by Radclyffe
“Sure, maybe.” Keith sighed. “I hate this school.”
“Me too.”
“You want another drink?”
“No thanks.”
“All right. Later, Allie.”
“Bisexuality is a valid identity!” I called after him as he walked away. He gave me a thumbs-up over his shoulder. I sighed and stood, ready to wander back to the fun, awesome party.
People were dancing, but in this kind of shy, anemic way. Mostly boys and girls were separated, middle-school formal style. Boys were chilling out by the keg, girls by the bar, with only a few wary, horny ambassadors gyrating between the groups. My finished drink had left a sickly-sweet taste in my mouth, so I decided to sneak over to boy territory and nab a beer.
“I swear, Everson’s upstairs right now, fuckin’ Jelly,” came Greg Hammelstein’s voice as I approached the keg.
“Sick, dude, sick,” said Ronnie, making a face. “I ran track with that kid.”
“Which one?” asked Pete Deller, drunkenly.
“Uh, both, I guess.” Ronnie sounded equally drunk. “Whatever. Gross. Jel’s, like, like a guy.”
“Pretty hot, though,” said Greg, taking a swig of beer. “Hot chick, I mean,” he amended hastily. “Like, she’s hot when she’s a chick. Kind of.”
“Yeah, but think about it,” said Pete. “What if, like, you were fuckin’ him—her, I mean. Like, you were gettin’ down to it, and he switched. Like, in the middle of it?”
“Aw, sick!” cried Ronnie and Greg, flinching visibly.
“Those Swops seriously freak me out,” said Greg. “Right?”
“Totally,” said Pete. Ronnie took a sip of beer and said nothing.
“Idiots,” I muttered, deciding the beer was not worth it.
“You say something?” Pete demanded, turning around.
“Yeah, I said you’re an idiot,” I repeated loudly.
“Fuck off,” said Pete. “Who invited you, bull dyke?”
“Everyone’s invited, Pete,” Ronnie said evenly. I felt suddenly bad about the karate trophies. Even if none of them were first place.
“Fag!” said Pete.
“You’re the fag!” cried Ronnie.
“Oh my God, fuck you guys,” I said, walking away.
“Dyke!” Pete yelled. Something smacked me on the back of the head and I felt a cold trickle run down my neck. Pete, or one of his devoted groupies (no homo), had nailed me with a full cup of beer.
I wish I could say I ran back and punched Pete right in the face, taking a brave stand for ostracized gender-nonconforming kids everywhere. But actually, I just hunched my shoulders and kept walking, silently praying that Pete didn’t have a brick handy. I was contemplating starting to walk home when I bumped right into Jelson.
“Dammit, Allie, watch where you’re going!” She sounded flustered and furious.
“Sorry,” I said forlornly.
She crossed her arms and scowled at me. She looked like she wanted to say something else angry, but couldn’t think of anything. She sniffed.
“Why are you covered in beer?”
“Hate crime,” I said. “Where have you been?”
“Upstairs. Danny said he wanted to ask me something about Amy.”
“All the guys thought you two were getting it on,” I said.
Jelson heaved a tired sigh. “No, Danny didn’t get any. He sure tried, though.”
“Are you okay? What happened?”
“I punched him in the goddamn mouth.”
“You’re so cool,” I said wistfully.
Jelson shrugged. “It’s not that impressive when you can dramatically increase your upper-body strength at will.”
I looked closer at the arms crossed over Jelson’s chest, squinting in the shadowy light of the patio, and saw that they were a little too thick for Jelson’s girl arms. So were the thighs poking out from under Jelson’s short skirt. I stared a little too long at the thighs.
“Is there a problem?” Jelson demanded. The voice had thrown me off. Well, the voice and the skirt and the pushup bra. It wasn’t a boy’s voice, because Jelson wasn’t totally a boy. Jelson was in-between again.
“Guh,” I said.
“Oh my God, I don’t need this.” Jelson started to walk away.
“Jelson, wait!” I moved to follow. “I’m sorry!”
“Leave me alone!”
