Cycle I · “The Hidden Voice” · 16

She’s hovering over the “orientation” field on yet another profile form. Options in a drop-down menu, neat little boxes: straight, bi, pan, queer, questioning, prefer not to say. She’s clicked three different ones on three different sites in the last year, each time certain it would make things easier, clearer, safer.

It never did.

Tonight, instead of rewriting herself again, she ends up scrolling back through a cluster of lines she bookmarked weeks ago because they wouldn’t leave her alone.

The words that sting aren’t about “straight white male”; it’s the quiet, annoyed shrug of Does Not Apply. It feels less like fence-sitting and more like escape velocity.

She thinks about all the times people have decided who she is based on:

One kink keyword,
One label,
One sentence in her bio.

All the DMs that started with, “So you’re into X, that means Y…” before she said a word. All the ways she’s edited herself to attract the “right” eyes, only to end up with people who loved the tag more than the person wearing it.

Her cursor blinks in the orientation box.

For a full minute, she fights the urge to pick whatever will get her the least backlash. Then, instead, she clicks out of the menu entirely and types one small line into her profile:

“If you need me in a box to talk to me, we’re not for each other.”

She doesn’t know what that makes her.

She only knows it feels more like her than any dropdown she’s chosen so far.

Cycle I · “The Hidden Voice” · 16

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