Direct Message
Grace Banks - The Pig’s Back, Issue Three
Mia’s Instagram handle is @missinginaughrim. Her profile picture is a selfie taken from a high angle, and turned ninety degrees to the right. In the background — her bedroom, pink fairy lights hanging from the bookshelves. Her bio reads: 20 / Galway / Commerce.
//
Mia posts a photo on her story of a stranger’s cockapoo running on Silverstrand. She only allows herself to check who’s seen it every ten minutes. It’s not until the third time that the name she’s looking for pops up. Zara’s handle is @zarathegal and her bio reads ‘not the brand’. In her profile picture she is leaning her elbows on a counter with a Pornstar Martini in her hand. Mia took it in a restaurant on their trip to Edinburgh last year.
Forty minutes later, Zara posts a story of a new novel whose cover proclaims the author as ‘the new Sally Rooney’. Mia messages Shannon from school back home. Shannon’s handle is @shananala and her profile picture is a washed-out photo of herself, age three, wearing a yellow bucket hat.
zara just posted
and?
she hasn’t posted in months
at least since we broke up
am i missing something?
oh so she just happens to post the same night i do
right yeah
or else it’s the weekend
and everyone’s posting
//
Mia half-swipes on people’s stories so that she can see them without the other person knowing. She doesn’t want people to think she cares about what they’re doing. She taps on stories posted by business accounts so that she can half-swipe either side of them. If someone posts multiple stories she has to wait until the first has timed out before she can see the next.
//
Mia is in a 10am lecture on financial derivatives when she sees that Zara has posted a story. She clicks to view the story next to it – a vegan bakery’s selection of morning pastries – and half-swipes to look at Zara’s. It’s a picture of a plate of French toast, piled with whipped cream and berries, and just beyond it a woman holding a glass of something that looks like Prosecco. The woman’s face is mostly cut off but Mia recognises her even from the neck down as Áine, Zara’s new girlfriend. It’s the first time Áine has appeared on Zara’s profile. Mia messages Shannon, who replies:
send a screenshot
i haven’t officially seen it though
why not?
she wants me to see it
do you have another photo of this girl?
nope
her insta is private
and i unfollowed out of spite
paranoid bitch huh
i mean who’d want to stalk her?
//
It was Shannon who used all lower-case first. Mia waited a few months before asking whether Shannon minded if she stole her style. Mia used to have to correct the auto-capitalisation every time before Zara told her there was a setting to disable it. In longer messages Mia uses either emojis or exclamation marks as punctuation. Full stops are passive aggressive. She adds the sparkle emoji in out-of-the-blue messages to help recipients gauge her tone.
//
Mia reads her horoscope on an astrology app. She’s a Scorpio. Zara used to accuse Mia of only liking astrology because everything she read was about her. She used to say it as a joke – you’re so egotistical, how cute – but apparently it wasn’t so cute, later, when it meant that Mia was a self-centred bitch.
Today’s horoscope reads: Lean into what brings you joy.
//
Mia watches Netflix on her laptop in bed. She can tell, from the half-watched true crime documentaries she knows she never started, that Zara is still using her log-in. She tells herself that she’s not bothered to change the password, but really she just likes to keep track of what Zara’s watching.
Mia’s roommate texts to ask whether she can have her shower now. Mia rolls her eyes so dramatically it hurts. For seven months she has been trying to impress on her roommate that this is her flat too, that she doesn’t need to ask permission. Still the roommate keeps her toiletries in her bedroom, and wipes down the shower every time. Mia once messaged Zara with a picture of a damp face cloth that her roommate had left on the bathroom radiator because it was such an event. Zara responded:
Is she well?
i’m not entirely sure
do you think i should be worried?
