“You’re unsure what pronoun to use when talking about my sex life? And if I even have a sex life?” Tucker sighed as if he had been asked this way too many times before. “Well, I dated women in high school, got bored, and then decided to try men in university.”
“And?”
“Still boredom. I . . . don’t like the sex very much. With both men and women. I mean, I do it, but it’s not . . . how I envision spending an evening. Is that too much to share?”
“No, no,” Nick said. “In fact, it makes a lot of sense. So asexual? With no real preference of men or women?”
“Eh, I don’t really think about it anymore. I’m happier like this, the way I am with you.”
“Like roommates? Friends?”
“Yeah. I kind of like the platonic thing we have going on here. You leave me alone, and I leave you alone. Well, unless I pry.”
Nick smiled. He knew Tucker was his friend, but hearing their relationship phrased this way—as a platonic thing—made him feel special. Singled out in a good way. “Yeah, I’ve liked having you as a roommate. And a friend. And things don’t really have to change, either.”
Tucker rolled his eyes. “People always change people. That’s the nature of relationships.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you go out and see this girl, things will be different. That doesn’t have to be good or bad, but it will be different.”
Nick was about to argue, but merely took a sip of coffee. In all he had learned this morning and the past few days about trans identity, he was drawing blanks about what it meant for him. Sure, maybe that was a selfish attitude—he should be focused on Katie—but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be confused, right?
“If I do date this woman,” Nick asked, “does this mean I’m not gay now?”
“Is that bad?”
“Kind of.” Nick scrunched up his nose and then shook his head. “But not because I don’t like straight people. Obviously, I like straight people. But it’s like watching a game of basketball or something. I’m not a sports player, but I can appreciate the game.”
“Sports player.” Tucker laughed. “You mean athlete.”
“See?” Nick laughed along with Tucker before he sighed. “I don’t even know the proper words. I’ve never considered myself anything but gay. That seems completely counterintuitive. When I was four, I realized I liked boys. A little later on, I found the word gay and liked it a lot. I’ve always identified as that. But if I say I’m gay and only attracted to men, then Katie isn’t considered a woman. And then she gets sad. Really, really sad.”
“And you do like her?”
Nick bit his lip and nodded. “I don’t know why, though. We like the same things, sure, but so do Alex and Levi and everyone else I grew up with. Liking the same things means nothing, and we don’t even agree on everything we do like.”
“Liking something isn’t always in the thing itself, though. It’s about how someone likes a thing. If you get hung up on the object, you do what Marx warned about and turn it into objectification. Or reification, if we’re talking about Gestalt philosophy.”
“Tucker . . .” Nick couldn’t finish what he wanted to say, because now that Tucker had mentioned Marx, he was back to thinking of the concert in neon colours and Katie referencing revolution. Oh, it was all so ridiculous. But he really wanted to know more about how she liked those things she talked about—regardless of the things themselves, just like Tucker said.
“Nick . . .?” Tucker answered, furrowing a brow. “You went somewhere else for a moment.”
“I know. I’m just thinking.”
“About her.”
“Yes.” Nick nodded. He gathered his thoughts, forgetting the minutia of the concert and worry over sounding offensive, and tried to speak his feelings. “So when she first told me she was trans, I thought I liked her because she used to be a guy—probably the exact kind of guy I would have been all over if I’d met her before now. But I’ve been learning from her and these online videos that I shouldn’t say that. Katie or any other trans woman isn’t a guy. Even when everyone thought they were guys, they were still women deep down. It’s sometimes complicated, but I get that. Even before I knew she was trans, I thought she was a woman. I can’t really picture her as anything but. And I like her—I really do. We kissed and it was nice.”
“You could be bisexual, you know,” Tucker said. “There’s nothing wrong with that, either.”
“It’s not really a matter of what’s wrong or right, though. It’s more like . . . I have to think of everything differently now. Everything that I took for granted before—ending up in life with a man—is now called into question.”
“You’re not marrying her.”
“I know I’m not.” Nick set his coffee cup down on the table so he could gesture. “But if I open this door, I don’t know what else can get in, you know?”
“Sure. I definitely understand the fear. No one wants to change their life story, especially when it’s part of their bedrock.”
Nick squinted and leaned in closer. “What do you mean my ‘life story’?”
“The one you said about realizing you liked boys and only boys at a young age.” Tucker nodded decisively. “That’s your life story.”
“But that’s just a sentence.”
“But it is your story. That’s what you’re worried about, right? That you’ll have to change that one sentence, and it means the rest of your world gets so complicated. It’s like . . . Hegel.”
“Oh no.” Nick ran a hand through his hair. “I can let you get away with Marx but please no more about Hegel.”
As if Nick hadn’t spoken, Tucker went on. “He has this term, for which the English is sublate, where it basically means that ideologically contrary ideas are maintained and changed through one another. So, you remember that you liked a boy and forget about all the girls you may have liked as well for the sake of maintaining the single story of being gay, but those two ideas still feed off one another. You ignored those feelings towards girls because you were gay, and anything else introduced to that narrative shook your foundation.”
