The Making of Us

by Debbie McGowan

  Jazz laughed and shoved me playfully on her way inside. “I’m gonna hit the vending machine. Do you want…” She stopped and shook her head. “Forget it.”

  I was surprised to realise I’d have probably said no, but it was instantly wiped out by what happened next.

  “Bisexual, my ass.”

  At first, I thought I was hearing things, because I’d literally just walked into the hall, and I couldn’t see anyone, never mind that only Pride officers should’ve been there this early before the hustings—I shouldn’t have been there—and it didn’t sound like the sort of thing any of them should be saying. I peered sideways at Jazz and shrugged, but she was staring hard at the stage. I looked, too, and saw the tabs flutter stage-left.

  “So he says.” That was Sarah’s voice, definitely. “It’s bullshit because I called him out.”

  “The whole bi thing is bullshit. Haven’t you noticed how they’re always fat or ugly?” That was the same male voice, and I was struggling to figure out who it was. “Or both?”

  Carlos, the current secretary and two-faced shitbag. No wonder I didn’t recognise him saying something like that. We’d always got on OK as well. Not anymore.

  The pair of them cackled, like it was the funniest thing in the world to be crucifying someone, and came out onto the stage, still talking. They saw Jazz and me and waved. We didn’t wave back.

  Carlos turned to face the other way and said, “I wonder if his ears are burning.”

  That was when I realised. The mics were on, but they didn’t know. They didn’t know I could hear them talking about me. What the hell? I’d never done anything to either of them. Nor had I said anything about being bisexual—apart from to Leigh, and they wouldn’t have told anyone. So Sarah was telling me what I was and then dismissing it as bullshit?

  This was all so wrong. What if new Pride members came in and heard them?

  “Can you blame him for wanting to double his chances?” Carlos glanced back at me with the shittiest smile. What a bastard.

  “I bet you anything he’s gonna stand for office,” Sarah said.

  “He’s not on the list of candidates. If he is standing, we’ll have to reinforce the stage.”

  With every word that spewed from his mouth, my sadness and self-pity grew and mutated until it was pure, paralysing anger. My eyes were burning with fury and tears. I couldn’t see and barely caught the blur of someone moving away from me.

  The next second, Jazz was leaping up into the middle of their cosy little tête-à-tête and jabbing at Carlos’s chest while she screamed a string of f-words and c-words in his and Sarah’s faces. Sarah’s head jerked my way. She looked horrified, for what it was worth.

  I couldn’t stand it anymore. I needed to get out of there, get away from these people and never come back. Not to Pride, not to uni, not to this constant living fucking hell of being the fat kid. No. Make that the ugly bisexual fat kid. I was done.

  I passed the Pride banner on my way out, so tempted to punch straight through the fake smiling faces. Pride? They had not one fucking single thing to be proud of. Not one.

  It had started raining. I noticed that much. It stung my burning cheeks as I walked and walked, taking a detour whenever I saw people approaching. I heard someone call my name. Noah, probably, but I couldn’t face him. I couldn’t face anyone. Once upon a time, I’d believed grown-ups who told me ‘kids are cruel’, and the insults, the bullying—I’d tried to ignore it, to not let people see how much they hurt me, always looking forward to that distant day in the future when I became an adult and it would stop.

  But it hadn’t stopped. It was never, ever going to stop. I wanted to scream, I was so bloody angry. This wasn’t fair, on me, on Leigh, on Jazz, who was back there, fighting my battle for me…

  I halted and bashed my fist against my forehead. Crap. I had to go back. I didn’t want to, but I had to stop Jazz. Not to rescue her—she could look after herself. But this wasn’t the right way to deal with it.

  Yes, Carlos and Sarah were horrible to me, but if they were doing it to me, anyone could come under attack, and it needed addressing. If I made this formal, they’d be disciplined and kicked out of Pride. They could be kicked out of uni, and I was ready to take Carlos on, but Sarah…

  Granted, she hadn’t defended me against Carlos, but now I thought back, she hadn’t actually said anything bad, other than telling him I was bi, which was out of order, but not at the magnitude of hate crime.

