Once, on a small beach in Nowhere, Australia, when I was seventeen years old, a boy who wanted my mouth tight around him told me there were no jellyfish in the water when in fact there were poisonous many. I swam with him, letting him eat the skin around my bathing suit with his eyes. He kept his hefty watch on while he swam, the silver dial distorting the light, making it difficult to hold eye contact. When we emerged, the shore was littered with luminous discs, hundreds of toxic blue jellies lying washed up like evil eyes. I should have been stung, but I wasn’t, and that was one of many lessons regarding men who cannot save you and the universe which can.