“You do realize you’ve just vocalized every single gay person’s nightmare—that we really could be straight if we tried hard, right?”
“Oh. Um. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just talking about ideas, you know? Hegel is all about opposing ideas—thesis and antithesis—and how they blend together to make the third option, the synthesis. These ideas have always helped me to figure out my stuff.”
“But ideas don’t exist in a vacuum. And I’m just not sure where these ones will take me.”
Tucker nodded. He took a sip of his coffee and then pushed his glasses farther up his nose. “I . . . I may not have been as equipped to handle this as I thought I was.”
Nick laughed—loud and uproarious, probably more than he should have. When Tucker also started to chuckle, everything seemed better. Even if they were both as confused as when they’d first started, at least Nick was talking about it. Katie wasn’t a secret tryst in the middle of the night anymore. She was a real person with real feelings, and maybe he was falling for her. That was okay. Even if he couldn’t predict the future, Nick was starting to become okay with the present.
“Do you want to see what she looks like?” Nick asked. He pulled out his phone before Tucker could even respond. The red notification numbers dwindled as he clicked on her profile photo and then slid the phone to Tucker, who stared at the image for a while.
“She’s pretty. And seems like your type.”
Nick’s heart and stomach did another flop. “My type?”
“Kind of punk rock, but also very sophisticated. That’s a type, right? I don’t really know dating lingo.”
Nick chuckled. “You know, I think me and you both.”
Nick let his eyes wander to Katie’s image again. Now that he’d shown Tucker her photo, there was no hiding from the green light that surely announced he was online. Katie
would have received the message that he’d read hers, and now his silence was an answer itself, one that said I don’t want to accept your friend request—which could also mean I don’t want to accept you. Nick never wanted anyone to feel that kind of rejection, so he accepted the request, but still felt mute.
“Something wrong?” Tucker asked.
“I. Uh. I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s not hard. I mean, I make conversations seem hard when I mention philosophy all the time, but it doesn’t have to be. And maybe you two will just be friends.”
“Maybe, but I think I’d like to be something more.”
“Yeah? That’s good, but you should tell her soon. I think . . . I think a lot of the difficulty with situations like this has to do with the way people talk about relationships—and then the way they don’t talk about them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Most people carry around silent expectations about what a relationship is supposed to mean, but they rarely express it out loud. For instance, most people believe that sex is the be all and end all of a relationship. When I was with people, no matter their gender, that was what I realized. They wanted sex—and expected sex—way more than I thought was necessary. And while I was cool with it for a short time, there was this disconnect about what we wanted for our futures. And that disconnection, the lack of talking, was enough to pull us apart.” Tucker made a face. “Am I making sense?”
“Yeah. What did you want, then? When you were in the relationships? If it wasn’t sex, what was it?”
“Companionship. Someone to call at night. Someone to sleep with, sometimes, but not all the time.” Tucker glanced up from his mug of coffee. “Something platonic, more or less. Once I realized the people I dated and I were on two different pages, I could reconfigure my expectations. And then I could be happy. Even if I was alone.”
“Hey, you’re not alone. I’m here. And we have . . . whatever we have.”
Tucker smiled. The two of them held up their half-empty mugs of coffee and clinked them together in a silent toast. Nick knew what Tucker meant, more or less, with his own situation. He was used to the pushback of being gay, like the name-calling and worry around marriage, as much as he was used to his pride that came from it. He could remember the first time he’d gone to Toronto Pride at eighteen, and feeling as if he belonged for the first time in his life. But was that just another scene in his life story he’d constructed after the fact? God, sometimes Nick hated Tucker for talking about the Big Ideas and not just focusing on poetry or pretty things like Nick did in his dissertation. Nick thought back on his life in elementary school and high school and tried to find mysterious girls or women he’d fallen for before Katie. I’m falling for Katie. Admitting that fact was like walking into the home he had decorated and moving all the furniture around. It was still him, still where he lived, but everything was from a different angle. But was she the first? That was the question he found difficult to answer, even as he thought back on his life.
“So you really like her?” Tucker asked. “Even despite all the difficulty that could come with other people’s expectations?”
Nick bit his lip. He remembered the way he’d danced with her during the concert and then, later on, listening to bad music as they looked at the Toronto skyline. Their relationship was so new it didn’t seem fair to think too far ahead. But in the present moment, they were acting like a bunch of kids just outside of high school, watching John Hughes movies together, and trying to find the perfect summer playlist. He could get used to that.
“Yeah. I do. It’s really weird sometimes, but I do.”
“You’ll get over the weirdness, then.”
“Thanks. I really mean it, Tucker. Thank you.”
“Not at all. I wouldn’t mind meeting her.”
“Really? So you don’t mind if I maybe bring her back at some point?”
“Not at all.” He rose from his seat and collected Nick’s mug with his own. When Nick looked back at the message screen, he knew exactly what to say.
Thanks so much for the add, Katie. I was thinking about the job, and also what you were saying about exploring matters outside of my comfort zone. So tell me, does the Grad House have music other than drunk grads at Open Mic?
