Chapter 20 #2
“They’re giving a stern pat on the back to their dicks and saying, ‘Good game.’?”
I’m returned, I’m sane, I’m saved.
Ms.?Esposito laughs as she passes. “What are you two talking about?” She replaces a rotting pear with a new one, completely changing the still-life. As students arrive, they sit and look, confused, from their drawings to the bowl of pears.
“So.” I put serious hands on the table between me and Andi. “Sexuality.”
“Sexuality is a liquid.” Andi coughs. “Most people would be queer if we didn’t learn to see everything so black and white.”
“A lot is happening here.”
“Most people are also idiots.”
“There we go.” I lean back in my chair. “I think sexuality might not be a solid or a liquid, but a gas.”
“It’s expansive?”
“It’s bigger than a spectrum with a single gender on each end. There’s so much more to who someone is. Attraction is three-dimensional.”
“So what parts of the cloud are you into?” They say it like they’re joking.
I count with my fingers. “Cool hair. Soft skin. Kindness.”
“The boring parts.”
“Honestly? Yes.”
“That’s sweet.” They say it like they mean it. “You should watch those videos I sent you.”
“I forgot about those.” I immediately search for them.
“You don’t have to watch Sexuality Is a Liquid because you already have your gas theory.
The basic idea of the other one, Gender Is a Social Construct , is that some things have meaning because people have decided to give them that meaning, as opposed to being objectively that way.
If we’d been born a thousand years in the past or future, or in an entirely different place, we’d have a different understanding of many things, including gender and sexuality. ”
The video appears to be narrated by an amorphous blob with a cowboy hat.
I put the phone away. “Tony says everything is a spectrum but not for cis men.”
“Tony also says the world isn’t flat or round.”
“That Disney cruise really changed him.”
Andi doesn’t laugh. “My point is that just because Tony doesn’t understand you doesn’t mean you’re wrong.”
“You don’t have to say something just to be nice,” I mumble.
“I never say things just to be nice.”
I feel ashamed…for feeling ashamed?
I draw the outline of Esposito’s new pear rising up behind the old one like a ghost. “I think I can turn almost any situation into a way to feel bad.”
Andi doesn’t reply.
A hollowed-out feeling overtakes me like my insides are scraped out and empty, and I blink in surprise at the speed of it. “So what about you? What parts of the infinite cloud are you attracted to?”
Andi doesn’t add the new pear but only darkens the rotten spots on the one Esposito removed. “I don’t think about such things.”
“Are you asexual?”
“No, although it is ridiculous that we assume everyone feels sexual attraction. I’m bi or pan, I guess. I just say I’m queer.”
“I like that. Maybe that’s what I am. Though I feel like I’ve never actually seen an example of a bi or pan guy.”
“First of all, if that’s true, then you’re watching the wrong things.
” Andi makes a frustrated sound. “But also, think of any book or movie. Who’s to say who isn’t queer?
Does every character in a seemingly straight romance announce at some point that they’re strictly straight?
For that matter, do people in seemingly gay romances proclaim they’re gay? ”
“Good point.” I put my hand on the table beside Andi’s. “Thank you, friend. I was feeling alone about this and honestly losing my mind a little before talking to you. Now I feel…”
They smile. “Gay?”
I laugh but I also feel a little like we missed an opportunity. I fear this conversation was like a stand-up joke. So close to the emotional truth, but at the end—a punchline.
Ms.?Esposito places a closed sketchbook beside Andi and says, “I don’t know what to tell you. Every mark is expertly placed. These drawings don’t even look like photos. They look real.”
Andi puts the sketchbook in their backpack. “Thanks.”
“When do you have to submit?” Esposito says.
“I don’t know.”
Esposito looks at me and then at Andi. “I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow.”
When Esposito leaves, I casually arrange my pencils and eraser on the table and let out an even more casual sigh. “Talk to you about what?”
Andi takes out their Discman. “Nothing.”
They have forty different monotones and this one means they want to change the subject.
But don’t I want to be asked about things, even when I don’t want to be asked about them? Don’t I like to know someone cares? Don’t I like to connect, to share the things I’m initially uncomfortable with sharing?
“Are you—”
“No.”
Between classes, I walk with the herd and replay this morning in my mind.
Tony was kind but didn’t understand me at all.
Andi talked generally about gender and sexuality but didn’t want to get personal.
What’s wrong with me that I can’t keep things casual and cool?
I’m struck by the certainty that I will always want more than someone else would like to give.
I find myself wandering a hallway I rarely go down—
And I walk straight into Elijah. And all my ridiculous anxieties disappear.
He’s wearing a gold T-shirt with the sleeves folded up, there’s light stubble above his lips, and he whispers, conspiratorially, without even saying hello, “Can you believe no one here knows where we went yesterday?”
He goes on to talk about how he drove home with the windows down, and how he can’t seem to care about any of his classes today.
He lists the things he cares about more than his classes.
People pass around us, and I don’t care about any of these people.
He gossips, he rambles, he waves his hands through the air.
I could listen to him for hours. I could look at him until I go blind.
When he asks what story I’m telling against Jay in the auditorium later, I’m suddenly certain what it will be.
“It’s a secret.”
He leans in. “But can I know the secret?”
The one-minute bell rings.
I smile. “Soon.”