“It sucks that you can’t go up there,” he says. “You think it’s ’cause she’s mad at you?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “Toni never seems mad. It’s probably true, about T having too much work. I mean, it’s Harvard. Besides, the pronoun thing has to be distracting.”
Carroll raises one skeptical eyebrow. “Come on. Are pronouns really that big a deal?”
“Yeah, usually. I mean, everyone’s different, but using male pronouns is this huge step.”
“Oh,” he says. “I thought you said Toni thought all pronouns were bad and that English was sexist, or whatever?”
“I don’t know.” I rub my forehead. Toni did say that stuff before. Did something change? Maybe I misunderstood it to begin with. Can I ask about that, or will that make me seem totally clueless?
“So, look,” Carroll says. “It’s okay. You can tell me the truth. Are you into that?”
I keep rubbing my forehead. “Into what?”
“You know. Are you one of those girls who’s into the whole guys-wearing-panties thing, and vice versa? Like, does it turn you on?”
My head starts to ache. Maybe I’m hungover, after all. “Is this more crap from that website you found?”
“Yeah. It said some people are into guys that look like girls, or girls that look like guys. They think it’s hot.”
I groan. Carroll’s terrible internet research skills are really getting old.
“I’m sure there are lots of people who are into all kinds of things,” I say. “But I don’t care about that. I only care about Toni.”
“Uh-huh.” He yawns. “It’s weird how you talk about this stuff. Because when we hang out, you know, normally, just you and me, you come off like such a girl girl, but when you talk about her, you act like you totally get how she feels.”
Did he just call me a girlie girl?
“I’m not one of those ultrafemme girls,” I say. “I don’t wear glitter nail polish and all that.”
“Oh, really?” He gets this half smirk on his face that I don’t like at all. “Does that mean you’re kind of trans, too? Like Toni?”
“No!” I say. Then I hear how that sounds and I say, “No, but I mean, it’s not like it’s a big deal.”
“Riiiiight.” Carroll stretches the word out into another yawn. “What does it mean if your girlfriend is a guy? Do you still get to tell people you’re a lesbian?”
My heart is pounding. I shouldn’t think this is important. It isn’t important.
“I don’t care what other people think,” I say. “That’s so petty.”
“Well, if you only like girls, and your girlfriend turns into a guy, then how can you like her? Or him? Doesn’t that mean you’re really bi?”
The back of my head throbs. I wish I’d never brought any of this up. I take a long drink of coffee. “I don’t know. I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“Well, since you’re so enlightened about it all, that means you and her are, like, beyond gender, right? So it doesn’t matter if your girlfriend is really your boyfriend?” He grins. “Even if that means people think you’re straight?”
I can’t help it. The word straight makes me shudder.
It’s not like I have a problem with straight people or anything. I’ve always had tons of straight friends. It’s just that being straight seems so...obvious. So conventional. It’s never felt like me.
I don’t even remember when I first thought of myself as gay. It’s not like I sat down one day and decided boys were icky. I even used to get crushes on guys when I was a kid. I just never wanted to jump any of them the way I wanted to jump Toni at that Homecoming dance.
I guess maybe I could like a guy someday. Hypothetically. I’m never going to stop liking girls, though. If people started thinking of me as straight, it would really freak me out.
Carroll sees the look on my face and laughs. “Maybe you’re not that enlightened, after all. Maybe you have issues like the rest of us normal people.”
Now I’m mad. He’s just saying all this because he knows it’ll bother me. He has no idea how serious this really is.
Whenever I start to think about this stuff, I always push it out of my head. I always think I’ll have time to figure it out later.
Well, what if right now is later? What if the stuff I’ve put off thinking about is actually happening right now?
Toni’s friends are using male pronouns already. Soon Toni could ask everyone else to do the same thing. Come out to the whole family. After that, there could be actual physical changes. Hormone injections. Surgery.
Would Toni still be the same person after all of that?
Would Toni still want to be with me? Regular, boring me, who doesn’t even know how to talk about pronouns without messing up?
I shake my head so these thoughts will go away. It only makes my headache worse. I look back up at Carroll.
“I’m not straight,” I say. “It doesn’t matter what pronouns Toni uses. That wouldn’t make me straight.”