Cycle I · “The Hidden Voice” · 19

She’s past the point where anyone could reasonably call her a kid, but she still hears “girl” in every DM that starts with, “Hey, baby.” There’s a specific kind of attention she gets from older men that hits different: longer messages, full sentences, actual questions about her day. They remember details. They notice when she disappears for a few days. They call her good in ways the boys her age don’t even have language for yet.

She likes it. That’s the secret she holds inside.

She has conversations she doesn’t talk about: older men, different cities, different sites, all orbiting the same pattern—she says she’s nothing interesting, they say she’s special, and something in her goes tense when a near-stranger is already calling himself Daddy a few days in. Half of her melts; the other half wants to slam the laptop shut and throw her phone across the room.

When she reads the line about “Daddy Issues” and “please contact the person of this profile at your earliest convenience,” she feels called out and weirdly… seen. The “fucker-it out together” part makes her snort, then stare. Because that’s the fantasy, isn’t it? That someone older, sharper, more together could crawl inside the mess in her chest and help her make sense of it while wanting her.

She doesn’t message. Not yet.

But she does something she hasn’t done before: instead of swearing off older men entirely, or pretending it’s all just a joke, she opens a blank note on her phone and types:

“Do I like him, or do I like being wanted like this?”

It isn’t an answer. It’s a better question than she had this morning. For now, that’s as close as she gets to “fucker-it out together” — just her, the screen, and the uncomfortable truth that part of her still wants exactly what scares her.

Cycle I · “The Hidden Voice” · 19

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