My ex-girlfriend walked into the dining hall this morning, walked into brunch with a girl at her side.

Her one and only best friend is in Mongolia, so it's not like this girl is a friend. As far as I can tell.

It has been... how many months? Since last October. And, despite that we only dated three weeks, this new girl bothers me. I guess I had sort of just expected her to be there if I ever did want to date her again. Like, I decided she was mature enough, she was over her other ex, was all ready to date me and would actually be a good girlfriend.

I still care about her a lot, even though she says things that annoy me sometimes, even though she totally fucked up with our relationship, even though I pretend she doesn't exist whenever I'm in the same room as her. We tried to be friends after we broke up, but I was a wreck because I was still attracted to her, despite her being immature and despite how she treated me. We have a connection, we can understand each other, our friendship/relationship goes much deeper than with anyone else I know at college. Life is boring and gray without her around. As I started ditching her this semester, she still tried to be friends, but eventually she took the hint and gave up, I guess.

She treated me wrong when I was with her: she had huge mood swings, smiling one moment and crying the next, talking about her ex, once even telling me I wouldn't be able to find anyone else who'd want to date me. I wasn't even sure I wanted to have sex with her, but I mean, it was my first relationship, I'd never even made out with anyone before, and we didn't get farther than that. She totally manipulated me. I was kind of in denial about all her problems when I was with her, but I was really happy--until I realized that she really was still into her ex, and I got jealous and we broke up.

I was miserable being friends with her because I still wanted to be with her, and all our chemistry just reminded me of it constantly. When I went home for vacations, I got over it much more quickly--there wasn't the pressure to call her up and see her. But going back to school, it was there all over again.

So I stopped talking to her, hoping that would help me get over her. I missed her so much. Now I'm depressed because I feel like none of my friendships are fulfilling, really. When I do run into her and can't avoid talking to her, she talks about how settled she is, or how she won some playwriting award, and I hate her. For being happy. Though I know she has mood swings, and she maybe hasn't really found her niche. At least she has a best friend, you know? But clearly, I'm not happy without talking to her. She probably knows I still care--I told her I stop talking to people I haven't gotten over. I've utterly cut myself off though. She's completely within her rights to find someone else. I won't even talk to her. Besides, it was so long ago.

I just feel terrible. It would be better if I had someone else. But everyone I'm interested in is unavailable, and everyone interested in me I'm not attracted to. All my friends are getting girlfriends. I feel unwanted, sexually deprived, alone. For some irrational reason, I expected my ex to be frozen in some sort of pining for me or something. All ready for me to go back to--for me to resist going back to. But she's moved on, had to move on. I'm cutting off everyone I could possibly care about. Am I too picky? Maybe. I know she didn't give me everything I wanted, but everything else here doesn't give me anything.

I'm supposed to be doing the rejecting.

I think I'm gonna leave college, go take time off. This year has ended on such a shit note with such few real friends, and the rest of the year wasn't really bubbly. It's not like I've found a girlfriend that's normal, no, I've only maybe had three crushes since I've been here, and maybe one of those could have turned to love. The people at my school are dramatic, singlemindedly driven, and so different from the people at home. I thought a liberal college would be like growing up Unitarian Universalist, but it's not.

The classes have been utter BS. Extracurriculars--a cappella is not what I'd dreamed of, and the garden could be good eventually but the people aren't perfect. The only good thing is the co-op I cook at, where I'll have a job next year, but that's only Fridays, and I've missed it for a month because of a cappella. It's not enough to be worth it.

I'm burnt out. I don't have so many real friends here anyway. I could come back next year with a good attitude and try to reshape my life, but I think it might be too soon. What if this college isn't the one for me in the long run? What if I just need perspective? A year could give me some grounding, get me out of school for a while.

