Hello, World?

"Abandoned by their Dutch partner after giving up their home and their job to follow him to the Netherlands, humanities scholar Seasonal finds themself single in a strange place for the first time in a decade. Dipping into the rabbit hole of digital eroticism, Seasonal soon meets Lâ aszlâ o, a male sub who volleys back their cerebral sexts and is seeking a dominant guide. His dating-app profile--a photo of Foucault and the ingenuous greeting "Hello, World?"--thinly veils his desire to be annihilated. It's a desire that Seasonal senses they can fulfill. But to do this means crossing the frightening gap between their desires and capacities. Seasonal and Lâ aszlâ o embark on an experiment in remaking intimacy outside the Republic of Gender. But as it continues, the two realize they are staging separate confrontations with domination: Seasonal finds they must confront their own relation to the violence and anger that marked their upbringing in working-class, small-town Australia, while Lâ aszlâ o stages his own confrontation with his decision to leave Viktor Orbâ an's Hungary. As they attempt to improvise a theater of domination that opens up possibilities of reciprocity, the energies of their sexuality stalk this collaboration, threatening to give them exactly what they bargained or begged for. A feminist paean to perversity in the tradition of Pauline Râ eage's Story of O and Anaè is Nin's Delta of Venus, Anna Poletti's hello, world? dares to fully inhabit female power, and to fully face the violence, beauty, and uncharted territories of human sexuality"--Back cover.