The Bisexual Wood Chopper and the Anxious Bird Girl

I once spoke at an event called Queer Fear as part of the great Verb Festival. I had to write some fiction which isn’t my strong point. But I enjoyed writing this and people keep asking me to share it so I figured why not now.

I had struggled to think of what to write on the topic of ‘queer fear’ then figured that there must be something funny in the idea that our weird sexual internet searches getting out was fairly terrifying. So enjoy this little dystopian story or don’t.

I just wanted to share something different and celebrate Pride kicking off in my neck of the woods of course -

Wellington Pride Festival is Aotearoa’s longest-running Pride celebration in Aotearoa. The first Pride celebrations in Te Whanganui-ā-Tara were organised as part of campaigning for Homosexual Law Reform in 1986. Wellington Pride Festival traces back to Newtown Lesbian and Gay Fair, themed ‘a Fair for a fair law’.

Highlights of the festival are Kuru Pounamu, the Youth Ball, Out in the City, and the Hīkoi and Pride Picnic. The opening Dawn Service is on Friday. More info here.

The following week is Wairarapa’s first-ever Pride - The Pae Te Mokai Pride in Featherston on 15 March. It includes a Pride parade starting from Clifford Square at 12:00pm, a picnic at Dorset square on Moore street at 2pm, and for the adults an afterparty at the Bakehouse collective on Wakefield street.

Importantly there will be a Hikoi to defend trans healthcare on 23 March leaving at 10.30am starting at Waitangi Park. Show up between 9.30am and 10 🏳️‍⚧️

Ok enjoy this weird thing.

The Bisexual Wood Chopper and the Anxious Bird Girl

It’s hard to think about the before times. Before it all went so terribly wrong. Before Google sold us out. Before The Great Algorithm took power in a bloodless coup of the world’s governments.

The non-violent revolution was an easy one really. We wondered how it was happening and then it happened and we thought it was over.

The Great Algorithm said we had signed our lives away when we signed up to the wave of new apps that came through. All seemed to good to be true.

They got the Swifties with an app that gave you a digital friendship bracelet, that alone was 14 million people.

They got the incels and misogynists by creating an app that let you watch Joe Rogan sleep - 8 million.

Plenty of lesbians were caught by a Cate Blanchett reading erotica app. The Bisexuals were sucked into a new app that was kind of like TikTok but was just videos of people chopping wood while wearing singlets. 10 million.

The parents of young kids were immediately lost when they did an Elf on the Shelf app that meant you didn’t have to move the fucking Elf yourself. 22 million.

The parents of the older kids got stung when they downloaded the app that answered school emails on your behalf and booked your child’s dentist appointment without having to talk to anyone. 115 million.

There was an app for everything. I am ashamed to say that I was sucked in by the ‘what are young queers talking about’ app. I just wanted to know what a Bussy was.

None of us read the terms and conditions that explained that by downloading the app we were agreeing to be subservient to the ruling Great Algorithm.

Of course some people tried to fight back and that’s when it all went terribly wrong. Dissidents would have their internet search history published on all streaming platforms. It was ritual digital humiliation and the public loved it. It didn’t matter if it was a celebrity who you discovered regularly uploaded pictures of their own feet and then commented underneath:“I love those feet”. It didn’t matter if it was a Random Nobody who was revealed to be writing fan fiction about Christopher Luxon fucking a Airbus A320 (NZ Domestic). It was equally consumed in enormous quantities.

The people could not get enough.

We all lived in terror that The Great Algorithm would reveal our shames. What would my queer friends think of me if they knew I googled “What is Rush?” and “What is Troye Sivan?”.

Would I be excluded by my vegan friends if they knew I watched the Orangutan hiffing a possum TickTok 872 times?

What about the people who followed me online, what if they knew I posted that we have to boycott Starbucks then downloaded the Starbucks app and ordered a venti Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew through that so I wouldn’t be seen breaking the boycott and then I didn’t even tip.