I just don't know what to do. I think I might hire one of those databasey people to help me find something. I don't have the money, but last year when I thought I'd take time off I couldn't find anything cheap/right on my own. I was thinking I might go to chef school, and then to Spain to work on my Spanish. A year in Spain could be good. It'd be pretty gay-friendly too. I like the feeling of Latin America more, but I think for a year I'd be happier in Spain. The cooking, or maybe sailing, or maybe carpentry, or farming. Something out of school, something real. I need to do something real. Then maybe when I have perspective I can move on with my life. But this drama shit, this BSing school shit, does not cut it. It's not what I want. It's not real.

What do you all think?/Do you know anyone in Spanish-speaking countries?

I thought college would be a bastion of spirited intellectualism, that there would be so many more people like me, that I would love my classes. There would be vibrant lectures and debates, I would think deeply about hard issues every day, I would go to art shows and concerts and plays, I would play music, write music, sing music, become a poet. Would fall in love with so many girls, would have a close circle of deep, civically-minded, good-natured friends. Would have a beautiful girlfriend and discuss queer theory with whomever came along. Maybe it would be hard to find my major, but it would be because there were so many staggeringly fabulous options. My roommate and I would be close, my a capella group would be energetically-performing and musically literate, my house would be another family.

It didn't quite work out like that.

My circle of friends (half of which I'm close to, the other half of whom I hang with because my friends do), is shattering do to ridiculous drama over who called who a ho or a liar or a bitch. I haven't experienced this much ridiculosity ever, maybe a bit in high school. My friends from home say that's what I get for going to a women's school, but I feel a bit foolish now. I just think these girls are mean and stupid. I know there must be some cool girls on campus, but the general student body here is either preppy or academically driven or jaded--no passionate intellectuals or world-savers here, no one who wants to change the world or think about things. My actual friends are sweet, but I don't philosophize with them at all. I feel comfortable with them, and they're great for laid-back joking around, but I need something deeper! My ex and I had that somewhat, but I can't really be friends with her--she's too unstable.

My house is also petty and dramatic! When we had house elections, and I was running, some girls totally bitched me out for interrupting their perfect schemes of which of their friends would get what positions. I decided to stay at my house next year before all this ridiculosity erupted, and now I want to leave.

Classes are not stimulating. I don't want to major in anything I took this year. I'm very busy, but I don't like my schoolwork much. My mind is not being stretched. I thought the humanities and social sciences would make me confront deep issues, but the truth is they are very easy to bullshit. I'm not interested enough to think about the issues I'm presented with, but the thought that these are just BS classes makes me so sad.

I'm directionless, on the road to pennilessness, and have met noone like minded. I have two crushes, one of whom is straight and the other of whom is taken, both of whom I avoid. There is no one else I've met that I'd consider dating really. The first year queers are very unstable. I am picky. I thought I'd have lost my virginity by now, and I probably could have, but to me sexual stuff has greater significance, especially if it's a first time. I don't want my first time to be meaningless, and I don't really know how to pull strings to get a fuck buddy or to sleep around, if I wanted that. I don't want to get mired in that, but I'm tired of being inexperienced. My friends say I'm a sloppy kisser, but I don't know how to change it! Probably the main way would be to get experience, but... oy.

I thought college would solve all my problems. I have become more outgoing and more comfortable socially and with my sexual orientation (though everyone here is very homosexist and would never discuss queer theory as more than a tangent). Other than that, it's been a bust. I don't know what to do--there's only five weeks left in my first year, and I feel like friendships and situations are already cemented. I'm miserable, though--been crying all week since I got back from break. This has been the longest week of my life.

So I know I like women. Some women. Haven't met one right one yet, or anything. I don't even like stereotypical beauty, but I have liked women for a long, long time.

Other than that, the door's pretty much open. Am I butch? Trans-masculine? A guy? Do I like guys? Is it just the influence of going to an all-women's school? Who will I be when I'm gone? What gender expression do I really want, what gender identity? Am I hiding or confused? Or both? Is this denial, or what? And, really! I've been questioning for four, five years!

