by Robin Talley
“Will Nance be home when we get there?” I ask as we climb the steps to Derek’s floor. “What about Frisbee?”
“Yeah, she’ll be there,” Derek says. “To be honest, Frisbee was an excuse. Nance hates hanging out with big groups at UBA events. She prefers to handle things behind the scenes.”
That seems odd for someone whose position title has the word outreach in it.
Derek’s house looks a lot like my freshman dorm—old and grand. Loud voices echo toward us as we climb the stairs to Derek’s room.
“Er,” Derek says before turning the key in the lock. “I should probably apologize in advance for anything my roommates might say over the course of the afternoon. Sometimes they get kind of...well. You’ll see.”
With that I’m nervous again.
Derek’s room has a huge common area that’s a lot nicer than mine. It has a bar on one side, a big-screen TV and two leather couches. As the door swings open, I see two people sitting hunched over on a couch in front of the unlit fireplace, arguing about what sounds like the plot of a video game involving toy ponies. When they see me, they stop talking right away.
“Toni,” Derek says, “this is Nance and Eli.”
Nance and Eli wave. Then in unison, as if they rehearsed it, they say, “Yo.”
Then both of them, and Derek, too, start laughing and talking about how funny it is that they both said “Yo” at the same time.
I wave back.
Derek goes over to sit on the couch, perching on the arm and gesturing for me to come join them.
I do. All three of them smile back at me.
They look almost like a family, hanging out here. They remind me of my group of friends back home. Except that in my group of friends back home, I was the only one who was trans.
“Hey,” I say. I try to smile at them as coolly as possible. In this moment, my greatest wish in the world is for the people in this room to like me.
“Toni and I met at the UBA table at the activities fair,” Derek tells the others.
An extremely short Asian person with extremely tall pants stands and slaps my hand. “Hey, man. I’m Eli.” Eli’s voice is very high.
“This is Nance,” Derek says, pointing to the girl who’s still sitting down. “Nance, Toni’s helping us with the transition guide.”
Nance squints at me through a pair of glasses that are almost identical to my own.
“You’re a freshman?” Nance asks in a Southern accent that sounds fake.
“Yep,” I say. “Sorry.”
Eli and Derek laugh.
“S’okay, man. You can’t help it,” Derek says.
I sit down on the couch next to Eli, determined to act as if I fit in here. “What, are you all sophomores?” I ask.
“No way! We look like sophomores to you?” Eli asks.
Eli’s the only one whose gender presentation I can’t figure out. I’m pretty sure Derek’s a trans guy, and I’m pretty sure Nance, whose haircut is almost identical to mine, is a butch lesbian. I can’t tell about Eli, though.
“Sorry, no, you all look really old,” I say, even though Eli looks about nine. All three of them laugh. “Grad students?”
“Juniors,” Nance says, then turns to Derek. “Was tabling as vile as usual?”
Derek shrugs. “Will you guys please at least show up at the next meeting? Don’t make me and Toni fend for ourselves all year.”
I try not to smile, but I’m positively giddy that Derek’s including me this way. As if I’m already part of the group.
“No way,” Nance says. “I put up with those bitches enough as it is. I’m sick of hearing Brad go on and on about how he’s one of the first out gay guys in his final club. It’s like, way to be a groundbreaker. You’re a rich white guy who got a bunch of other rich white guys to let you pay them to be their friend. Five points to Brad.”
Eli laughs. “I might go to a meeting or two. I like free cupcakes.”
“Does Shari make those for all the meetings?” I ask.
“Usually,” Derek says. “She’s gotten good at the food coloring. Every meeting has a different theme. Maybe she won’t make them next time, though, now that you called her out on it.”
“No way!” Nance says. “Did he really?”
It takes me a second to realize Nance is talking about me.
“Yeah, and you should’ve seen it,” Derek says. “Toni opens his mouth once, and Shari’s all over him.”
Okay, now Derek’s doing it, too.
No one’s ever called me by male pronouns before.
It’s strange. Not necessarily bad. It’s...I don’t know what it is, actually.
“So, Toni, what’s your story?” Nance asks. “You got somebody back home?”
“Back home?” Was Nance asking about my parents? I don’t usually rant about my mom to people until I know them better.
“You know, like a girlfriend?” Eli blushes. “I mean, or a boyfriend, or whatever?”
“Oh. Yeah.” A boyfriend? How weird. First the pronouns, now this. It’s been years since anyone thought I was into guys. “My girlfriend goes to NYU.”
“Cool,” Derek says. “Do you have a picture?”
“Yeah.” I try to ignore the familiar twinge of anxiety that’s flared back up in my stomach now that we’re talking about Gretchen and flip through the photos on my phone until I find a good one. “This is us at Queer Prom last year.”
“You had a Queer Prom at your high school?” Nance asks. “Where are you from?”
“DC,” I say.
“Oh,” Nance says. “Figures.”
I want to ask what Nance means by that, but then Eli peers at my phone and whistles like a trucker. Except with Eli’s high-pitched voice it sounds more like a teakettle.
“Nice,” Eli says. “Very nice.”
“Yeah, you’ve got a definite hottie there,” Nance says.
