch, dumped like rubbish on the front porch, as if the council had never arrived to pick it up from the side of the road. Josie’s housemates. Or friends. Perhaps a fragile alliance somewhere between the two, with shared spoons in ice-cream and fights over dirty dishes. As Josie swung open the iron gate, her fingers brushed his forearm, making the fine hairs stand stiff, as if suffering an electric shock. Her housemate-friends barely bothered with a glance in his direction. This wasn’t routine for him, this crackling static in the air between where his body ended, and Josie’s began. Was this routine for her? How many other boys had been ushered through this gate?

The brunette with the fuzzy fringe looked up from her book, a vaguely academic title she was reading with pen in hand. Her head was nestled in her friend’s lap, her bare feet propped up on the arm of the couch. ‘Watch your step,’ she said without losing her place on the page. ‘He’s been at it again.’ 

‘Doorstep this time,’ the strawberry blonde one said, sipping her water bottle, red wine rushing through the plastic straw like blood in an IV line. 

‘Ew,’ Josie said, scrunching her nose with a kind of thrilled disgust, rushing in for a closer look. A pale condom lay limp on the doorstep, like a dead bird left by a cat as a gesture of good will. ‘Has anyone responded to our post on the community page?’

‘Yes and no,’ the brunette said, dog-earing her page and closing the book. ‘Tons of people reckon it’s feral, but nothing substantial as far as clues go.’

The girls argued amongst themselves, debating the identity of the condom culprit. Still yet to be introduced, James was stuck loitering, his hand gripping the hip-height gate, standing on the margins of their conversation. The girl with the book suspected it was local Grammar boys egging each other on for a fucked up dare or some kind of hazing ritual—she’d just read an article about it. It’s not a one off, the other girl said, tapping her friend on the shoulder to free her legs, which she soon clutched to her chest. It struck her as a sexual obsession, she said, clawing at her water bottle with nervous nails, some pervert who was probably peering through our windows at night. She had a pinched way of talking, pulling the words out from the panicked pit of her stomach like a never-ending handkerchief, as if a condom on the doorstep was proof that they would all end up hacked to bits in black rubbish bags. With a hushed tone, as if afraid the culprit might overhear her, she asked her friends if they should report it. The brunette reached for her hand, stroking it with her thumb.

‘What are the police gonna do?’ Josie laughed, leaning back against the post, ‘Arrest everyone with a working dick and an open packet of condoms?’ Turning to James, she finally acknowledged his existence. ‘What would you do if someone was leaving condoms on your doorstep?’

‘I don’t know,’ James said, stumped, ‘never really thought about it.’ 

‘See, this is the problem with men,’ the brunette said, flicking her wrist dismissively. ‘He can’t even summon the empathy to imagine it happening to him.’ 

James bit back the urge to tell her to fuck off. This girl didn’t even know his name, but it didn’t stop her from assuming she knew everything about him. He knew her type. She was the kind of girl who liked to punish every man she met, because it made her feel uniquely oppressed to be a woman rather than just pretty, white and privately educated. 

‘To be fair,’ Josie said, coming down the steps to stand beside him, ‘I didn’t really think about it happening ‘til it happened to me either.’ 

James let go of the breath burning inside his chest, feeling absurdly grateful. Josie knew how to laugh it off, with a hand on her hip. He could still salvage this. But, like a vampire, he couldn’t pass through her door without permission. If he gave them a convincing enough reason, they would have to invite him in. 

‘Have you considered installing security cameras?’ James asked, swallowing, ‘You know, sort of catch him in the act?’ 

***

And it felt like an adventure, the late night trip to Bunnings. James was game when Josie told him to grab the trolley, despite knowing a box of security cameras would fit neatly into their respective arms. He pushed it through empty aisles, skidding around corners, his sneakers thudding against the floor as he built towards her desired speed, until shelves became a fluorescent blur. Josie was on the bow of the trolley, arms swept out theatrically, living her Titanic moment, curls lightly swaying in his generated breeze. And she was laughing, laughing, a high breezy sound that made everything feel as easy as stepping up off the ground and letting the momentum drag him away. 