Zara suggested Mia devise a shower schedule so the roommate would feel some claim to the bathroom:
At least you’d know when to expect to see her
Out in the wild
Zara used to call the roommate Lurch because of the way she would appear unannounced in doorways and at the edges of rooms. One morning Mia was sitting on the kitchen counter with Zara stood between her legs as they waited for their toast. Mia jumped out of her skin when she saw Lurch hovering in the doorway into the living room. When Zara turned, Lurch looked even more terrified at having been seen. Zara asked if she wanted some toast. Lurch didn’t answer her, only said: You look good together.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and turned to go just as the toaster popped. Sometimes Mia half-expected to roll over after sex and see Lurch standing there, watching them. When Zara stopped coming over after they broke up, Lurch seemed to materialise more often. They passed each other in the hallway more times in a day than they would have before in a week. Mia never told Lurch what happened with Zara, or even that they’d ended it. Once, a few weeks after the break-up, Lurch held the hall door open for Mia on her way from the kitchen to her bedroom. Mia thanked her. Lurch nodded and said:
-You’d miss her around the place, wouldn’t you?
It occurred to Mia then that Lurch probably never knew Zara’s name. The question caught her off-guard. She smiled with her mouth closed and nodded.
Mia responds to Lurch’s message:
i was actually gonna use the bathroom now
okay no worries!
sorry!
//
Mia scrolls through Netflix. She finds Vampire Diaries under a section headed ‘Watch It Again’. She’s tempted, but thinks better of it. Zara and Mia re-watched the whole series together. It became an inside joke. Anytime it was brought up in conversation, they would talk as if it were deserving of serious critical attention.
-I think there could be more character development, their trajectories feel forced.
-I don’t know, do you not think that’s a cornerstone of the genre?
-No, season two is overrated.
It didn’t matter that no one knew what they were talking about because they were the most hilarious people in the world.
//
The health app on Mia’s phone sends a notification to say that her fertile window is likely to start within the next three days. For somebody who doesn’t need to be concerned about getting pregnant, read: horny window.
//
Mia types the words ‘lesbian’ and ‘boob’ without thinking. Sometimes she adds words like ‘sensual’ and ‘romantic’ to weed out the BDSM and videos where women look at the camera while they suck rubber dildos. Often now she doesn’t bother with videos at all, only GIFs. You lose the sound, but also the fear that the website is secretly recording you through your front camera.
//
In the library Mia listens to a song by Olivia Rodrigo called deja vu on repeat. She scrolls through Twitter on her laptop with a serious expression so fellow students will think she’s studying. After twenty minutes of queuing the same song on repeat, she decides to accept facts and finds an hour-long looped version of it on YouTube.
//
Mia searches for Zara’s girlfriend Áine’s profile. The account is still private but her profile picture has changed. It used to be a photo taken on a disposable camera, of Áine dancing in a cheap MDF kitchen. Now it’s a selfie taken in the mirror of a lift, her hair pulled back in a low bun and her oversized leather jacket open to hint at the lime-green crop top underneath. The photo is also turned ninety degrees to the right. Mia sees on her profile that she is followed by Lurch.
//
Mia sits on the kitchen counter waiting for the kettle to boil and scrolls. She looks up as Lurch wanders into the room. Lurch stops dead:
-Sorry. I didn’t hear you.
-That’s okay.
Lurch always looks out from under herself:
-I used to be able to hear the two of you talking.
Mia nods.
-What happened?
Mia thinks carefully about her response:
-Creative differences.
The kettle comes to the boil and switches itself off but Mia doesn’t move. Somehow it feels less awkward just to sit here while they both nod and stare at the floor. Mia cocks her head and says:
-Come here for a second.
Lurch looks blank:
-Hmm?
-Just c’mere.
Lurch comes and stands a foot away from her. Mia reaches out, takes Lurch’s arm and coaxes her closer. Mia leans in and kisses her. After a few seconds Lurch relaxes into it and then as quick she’s holding Mia’s face and pressing herself up against the countertop between Mia’s knees. Mia holds the waistband of her pyjama bottoms open so that Lurch can slip a hand inside. Lurch touches Mia with her thumb, over Mia’s underwear. Mia leans her cheek against Lurch’s and closes her eyes. Images from the night before float tantalisingly out of focus – bouncing boobs and oil-slathered boobs and boobs sucked raw. Lurch moans with her all the way.