“Uh. Thanks.” I’m not sure whether to be proud or offended. I’m leaning toward proud.
“Yo, guys, don’t be crass,” Derek says, squeezing onto the couch with the rest of us and leaning over to look at the picture. “Show some respect.”
“Hey, man, I have the utmost respect for hotties!” Nance says. Everyone’s laughing, so I do, too. “Ask anyone!”
“That’s not what I heard.” Derek smiles and takes the phone out of Eli’s hand. As Eli reaches over to give it to Derek, I catch a glimpse of a chest binder through Eli’s T-shirt. I guess that means Eli presents as male, too. I wonder if Eli’s definitely trans, like Derek, or still figuring it out, like me.
Nance turns back to me. “Are you going to try to stay with your girlfriend all year? You didn’t want to take a break or anything, what with starting college?”
“‘Taking a break’ is juvenile,” I say, making air quotes. “You’re either with someone or you’re not.”
“Yeah, but freshman year is hard,” Derek says. “Long distance is tough when you haven’t done it before.”
“I know. I’ve heard all the clichés,” I say. “How everyone always breaks up freshman year. I’m just saying they couldn’t have been that committed in the first place if all it takes is some distance to split them up. Besides, Gretchen and I are barely even long distance. New York to Boston is a couple of hours on a train. We can see each other every weekend if we want to.”
“Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much,” Nance mutters. I decide to ignore this.
“Every weekend?” Eli asks. “Are you really going to do that?”
“That’s the plan.” I don’t mention that we skipped last weekend.
“Our friend Andy used to have a girl like that,” Nance says. “She was gorgeous, too. She dumped him, though. She had issues with the trans stuff. You know how it goes wit
h some girls.”
“Is your girlfriend cool with it, Toni?” Eli asks in a soft voice. “Or are you not out to her?”
I can’t imagine keeping such a big secret from someone I care about as much as Gretchen. Is that really normal?
Well, I guess Gretchen kept a pretty big secret from me.
“Gretchen’s very much cool with it,” I say. “We’re completely honest with each other about everything.”
“Hey, you should get her to come up for the Halloween dance so we can meet her,” Derek says. “Since you’ll be visiting back and forth all the time anyway.”
“There’s a Halloween dance?” I ask.
Nance snorts. “Dance isn’t the right word. It’s more of an excuse to dress up in slutwear and drink a ton of alcohol.”
“That works for me,” I say, and the others laugh. Not that Gretchen or I usually drink very much. Gretchen is such a lightweight, and I’m always the one stuck driving.
But I don’t have to drive up here. Everyone walks everywhere at Harvard. I can do what I want here.
I can be who I want.
“Some of the straight guys come in drag,” Derek says. “Mostly it’s respectful, though. It’s supposed to be just for the people in our house, but we can get you guys in.”
“Cool, thanks. I’ll tell Gretchen.”
Nance launches into a story about last year’s Halloween dance and Derek joins in. Soon all of them are rushing to tell me all the best stories from last year, and the details on everyone I met at the UBA table, and all the reasons we shouldn’t be hanging out and talking right now (all four of us have reading we should be doing instead).
Derek and Nance and I don’t do any work on the transition guide, but that’s okay. We have plenty of time.
And I have plenty of time to think about this transitioning stuff on my own, too.
4
SEPTEMBER
FRESHMAN YEAR OF COLLEGE
2 WEEKS APART
GRETCHEN
“I looked up your girlfriend online,” Carroll tells me.
It’s a Friday night, and we’re in the lounge carbing up on microwave pasta before we go out. There’s a club Carroll’s been bugging me to try since our first day of classes. Plus my bus to Boston leaves crazy early tomorrow morning, so we figured it would be easier to just stay up all night. It’ll be my first time seeing Toni since school started.
“Oh, yeah?” I say. “Are you and T officially best buds now?”
He laughs. “No. I mean I looked up that genderqueer thing you told me about.”
Crap. I still haven’t mentioned that conversation to Toni. I’ll come clean first thing after I get to Harvard. No, wait, I should do it before I get there. Toni might be upset, and I don’t want to ruin our first visit with this.
“So what did you find out?” I ask Carroll.
“The site said a lot of genderqueer people are just kids who haven’t made up their minds yet whether they want to be a guy or a girl,” Carroll says, turning the faucet on full blast. “It said in the end, most of them either get over it or wind up full-on trannies.”
I sigh. “Don’t say ‘tranny.’ It’s offensive.”
Carroll holds up his hands in surrender. He drops the bowl he was supposed to be rinsing out. It clatters into the sink.
“See?” Carroll says, pointing to it. “Another casualty of political correctness.”
I roll my eyes. “Ha, ha.”
“So, is it true?” He wipes off the bowl. “About genderqueers?”
I’m pretty sure adding an s to genderqueer is offensive, too—it’s offensive to just say queers, I think, and the principle would be the same, right?—but I don’t know that for sure, so I don’t say anything about it.
“I think that’s just a stereotype,” I say, though I’m uncertain. What Carroll read sounds like the kind of thing people say about bi people—that bisexuality isn’t real, and they’re really all either gay or straight and are just being indecisive. Since I have lots of bi friends, and I used to think of myself as kinda-sorta bi, I know that whole thing is bull. Being bi isn’t any less real than being gay or straight is.