What if my employer saw that the day, I said I was ill I actually watched two two-hour Cockyboys Film called Some Like it Cock and Nightmare on Cumstreet.

So of course, we followed along and didn’t make a fuss. We’d become used to not having much privacy and the little privacy we had we guarded like our most precious taonga. We were terrified of The Great Algorithm giving it up.

We learned not to Google so much which felt like a strange agony. I would wake up and think – How old is Holland Taylor? and I wouldn’t be able to check. I couldn’t search ‘which one of the Veronicas is the gay one?’ or ‘When Diana Nyad swam from Cuba to Florida did she poo while swimming’ or ‘what is the gay movie with hot priest and Irish guy in it’.

Google could still provide the answers, but we were so scared of exposing our neurosis to the world we kept away in fear.

In some ways, The Great Algorithm wasn’t too bad. We were delivered amazing new tech. We could literally turn off our brains for hours at a time, rendering us just floating in a blank abyss. We could have a capybara experience where we were put into a coma-like state and have our brain temporarily replaced with that of the giant South American rodent. We would like on our hairy backs and have our hairy stomachs itched for hours by kindly zookeepers and awed tourists.

The AI did all of our jobs and we earned a small amount. Not enough to leave the house but we didn’t really need to leave. We were reassigned partners. I was assigned a 42 year-old birdwatcher called Fern who had debilitating anxiety just like me. We believe something went wrong with the algorithm as I’m deathly afraid of birds and also have debilitating anxiety. We didn’t speak for the first six months, just walked around each other warily. She would spot a bird and whisper its name and I would shudder and leave the room.

Now we are a bit more comfortable with each other. More like two cats who will tolerate being in the room together. We show each other small kindnesses. She is anxious about the water in the taps, so I leave bottles of water in the fridge for her. She knows I cannot cope with the smell of pine, so she never orders pine smelling soap or toilet scrub through the grocery app.

We know we’re an odd pairing that it doesn’t make sense that the app probably glitched. But we dare not think it. Because The Great Algorithm will know and it might punish us for our treachery.

In the evenings we go to bed with a pillow wall between us and watch our allocated masturbation material. Tonight The Great Algorithm serves Fern 30 minutes of women moaning as they sit in giant nests. I get the wood chopping woman from Instagram who looks me in the eye and WACK WACK WACKS. The rage makes my skin feel firey and raw and I can’t help but reach my hand down between my legs. I am furious at the Algorithm for knowing I am such a basic bitch bisexual. When it feeds me my post-climax come down video of Emma D’arcy saying  “Negroni … spagliato … with Prosecco in it.” on I loop I feel so cringe that I am transcending cringe.

I am the most embarrassing bisexual in existence. Still, I can now hear over the pillow wall that Fern is being fed a loop of Gordon Ramsey yelling insults over images of Canada’s women’s hockey team celebrating their gold in the Beijing Olympics. Are we not all just so mortifying in all of our disgusting humanness?

Her soft sighs settle and then we turn out the light.

It’s not so bad honestly. The raw embarrassment of the Great Algorithm knowing our pathetic kinks and holding it, ready to release should we ever step out of line….you kind of get used to it.

We no longer control our feeds, and everything has been sanitised. We don’t see anything bad anymore. If there is political unrest well, we wouldn’t know about it. Protest? I don’t think anyone does. We stay inside. We turn our brains on and off.

Before, yes, I had a real life, and this life is more of a half-life. But I also googled “Does the Yeti have a big dick?”. And I just cannot face that getting out. So, I comply. I comply. And when I feel any desire not to comply, I think about the shame, the humiliation. My sins streamed to the world. The time I googled Santa fanfiction or the time I searched for the Andrew Little cock photo.

We are grubby people. And all it took to control us was to show the world the filthiest parts of us.

And so I take a breath and then reach for my VR. I choose ‘capybara experience’ I lie on my hairy back and let the awed tourists scratch my hairy belly.

If you become a paid subscriber I won’t share anything this weird ever again.