***

James fiddled with cables of the new security camera under the dangling lampshade, adorned with a scarf that tinged the whole room crimson. Josie read the small print instructions, squinting, then dismissed them, dropping the leaflet in mid-air, floating down, discarded. As Josie sat down beside him, she joked that he shouldn’t use her as evidence that women can’t excel in STEM, because, after all, she has ADHD. That, and she hated her science teacher in high school. She sighed, as if already resigned to her fate. Good thing you’ve got a higher tolerance for boring things than me, she grinned, giving his shoulder a playful shove. James smiled through the sinking feeling, steadily clicking through each screen. Kat and Florence, the housemate-friends, were busy boiling a kettle in the kitchen, debating the political implications of a popstar’s outfit. Did Josie find him boring, the same way they clearly did? 

‘I just need a password,’ James asked, fingers hovering at the ready over the keyboard. 

‘Just put ‘three girls, one condom’,’ said Josie, laughing at her own joke. 

As James typed in the preferred password, complete with numbers and symbols, Kat stopped talking abruptly from behind the kitchen bench. Her whole body rotated, giving her glare its full effect as she shook her head and hands in wordless interrogation, her brown hair swaying with the motion. 

‘What?’ Josie chuckled, her shoulders rising self-consciously. 

‘Shouldn’t you, like, protect our privacy?’

‘Oh, come on, James is helping us out. It’s not like he’s some random creep.’

‘I’m just saying, with your taste—’ Kat rolled her eyes, leaving the thought unfinished, the insult implied. 

‘What, men? He’s fine.’ Josie flicked her fingers, urging James to keep going, ‘It’s fine.’ 

Kat pursed her lips, but said nothing, sweeping out of the room. James hit enter. With a single vote of confidence, he was in. 

***

There were dates every week or so. James chased Josie down at laser tag, and she delicately fetched his neon ball from the bush when he swung too hard at mini golf. Wandering through aquariums and zoos, they debated which animal represented each of them best (Josie, a bird, James, a lion, which she joked was very stereotypical, men always pick predators, but everyone knows lionesses do all the work). Almost as if, having missed the excursions of each other’s childhood, they were writing themselves back in, together from the start. 

Eating lukewarm lasagna at his mother’s house, James was asked with a knowing smirk whether a special someone was in the picture. James smiled, but shook his head, unable to say anything. He still couldn’t bring himself to pose a question as fluttering and fragile as what are we, without the glass certainty of knowing Josie wouldn’t fly away. His mother leaned back in her chair, studying him, and said, you seem happier is all. But his happiness was a balloon, fragile and floating, too easily pierced. He didn’t want to know. Josie had all the power. To define and decide. 

James endured the gruel of his week on a few rationed weekend hours with Josie, sugar sweet. By counting down the days, he could control that gnawing, hollow feeling. He tried to organise a mid-week fix—a coffee on campus, cheap movie tickets, ordering a pint at the pub where she worked so she could chat to him on the clock. Busy, Josie was always too busy. Pretty soon she was rescheduling, spacing out their dates, citing a crazy schedule now that uni had started back up. His memes were met with low effort laugh emojis. His messages remained unread for days at time. One day, he saw her crossing the street to campus and he ran past the red light and a honking car to catch up with her. With a tight smile, gripping the straps of her backpack, she told him she’d see him around. When? But Josie walked away, the wind whipping up golden leaves and scattering them like petals. Autumn had arrived, but James had ignored it, failing to dress for the sudden chill in the air. Now he was shivering in his t-shirt, watching her go. 

When the newly appointed axis of his life stopped responding, James’ wheels started spinning out. Seemingly overnight, Josie was gone, rolling herself up like a sleeping bag, leaving him to stumble awake into an empty campsite with nothing left but the ashes of her fire. Didn’t he deserve more than that? An answer, an explanation, maybe even a second chance? She’d ghosted him, and yet he was the one who was vanishing, blurring at the edges. 

On campus, he moved silently through crowds of chattering students. He shrank into himself in tutorials, as his peers scrolled their phones and turned their shoulders, unhappy at being seated next to him. Weeks passed without a word. He couldn’t contact the living, not since Josie had become a dead presence on his screen. Without her, there was no-one left to acknowledge his existence. He deleted the voicemails his mother left, in which she joked that she didn’t mind being ignored so long as he let her meet the girl taking up all his time. Her voice was far away, drifting in from another timeline, a life that was no longer his. A letter for Josie, handwritten and heartfelt, mocked him from his desk for weeks, unopened and undelivered. It kept him stuck. If he sent it, it’d be just another message Josie left unread. If he threw it away, he’d have to admit it was over.