Afterwards, Mia can’t bring herself to look Lurch in the eye. Instead she rubs the tops of her thighs and says:
-I was gonna make tea.
//
Mia tags Shannon in an Instagram post by a Dublin radio station, to be in with a chance of winning Olivia Rodrigo tickets. She shares the post to her story for an extra entry. Even though she knows people will only flick past it, she still checks to see who’s seen it. She likes to think of her name and face flitting through their brains for half a second.
//
Mia is on the bus when she opens Instagram and sees that Zara has posted. In the photo Zara is lying face down on a tartan blanket spread over grass, her head in her arms. Even though the picture is black and white, Mia can see the colour of Zara’s hair across her shoulders, more auburn in the sun. As a caption Zara has tagged Áine. Áine has commented: I think maybe, potentially, correct me if I’m wrong, your caption may need some work. Zara has liked the comment and replied: not every1 can be an artist. Mia texts Shannon:
zara’s new post…
you were exactly that kind of couple
don’t pretend
don’t insult me
Defensive, Mia scrolls through the posts she’s archived since the break-up. The first is a picture of Zara’s feet, her nails polished a metallic blue, in the volcanic sand of a Greek island beach. Mia’s caption: feet fetishists look away now. Zara’s reply: for your mouth only. Mia goes back to Shannon:
shut up
are gay girls not allowed to show their affection for each other
when you think of it like that it’s really quite political
//
When Mia next logs into Netflix she sees that Zara has started re-watching Vampire Diaries again from season two. Overrated, she thinks.
//
Zara liked to have her arms pinned behind her head. Zara liked to be asked for things. Zara liked to feel Mia’s weight on top of her.
The distribution of flesh is all wrong. Mia can’t find the right angle against Lurch’s hip. In the end she finishes herself.
She stays panting for a few minutes:
-Ok?
-Mhm.
Mia lets herself lie in it for a moment before she feels she should ask:
-Do you want anything?
-No.
-Are you sure?
-I just like making you feel good.
Mia doesn’t want to argue, and she doesn’t want to stay. Even the thought of it reminds her of when she would wake in the warm black with Zara’s legs twisted in hers, and Zara would whisper all the things Mia had said in her sleep, how Mia had shaken her head or laughed as she said them. Mia remembers days when she and Zara would lie in bed with period cramps and paracetamol. They would read aloud to each other from books by American women essayists, on art and bodies and the colour blue.
Mia peels herself from Lurch’s skin, sits up and feels around for her clothes. She regrets now not asking, when she was picking up her stuff, for the dressing gown Zara bought her for her last birthday. It was silky and floral and made Mia feel like an Edwardian lady, having an affair with her lady’s maid because her husband was mean and inattentive in bed.
//
Mia has started checking Áine’s profile every morning. It’s become part of her routine, as she lies in bed, once she’s gone through her email and Twitter. Today she notices Áine has changed her bio. Now it reads: the second season of Vampire Diaries is the best.
//
Lurch’s handle is @cb_b1999. Her profile picture is a still from a Studio Ghibli film. Her bio reads: she/her. Mia messages her:
do you know a girl called aine treacy
Yes
how
Friend of a friend
would you do me a favour
Okay
let me know if she posts anything
Okay
you free tomorrow night
Yes
//
Once they’re finished and Mia is getting dressed, Lurch passes her phone to Mia from bed with Instagram open. Áine has posted a photo of herself and Zara standing together on the diving board at Salthill. Mia pulls up a photograph of herself and Zara nine months ago: the same place, the same angle, the same pose. Mia takes a screenshot on Lurch’s phone, Airdrops it to herself, and forwards it to Shannon:
are you KIDDING me
please explain
Mia sends a screenshot of her own post, which she’s since taken down. Shannon sees the picture immediately. A few seconds pass before she begins to type. The photo reverts to ‘seen’. Another thirty seconds elapse before Shannon’s message comes through:
you don’t own Salthill
it’s too much of a coincidence
you’ll want to copyright fingering next
//
Mia is suspended from Instagram for posting a picture of herself with her twenty-first birthday balloons. The email says that it has come to Instagram’s attention that she was younger than thirteen when her account was set up, and that this is in violation of their community guidelines. Her account is disabled for thirty days. She sends a screenshot of the email to Shannon, who responds:
wtf
ikr
happy birthday from the metaverse
can you appeal that
i mean i could
but they’re not wrong
it’s just annoying
so
set up a new one
use your college email
//
Mia tries to think of a clever handle for her new account. She settles for @ainethefirst and sets her bio as ‘the original and the best’. She sends a screenshot to Shannon, who responds:
good one
ikr
i thought you were over this
over what
that we broke up
or that she’s with the one woman i asked her not to get with
?
