What We Left Behind

by Robin Talley

  “Hey, you’re into the vampire look, right?” I laugh. “Please just say you’ll do it.”

  “I’ll do it if you want me to, but you’re making me nervous with this stuff. Look, I know it’s got to be hard. You and your girlfriend were together for so long, and—”

  “Are,” I correct her. “We’re still together. We’re just on a break for a couple of weeks.”

  That’s what I keep saying. To myself. To my friends. To anyone who will listen.

  I don’t even know what it means, though. What’s a break, really? How is not talking to each other and agreeing to go out with other people any different from regular old breaking up?

  Toni still hasn’t called me to take it all back. I was so positive that would happen first thing. I guess I don’t know Toni as well as I thought I did.

  Maybe I should’ve just let Toni go through with it that night instead of making things worse. I acted like a little kid throwing a tantrum because I wasn’t getting what I wanted.

  Thinking about what might’ve happened if I hadn’t fought back makes me nauseated. I stop walking and grab on to the scaffolding to steady myself.

  “Right, I know.” Samantha stops with me, not noticing that I’m about to fall over. “It’s got to be hard when you’ve been with someone for so long and then all of a sudden—”

  “Hey, now!” I laugh. I let go of the scaffolding and take a step. Then another. Then we’re walking again.

  I can do this. I’m not going to throw up at nine in the morning when I’m not even hungover.

  “No analyzing!” I say. “This is only about hair, okay?”

  “Okay, okay. It’s just that you’ve been acting strange ever since Thanksgiving. Sorry, but I couldn’t help noticing.”

  I forgive her, since it’s fine as long as she doesn’t talk about it. We make it the rest of the way to class without further gastrointestinal distress.

  After class I go to Ricky’s and pick up some Jet Black Hair Goo. That night Samantha applies said goo to my hair in our bathroom sink. It comes out looking gooier than I had in mind, but I look totally different than I did before, and that was the whole idea.

  “You look like Morticia Addams,” Carroll says the next night when he shows up at my room. Samantha took off a long time ago. She said she was meeting up with a guy and might not be back until late.

  “I know, right?” I say to Carroll. “Don’t you love it?”

  “Not in the slightest, but I love you, dollface.”

  Carroll kisses me on the nose with a loud smack. I can tell from his breath that he’s already well on his way to being drunk.

  “Did you bring some to share?” I ask.

  “Naturally!” He holds up a brown paper bag. “We have to drink out of the bottle unless you have cups.”

  I don’t have cups, but that’s fine with me. Carroll’s bag holds a half-empty bottle of cheap white wine, a parting gift from last night’s sketchy hookup.

  “What do you do with these guys?” I ask him once we’re nearly done with the bottle. I check my phone. It says it’s at full power but I plug it in again just in case. “Are you being safe, at least?”

  “That’s the least of my concerns,” Carroll says. “And for your information, Miss Nosy, we don’t go all the way. Alas, I still have yet to lose the big V.”

  “Waiting for Mr. Right?”

  “Just Mr. Not Repulsive.”

  We finish the bottle—Carroll makes me down the last few chugs on my own, since he had a head start—and leave for the club.

  They don’t card us this time, I guess because it’s a weeknight, so we head for the bar as soon as we get inside. The music isn’t as good as I remember, and the place isn’t as crowded as it was last time, but after a couple of shots, I don’t care. I put my phone’s vibrator on High so I’ll know if it rings even if I can’t hear it.

  We’re dancing to a remix of some terrible boy band song when Carroll grabs my shoulder and shouts in my ear. “LOOK NINETY DEGREES CLOCKWISE!”

  “What?” I’m very, very drunk. Just staying upright requires a lot of effort. I remember what ninety degrees means, but I’m stumped by the clockwise part.

  Carroll turns me around. There’s a Latina girl in a black dress looking at us.

  “GO DANCE WITH HER!” Carroll shouts.

  I shake my head. The movement almost makes me fall over. “I don’t want to dance with her.”