Gritting his teeth, James removed unwashed bowls from his sink, tackling bits of carrot and corn clogging his drain like vomit. Forget closure, he never even found out what happened with the condom culprit. Only—he could finish the story for himself, if he wanted to. He knew her password. He doubted she’d ever bothered checking the feed. She had a habit of losing interest. Could be a reason to reach out at the very least. Maybe Josie would grab a drink with him, her face flushing as they discussed all the despicable details. Maybe, seeing him again, as the guy who’d solved the case, she’d realise she had underestimated him. Maybe even owed him. Feel the need to reward him. 

Logging in, scrolling to the start, he saw himself at the beginning of the end again. Kissing Josie in a darkened doorway, even when she tried to pull away, because Kat complained about his heterosexual displays of affection in her presence. Footage was deleted every three months. He downloaded the clip as permanent proof it’d been real. Josie was still his, in every frame. He dragged his mouse slowly over her wide eyed surprise. Her hand pushed against his chest. Her head tilting away from his. Clenching his teeth, James breathed in deeply to immobilise the wetness welling at the corner of his eyes. No matter how many times he replayed it, nothing would bring him back to that moment in time. 

***

James never found the condom culprit. But he kept logging in, daily, from the darkness of his apartment to watch her life unfold without him—live. He watched her throw her curls up into a ponytail, rushing to class, to work, to yoga, to soccer. He always knew where she was headed, based on her bag and uniform. Sometimes, when he had time, he followed her there, tailing at a safe distance. How else would he find her when he worked up the courage to deliver the letter and say what he wanted to say to her face? 

It wasn’t a crime, what he was doing. After all, officer, she gave him the password. No worse than reading a diary left open. Human curiosity. His obsession was that of a lover, smiling affectionately when she scratched her crotch on the couch while reading, certain no-one was looking, or frowning with concern when she came home early, letting her backpack drop, slumping down with the weight of whatever had ruined her day. Only James, watching over her, knew who she was when no-one else was around. And in return, she helped him sleep at night, her doorway propped up on his bedside table, her digital presence beside him as he drifted off, unable and unwilling to be the first to hang up. 

All he could do was stare, mute and hurt, as Josie fell for his replacement. Beckett. Her ‘friend,’ that’s what she’d told him. It hadn’t occurred to James to worry about him—this weakling with bleached hair and painted nails. But there he was, turning up in her social media feed, praying in front of his whiteboard imitation of some famous painting. There he was, with his shaggy hair and tarot tattoos, hanging out for hours on Josie’s front porch, making Kat and Florence laugh at his inaudible jokes. There he was, where James deserved to be, with Josie’s knee lingering against his. 

Paralysed behind his screen, James felt humiliation hot in his mouth. Without an official breakup, he decided, this was cheating. 

James had always dabbled with a certain side of the internet, smirking occasionally at podcasts and memes and online forums. He excused them in the name of comedy and wondered why women were so quick to take offence. But he cringed when it went too far. He didn’t feel like an alpha male, and he doubted he’d ever earn enough to provide for anyone in this economy. But still, lit up at night by blue light, he couldn’t stop thinking about Josie, pulling his memories apart and assembling them back together again, as if it were a matter of figuring out how to make the parts fit. Why hadn’t he been enough?

He turned to the internet, typing questions into the search bar that made his throat raw with the ache of putting it into words. His algorithm was only too ready with answers, suggesting all sorts of places he could put his pain, letting collective male anger sharpen it into a point. The best forums made him feel the worst. Night after night, scrolling until his eyes stung, he let strangers convince him that no-one would ever love him, so he might as well give up—on women and on himself—because the system was rigged, and the only way out was revenge or roping himself. 

