“I’m not sure how I feel about you spending all that time with a boy.”
I freeze. It’s the sort of thing my dad would say before he knew I was a guy. The sort of father must protect daughter stereotype that pissed me off before, and sure as hell pisses me off even more now. “Is that what it is?” I ask. “You don’t like me staying over at Ezra’s because he’s a guy?”
My dad hesitates. “His parents aren’t with him—”
“I’m a guy too, though,” I say, and I’m met with silence. “If I’d been born with a penis, would it be as much of a problem?”
“You’re putting words in my mouth,” my dad tells me. “The issue would be the same. You two are in that apartment without any adult supervision.”
“We’re seventeen,” I say. “We’re going off to college next year. We’re not little kids.”
My dad’s shaking his head. “Never said you were.”
Neither of us says anything for a while. There’s a scraping of knives against plates, clatter of glasses against the table.
“Besides,” my dad says, “just because you’re both boys, doesn’t mean you can’t be . . . inappropriate with each other.”
“Ezra and I are friends. Best friends. Nothing else going on there.” My dad won’t meet my eye, and I know I should stop, but there’s so much about this conversation that pisses me off. “I like staying down by Ezra’s, because at least with him, I never have to feel like he doesn’t respect me.”
My dad frowns at me. “And what does that mean?”
“I mean he knows that I’m a guy,” I say, ignoring the flinch of shame deep inside me—these days, I don’t even know if I’m a guy myself. “I don’t ever feel like I have to convince him of that. I mean that he calls me by my name: Felix.”
“Listen,” he says, “it isn’t easy to just suddenly switch my idea of who you are in my head. For twelve years, you were my baby g—”
I cut him off before he can say it. “That’s never who I was. That’s who you assumed I was.”
He’s quiet. A woman on the TV screen is crying, tears leaving streaks on her fake orange tan. My dad breaks the silence. “I’m trying,” he says. “I’ve shown you that. I’ve proven that. I don’t always get it right, but I’m trying to understand.”
Sometimes, I don’t know if that’s enough. I feel like a shitty son, getting angry at my dad when he’s the one who paid for my hormones, my doctors’ visits, my surgery, everything—but every time I’m around him, I feel like I have to work hard to prove that I am who I say I am. It pisses me off that he doesn’t just accept it. That there’s something he has to understand in the first place.
“I need you to be a little more patient,” my dad tells me. “I’ve had a certain idea of who you are in my head for twelve years. That’s a long time.” He hesitates, and I can tell he almost called me by my old name.
My dad won’t look at me. I don’t know if he even knows how to look at me. He can’t see me for who I really am—only who he wants me to be. Maybe this is fucked-up, I don’t know . . . but somehow, it’s his approval I need most, even more than anyone else’s. I need his validation. His understanding, not just acceptance, that he has a son.
I’m not sure that’s something he’ll ever give me.
I stand up, scratching my chair against the floor, grab my backpack, and head for the door.
“Where’re you going?” my dad calls, but I ignore him as I slam it shut behind me.
Six
EZRA’S EITHER ASLEEP OR NOT HOME WHEN I BUZZ HIS apartment number, and when he doesn’t answer his phone, I sit down on the concrete stoop steps, knees curled up to my chest, cheek resting on top of them. It might’ve been a little overdramatic, storming out of my dad’s apartment like that, and guilt is building in my chest. It’s going to be awkward as fuck the next time I try to go home.
I must fall asleep like that, leaning against the rusting railing, because when I open my eyes, there’s a hand on my shoulder. I blink away the bleariness to see Ezra leaning over me, illuminated by the orange streetlight.
“Hey,” he says, voice low. “What’re you doing here?”
“Fight with my dad,” I murmur, still half-asleep.
He sits down beside me and lets me lean against him instead of the railing. “You okay?”
I shrug. “Where were you? Special friend’s place?”
He nudges into me. “No. Couldn’t sleep, so I took a walk.”
“Insomnia again?”
“Guess I got used to staying up all night with you.”
Ezra helps me to my feet, and we stomp up the steps and to his apartment. He unlocks the door, and I let myself in first. The time on Ezra’s stove blinks 11:03. I head straight for the mattress, ready to crash. The two of us can stay up until three in the morning on a good night sometimes, but right now—after that fight with my dad—I’m exhausted.