  Maybe she had good reason to be defensive—OK, that was a bit of an understatement. She was downright spiteful, but throwing anger back at her could only make things worse. It wouldn’t challenge hers or Carlos’s discrimination, and whilst we only had to put up with each other for the next few months, where would it leave Pride in the future if we didn’t sort it out now?

  I gave myself another minute or two to calm down, waiting until I was no longer conscious of my heart thumping and I was sure I wasn’t going to burst into tears at the first look of disgust that came my way. Then I took a long, deep breath and traced my steps back to the meeting hall.

  Wow, I’d walked a long way!

  I could hear Jazz from outside, still shouting but with tears, and when I got in there, I saw Sarah was in much the same state. Carlos had retreated to a safe distance and gave me what I interpreted as a remorseful nod. Too little, too late. I noticed Leigh and Noah over the other side of the room with a few others, all of them whispering, no doubt trying to figure out what was going on.

  Noah moved towards me, on an intercept course, and reached me about halfway to the stage. “Everything all right, Jess?”

  “Yeah, can you give me a minute?” I asked, keeping my eyes on Jazz and Sarah.

  “Sure.” He returned to Leigh, and I approached, unseen by Jazz until I was almost right behind her, at which point she spun around to see why Sarah had stopped yelling.

  “Hey,” I said. “You OK?”

  Jazz snorted breaths out of her nose and nodded.

  “Thanks for having my back, but I need to deal with this.”

  For a moment, she stayed stubbornly where she was, but then gave an angry shrug and backed off.

  “I’d like to talk to you, please,” I said to Sarah. I wasn’t going to talk to Carlos. I was still figuring out whether I was going to report him to the SU and Student Support.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” Sarah snapped.

  “I appreciate that, but what you said about me, you had no right, and it hurt me.” The tears were on their way. I swallowed and kept going, not really caring if I did end up crying. It wouldn’t do any harm for her to see the effect of their conversation. “Can we go into the office or something?” I suggested.

  “Say what you need to, Jesse.”

  “It would be better in private.”

  “Just say it.” She folded her arms and glared at me.

  “I don’t understand why you’re so down on me.”

  “Because you don’t belong here.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not. You think it’s so easy—hold up a flag, attend a parade, wear a rainbow t-shirt. It’s not a lifestyle you can pick up when it suits you and then fuck off later when you realise you’re seen as a nobody or a freak. You don’t live this. It’s not a bloody fashion statement.”

  “So this is about allies?”

  “What else? Yeah, yeah, I know you’re seeing someone queer. But that came a bit out of the blue, didn’t it? We discuss limiting membership to LGBT+ only, and all of a sudden you’re bisexual.”

  Sarah was in such a state, she was wheezing and struggling to catch her breath. I was a bit taken aback, both by how worked up she was and her accusation. It was so ridiculous I wanted to laugh.

  “You think I’m going out with Leigh as some kind of Pride entry ticket?”

  She completely ignored that. “Look, Jesse, I’ve got no problem with anyone who wants to support their mates, kids, siblings, whoever. It’s awesome if they do, b
ut this is not their space. It’s ours, and we had to fight for it, so butt the fuck out. If you want to belong somewhere, start your own group. Don’t gatecrash ours.”

  I stood my ground, but…I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d intended to counter her argument, but I could see where she was coming from, because, ironically, she and Carlos had just given me my first taste of biphobia. Plus, this was exactly how we’d felt about that idiot at Weight Watchers who claimed he understood how hard it was trying to lose weight. There was a difference between being an ally and tagging along for the parties. However, none of that was why I was caught in a quandary.

  “Sarah, are you OK?”

  Again, she ignored my question and glared pure hatred at Jazz. “I thought you would understand.”

  Jazz gave a loud, false laugh. “Oh, I understand, all right. You’re not interested in supporting our students. You want your own little clique. Hey, here’s an idea. Why don’t you leave and start a lesbian-only group?”