Oh, definitely. We get to play whatever we want here, Katie wrote back. How about you come by Friday after 5, and we can figure out what to do next?
Nick didn’t even have to check his calendar. Definitely. I’ll be there.
The Grad House was a white building on the edge of campus. Nick had passed it at least a dozen times in his academic career, since it was on the way to the financial aid office, but he’d never bothered to go inside. He’d arrived fifteen minutes earlier than their agreed meeting time—which Nick tried to convince himself was because of the bus schedule. It was either be fifteen minutes early or a half hour late, and he opted to be early. That was it.
Never mind the fact that his heart was hammering and his palms were sweaty. He tried to calm himself by reading the plaque outside the restaurant door that gave the building’s history (first as a farmhouse, and now as a bar/café subsidized for students). When the fifteen minutes early became ten minutes, he figured that was good enough.
Music played from the speakers above the bar and kitchen. Nick knew the song right away as one of the Canadian indie bands that he and Levi used to spend countless hours fawning over. The memory made him smile, and his nervousness melted away. He spotted Katie at the front by the cashier station, talking animatedly to a customer as she mixed a drink. A line had begun to form for her till, since it was the start of dinner. Nick took a seat in the lounge area next to the door and picked up a school newspaper to flip through idly. From what he could gather, many of the local school events were held in the Grad House. An early spring event for a poetry reading took up the centre section of the paper. A tagline of For outsiders, it’s a great place to belong caught Nick’s eye.
When the line dwindled by Katie’s till, Nick stood up and surveyed the rest of the area. The blue walls were in desperate need of a paint job, and some of the decor was probably from the 1990s, but there were glimpses of what kind of space this was. Original artwork hung on the wall with price tags underneath, while beer advertisements and large windows filled up the rest of the wall space.
“Hey,” Katie called out from her till. “Can I get you anything?”
“Nah, it’s too early to drink.”
“Yeah, I don’t really touch much of it either. So here, have a Coke.” She filled up a tall glass for him from a soft-drink gun at the front counter and slid it across. Nick was about to protest, since he had no change and using a credit card for a two-dollar purchase seemed silly, but she waved her hand.
“On the house.”
“In that case, thank you.” A bell punctuated the next song on the speakers, and Nick and Katie glanced at the front door as more people came inside. Katie sighed, making her dark hair fluff by her face. “I’m sorry. My shift is done in two minutes, and I’ll be right with you, okay?”
Nick moved out of the way with another thanks and sat in a corner table by a large canvas. The painting seemed to be a mess of dark colours, but when Nick surveyed it closer, he realized that a waterfall took up the centre of the painting and was surrounded by old-timey shops and a large banner that had backwards letters on it. Nick had to take a photo of the painting on his phone to flip it around before he realized that the banner read, Wish You Were Here. When Nick scanned the bottom corner for the price tag, he noticed Sheena Miller displayed prominently.
This was hers. It was beautiful, if not a little odd. He was about to take another picture of the painting so he could get more than just the writing when Katie approached him.
“Ah. My study in negatives.”
“Is that what it’s called?”
“Not officially. It’s my Wish You Were Here piece. It’s based on a postcard my friend Jonas gave me. I met him in therapy, and we wanted
to stay in touch, even though therapy was done for me. So he sends me postcards, and I thought that painting the opposite colour scheme—like a photographic negative—would imply the opposite feelings.”
“Which are . . .?” Nick asked, trying to keep up. Katie spoke faster than before and gestured a lot, as if she was nervous.
“I miss you, Jonas, but I sure as hell don’t miss therapy.”
“I hear that. It’s really pretty.” Nick glanced around the paintings in the rest of the room, wonder in his eyes. “Are they all yours?”
“No. We get a handful of art students coming through here to work before they go off to graduate school, so some paintings are years old from other student cohorts. Sometimes we get new ones, but honestly, I don’t even think people realize you can buy them.”
Nick fought the urge to offer to buy the piece. He had no money to do that—and really, he had no wall space. Too many framed album covers and movie posters got in the way. “So are you an art student, too?”
“Eh.” Katie waved her hand in a so-so gesture. “I’m an artist and a perpetual student. Not always an art student, though, since I don’t exactly like the art department here that wants me to start at zero again, when I’ve been doing professional work for years. But that’s a long story.”
“I came because I have time,” Nick said.
“Not just for free drinks?” she joked, but soon continued. “I went to university ages ago, but I didn’t do so well because you know, Warped Tour. So I flunked out and focused on the tour. Did some art gigs for bands while I was there, and I continued that where I could with the Hellcats and others. But I decided to come back to school a few years ago, since it’s a way to subsidize my hormones and other costs.”
Nick nodded, but was sure it looked as if he was desperately trying to follow. He’d read more about hormones this afternoon than he thought possible, but his mind was still forming a blank about what it all meant, so he tried to focus on what he did know: years and years of education. “So you’re still an undergrad in . . .?”
Hopeless Romantic Page 8