But before I can drift back to sleep, Ezra sits on the edge of the mattress, kicking off his scuffed Converses. “I know something’ll that’ll cheer you up,” he says, twisting to look over his shoulder at me.
“Yeah?” I mumble. “What’s that?”
He flashes a grin. “A party.”
I stare at him. “What?”
“A party,” he says again. “Let’s have a party. I’ll invite some people over.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No,” he says. “Why would I be kidding?”
“Because it’s eleven o’clock on a Monday night.”
“Christ, you’re an old fuck,” he says. “Real St. Cat’s summer parties don’t actually start until midnight anyway.” I wouldn’t know. I’m not usually the partying type. “The dorms are close. People should be able to get here pretty fast. I’ll tell them to bring booze for entry.”
He already has his phone out, scrolling through contacts. I reach out a hand to stop him, but he yanks his phone away.
“Look, if you don’t want to come to my party, that’s fine,” he says, standing up, fingers flying over the screen as he—I’m assuming—texts out an invite. “But this is my apartment, so you’ll have to wait outside until the party’s over.”
I groan and roll over, hunching myself into the fetal position. “You’re not inviting Declan and his dumbass friends, are you?”
“Who the hell do you think I am?” Ezra says. He starts marching around the apartment, tossing crap into the one trash can he has in the corner of the kitchen. It feels like three minutes barely pass before his intercom starts to buzz. He grins at me as he hits a button, and after listening to echoing footsteps on the staircase outside, there’s an impatient knock on Ezra’s door.
He throws it open, and Marisol comes sauntering in, makeup smeared across her face, tight dress and combat boots on. She’d clearly already been out. She ignores me as she holds up a six-pack of beer and stares around.
“Where the fuck is everyone?” she says.
“You’re the first person here.”
“Balls,” she says, walking in and dropping the beer on the kitchen counter. “Suckiest party ever, Ezra.”
“Relax,” he says, grabbing a beer bottle and using his T-shirt to twist the cap off. “Some serious shit’s about to go down.”
And he’s right. Within the next few minutes, over a dozen people show up. Most are St. Cat’s students. Some are people I’ve never seen before in my life. Ezra asked Leah to bring her speakers, and an iPhone is hooked up, blasting Hayley Kiyoko and BTS. Ezra still hasn’t gotten lightbulbs, so the only way to see is from the dim glow of the TV screen, the orange streetlights outside, and the phones people wave around. No one seems to care. A few take advantage of the dark, from the sounds of smacking lips and a little too much moaning. There’s dancing, laughing, shouting as a guy yells to pass the weed. Someone brings a string of blinking white Christmas lights, I have no idea why, and half the crowd spends a good few drunken minutes decorating Ezra’s apartment with them.
Marisol dances with Hazel, kissing, hands
beneath shirts. Austin is there, leaning into Ezra, whispering in his ear, hand on Ezra’s leg. Leah and Tyler are screaming the words to an old Lizzo song in each other’s faces, jumping up and down. Everyone’s shorts and skirts and sneakers and platform heels surround me while I sit on the mattress, back against the wall, watching.
Watching, watching, watching. It feels like that’s all I ever do sometimes. Watch other people dance, watch other people kiss. Marisol was the first—and last—person I worked up the nerve to ask out. We never kissed. We barely touched. What do you call someone who’s never been kissed? A lip virgin? I guess I’m a lip virgin.
Why am I always the person who just sits to the side and watches? What is it about me that no one likes, that no one wants? It’s like it’s too much for other people—me having brown skin, and being queer, and being trans on top of that . . . or, maybe that’s just what I tell myself because I’m too afraid to put myself out there again, too afraid of being rejected and getting hurt. Maybe it’s a little bit of both.
I pull out my phone and place it on long-exposure mode, snapping a photo. When enough time has passed, I look at it. The photo is a smear of cell phone and Christmas lights, streaks of white across the screen, blurs of legs and shoes.
I go to Instagram to post the image, but I hesitate. The piece of shit who’d messaged me—I’m positive it was Declan with a stupid fake account—hasn’t said anything else, but I don’t know if posting this would make him want to message me again. I shouldn’t be afraid to post photos on my own Instagram account, but I am. Besides . . . I don’t want anyone to see this picture. It feels too vulnerable. Too lonely. People right here at this party could check their phones and see it. It’d be weird.
