▸ Column · Modern Gotham, present-day nocturnal vigilante era
BATMAN replies.
The letter
My partner of eight months, Emil, slid a handwritten notebook across the kitchen table last week and asked me to fill in my passwords — email, bank accounts, work messages, all of it. He says people with nothing to hide share everything, and my hesitation is as good as a confession. I offered to hand him my phone right there, in person. He said that wasn't the same as trust. Now it comes up every night. Yesterday he mentioned how his ex "played games" the same way I do — as if he already has me filed under a case number I didn't know was open. I keep telling myself his insecurity is something I can soothe. But writing in that notebook feels like signing something I can't take back. Is the notebook the problem, or am I?
Batman replies
The notebook is not a love letter.
I know exactly what Emil is doing. I've done something like it — not to lovers, but to the people I called allies. I kept contingency files on all of them. Clark. Diana. Hal. Every weakness catalogued, every access point mapped. I told myself it was preparation. It wasn't. It was control dressed as caution.
The difference: I never slid that folder across a table and called someone a suspect for declining to sign it.
"Nothing to hide" is a coward's argument. It inverts the burden — makes proof of innocence the price of presumed innocence. You felt something the moment the pen was in your hand. That alarm works.
Alfred knew everything about me. Everything. He never once demanded the files. That is the difference between someone who trusts you and someone who wants ownership.
Do not write in that notebook. But do not simply refuse and move on — document the escalation. Every conversation. Dates, exact words. The ex comparison, the quiet that followed when you said no. That is not a romance journal. That is evidence.
The pattern is already clear.
— Batman
The Joker weighs in
Oh, Bats and his evidence files — ha! — isn't that precious? He forgot to mention he compiled those on his friends. Behind their backs. Contingency plans for the people who trusted him most. The World's Greatest Detective, everybody.
Here's the joke, darling: Emil isn't the problem. Your faith that "trust" is a real thing — that's the punchline. He's just the first man honest enough to show you the cords behind the curtain.
The move? Fill the notebook. Make every password a gorgeous, beautiful lie. Watch him settle right into it, calm as a Sunday. That's all "trust" ever was — a very committed performance.
One bad day you'll remember none of it was real. Ha-ha-HA.
— The Joker
▸ Read next