  “YOU’RE ON A BREAK! YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO HOOK UP WITH OTHER PEOPLE! THAT GIRL’S HOT!”

  “THEN YOU GO DANCE WITH HER!”

  So he does.

  He leaves me alone on the dance floor and goes up to this girl, who’s with a group of friends, and says something in her ear. The girl laughs. Then Carroll puts his arm around her waist and they’re grinding.

  I can’t believe it. I push toward them and yell “HEY! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?” in Carroll’s ear.

  Carroll reaches out and pulls me in until the three of us are smashed up against each other. The girl smiles at me. I want to cry.

  “THIS IS MY FRIEND!” Carroll yells to the girl. “SHE AND HER BAT-CRAZY TRANNY GIRLFRIEND ARE ON A BREAK AND SHE’S ALL DEPRESSED ABOUT IT! I NEED YOU TO HELP ME CHEER HER UP!”

  “I’M NOT DEPRESSED!” I shout.

  “THAT SUCKS!” the girl shouts to me. “YOUR GIRLFRIEND, SHE’S CRAZY!”

  “NO, SHE’S NOT! SHE’S GREAT!” Damn, I broke the pronoun rule. “I mean—”

  “FORGET IT AND DANCE, GRETCH!” Carroll shouts.

  So I do. I close my eyes and go with it.

  And it’s the best I’ve felt since break.

  We’re all three fantastic dancers, or else I’m still just really, really drunk. We stay in a tight pack for song after song, grinding our hips and then our entire bodies.

  At some point, there is also kissing involved.

  That wasn’t part of the plan, but there’s nothing stopping me now from doing whatever the hell I want. If what I want to do is to kiss some random girl, and to watch some random girl kiss Carroll (wait, is that really what’s happening? That’s what it looks like, but that can’t be right, can it?), then that’s what I’ll do.

  Maybe I’ll do it even if it isn’t what I want to do. Who the hell is going to stop me?

  This goes on for a long time. So long I almost start to feel sober. That’s bad, because when I’m sober I’ll just freak out again.

  The girl’s friends tell her it’s time to leave, and she’s gone with a wave. I still don’t know who she was. I don’t want to know. Somewhere in the back of my brain a little voice buzzes, telling me it’s the first time in two years I’ve kissed someone who wasn’t Toni. That little voice makes me want to throw up again.

  Carroll pulls me toward the exit, but I make him stop at the bar first so I can have another shot. Then I have one more. I buy shots for Carroll, too, so I don’t have to do them alone.

  Now that the little voice in my head is quiet again, the buzzing alcohol is much more pleasant. All I want is for it to get louder and louder until it erases everything else.

  I give Carroll my wallet to deal with the cabdriver since he never has any money. I check my phone to see if any calls came in. Nothing.

  The next thing I know we’re stumbling into my room. Samantha is still out. Carroll and I collapse onto my bed, and I am suddenly aware that I cannot fall asleep. If I fall asleep I will have awful, torturous dreams, the kind you can’t really wake up from.

  Carroll is lamenting the lack of cute boys at the club tonight. I make sympathetic noises and pet his hair. It has almost as much gel in it as Toni used to put in. That makes me sad.

  I tell him I miss Toni. I tell him I think this isn’t just a break. I think this is for real. I think I’m never, ever getting Toni back.r />
  I’m crying. Carroll hugs me, and I cry all over his new shirt, which always makes him mad. He must be incredibly drunk, too, because he doesn’t make me turn my face away.

  While I cry, he talks. He tells me that his dad said he was ashamed of him. That he said he wished Carroll was just a criminal instead of being gay, because then when his dad’s friends heard about it, they’d feel sorry for him. He said no one felt sorry for the guy whose son was a fag. Carroll says he wishes he hadn’t told him, that it was a terrible mistake, that his dad made him feel weak and useless and like he was nothing, nothing, no one.

  I’m still crying. Carroll is, too. I hug him harder. Then we’re kissing.