But something like this—I want, no, need to put the photo out into the world, into the universe, as if the second that picture exists somewhere besides my phone is the moment I’ll start to exist, too. I log into the luckyliquid95 account and post it. The caption reads “the watcher.” Perfect.
There’s a furious pounding on the door. When Ezra cracks it open, his upstairs neighbor yells that it’s one in the morning, some people have to wake up for work tomorrow, turn the fucking music down or he’s going to call the cops, etc. Ezra is nowhere near as petty as me—Ezra’s neighbor is a jerk, so I 100 percent would’ve kept the party going—but Ez says things are winding down anyway and turns off the music. People eventually trickle out the door, yelling that they’ll see each other in class tomorrow, laughter and loud voices and footsteps echoing on the staircase, until finally it’s just me, Ezra, Marisol, Leah, and Austin.
Ezra and Austin are sitting by the open window as they smoke weed, whispering, eyes shining as they lean forward and laugh, making intense eye contact. I feel like I’m witnessing something private, like I shouldn’t even be looking at them. Leah and Marisol are lying down flat on their backs on the hardwood floor, arms and legs spread out like they’re about to make snow angels. After Marisol and I attempted our three dates, she declared to everyone one morning before class that she’s only interested in dating other girls. I try not to be too self-involved, but it almost felt like she was saying that just to make a dig at me—to say that while I’m misogynistic, she is clearly not (how can she be, when she loves girls so much that she’ll only date them?); to suggest, somehow, that she only dates girls, which is why she was willing to go on a date with me. I don’t know if she’s purposefully trying to hurt me—if she even realizes she’s doing it, or if I’m just being oversensitive. It can be hard to get a feel for what Marisol’s thinking, and I’m pretty sure she likes it that way. What’s worse is that I can’t even talk to Ezra about it—not without admitting what Marisol had said.
Marisol is in the middle of a monologue about Hazel. “She’s so confusing. I mean, what was that tonight? Is she just fucking with me? She’ll do this thing where she won’t answer a text for, like, five hours, and I don’t know if she’s just playing it cool, or if she actually just doesn’t look at her phone.”
“Probably just not looking at her phone,” Leah tells her. “Anyone would jump for a chance to make out with you.” I have a feeling that Leah is only half joking.
“I know, right?” Marisol says, then adds with a laugh, “Sorry you never got a chance, Felix.”
I’m on my stomach, head on my folded arms. There’s a pinch of shame in my chest. “Thanks, I guess?”
Ezra’s heard us from the window. He groans with a grin. “Totally forgot you two dated.” He pauses. “Is it weird that you went out for, like, approximately three seconds?”
“First of all, fuck you, it was two weeks,” Marisol says. “And second of all . . .” In the dim light of the muted TV and the blinking Christmas lights, she sits up to face me. “Well, it isn’t weird for me. It just didn’t work out. It happens. Is it weird for you, Felix?”
She smiles a little, like she’s taunting me. She knows that things are weird as fuck. I hesitate. I never told Ezra about what Marisol said. It’s embarrassing, on the edge of humiliating, and I don’t want to deal with the awkwardness. Ezra would be pissed, he and Marisol would fight, and there’d be unnecessary drama at St. Cat’s. Marisol’s stupid-ass comment isn’t worth fucking up my last school year over. Unlike Declan Keane’s gallery.
“Uh,” I say, suddenly aware that everyone’s staring at me. “No. Not weird.”
Leah scratches the back of her neck, and Austin bites his lip. Ezra gives a Chrissy Teigen grimace-smile. “So, really fucking awkward, then?”
Marisol shrugs. “I had no idea you felt awkward,” she tells me. “We can talk about it, I guess, if you want to.”
No, I definitely don’t want to talk about it—especially when Marisol somehow has a way of making things out to be my problem. As if she has nothing to do with why I’m uncomfortable with her. As if she has no memory of telling me that I’m a misogynist.
Ezra walks over, plopping down beside me on the mattress. Austin puts out the bud and follows, sitting cross-legged next to Leah on the floor. “We can make a Dr. Phil episode out of it,” Ezra suggests.