  “Jazz, just leave it, yeah?” I said peaceably, I hoped. I didn’t want to further antagonise either of them.

  “Fine!” Jazz slapped her hands loudly against her sides and stormed off, slamming the door on her way. Well, at least the rain might cool her temper.

  I turned my attention back to Sarah, who was still wheezing and gasping and not backing down. “Do you use an inhaler?” I asked.

  “Don’t fucking patronise me!”

  “I’m not, I swear. I’ve heard everything you said, and I agree with a lot of it, but right now, I’m worried about you.”

  “You…” She turned frantically on the spot. “Can’t breathe…”

  I looked past her to the stage and asked, “Has Sarah got a bag or coat there somewhere?”

  Carlos looked around him and then marched off into the wing. “Yep!” He reappeared with a bag, jumped down to ground level and jogged across to give it to Sarah.

  “Do you need an ambulance?” I asked. She shook her head and delved inside her bag, searching, shaking. This was not looking good. Her lips were turning blue, which did have me panicking a little. “Noah, can you get a chair, please?”

  A chair appeared behind Sarah; she sat without prompting and held up her bag to me.

  “Is there anything private in here you don’t want people to see?”

  “No.”

  I crouched and emptied it onto the floor, searching through ring binders and pencil cases for an inhaler. I found two. “Which one?”

  “Blue.”

  I gave it a shake and took the guard off. “Can you manage?”

  In spite of her struggle to breathe, she still slow-blinked to show me what she thought of that question.

  I remained crouched and held the back of the chair for support. If it had been anyone else, I’d have reassured them, told them to take it easy, done all that other stuff we were told to do to keep the patient calm. But this was Sarah, and the way she felt about me, anything I said would only exacerbate her agitation. But she was, gradually, starting to breathe more easily.

  “Thanks,” she muttered begrudgingly.

  “You’re welcome,” I replied and got out of her space. We still needed to have this out, but it could wait.

  Her point about banning allies from Pride…I really wasn’t sure that was her problem right now. For as much as she could be abrupt and outspoken, I’d never seen her so upset before, and I had a horrible feeling it was personal.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Sixteen

  By the time I’d finished explaining to Noah and Leigh what had happened—not the details, just that I’d heard some unsavoury comments—I was angry again, but it was no longer the hopeless anger that had sent me tearing out of there earlier. If anything, it had fired me up. I was sick of listening to that shit and I wanted to do something about it. I made a decision, right then and there.

  “I’m going to stand for office.”

  Noah and Leigh looked at me as if they thought they’d misheard, which wasn’t surprising, considering how often I’d bumbled at Leigh, not to mention that only a few days ago, I’d done everything in my power to convince Noah to do the talking for our group presentation. They both knew how shy I was, how much I tried to blend in and stay invisible.

  But this was different, because it wasn’t about me, or not just about me. Sarah might’ve been the most outspoken, but she was hardly the only person with those sentiments, and whether I agreed with her or not, if the consensus among the members was that allies should form their own separate group, I felt strongly that we needed to make that change.

  I noticed Noah watching me through narrowed eyes. “What?” I asked.

  “I know that face. You’re scheming.”

  “Not scheming. Writing a campaign speech in my head.”

  “You’re serious about this?”

  “Yes, I am.” I turned to Leigh. “What do you think? Bad idea? Good idea?”

  They nodded and smiled assuredly. “Good idea.”

  I huffed out a breath I was sure I’d been holding in since helping Sarah. She was going to go nuts. “OK. I’m off to get a nomination form—oh, and I need two people to nominate me.”

  “That’s handy,” Leigh said.

  Noah shrugged his agreement. “Almost like you planned it…”

  I laughed. “I really didn’t.”

  “You want me to come with you?” Leigh asked.

  “Please.”

  We set off, hand in hand, for the front of the hall. I was getting really psyched about this, although it meant talking to Carlos, and as we neared the stage, I felt my hair prickle.