  The music from the club pounds in my ears. I close my eyes and remember the girl in the black dress. The girl I kissed who wasn’t Toni.

  The kisses are getting deeper now, and then our clothes are coming off.

  I think, Whatever.

  I think, I can do whatever the hell I want.

  I think, Toni’s trying new things. I can, too.

  I think, Toni doesn’t care. Toni doesn’t need me anymore. I’ve served my purpose and now Toni can get on with her real life with people who are better and smarter and cooler than me.

  I open my eyes, and this is actually happening. I am actually doing this. It isn’t all in my head.

  I think, This is fine, this is fine, this is fine.

  I close my eyes again, and I keep them closed. All I want is to feel good, and I do, sort of.

  It’s like the hair, and the dancing, and the drinks, and the girl in the black dress. It’s what I need.

  I need to be feeling something.

  * * *

  I wake up alone with a massive headache. I stretch, groan, look up at the ceiling.

  Then I notice the smell.

  It takes me a second to place it. Then I lean over, and I see.

  Someone has puked over the side of my bed. Multiple times.

  It wasn’t me. I never puke. And Samantha’s bed is empty. It looks like she never came home last night.

  I get out of bed groggily, stepping around the puke. The room is spinning. Normally I don’t get hungover, but normally I don’t drink my body weight in vodka shots.

  I make it halfway to the bathroom before I remember what happened.

  Oh. Oh.

  I sit down on top of a stack of papers on the floor. Then I close my eyes and count to a hundred.

  When I open my eyes again, the room is still spinning and the memory hasn’t gone away.

  I look at the clock. It’s six-thirty in the morning. At eight I’m supposed to be in my Writing the Essay class for a discussion on the ethics of citing internet sources.

  Where the hell is he?

  I force down two Advil, find my room key in the trash can next to the condom wrapper and walk down the hall in my ratty sweats. I bang on his door for three minutes. Juan finally swings it open and blinks at me. “You know what time it is?”

  “Sorry,” I say. “Is he here?”

  Juan trudges back to his bed, lies down and throws his arm over his face.

  I look to the other side of the room. Carroll is sitting at his desk with his laptop open. I can’t see what’s on the screen.

  “Hey,” I say. “Can we talk?”

  “About what?” He doesn’t look up.

  “I don’t care what you talk about,” Juan mumbles. “Just don’t do it in here.”

  Carroll rolls his eyes and comes to stand in the doorway. He leaves the door open. “I’m kind of in the middle of something. What do you want?”

  I don’t know what I want. I didn’t come here with an agenda. I just wanted to see my friend. To make sure everything’s all right.

  Because I have this feeling. Even before I got here, even before I saw the way he’s looking at me, I had this feeling.

  “Can we go somewhere and talk?” I ask.

  “What for?”

  “What do you mean, what for?”

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” he says.

  “I know last night was weird, but you don’t have to—”

  “We’re not friends anymore,” he says.

  Why do other people get to make these unilateral decisions about my life?

  “Why?” I ask, because I need to hear it.

  “I don’t like being used,” he says.

  “Used?”

  “Please shut up, both of you,” Juan groans. Carroll ignores him.

  “I know you have issues, but that doesn’t mean you get to do whatever the hell you want all the time,” Carroll says. “Get a damn therapist.”

  “What? I can’t believe this. You’re one to talk!” Then I lower my voice. “I know you’re upset about what happened with your dad, but—”

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with this. Yeah, I have issues, but my issues are normal. You and your screwed-up shemale ex are in a league all your own.”

  Okay. Wow. I take a step back.

  “Look,” I say. “Let’s just pretend last night never happened. It was just some random thing anyway.”

  “Yeah, right. Like I could. From now on every time I see you, it’s going to be all I think about.” He shudders. I want to die, just a little bit. “I never would’ve done anything like that if you hadn’t started it.”

  “What?” I sputter. “We both started it. At the same time. Remember?”

