I haven’t heard a word I like better, though. It’s like Inez with heteroflexible. Even though that’s a stupid word, too.
“Junior year of high school,” I say. “I went to this crazy private all-girl school, and we had to wear a uniform with a white shirt and a plaid skirt. It was like something out of Japanese porn. I went to the administration and asked if I could wear pants instead, and they said no. So I wound up threatening to sue the school. Eventually they changed the policy. Before that, though, I talked to these lawyers at the ACLU, and they asked me if I identified as genderqueer, because if I did, they’d put it in the argument. It would be the first time they’d had a genderqueer plaintiff in a case like mine. They were all excited about it. I didn’t know much about genderqueer as a term, so I looked it up. In the end it turned out we didn’t need to sue, after all, because the administration got scared and decided I could wear pants. Besides, if I’d let the ACLU tell people I was genderqueer, it would’ve gone into the news stories, and I’d have had to tell my mother, and I was nowhere near ready to do that in eleventh grade, or now for that matter. But anyway, at least I got a semiacceptable label out of the thing. So when I started coming out to people online and stuff, genderqueer was the word I used.”
Derek stares at me. “That was you?”
“What was me?”
“The school uniform lawsuit! I followed your case on all the blogs. I even started a petition about you! You were my hero!”
I laugh so hard I spit Coke. “You’re lying.”
“No way! I can’t believe this. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize your name when I first met you!”
“The stories probably called me Antonia,” I say, making a face.
“Oh, that’s right. I remember it all now. I was so jealous of you! I was completely closeted in high school, but you—you had the nerve to fight the power!”
Derek lifts a fist into the air, grinning even harder now than when we talked about Inez. I sit up straight and smile back. I never thought anyone outside my high school friends would remember that story.
“I guess it was pretty cool,” I say.
“It was majorly cool! But I do have one question. This always bothered me. You had a guys’ high school that was connected with yours, didn’t you? So why didn’t you ask to wear their uniform instead? Why did you want to wear the same uniform the girls did, only with pants? Because that’s what you wound up with, right? I saw the picture—you had on some unfortunate blue-plaid pants in the end.”
“It wasn’t about fashion,” I say.
“I know, but if it was about gender presentation, wouldn’t it have made the most sense to wear the guys’ uniform?”
I gnaw on my knuckle. “I didn’t think about it that way at the time.”
Why did I do that? It never occurred to me back then to want to look like the guys. Before the ACLU prompted me to start searching the internet, I’d thought of myself as butch. Now that doesn’t feel right at all.
If I were doing it over again, would I want to wear the guys’ uniform? I don’t know. I feel more like a guy now than I did then, but I can’t imagine wanting to, like, go to the guys’ high school and use their locker room or whatever.
Derek probably would have. Andy, too. Maybe even Eli.
What makes me so different? Am I just in a temporary stage before I wind up the same as them? I try to imagine living full-time as a guy, wearing a suit like Brad’s and joking around with guys the way Andy and Kartik do. It sounds kind of thrilling. And terrifying. When I try to picture it, I see myself dressed up like it’s Halloween or like I’m acting in a movie. It doesn’t seem real.
Why is this stuff so confusing? Am I really the only person in the world who thinks this stuff is complicated? As far as I know, Gretchen never thinks about this stuff at all. Gretchen’s always identified as a girl without angsting about it or anything. I don’t know what I’d do if I had all that spare time. I could probably train for the Olympics.
“Sorry,” Derek says. “It was a long time ago anyway, but I’ve always been curious. Even when I was home for Thanksgiving break I used to sneak onto the library computers to see if there was any news about you.”
“Why’d you have to sneak onto the computers?” I say.
“Sometimes I forgot to clear my browser history at home. My dad always checked it.”
“That sucks. Are your parents better now?”
“Sort of. It’s a work in progress.”
“Are you out to them?”
“Yeah. I’ve talked to my dad and my stepmom a couple of times, but they never want to talk about it afterward. It’s as if I never brought it up.”
Derek has stopped laughing. It’s strange having such a serious conversation after everything else that’s happened tonight.
But I want to know about this. Suddenly I need to know.
“Do your parents call you by the right pronouns?” I ask.