I almost decided I was a lesbian, but then there was a sweet, geeky guy, and I realized I was thinking about him a bit. Maybe not so much sexually, but I don't think about that many people sexually. I'm just horny, undirected horniness. When I hooked up with my friend I realized I liked having breasts, but I still don't know what gender I am.

And I LIKE queer theory, if no one else on this campus does! Gender revolution, sexual fluidity makes so much sense to me. But I don't have the guts to even admit attraction to men. Or possible attraction to men. OR open-mindedness, or anything.

Oy. I'm pretty mad at myself. And confused. I don't find much of a need for labels, but apparently everyone else does. And not having a label is choosing connotations, anyway. I wish I had a position I could happily defend. But I may be shirking the real issue: my cowardice.

I said goodbye in a gaze thirty-seven degrees away from your eyes on my sockets;
In short words in short sentences:
“We’ll chill, it’ll be cool.”
(my hands dove in my pockets as if it were your cheekbones they were holding)
words full of curdled nectar, fermentation of old pumping blood.

You ironed on a smile that
Saw in my lips those vines you wound about my heart.
You still sparkled like our unfilled wine glasses,
still drew a tightrope between us,
and I grab one end away, wrap my fist three times, and flower-press your face on a kite.

Footfalls digging sockets into pockmarked sand, pockets,
tightrope string slicing red fortunes on my palm,
still running to catch up to your face in the clouds,
no matter how many sandy-grain pyramids behind.

So we had the day off of classes yesterday. And my friends and I decided it would be a good idea to get crazy drunk the night before. One girl--Diamond, we'll call her--procured some delicious rum from the Bahamas (from a previous hookup in her dorm), and four queer, single girls proceeded to down an inordinate amount of generously measured shots. A couple of non-drinkers were there, watching us make fools of ourselves, but they left eventually after cutting us off of our third tequila and pepsi mix and telling my friends they were too drunk to walk back to their dorms.

So here's the cast of characters:

Diamond. She's on the rebound from a two-year relationship, and has been hooking up with a couple of girls since the breakup. One of my friends has told me she has a crush on me. I'm very done with rebound relationships, though I think she's kinda cute. I've decided that it wouldn't be bad if I hooked up with Diamond while drunk, though. Given the experience she has, it probably would be pretty fabulous.

Alex. We've been friends since the first day of school on our orientation group. She's single, though she's hooking up with a straight girl on the side. She's very much of a mess, cutting and depressed. We'd pinky-sworn not to date at the beginning of the year, and all last semester I wasn't into her, but since the beginning of this one I've found myself physically attracted to her. I've tried to suppress it because she's such a mess, and I don't think she's that into me.

Sarah. She lives down from the hall from me (hence off-limits), and just broke up with a girl, but is still on the rebound from her ex-boyfriend of last summer. She's very sweet and nice, though I don't know her so so well.

Me. It's my room. A newly opened double (with a king-size bed made from two double beds). I'm 98% over my first, very problematic relationship, had a fling over winter break, and am very sexually deprived.

So after our sober friends leave us to our own devices, we decide to watch a movie. Over the course of our drinking, Diamond and Sarah have been flirting and cuddling a bit. So maybe scratch hooking up with Diamond, my alcohol-infused brain decides. Alex and I often cuddle anyway (thus was born my first shock of attraction to her), and so the movie (watched from the bed), quickly induces coupling up. Alex and I are just holding each other, but our faces are close, and I decide to go for it. She kisses back and goes a lot farther (second... almost third base, but I had enough presence of mind to stop her), all the while both of us reiterating how drunk we are. Diamond and Sarah are on the other half of the bed, giggling and cuddling and maybe making out. So maybe I'm a bit jealous. But, holy cow, I've never been this far with anyone before, and it's some pretty high quality action. I tell myself to enjoy it while it lasts.

