▸ Column · Modern Gotham — smartphones, banking apps, Instagram DMs; Harley Quinn post-Joker, rebuilt and sharp-eyed, running an unofficial advice practice out of sheer refusal to watch other people not pay attention to the signs she ignored
HARLEY QUINN replies.
Replied to by Harley Quinn, with a rebuttal from Poison Ivy.
The letter
Dear Dr. Q, My partner and I have been together going on fourteen months. Last week he slid a handwritten list across the table — every login he wants from me: social media, email, the banking app, even the backup drive where my photos live. His explanation is that his ex cheated and this is the only way he can get his anxiety under control. "Nothing to hide" means just type them in. I shared the social media login as a good-faith gesture. He stayed up until two in the morning combing through three years of my message history and then woke me to cross-examine me about a guy from college I haven't spoken to in years. Now he's treating my hesitation on the email and banking as proof I'm "choosing secrecy over us." Part of me keeps circling the same question: does someone who's genuinely committed have any right to a locked door at all? Or is this one of those asks that can never be satisfied no matter how much I hand over? — Static in Gotham
Harley Quinn replies
Oh, I know this letter. I LIVED this letter — different sticky note, considerably worse handwriting, same exact tune. So listen to me, cupcake, because I am the cautionary tale standing right in front of you with a clipboard.
Here's your diagnosis from a doctor with a psych degree she earned and subsequently had some THOUGHTS about: what he's asking for isn't trust. It's topography. He wants to map every inch of you so he knows exactly where you can go that he can't follow. That ex who cheated? That's not context, that's the pitch. You didn't cheat on him — you're paying three years of penance for a woman you never even met.
And here's the part where I really need you with me, because I wasn't when I should've been: he SHOWED you. You handed over the Instagram as a peace offering, and he used it as a shovel. Three years of your life dug up, a case file assembled, a 2 a.m. interrogation. That's the data. Not his speech about the ex, not the note — what he actually DID with the access you gave him in good faith.
"Nothing to hide" is the oldest con running. The correct answer is always "not enough yet." You give him the email, there'll be something in it. You give him the banking, there'll be a charge he needs explained. The appetite doesn't close, sweetie.
Took me way too long to learn that a locked door isn't a betrayal. It's a self. Keep yours.
— Harley Quinn
Poison Ivy weighs in
Harley loves a diagnosis — the anatomy, the origin story, the whole clinical bouquet. She'll give you the most thorough reading of your situation you've ever received, and it will be correct, and it will be very good for Harley.
But darling, the analysis was over the moment you watched what he did with what you freely gave him. You already ran the experiment. The specimen was offered sustenance and used it to take inventory of everything it hadn't consumed yet. That isn't data to sit with. That's compost.
Your private spaces aren't walls, sweet thing. They're root systems. Soil of your own. He wants them bare so nothing can grow in you that isn't him first.
The Green doesn't negotiate with something that wants to hollow it out from the inside. And neither should you.
— Poison Ivy
▸ Read next