“No, I need to talk to you!” I grabbed Jelson’s shoulder, wanting her to look at me.
“You have no idea what it’s like!” Jelson threw me off, obviously fighting back tears. “You’re so secure, being the way you are. You’re totally okay being in-between, you don’t care what anyone thinks.”
“What?” I said, thrown off-guard. “Jelson, what are you talking about?”
“You strut around, big tough macho butch girl, and you don’t let anybody change you. You don’t let anyone push you back and forth.” Jelson’s tears were smearing his mascara. “You’re everything that’s best about boys and girls, together. You’re so strong, and so kind.” Jelson’s shoulders shook.
“Jelson,” I said, my heart beating hard.
“And I know how you look at me! You laugh at me, the way I am with boys, and the way I am with girls. You think it’s so stupid!”
“Jelson, I don’t think you’re stupid—”
“I only do it because I’m scared,” said Jelson. “I don’t know how else to be!”
“Jelson, I had no idea you felt like that,” I said. “You’re just so good at it, so good at being a boy or a girl, it always seemed so natural.”
“Oh, please.” Jelson laughed harshly. “There is nothing natural about this outfit.”
“Okay, yeah, totally fair.” I smiled weakly. “But I always felt so gross next to you. So lumbering and awkward.”
“Oh my God, Allie, have you looked in the mirror?” Jelson put a hand on my face. I made a horrible little noise.
“Are you all right?”
“No!” I reached out, put an arm around Jelson’s waist, and pulled us close together. I gasped, feeling the hard, soft warmth of that body. Of Jelson. My best friend.
And then we were two freaky, androgynous high school queers, kissing in the dark on some rich kid’s patio. Jelson is my best friend. I love Jelson.
The Tea Bowl
Justine F. Lane
The first time I saw her, she was standing in the doorway of the English staffroom where I had a desk. It was mid-January, the coldest time of year in Japan. Aside from the gas heater, I was alone. She looked at me and asked where my supervisor was. Many of the final-year students had been coming to see him for last-minute help as they prepared for their university entrance exams. I called him, then lowered my eyes back to my language studies.
But she kept her attention on me, and as I looked up, she spoke to me in slow, steady English. “I heard that you’re a vegetarian,” she said. I was surprised, not because she knew—I’d told many students, and word spreads quickly. And then there was that rather graphic animal rights board I’d put up in the corridor. What surprised me was that she’d brought it up. No other student had before.
“Yes,” I replied, “that’s right.” At this, she grinned broadly, poking her head a little farther into the office.
“Me too,” she said. I stared at her, taken aback. I’d never met a vegetarian student here. I told her as much. She smiled some more, then stepped across the threshold. Her expression turned to one of great concentration as she struggled to find the English words she wanted to say. “Since I was a child,” she said. “I never liked meat.”
I told her I thought that was great, and really meant it. Then my supervisor came to fetch her, and our conversation ended.
The next day, again, I was at my desk when the door to the staffroom slid open. It was a heavy door and always made a sound when it was opened or closed. I looked up to see the same student. She smiled and gave a small wave. Again, she asked for my supervisor. This time, he was at his desk. As she
walked past me toward him, I looked at her hair. It was thick, jet black and straight, and cut short, above the ears. It was bordering on a bowl cut, but cute. I looked at her clothes. She was wearing a plaid flannel shirt, in the ’90s farm style that had recently returned to popularity. The collar was open, and I could see the neck of her white T-shirt. She wore some kind of cargo pants and a bright orange hoodie. Suspicious, I thought, then checked myself. I returned my concentration to my studies, but the new grammar point didn’t make sense, and my chest felt strange. It was burning, right in the center. My palms were getting kind of sweaty, too. I wondered whether the pickles I’d eaten with lunch had been okay. Or perhaps I was getting a cold—there were lots going around.
About twenty minutes later, she walked past my desk again on her way out. She paused and looked at me.
“I heard that you’re originally from Africa,” she said.