  “Do you want me to ask him?” Leigh offered.

  “No, I need to do it.” I squeezed Leigh’s hand. “Thank you, though.” I was glad they were here with me.

  Carlos was organising papers on the table stage-left. Rather than interrupt him, I waited for him to notice me. He didn’t, but Jazz did and tapped him on the arm to get his attention then gestured with a nod. Carlos turned around, peering down at me from the stage. He seemed to be making the most of having the height advantage for once.

  “Can I have a nomination form, please?”

  Without a word, he turned back to the table and picked up some papers, flicking through them as he snipped out, “What role?”

  “Inclusion officer.”

  The paper shuffling stopped, and I suppressed a smile. He didn’t like that one bit. I hadn’t noticed before, but he had an epic unibrow, and he was frowning so hard it could almost have been a moustache. Bit of an exaggeration, but still. I was enjoying the fact he was pissed off.

  He came to the edge of the stage and jumped down next to me. “You need two nominations.”

  “Yep.”

  “And a brief summary of your campaign.”

  “OK.”

  The unibrow lifted a little. He’d expected to get a rise out of me, but that was the easy part, getting it down on paper. Standing up at the front of the rapidly filling meeting hall—it was going to be a challenge, but I knew what I wanted to say.

  “Bring it back to me as soon as you’re done. You’ve got ten minutes.”

  “No problem.” I took the papers and moved to walk away. I wasn’t filling them in with him looking over my shoulder the whole time. I managed one step before he spoke again.

  “Look…Jesse. I’m sorry about before.”

  Keeping my back to him, I said, “Thanks for apologising.”

  “But you don’t accept?”

  I considered for a moment and turned to face him, holding out a bit longer while I weighed up the implications of what I was about to say. “Yes, I accept your apology, but that’s not the end of the matter. You’ve not only broken Pride’s rules, you’ve broken the Student Union’s, the university’s and—I’m pretty sure—the law.”

  “Right.” Carlos nodded, his expression either remorseful or fearful. I thought probably the latter. “You’re going to report me.”

  “Actually, I’m not, beca
use you’ll get kicked out of uni, and no doubt spend the rest of your life telling people how some fat bloke fucked up your degree for you. So, no, I’m not giving you the satisfaction. I’m going to talk to Student Support about restorative justice.”

  Carlos’s eyes shifted from side to side; he was trying to figure out the catch, but there wasn’t one. This way, he’d still have to face up to what he’d done, but if he screwed up, it would be on his head, not mine.

  Eventually, he looked up and kind of made eye contact. “Thank you,” he said.

  I gave him a nod and walked away.

  “Oh, God,” Leigh whispered. “Matty’s gonna wipe the floor with him.”

  “He sure is.” Assuming Matty was up for taking the case. He’d recently finished his restorative justice training, and I’d seen him practising his technique—with Noah and his brother, which was best defined as a work in progress. They hadn’t killed each other, and that was a good start, although from what Noah had told me, they’d managed to resolve most of their differences before Matty made them his crash test dummies.

  In fact, Matty had arrived whilst I’d been talking to Carlos, but I was going to leave explaining what had happened until later. I needed him for something far more urgent.

  “Alright, Matty? How was the dance show?”

  “Never mind that. Are you really standing for office?”

  “Yep. Inclusion officer, and I need to pick your brains.”

  “Ha! Gonna have to find them first.” Matty grinned. I didn’t like that he was so self-deprecating—hello, pot, meet kettle!—but that was his battle to win. “What d’you need to know?”

  “The Equality Act, short version.”

  He tapped his thumb with his index finger—first point: “Protects people from direct or—” index finger to index finger “—indirect discrimination in the—” middle finger “—workplace—” ring finger “—and wider society, and allows for positive action.” That one landed on his pinky, even though, to me, it only sounded like the second point, but it was an interesting insight into how Matty remembered stuff.

  “What’s positive action?” I asked.