“Dr. Phil?” Marisol echoes. “What are you, fifty?”
Ezra ignores her. “Group therapy. It could be good for us.”
I can’t think of anything more awful. “Thanks,” I say, “but no thanks.”
Leah grins up at me. Her face becomes extraordinarily red when she’s intoxicated. “Felix, can I ask you a question?” She goes on without waiting for my response. “You dated Marisol,” she says, “but are you also into guys? Since you went out with Ezra, I mean.”
Marisol begins cackling. Ezra chokes on air, and I screw my face up in confusion. “What?”
Leah’s surprised. “You two went out, didn’t you?”
“No, we really didn’t.”
Marisol’s laughter gets louder.
“Oh,” Leah says, looking at Marisol and Austin in confusion. “I thought you went out. I’m not the only one who thought that, right?”
“Everyone always thinks that we did,” Ezra says, giving a small, embarrassed smile without looking at Austin. Austin takes a sip from Leah’s beer bottle. Awkward.
“Yeah,” I say, “I’m also into guys. Why?”
Leah recovers quickly. “I was just wondering if you consider yourself bisexual or pansexual or anything. I thought I was bisexual,” Leah tells us, “but I think it was only because it was like I had to be. It was almost like a habit, until finally one day, I was like—wait, why do I say I’m attracted to guys when literally the last guy I thought was cute was Simba?”
There’s silence. Marisol blinks at Leah. “You know that Simba was a lion, right?”
Austin adds, “And a cartoon.”
“Simba was fucking hot, okay?” Leah says. “That jungle scene with Nala? Come on now.” She pauses. “Though now that I think about it, maybe I was actually more attracted to Nala . . .”
“I thought Kovu was pretty hot,” Ezra tells us, leaning against the wall.
�
��I was all about Lilo’s sister,” Marisol says. “Those curves. Seriously.”
“Zuko, too,” Ezra adds.
“Oh,” Leah says, sitting up. “What about Mulan? And those fucking Li Shang bisexual vibes?”
I’d been super into Mulan, I suddenly remember, until she started dressing like a girl again. I was disappointed when she was forced to leave the army, forced to say that she was a woman. It’s funny—I hadn’t really thought about it until now, but it’s yet another clue. My memories are peppered with little pieces of evidence that I’d always been trans, even before I knew what trans was. Sometimes, I’m a little frustrated with myself. What if I’d been one of the folks who knew, without a doubt, that they were trans since the time they were toddlers? How many years have I wasted living this lie, and all because I hadn’t even known that I could’ve been living my truth all along? But I’m also grateful. Happy that I’d figured it out at all.
“Wait,” Ezra says, “is everyone here queer?”
“Yeah, of course,” Marisol says. “I only hang out with gay people.”
Leah twists a curl around her finger. “Straight people are so exhausting.”
“Did you all see that article on whether women have any value if they don’t get married and have children?” Austin asks.
“I see at least one thing a day that makes me wonder if the straight people are all right.”
“And then there was that article saying that queer TV shows are making more people gay.”
“I never saw a single TV show with a gay person until, like, last year,” Leah says, “and I didn’t turn out to be straight. So.”
“The shows aren’t making people gay,” Austin says. “They’re just making people realize it’s even . . . I don’t know, a possibility. It’s like we’re all brainwashed from the time we’re babies to think that we have to be straight.”
“The straights say that we’ve got an agenda to turn people gay,” Marisol says, “but then will try to force toddlers on each other and say it’s so cute and they’re destined to get married. Seriously.”
I understand what Austin means. Kind of like reading I Am J for the first time, and everything just clicking. I’d already gone through the whole questioning sexuality thing a few years before that. I’d had crushes on girls and guys before, but I never had a crush on both a girl and a guy at the same time. It was almost like a cycle. I’d be attracted to girls for a few months, then to guys for a few months, then back to girls again. And whenever I was into a guy, looking back on it now, it’s difficult to figure out if I was actually into him, if I just wanted to be him—or both. It was one of the most confusing times of my life. I thought, for some reason, that I had to figure out which I was more attracted to—either I was gay or I was straight. One day, a few weeks after meeting Ezra—right around when he started dating Declan—I told him that I felt like I was going crazy.
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