it sounds more dramatic when you say woman
need i remind you
she badmouthed me to zara when we were together
i know
she didn’t even know me
we met once at pride
i know
what do you want
a cross to nail yourself to
//
Mia’s new account allows her to look at public content, but she doesn’t want to request to follow everyone she knows. She follows some – Shannon and Lurch. Even though Lurch’s is one of the few stories Mia can see, still she only half-swipes on it. She resents the power it would give Lurch to know that Mia cares about what she posts.
Sometimes Mia goes onto Zara and Áine’s accounts just to see if their profiles have changed. Lurch hasn’t shown her anything Áine has posted in a while. Mia doesn’t know whether it’s because Áine hasn’t posted anything or because Lurch doesn’t want to show her. Shannon said she would tell Mia if Zara posted anything but Mia reckons she was just saying that, that Shannon doesn’t want to encourage her. Instead Mia imagines the photos Zara and Áine are posting, in the same poses and locations that Zara and Mia did. She comes up with meaningless phrases, the inside jokes they’d use as captions to signal to the rest of the world just how close they are. She takes a small degree of comfort in the likelihood that they’ll be looking out for her views or likes and there won’t be any.
//
Today’s horoscope reads: The mood has been a little tense lately. Try going for a walk to clear your head. Mia wonders whether the advice is deliberately written to sound passive-aggressive, or whether it only comes across that way when she doesn’t want to hear it.
//
Lurch’s message is so pathetic that Mia doesn’t know whether to laugh or cringe:
Are you free now…?
Mia considers her response carefully. She enjoys being mean to Lurch over text. Even if what she says isn’t explicitly, objectively bad, the intention is still there. She never knows whether Lurch takes things the way she intends. It would be better if she didn’t – if Mia could have the feeling of power with none of the guilt.
look at you trying to take initiative
I’m sorry I’m not good at this
don’t be so hard on yourself
ellipses are effective
Please don’t make fun of me
I’m not used to this
i don’t believe you
Well I’m usually attracted to extroverts
Which is weird
Because I don’t think you are one
Mia likes the last message as an acknowledgment, out of courtesy only. She feels hurt, even though she knows the Sixteen Personalities test said that she was 57% introverted. Mia sends a screenshot of the conversation to Shannon. She is partly looking for consensus and partly showing off her superiority over Lurch. Twenty minutes without a response and her quips don’t feel so impressive. She deletes the message.
//
Mia’s daily horoscope reads: You’ve been feeling out of touch lately. Take steps to reconnect with those who ground you.
//
Shannon comes up to the city one weekend to stay. Mia takes her to a vegetarian restaurant on Henry Street for brunch. The walls and ceiling are dark grey, the tiled floor black and white, the furniture made with reclaimed planks of wood. Mia opens the place’s Instagram page alongside the menu so that she can see what each item looks like. Shannon has the pancakes with chia compote and coconut cream. Mia wants the scrambled tofu on sourdough but there’s no picture of it. She orders the pancakes with tempeh bacon instead.
-So, how’ve you been?
Something in the way Shannon says it makes Mia feel observed.
-Is this an intervention?