Sarah gets up to go to the bathroom. Diamond asks me if she's heard anything about what I think of her. I stop making out with Alex and turn on my side to look at her. "Yeah," I say. "Well?" She asks. Alex says, "Oh, make out already!" and pushes me onto that side of the bed. "Um," is my articulate response, and then I kiss her.

When Sarah comes back, Alex and I resume making out. It's good to remember I didn't completely forget how.

It's hard to sleep in a bed with four people. At one point in the night I realize that we were making out in front of Diamond and Sarah, and I apologize loudly for the inappropriateness. The next morning at brunch is very awkward. Diamond and Sarah are holding hands. Alex and I are staring straight ahead, and sitting as far as possible from each other. Our friend Liza, who has a girlfriend and was otherwise occupied the night before, just laughed at it all. I was very hungover and rather overwhelmed.

When we were cleaning up my room, Diamond asked me what the kiss meant. I told her maybe we could date sometime in the future, when she was over her ex.

I went and talked to a friend about the whole thing with Alex. She told me to go for getting with Alex. I talked to her later that day, and told her I wouldn't mind hooking up again, and she gave me a non-response. She needed to talk to her hookup buddy. We agreed we didn't want a relationship.

And that's where it stands. I'm a bit of a panicky mess. First times are nice, but I don't like how everything is vague and up in the air. And Alex and I are old, old friends. But thinking about it, I really am pretty into her. Our friendship isn't as close as it could be, and that makes me sad. She's closer with other people. But she's such a wreck I couldn't be with her. And I don't think she really wants me anyway. I think she was just sex-hungry.

So, if you do want to hook up, do it sober. And think about who you do it with first.

I wrote this for my poetry class (it's supposed to be a prose outpouring on a body part). What do you all think?

There are potatoes sitting in my chest, frozen, stale potatoes with pointed pacifiers of punctuated electricity. They are pillowed in Jello and hang limp, limp, larger than fresh-picked apples, hang flanking my heart. The black hole of produce that is my chest siphons off rot in a direct triangle to my heart, where it nests and festers like an old mother bird still waiting for eggs that will never come. They cannot be touched, no, not even one finger tip around their five-minute circumference: they recoil into cemented potato holeiness at the mere thought of a darkened room and a seductive snaking of hips, two sets rubbing against each other and—no, the only way my nested heart can survive that siphoning is if they just aren’t there. There, now all I need to do is just smooth them flat, a thumb smoothing over a misbegotten ridge of clay, smooth them over in cool gray glances and then my heart will be released from its bodyguards, free to roam and free to caress and nest anyone and anything it chooses. But, holy bejeezus, my breasts aren’t clay and there’s no hand as large as my chest, no hand that can just brush them over like a wrinkle in tossed bedcovers and have them done. No, all I do is stare down from the cliff of my face and take the hands at my sides—hands suddenly as apart from my shoulder sockets as brush is different from the cliff it clings to—take my hands and watch from miles above as tan elastic bandage, four inches wide and nine miles long, as that bandage sandpapers my palms and makes folded-in Vs across my chest, steamrollering, a cement truck rolling across and reinventing. There is a gravelly sound that accompanies my new-wrapped cliff, the sound of a car pulling out of a gravel driveway, of a hand sliding across a filling page. And these hands that are not my hands but are attached to my elbows, which bend forward and sideways and back, over and over in nine miles of fabric, are attached to my elbows attached to my shoulders my—these hands wrap and smooth and they aren’t gone, my bodyguards, my potatoes, oh no, they are mashed, flattened like dried flowers in a dictionary, a dictionary bound to be shaken open in hours when paper cuts of weight dig into gravity and spread newly ballooning flowers all over my tan-marble linoleum. In my head, though, all across the clouds in a sky blue even at midnight, the only view is foreshortened fists opening and sliding and closing and turning and sliding, making interlocking Vs of sandpaper tan across my chest. Who knows what’s underneath? Who cares? All there is is a heart turning to iron and the two cement magnets of nothing—everything—flattened like a building under medical facades.

