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 again. 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.