-Does it need to be?
Shannon always looks off to the side when she’s talking. As a response Mia picks up her phone. She half-swipes on Lurch’s story, a picture of the comic book store in Corbett Court with the word ‘Mecca’ typed over it. Mia looks up at Shannon:
-Is it not vaguely Islamophobic to use the word Mecca as a metaphor?
Shannon gives a questioning look and Mia shows her Lurch’s story. Shannon looks between the phone and Mia:
-I don’t know how you manage it.
-Manage what?
-You weed them out like I dunno what.
Shannon laughs nervously. Mia leans closer across the table, grinning:
-Weed what out?
-The gay ones.
-I’m fairly sure she’s bi, but whatever.
-How long has this been going on?
-Only a few weeks.
Shannon grins:
-So you’re going at it with your roommate, and still obsessing over your ex.
Mia rubs the grease from her phone screen:
-Obsessing is a loaded term.
-An appropriate one, I think.
-What do you expect when she ended it without giving me a reason, and then shacked up with the girl who’s been spouting shit about me for the past two years?
-That’s not true.
-Without a proper reason, then.
-Zara told you why she wanted to end it.
-Because she had a ‘weird feeling’ around me? That her body was ‘trying to tell her something’? That’s not a reason.
Mia doesn’t want to go into the rest – that when Mia demanded to know how she’d messed things up, Zara accused her of believing everything was about her.
Shannon shakes her head:
-Classic Mia.
-I’m fairly sure I’ve never done anything like this before.
-Mia has two modes: horny and angry.
-Don’t talk about me in the third person.
-Which I guess are just two sides of the same coin.
Mia gives Shannon a disapproving glare. Shannon smiles:
-You know I’m only joking.
Their food arrives.
//
When Shannon leaves on Sunday evening her absence feels more tangible than her presence did. Mia lies on her bed and scrolls through reels. She wonders if the drop in quality is directly related to the rise in content.
//
When Lurch’s message comes through Mia feels like throwing her phone across the bedroom:
Are you up?
sorry
i assumed you’d want some alone time with your comics tonight
For once Mia hopes that Lurch reads it as nastily as she intends it. Lurch starts and stops typing several times before her message comes through:
How did you know I was at the comic store?
Mia is starting to wonder whether her policy of half-swiping on stories is really such a smart one. She mutes her chat with Lurch.
//
Mia is learning how to sleep alone again. She lies in bed with her wireless earphones in, listening to rain sounds. She sets a sleep timer to turn them off after forty minutes. By the time it goes silent she is still awake. She redownloads Tinder. She wonders whether she should be worried that she recognises most of these girls from before, but once she starts swiping she finds it hard to stop. Once she’s tired herself out she leaves her phone on the bedside table with notifications on, in case she gets a match while she’s asleep.
//
Mia wakes up so hungry she feels sick. She scrolls through foodie Instagram in the hope that it’ll make her want to eat something. It only makes her feel worse.
//
Mia makes herself wait until it gets dark before opening Tinder again. She hasn’t been notified of any matches, but still she refreshes several times, just in case. She swipes through a few more girls, her judgement more and more reflexive. She pauses on one girl she recognises as one of Zara’s school friends. She holds her finger on the screen, debating whether to swipe right just for the chance that Zara will hear about it. In the end she decides that being on a dating app while Zara is already in a committed relationship isn’t much of a flex – isn’t a flex at all.
//
Mia’s thirty-day ban lapses. The first thing she does when she logs into her old account is check Zara’s profile. Zara posted four days ago. It’s a picture of Zara’s kitchen table, with glasses of orange juice and mugs of tea and plates of toast. Áine’s eyes closed against the sun’s glare through the window. Áine’s legs stretching towards the camera, her feet resting on the tops of Zara’s thighs. Áine in Mia’s silky floral dressing gown.
Today’s horoscope: either you run the day or the day runs you.
