The Orgasm is a Fugitive Event
BY ALI CHOUDHARY
The campus is a geometry of surveillance: clipped hedges, biometric locks, compost bins that
whisper carbon offset. A year ago, we stood beneath banners for Palestine, throats bright with
failure, voices dissolving like salt in wind. Watched always, never heard. Still, this boy and I fuck
beneath the optics. I mean: the motion-activated lights flicker like nervous testimony, then go dark.
I mean: his hands are cold and curious, almost innocent, until they inherit my history. Outside, the
city’s smart sensors calibrate for anomaly—shatter, siren, unlicensed joy. But moans slip under the
grid. Desire is a sanctioned frequency. Isn’t that its own violence? He unbuttons my shirt like it’s
a form in triplicate: slow, impersonal, binding. Later, I’ll wonder if the system registered my breath
spiking. My voice saying yes like it had just refused its own body. We are taught to consent like we
tick a box on a return policy. Skip the terms. Assume the loss. So when he grips my throat mid-
thrust, I taste nothing but static. I kiss back like I’m exhaling a blueprint for escape. The city
twitches. Moves on. Somewhere, a man pisses into an abandoned phone booth. Somewhere, a
child renames each scar after a star. Somewhere, a girl erases every message she’s ever sent and
calls that privacy. Or love. After, in the mirror, I study myself like a failed encryption. My
body: an unauthorised archive. My thighs: a wet transcript. I do not cleanse the record. I blur it
like a sigil. I take the long way home, past shadows that don’t report back. I don’t want to be
witnessed. I want to be misremembered. I want the night to file me under a corrupted memory.
Something the algorithm deletes because it couldn’t tell if it was a threat or a dream.