The problem is, I know stuff about being bi. I don’t know enough about being genderqueer to argue with whatever Carroll’s been reading. Toni and I talked about this stuff some back when T first told me about it, but it’s all so complicated and it’s hard to remember all the details. I really need to go online and read some websites that are better than the one Carroll found. How will I know which websites are the good ones, though?
I guess I could ask Toni, but—well, I don’t want T to know I’m still kind of confused. A good girlfriend would remember all the details. Actually, a good girlfriend would just instinctively understand all of this.
Of course, a good girlfriend probably wouldn’t have lied about where she was going to college, either.
Okay. Enough. We’re going out. I can berate myself later.
A half-drunk girl wanders into the lounge and says hi to Carroll. He says hi back. She lives on a different floor, but she’s in Tisch with him, I learn.
“Hey, have you met my girl Gretchen?” Carroll asks. “Gretch, this is Tracy.”
The girl looks at me. “Oh, right. I heard there was a lesbian on this floor.”
I laugh. “Yeah, two of us, even.”
The first week of classes, I ran into this girl I knew from debate, Briana. After we stopped laughing about how funny it was that we’d both wound up at NYU, she recruited me to join this volunteer project she’s doing with a middle school in Inwood. She also introduced me to her friends. One of her friends, Heidi, turned out to live on my floor.
It’s nice to have some gay friends at school who are girls. They aren’t nearly as much fun to hang out with as Carroll, though.
“I need to call Toni before we go out,” I tell Carroll.
“Take your time,” he says. “Suck up to the ball and chain. I’m nowhere near finalizing my outfit anyway.”
“Whatever. You’ll wind up in that new shirt you got on Tuesday.”
“Not necessarily! There’s also the faux-vintage one you made me buy at Urban. I have to do a compare and contrast.”
Tracy laughs.
“Don’t encourage him,” I tell her.
I take my pasta back to my empty room. My roommate, Samantha, is already out at a party with her goth friends. She wandered out earlier wearing a black dress, red fishnets and knee-high boots. I’m not sure exactly what look she was going for, but I don’t think it quite worked out the way she was hoping.
Toni isn’t available on video chat, but when I call, T answers the phone on the first ring. I can hear voices in the background.
“Hey, Gretch!” I can hear the smile in Toni’s voice, and I automatically smile back. It’s so weird thinking it’s been more than two weeks since we were last in the same place. I thought that much time apart would be unbearable, but getting to hear Toni’s voice helps a lot. “I was about to call you! Are you going out?”
“Yeah, to a club with Carroll. How about you?”
“I’m out now, actually. Derek and the guys are having a party in their room.”
“For real? Do people at Harvard have really huge rooms?”
“Some do.” Someone says something in the background, and Toni laughs. “Hey, I meant to ask you, do you want to come up here for Halloween weekend? There’s a dance. It’s supposed to be cool.”
My face breaks into a full-on grin.
Two weeks ago, I’d emailed Toni a list of potential bus times for me to come visit. Toni had replied with a one-sentence note about being too busy.
When I first read that email, I thought that was it for us. I thought Toni was so mad about what I’d done that T had decided never to see me a
gain. I’d gotten embarrassingly hysterical about it, actually. Then Samantha came in from the bathroom and I had to pretend I was all emotional from watching a sappy video about cats.
Then Toni sent me a totally normal text about dining hall food, and we’d gotten on video chat that night and gushed about how much we missed each other, and it seemed like things were back to usual between us. I guess Toni really was just overwhelmed in those first few days of school. I was so relieved I started crying as soon as we signed off the chat.
Now I’m going up tomorrow, and we’re planning another trip for after that. I guess things really are back to how they’re supposed to be.
“Sure!” I tell Toni. “I was thinking about going to the Village Halloween parade, but that’s okay. I’ve been before. Should I get a costume for the dance?”
“Yeah. Get something sexy, all right? I want to show you off.”
I laugh. Toni doesn’t usually say stuff like that. “Okay. Carroll can help me find something. Listen, do you have a sec to talk? It’s kind of serious.”
“Yeah, sure. Hang on.” A door closes on Toni’s end of the phone. “What’s up?”
I tell Toni about what I said to Carroll that first night. I don’t mention what Carroll said back, or how I didn’t know the answers to his questions. I’ll set him straight once I’ve read the websites and know the details.
Toni doesn’t react the way I expected.
“Oh, everyone knows now,” Toni says. “Even my roommates. Joanna’s in a class with someone who’s in the UBA, so they found out last week. It’s not a big deal.”
“Wow.” I sit down on the bed. I can’t believe Toni didn’t mention this before. I keep my voice normal, though, because Toni’s acting like it’s nothing special. “Really? Are they being cool?”
“Felicia’s being a bitch, but Felicia was a bitch already. Everyone else is acting extremely normal. Like they’re making a point of it. Ebony even asked me what pronouns to use.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That I didn’t care, yet.” I can hear Toni fidgeting. “Derek and Nance and those guys use male pronouns for me.”