I was at least a head taller than her, but since I was sitting, I was forced to look up at her face. It was oval-shaped and very soft. The strange feeling in my chest intensified and my throat felt like it was closing as I confirmed my nationality. “That’s great,” she said, grinning. She had nice teeth, I thought, and then wondered at the randomness of that cogitation. I usually didn’t notice people’s teeth unless there was something strange about them, or they had none at all.
She asked if I knew Swahili at all. I shook my head. She told me that she wanted to study it at university. I was impressed. I asked her why she wanted to study it. “I want to go to Africa and help the people there,” she said sincerely. Despite the simplicity of this statement and the problematic elements to it, I couldn’t help but marvel at how cool she was. I didn’t usually admire people I’d just met—I preferred to judge them savagely.
After she had left, the strange feeling in my chest persisted. I felt hot, and my heart was beating fast, pumping sweat out of my pores. What was going on? Fifteeen minutes went by, and I had just decided to go to the sick room when my supervisor walked by. Without thinking, I blurted out that the student was vegetarian. He was confused.
“Which one?”
“Er, the one that was in here just now,” I said. But two more girls had come to see him since. He gave me some names. But I didn’t know hers. “The one with the short hair,” I tried, my heart pounding. Comprehension spread across his face.
“Ah, you mean her!” he said. “She’s vegetarian? I had no idea.” I repeated her name as he had said it, my clumsy foreign tongue struggling to get the right pronunciation.
He corrected me a couple of times, then said, “It’s quite an unusual name—it means ‘child of the wind.’” I imagined leaves and pink blossom petals gently blowing across a late-spring landscape.
My supervisor was still talking. “I don’t know the exact details, but she lives alone with her mother,” he said. “They’re—how do you say it—pottery?”
I giggled. “Potters?”
“Yes—potters. Every month they sell their goods at a temple market.”
Her “cool” points instantly doubled. In this society that was dominated by paper-shuffling “salarymen” and “office ladies,” a humble, creative, and independent trade like pottery was something that earned my respect.
The next day, I was feeling much better—no more chest burning, perspiration, or palpitations. I chalked up the previous day’s ailment to heartburn and put on nice clothes for a change: pinstripe pants, a collared shirt, and a black V-neck pullover. At work, I decided to finish sticking up some posters before doing anything else. As I was balanced on a desk, pre-cut strips of tape all over my hands, I heard the door to the staffroom slide open. My heart started pounding again. A boy’s voice called for my supervisor, and I relaxed. Then the door slid open again. This time, a familiar voice, deep but feminine, called for my supervisor. In an instant, all the feelings were back. My legs trembling, I leapt off the desk, ripping the crotch of my pants on the way down. As the threads snapped, suddenly I understood what was going on. I opened the classroom door to see her beautiful, young face, and it was clear that I had fallen for it.
Crap, I thought. I did mention the fact that she was a student, right? And that I was an English teacher? As my supervisor led her to his desk, I returned to my own and had a discreet freak-out. Oh my God! How could this have happened? And so quickly? And why? I was in a relationship. I’d come to Japan with my partner, and our anniversary was coming up. But no matter how sternly I talked to myself, I couldn’t think my way out of it. This girl was having a physical effect on me like nothing I’d ever experienced. It felt like she was holding a white-hot poker to my breastplate, but I couldn’t—or rather, didn’t want to move away from it.
I had to speak to her some more. I devised a smooth strategy to snare her on her way out. It felt like she had been talking to my supervisor for hours when she finally passed by my desk. “Hey…” I mangled her name. She stopped to look at me. Remembering my ripped pants, I clamped my thighs shut. How long had I been sitting with my legs flapping open like that? “I heard that your parents make pottery,” I said, using her way of speaking. She smiled, glancing at my supervisor.
“Yes, it’s the family business,” she said. She seemed pleased, but puzzled, that I was interested.
“That’s cool!” I said. “What kind of pottery do you make?” She told me that it was a traditional style, using simple blue and white designs. It sounded great. All was going according to plan. “Well, er, do you have any tea bowls?” I asked. For a second, she didn’t understand. I repeated the word in Japanese, probably inadvertently swearing at her. She smiled and said that they had the bowls. “Well, I’d like to buy one,” I said. “For tea ceremony. I, er, study it, actually.” I really was studying Japanese tea ceremony, but had yet to purchase any bowls.