I long for intensity
the way I ache
for sex.

One in my heart, squeezed in a juicer and
left to sit,

One in my gut, gobs of clay longing wrapped
to my ribs and
opening my lips
chapped with kissing.

And my refusal to love ordinary isn't snobbery,
it's simmering stronger than tea, than tomato soup,
heavier than the buzz of alcohol.

It crawls out of my juice-squeezed heart and sand-layered gut,
emotions dripping like tides.

And I am always dressed
in clothes too plain
to be crazy.

Well, that girl and I broke up. We still get along. It's weird not touching or kissing, but we'll get used to it. Yesterday she hung out with her ex and I couldn't take it and she said that maybe it wouldn't work and I agreed. But she wants to keep it open, and I tried to break it more cleanly.

I believe we shall still be best friends.

I also think she may be crushing on me a bit more than I on her.

I feel OK. I felt so terrible half the time we were dating that it's a bit of a relief. But I suspect tomorrow I'll feel sad.

So I'm dating this girl. As of two evenings ago. I enjoyed hanging out with her when I met her at college; she's this cool playwright who is very energetic and dynamic and talks all the time, but in a good way because she has so much to say.

Rather soon after I met her, she was going to audition for this play her ex-girlfriend (who goes to our school) was running. But she decided not to, instead wandering around campus with me and crying about her ex and how much she is still in love with her and how mean her ex was to her.

A week ago, she started flirting with me very heavily. She apparently has a rather large crush on me. I was pretty tempted to flirt back, I think especially because we are such good friends and she's so interesting to hang out with. But, I mean, she was just crying to me about her ex! But then again, no halfway cute girl has ever showed interest in me. I'd never even kissed a girl!

Well, I decided I didn't care about her ex after I came back from visiting home this weekend, and we saw each other, and making out and then official relationship-ness and much proclamation ensued.

Yesterday was arbitrary cancellation of classes, so clearly much hanging out and kissing ensued. Which was pretty fun, but she seemed a bit more excited about it than I. I was mostly just having fun, but she seemed really into me. Is it just her personality? Or am I just not really crushing on her and just happy to have a kissing buddy?

Kissing is cool and all, but that night before we went to eat she started crying about how she doesn't know anyone here and how "I'm different" (from her ex?), and she's really overwhelmed. And I asked her about her ex, and she said she didn't want to love her anymore. Which, of course, is nowhere near not loving her. Over lunch she kept saying how she has these terrible mood swings, and I was just... I don't know. And she says she likes me so much, and I'm so nice to her, and she wants to date me and she wants a girlfriend.

We started a conversation about it, with a lot of "I don't know"s, and I felt like I should break up with her, because it was honestly too much angst. But she had play rehearsal and we didn't finish the conversation. I thought a lot about it and figured that made sense. She doesn't want to date casually; she gets pretty emotionally attached. I don't want to make that kind of a commitment with her in this state.

So I was going to break up with her, and I saw her at lunch today, and we figured we needed to talk so we skipped lunch to talk, and I resisted how all over me she was for at least half an hour. I told her what I was thinking, and we talked about other things, and she kissed me, and I said "I'll be an emotional wreck for you." Yeah. So we kissed a lot in the middle of campus and she went to class. So now she doesn't have to change her facebook status.

So I'm rather an idiot and feel a bit like a shitbag, because after all these shenanigans I really don't feel that attracted to her.

So here I am, at the lesbian capital of the world, in the lesbianest college. Finished my first week of classes. Love the environment. Wear overalls all the time. Meet a lot of girls, have a few gay friends, a lot of straight ones live in my dorm. As far as I can tell anyway. Long story short, I'm actually fitting in comfortably.