  “What I remember is you dancing like a maniac in that club, hitting on everything that moved, like some bi nympho or something.”

  “Well, I remember it wasn’t me who pulled a damn condom out of my pocket. I don’t even have condoms in my pocket.”

  For a second we just stare at each other. My heart is pounding so hard. This feels so much like that night by the fountain.

  “I’ve been trying so hard to do everything right here,” Carroll says, quieter than before. “I was going to leave all the crap back at home. I’m supposed to finally be away from all that. This is supposed to be my chance to do what I always wanted. Then you butt in and mess it up. You’re acting all psychotic just because some loser dumped you. What, you figured she’s growing a dick so you might as well try one out for yourself? Well, do what you’ve gotta do, but leave me out of it.”

  I close my eyes.

  I deserve this. I deserve to be completely and utterly alone.

  “Hey, Carroll. Hey, Gretchen.” A girl’s voice. I open my eyes. It’s Tracy, Carroll’s friend from Tisch. “Why are you guys standing here with the door open? Gretchen, are you coming to breakfast with us?”

  “No,” Carroll says. “Gretchen’s got someplace else to be.”

  I leave without speaking. I find my way back to my room, crawl into bed and pull the blankets over my head.

  I never want to come back out.

  15

  DECEMBER

  FRESHMAN YEAR OF COLLEGE

  2 WEEKS APART

  TONY

  “I’ve decided I like the term gender variant,” I say.

  “Any particular reason?” Nance asks. “Or is this just your new flavor of the week?”

  Nance and I have never talked about what she said to me on the library steps that day, but we have a cautious truce of sorts going on, so I’m pretty sure she’s just teasing me now.

  “It’s more all-encompassing,” I explain. “It’s broad enough to get around those tiny boxes that labels put you in.”

  “Okay, sure,” Nance says. “Except gender variant is a label, too.”

  I sigh. “It’s an alternative label. It’s flexible. It allows space to define yourself within it without being constricted by the limits of the terminology itself.”

  Half the people at the table roll their ey
es. By now I’ve learned not to take that personally.

  We’re studying in a coffee shop a couple of blocks from the Yard. It’s a Thursday night, and the place is so full we had to sit at the counter for an hour before Nance noticed this spot was free. Now six of us are gathered around a table meant for four in the corner next to the handicapped entrance. Eli’s laptop doesn’t fit on the table, so he’s balancing it on his knees.

  “Have you thought about just using nonbinary?” Inez asks. “My friend Luis uses it. They say it’s really freeing to get away from people’s expectations of defining yourself as just one of two genders.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I say. “That’s a contender, too. Lately I’ve been giving more thought to labels, and I think I might’ve been underestimating their importance. I’ve been focusing on pronouns, but I think the labels people choose for gender identity matter more. I can’t believe I only just thought of this, but you know, at my high school, I founded our Gay-Straight Alliance. That’s what it was called, the GSA. I left everyone else out of the name—bi people, asexual people, intersex people. I even left out trans people. I mean, come on, I put in straight people but I left out myself. If that doesn’t show labels have power, I don’t know what does.”

  “Every high school calls it the Gay-Straight Alliance,” Derek says. “That’s the default. You calling your group that is unlikely to have any deep hidden meaning.”

  “Besides, all those group names leave someone out,” Andy says. “The UBA does it, too. It’s got gay and trans people in the name, and even intersex and asexual people, but it leaves out aromantic, questioning and pansexual.”

  “And hijra and two-spirit,” Inez says.

  “And genderqueer and genderfluid,” Derek says. “And a ton of others.”

  “Acronyms always fail,” Nance says. “Because it doesn’t matter how many letters you include. It only matters who you actually represent. That’s why GSAs don’t bother me, because they use gay as an all-inclusive term. But the GSA at the school I volunteer at does way more work with different kinds of people than the UBA does here.”

  “For real,” Derek says. “I can’t remember the last time the UBA ever did anything remotely helpful for bi people.”