His self-loathing became masturbatory. Because, finally, none of it was his fault. It was hers. The content he consumed stirred up the embers of his resentment until it was blazing. A chorus of voices, endlessly affirming his right to fury. He clicked out of the threads proposing rape camps and mass shootings, feeling vaguely uneasy, then swapped to a different tab, stroking his cock as a girl with curly hair was face-fucked, enjoying the glistening close-ups of saliva, cum, and tears in her eyes. A triggered gag reflex was just part of it. Still, James didn’t like to think about why it felt better when she cried. 

***

James stood two streets away from Josie’s unit, watching the security camera feed on his phone to confirm that everyone in the house had left. Once he was clear, he ran all the way there, his unfit heart spluttering in his chest, afraid to miss his window of opportunity. 

Beckett had been over the night before, but this time, for the first time, he hadn’t left until morning. James had to know if it had gone too far, if he had come too late. He hadn’t read the letter since the day he wrote it, but maybe, now, months later, it would be enough. Sincerity was cringe. But girls liked that kind of thing. Plus, some part of him suspected it was better than what he’d written since, crumpling up paper in his fist.

First, he had to search the bins. He’d watched Florence take the rubbish out that morning, swinging open the door and holding the plastic bag away from her body, afraid of its dripping contents. James had to be sure. Keeping his head on a swivel, he disappeared down the shared alley. James flipped open the green lid of Josie’s bin, ripping open the soft, pliable skin of the black liner and shaking out its half-eaten innards onto the pavement. Holding his breath against the sweetly rotting scent, he kicked around blackened banana peels and bloodied tampons unfurling from toilet paper parcels. He knew what to look for. He squatted down, searching inside each cardboard container with tentative fingers. 

That’s where he found it, smuggled like contraband inside a box of savoury biscuits. A used condom, with a tied off top. 

He could see it, grainy in his mind like footage, how they’d said goodnight, then holed up together in her room, bringing snacks as supplies for a movie they were only pretending to watch, with a charged, constant awareness of the other body in the bed. James would not let himself feel it: the heart wrung out inside his chest. Only rage was permitted—the throbbing vein in his head that pumped thoughts like blood, circulating them, like cause and effect, until everything began and ended with a gushing spray of FUCK HER. 

James tore his letter in half. Before slipping his stupid words back into his pocket, he ripped off a ragged edge, then, grabbing a pen from his pocket, turned over his blue ink promises, and let her know what he thought of her now, scrawled in big, gnashing letters. 

SLUT.

He left the rubbish scattered where it was. Josie could pick it up. Now, he only needed the condom, gingerly pinched at the edge to minimise contact with another dick. 

He knew the angles of her camera intimately, every curve and contour of their vision, which details they gave up easily and which, flirting at the periphery, teased what remained out of view. James inched towards that invisible boundary, a forcefield that had once let him in and lent him eyes, but now held him at more than arm’s length. Yes, he could dump the condom and note here, on the pavement, and sneak away unobserved. But Josie would step over it, assign it to a stranger, as if it were something blown in from the street that had nothing to do with her. No, he wanted her to feel something when she saw it, shame, scrawled on the inside of her skin, knowing, before either of her friends did, the message was meant for her. 

Her doorstep beckoned. The camera’s red dot blinked in warning. One more step, and she would see him. A tantalising thought. Sometimes, when he watched her, she looked up at him, with a worried bend to her brow, her eyes lingering on the camera. Direct eye contact, the kind that compressed the breath in his chest. James edged his boot into the corner of the frame. He could reverse the roles. Make her watch him for a change. What would she feel, when she saw his face again? Knowing he never left. Never went away. He’d been here for her all this time, watching and waiting, in the only way she would let him. Here. Always. Who else could give her that kind of commitment? Only him. Her only option was him. 

He could step into her frame again. One step. One. That’s all it would take. If he did it, if he did it now, she wouldn’t ever forget him. Not ever again. He felt almost woozy with it, the power of deciding for her. The note felt damp in his hand, the condom cowardly. He wanted her to see him again, but not like this. He wanted to look up at the camera and wink, like it was their private joke, making her smile on the other side. But this was all he had, his only remaining move. He crumpled the note in his fist and threw the condom at her door. Next time, he would come back with flowers, with a shower and a shave, and take his rightful place inside the frame, knocking on her door. Yes. No. Either way—if she didn’t open up and let him in, he’d have to force the handle.