Hex Girl

Publicity done right in an anti-rape campaign: double-page spread, pages glued to one another. After the reader forcefully separates them, the image above is revealed with the caption “if you have to use force, it’s rape”.

She deserves better, you say. I say: You’re a goddamn coward. What she deserves is an actual person she can connect with. She deserves you, or me or the entire world; she deserves someone achingly real and honest. She deserves a human being equally raw to pursue her and love her and, perhaps, destroy her emotionally, but she deserves all that as well. She doesn’t deserve anyone’s sugary fairytale. She deserves to float freely, with you, or me, or the world, into the very depths of her own psychosynthesis. She deserves to explore the meaning of the word "intimacy", with someone beside her that will care regardless. She fucking deserves all of it. So, pluck up the courage and be with her or leave her in peace but don’t you dare "sell" her your own "inadequacy" as a lie so that, again, you manage to comfort your conscience and eventually come to feel that you love her exactly because you’re letting her go. Because, darling, that’s bullshit. That’s only you own little self-created lie laying behind a much bigger lie; it’s not even properly concealed within itself, you fucking idiot.