Except for this one thing. I'm at a women's school, and I'm not so sure I ID as female. I knew this was coming, and my school has a pretty big trans population, but ack! I feel like I'm coming out to myself all over again. I mean, some trans people knew since they were two, and I definitely haven't been that way. I guess I've just felt a bit "meh" on the subject of gender for a long time. Part of that was because I felt a bit weird in my own skin at public school, and I didn't really have any female examples other than nerd or groomed.

But the whole concept of gender is weird to me. Gender roles, gender norms. Why does gender dictate all these weird things like the height of shoe you wear or whether you put chemicals on your face? Or whether you have this crazy fluffy Victorian name like I do? When I step outside the paradigm of "Men do this, women do that" I feel like I'm an alien hot-air ballooning over the United States. My society has been cut out of me.

It especially irks me when people say that gender is completely genetic. No! No! I have a choice, I do. In other cultures, people have different gender constructs than here, sometimes opposite ones. If races differ so slightly in genetic makeup, how could gender identities and roles be so varied in different places?

Maybe I should just go live somewhere where gender isn't an issue. Is there a place like that? Maybe I...

I just feel this not-femaleness so much of the time. "Women" doesn't really apply to me anymore. Maybe I'm just confused about what range of women are out there, but I feel like I'm not it. Yet here people mistake me for straight all the time because my hair is maybe three inches long instead of buzz-cutted.

Maybe I'm just confused and need to wait it out. Maybe I just need a girlfriend. Maybe I'm just traumatized from public school. Maybe I need to look butcher. I feel like I'm always five steps behind the look I think I'm presenting and the actual one that comes out. I don't know how to do this stuff, though! I never thought about it before, never cared about my clothes. And now I want to go pillage the men's sections at stores, and I didn't at home because my straight girlfriends might be wierd about it and here because I haven't found anyone yet. And I have no money.

This writing feels really disjointed to me. Maybe I'm taking too many foreign languages, or maybe it's just so hard for me to even let myself think about this as if it were real.

I just don't want to go through this again, you know? Even here, with so many transguys, I'm gonna be an outcast again, gonna have to come out.

I'm going! To college! In five days!

Smith, of course, which is excellently queer. We shall see how the all-girls' thing pans out.

I just wanted to thank this virtual gay community for being here for me and educating me when I was scared and depressed and ignorant. Now I am none of these things, and oasis was a big part of getting me through that. Thanks Jeff, for keeping this up and for putting so much love and advice here. And everyone else, too, of course, for being there or for being me.

I'll probably still lurk a bit as I have been for the past year. Who knows--I may yet regain active membership.

To be continued...

The legislature in MA today voted to keep same-sex marriage, not to vote on it. No stress, not even a debate. The future of gay marriage in MA is pretty certain now. Love love love MA!!! And Deval, too, of course. If Mitt was still around, he'd lobby to vote on this when everyone was planning on banning gay marriage.

The other day I was really worried and angry, but MA takes care of us here de jure and de facto should follow. SUCH a good day. This not only saves so much political hassle, but it sets a historical precedent of unconditional protection of marriage as a civil right.

http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid46316.asp
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/06/legis...
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/06/one_l...
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/06/14/tight_vote_looms_on...

Fiction absolute. That’s what he called it, reading Tom Wolfe in English class that day. Fiction absolute. As I was reading I wanted to underline it, but I’d forgotten my pencil. Everyone has their own worldview that places their group—or groups—in the best light. Sure—Democrats and Republicans, military and civilians, jocks and nerds, gays and straights—they all do put themselves in the brightest spotlight. Sure, I think. Even our language reflects it. When was the last time a man was a nurse? Gender roles. The last time a lawyer talked in plain English? Eschew obfuscation—but who’s talking.