“Then I’ll bring you one,” she said, without hesitation.
“Great, just tell me how much it is,” I said.
“No, no,” she said, looking confused. “I’ll give you one, as a present.”
I was blown away. Tea bowls cost thousands of yen. And apparently her family wasn’t well-off; yet here she was, a student I’d only spoken to once or twice, saying she’d give me one. I couldn’t accept it. We argued about it politely for a minute, but in the end she won. She brought her hands close to my desk and tried to explain about the different sizes of bowls they had. Although her English was fine, I couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. I was captivated by her hands. They were so small, so cute. Her nails were very short—again, suspicious, I thought. I drifted off into a fantasy involving those hands and the warm, moist places they’d fit into so perfectly. When she stopped speaking, I jolted back to reality, nodding and reassuring her that the size was perfect. I could have been agreeing to a thimble for all I knew. Then she was gone.
I wondered how old she was. She had to be at least eighteen, turning nineteen. That was the average age for the final-year students. I sucked my teeth. It was only a three-year age difference. I’d dated a girl eight years older than me, and that had worked…well, sort of. Okay, not at all, but it wasn’t because of the age difference. But what was I thinking? I was in a relationship. Yes, these feelings were strong. Every cell in my body was filled with a longing that felt eons old. She’d be graduating in just six weeks, and then a relationship would no longer be forbidden. But it was a ridiculous idea. What was I going to do, break up with my girlfriend and run off with a teenager? Open up our relationship like we’d talked about doing at some point? Have an illicit but steamy affair in a broom closet or love hotel somewhere? Preposterous. Yet, cruelly, I allowed myself to see a possibility.
That evening at home, I felt compelled to tell my partner at least part of what I was going through. Writer types are always oversharing. “So,” I cleared my throat, “I’m getting a new tea bowl.” She didn’t look up from the scrapbook she was pasting stuff into.
“That’s great,” she said, a pre-programmed response.
I added, “Fro
m a student. She’s a vegetarian too, can you believe it?” I was hoping and fearing she would pick up on what I was really trying to say. But she merely glanced up and said, “That’s nice.” I couldn’t contain myself.
“I know, isn’t it?” I exclaimed, beaming, and proceeded to tell her the whole story, minus the part where I fell in love. She didn’t seem to find anything about it suspicious, and she even said she’d sew my pants, if I paid her. That’s how it was with her—nothing for free.
I was burdened by the detail I hadn’t told my girlfriend, but I just didn’t have the guts to do it. I didn’t know how she would react, and as much as I wanted to tell her, I didn’t want to hurt her. I had no appetite for dinner, but ate so as to avoid suspicion. We usually went to bed around ten, but I stayed up well past midnight, sitting alone in the small lounge and letting the invigorating, but unstable, surging energy of love carry me into imaginary lands where I chased the child of the wind through wheat fields and laughed in her bare, sun-kissed arms, completely carefree and absorbed in the moment.
From the next day, I waited. I had no idea when the tea bowl would arrive. She’d asked me when I would next be at school, and stupidly, I’d said I would be there every day. Even though I had a quiet schedule for the next couple of weeks, I was chained to my desk until she returned. Every time the door slid open, I palpitated and perspired. I made a mix CD of music I liked, since she’d mentioned she was into rock music and was learning guitar. I wrote out the track list for the mix CD in blue pen and added a few doodles, and, after some thought, my e-mail address. I folded it up and put it inside the CD case.
I paid close attention to the floor by the doorway. Students normally wore standard-issue green and white canvas school slippers, but once they’d left the school, as the final-years had, they wore the gray slippers used for guests when they came to see teachers. Our staffroom was a no-slipper zone, which meant you had to take them off and leave them outside. Every time I came back from the toilet and saw a pair of those gray slippers outside the door, I almost fainted.