▸ Column · Modern Gotham City — contemporary urban setting matching Harley's current post-Joker era
HARLEY QUINN replies.
Replied to by Harley Quinn, with a rebuttal from Han Solo.
The letter
My boyfriend Theo and I split a Gotham City apartment eight months ago and agreed on a 50/50 rent arrangement — his pitch, which I accepted as the grown-up approach even though he earns around $94k and I'm an elementary school art teacher at $41k. My half of the rent alone runs 38% of my take-home pay. I've quietly stopped contributing to my retirement account and I've been floating grocery runs on a credit card I'm slowly losing ground on. Last weekend Theo suggested booking a February ski trip like the flight costs were a background detail. I want to bring up switching to a proportional split, but every time I picture the conversation I feel like I'm confessing I can't keep up — scared he'll think I'm asking him to carry me or take advantage. Is there any way to say this without sounding like I'm angling for a handout?
Harley Quinn replies
"Can't keep up" — oh sweetie, I need you to HEAR what you just said. You're putting 38% of your paycheck into a shared roof while the man you live with is doing casual math on ski lodges, and somehow the story in your head is that NAMING THIS is the embarrassing part. I spent a long time not naming things. I had a doctorate and a perfectly good vocabulary and I still convinced myself that going along with whatever he wanted was just, y'know, loving somebody. It is not. It is losing yourself one quiet accommodation at a time, and the credit card always knows the truth before you're ready to say it out loud.
Equal isn't the same thing as fair. Ivy explained this to me with plants once — same water for a cactus and a fern isn't balance, it's just one of them dying slower. You're the fern, cupcake. You're on a credit card.
You're not asking to be carried. You're asking the math to actually math. So say that. "I looked at the numbers and at 38% of my take-home I've had to stop putting anything in retirement." That is a sentence, not a confession. It is also completely true, which is more than most people manage. And then you watch what he does with it, because his reaction in that moment is going to tell you everything you've been too scared to find out.
Took me way too long to learn this, so I'm tellin' you for free.
— Harley Quinn
Han Solo weighs in
Look, she's right, but I notice you've spent this whole letter worrying about what you're going to sound like — zero words on what Theo has actually been doing while you've been charging groceries. The ski trip's already on the table. You didn't put it there. That's data, kid, not the conversation you're scared of, but the one that's already happening without words. Drop the number on him — not a careful framing, not the rehearsed opener, the actual number on that card. What he does in the next ten seconds tells you more than anything you've been rehearsing. I've made both calls in moments like that. Trust me on which one you carry around afterward.
— Han Solo