My best friend’s father is an antiseptic inventor. Because he knows the genus and species of all 5,692,535,897 germs in a fingertip of kitchen counter, he washes his hands every twenty-two minutes. If he has cut himself in the last month, he wears latex gloves to folk dances. My best friend, who, being on immune suppressants, has many more risks to take than his father, has only half internalized his lectures. He’ll say,
“But—you know—”
“What?” I ask.
“The faucets are so unclean!” Oh, wait, I’m not sounding like Dad, am I?”
“No. No, of course not.” I see the image of translucent white rubber stretching over precision-drill hands, and his worried eyebrows. Who would ever cover them up?

It is lunch. My cousin and I have not talked for a while. We sit down at the shiny wood table on the machine-embroidered chairs. Behind Lisa all the city brushes by a big picture window. The sky is milk.
The waiter comes and goes, so quiet I can hardly hear him come up. Every five minutes almost. I’ll just have to ask her and let him hear some of it. It’s all twisting up like a sweaty doodle, fierce elaboration and ignorance, wrinkled and folded in my stomach.
“Lisa?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know what to do. I think I’m questioning my gender.”
“Oh yeah?” Her face is a milk-smooth line.
“Yeah. Like—I think I’m a boy sometimes. A lot. I keep on thinking about it. It’s confusing, though. I mean, what is gender anyway? A stereotype, a physicality? What else is there? What creates the desire to… Once... I went bathing suit shopping. It was awful! The saleslady was all neat and middle aged and I had holey pants and when she showed me a bikini I thought—have you ever thought this?—‘but I’m a boy.’”
“Yeah, that’s happened to me before.”
“What should I do? I don’t think I can take it much longer.
“Well, the conclusion I came to was that I wasn’t really a guy. I just wanted to be.”
“Wanted to?”
“Wanted to find a home. If my problem was I was trans, I could come out, I’d know what I want. All my other problems would be caused by that. They’d all have a good explanation.”
How horrible, how isolating, for high school to make you feel you had the wrong gender. I remember thinking that once. Maybe she makes sense.
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much, Marietta.”
But… But… maybe I’m not always you. Maybe we’re not always this close. But I’m thinking this now.

“I think they’d just fire him if he’d done something really bad.” Kate continued her third rant over the green back of the bus seat. “They wouldn’t put a teacher on leave otherwise.”
Her mouth turned down in a determined way and her glasses glinted behind wide eyes and raised, convinced eyebrows.
“Well, I just think there are worse injustices in the world.” Do you know what it’s like to be a sexual minority, Kate? To be gay, bi, trans? To walk down the halls and hear this lacy, looping, Victorian name, this name that ties you up in pink and delicacy, delicacy, just a quiet, gentle girl. A deep girl. A girl who will be fine in college, because in college there will be so many others like her. You don’t know. Kate panics over tests. She can’t.
“Of course there are worse injustices in the world! There are always worse injustices.” Kit looks at her lap, sighs, looks up again in a ¾ facial profile. “I intend to pursue it though.”
That mouth again. Those eyes. She goes back to her drawing, and I stare out the window. The first time for a while we haven’t talked on the bus home. When you’ve felt this isolated and unsupported every day, Kate, when there is nowhere, nowhere to turn, when even the lesbian school wouldn’t accept you for who you are, then you’ll get a taste. You’ll know what lostness is, what helplessness.
It’s Kate’s stop. As she gets up, I catch myself staring above her, in ¾ profile, with a long-suffering, tragic gaze. Damn. Who’s being the hero now? Who really does need a cause to hang on to, a group to be in? Maybe it is all crap, anyway. Maybe it’s all crap like Laura said.
“Bye,” she says, miserabler-than-usual in her voice.
“Have a nice weekend,” I smile. The nice girl, too. Always the nice girl.

At home, I stare out my window at the same woods, the same smoothed stones I’ve seen for sixteen years. If I to co-ed school… But—God! I don’t care about its non-discrimination, God, if I go there, I’ll never get out of here. I’ll see the same woods fifteen minutes away. The sky will always be milky-white and the trees will always be short of grasping sky. If I don’t take off my latex gloves of Marietta, I’ll never take the risks that let me live.