//
Mia searches how to set up a second Tinder profile. Apparently the designers have put measures in place to make this difficult. A few Reddit threads point her in the direction of unofficial loopholes. She tries not to think about how the dodgy apps she has to download are probably selling her personal data. She asks Lurch to send her screenshots of some of Áine’s posts. She doesn’t tell her what for, and she doesn’t thank her afterwards. Lurch only says:
I hope they’re ok
Sorry
Mia chooses three photos for the fake profile, sets her name as Áine, guesses her age as 21. She sends a screenshot of the finished profile to Shannon, who replies:
what’s happening
did they break up
nope
oh shit
i have a feeling it might be on the cards tho
//
Mia swipes through girls’ profiles on the fake account until she finds Zara’s schoolfriend again. She swipes right and locks her phone. As she lies on her bed, waiting, she tries to imagine Áine’s texting style from the little she knows about her. When the notification comes through to say that she has a match, she doesn’t bother to wait before messaging:
fancy seeing you here!
The exclamation mark feels very on-brand. A few minutes pass before she gets a response:
My sentiments exactly!
what are you in for
Ah you know yourself
See what happens
Mia can’t help smiling to herself:
up for it?
Seriously?
of course
The message is left on read. Mia lies on her bed and listens to Olivia Rodrigo’s album from start to finish, smiling as she pictures the chaos she has just set loose on the other side of the phone screen.
//
When Mia opens the app the next morning the interface is grey and there is a message to say that her profile has been banned for violating the app’s terms of service. A reaction, but it doesn’t feel like enough. Later, Shannon messages out of the blue:
you are something else
wot
guys do shit like this all the time
just because i like men doesn’t mean they’re not dicks
well it seems to work for them
you justify everything like that
‘you wouldn’t say that if a man did the same’
it’s a fact
that doesn’t mean it’s ok tho
that’s feminism baby
no
i feel like that’s equality moving in the wrong direction
what wave is this anyway
i think i’d like to get off here
//
Mia’s horoscope today: Sometimes you have to stick up for yourself. Know your worth. She goes to message Zara but their thread isn’t where she expects it to be. She searches for Zara’s profile but it doesn’t appear. She goes to check Áine’s account and it’s the same. Blocked.
//
Mia logs on to the Google Doc she and Zara used to plan their Greek holiday last summer. She knows that if she leaves a comment Zara will get an email notification. She writes:
I know you know it was me. We see through each other every time, don’t we?
She waits two days for a response. Every email chime replaces a beat of her heart. They are only ever circulars, college surveys, online sales.
//
Netflix only allows Mia to create five profiles. She names them:
I’m
Sorry
Feel
Better
Now?
She doesn’t watch anything on Netflix for three days so that she can better tell whether Zara has logged in. On the third day she sees that someone has started another episode from season two of Vampire Diaries. She scrolls on her phone for the rest of the evening, waiting for Zara to message, but she never does.
//
Mia transfers €0.01 into Zara’s bank account. With the 140 characters allowed in the ‘message to payee’ field, she types:
Did I not take enough charge? Did I take too much charge? Because you said that’s what you liked. P.S. I still think the second season is overrated.
Mia adds her banking app to the list of things she checks when she wakes up, when she picks up her phone, before she goes to sleep. After a week she questions whether Zara might have closed the account.
//
Mia orders a Big Mac meal to be delivered to Zara’s address. In the space marked ‘Note to Driver’ she types:
I respect and admire your agency. I just wish you didn’t feel like the only way you could express it was by ending us.
She imagines Zara staying at Áine’s place and coming back the next morning to a McDonald’s bag on her doorstep, torn apart by birds or foxes, the delivery note illegible. The idea doesn’t even upset her.
//
Mia watches the green light beside Lurch’s profile that means she’s active. She opens the chat:
are you up?
Lurch sees the message, types quickly:
Don’t think I don’t know what you did with those photos
It’s always Mia, myself and I, isn’t it?
The green light disappears. Mia locks her phone and places it face-down on the bedside table. She rolls into the cold patch on the sheets and pulls the covers over her head.
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