Gender Jumper

When we met, it was in a room full of peers, all flirty and attractively weird teens trying out for a recurring drama project. Then there was summer training and monthly meetings, intimate spaces where people laid in each other's laps and understood stillness. Then there were actual performances, though I barely remember us going together, and then our open house with family, which I missed for some devastating reason. I had a crush on her, but I had a crush on almost every girl in the room. I just loved the proximity of it all.

We stayed connected in the interim year, but nothing frequent or deep. She didn't come back while I was lost and afraid and just kept showing up without ever really asking the director. She, now a junior, was busy with her own school's theater program; I, a recent graduate who had failed to get into my dream school or have a backup plan, was languishing in limbo, from the minimum wage job to the clinically depressed girlfriend-roommate. 

It wasn't until I was finally away at NYU that she told me. We were chatting on AIM about my new girlfriend (not the depressed one, but a respectable one who never really asked me, just sort of started calling me her boyfriend and I didn't argue). She was flirting, like we did, but when I laughed it off she clapped back:

"I'm serious. I was in love with you, ___ ___." Full name and everything.

I couldn't tell if she was hurt, only that she was serious. I was so stunned I didn't ask any of the questions in my mind. I just took a dramatic breath (this was before the days when you could see someone was typing a response) and answered,

"Then I'm the fool." Lacking any finesse whatsoever, I told her that I didn't think my new relationship would last very long and maybe some day we could find out what was possible.

We didn't really discuss it after that, but we didn't communicate any less, either. My first year at NYU was the first time I ever had high speed internet, and I chatted at least as many words as I expositioned. She wasn't even the only person to dance along the boundary between "proper" and "improper" monogamy (the month would turn into six years, but I would make it five before full-on cheating on her). But I started to get a sense of her as a person and I wanted to know more.

But we did share secrets, we discussed sex and desire, and we continued to tapdance around the boundary of flirtation that was neither harmful nor harmless.

My first winter break, we ended up spending New Year's Eve together -- not just New Year's Eve, but Y2K. My best friend from high school came along and we just wandered the park, watching people and fireworks and cutting up. We took wild photos in a statuesque nook. Her playfulness was endless. I 

(It has only been in recent years that I realized I might have or could have loved that friend -- not the cop, but the fluffy learner -- romantically, as we met years before I allowed myself sexual thoughts about a guy.)

When the night came to an end, I think I used the magnitude of the occasion and the world not ending (...it was a thing... you kind of had to be there...) to surprise myself and her by kissing her goodbye. It wasn't even midnight. I don't know what I told the cop (he knew I had a girlfriend out East and he would forever be a stickler about monogamy). I just had to let her know that I saw it, too, some kind of spark.

The next time I saw her was the following year (summer I think); she'd had breast reduction surgery to reduce her back pain and I came by to wish her well. It was the first time I'd been inside her large, expensive home, or met any of her family. I didn't stay long, and I didn't kiss her goodbye.

And from there, we just lived our separate lives. We stayed in touch on AIM, and I kept her cell number long enough to put her in my first several phones (I didn't get one until the summer I graduated NYU and moved to D.C.). Our paths never crossed and our conversations didn't spark potent memories.

Until...

One day near the start of summer, I was scrolling through my phone and talking about all the old numbers that remained there. I was talking to someone, but I couldn't tell you who. It was 2008, ten years since the drama troupe and eight since Y2K. I'd been to D.C. and back, finished my 6 years with my college sweetheart, and was two years deep into nonmonogamy. I was depressed that year, grieving a heartbreak the previous winter, and not dating as much as I had in previous years. I was looking for connection. I was curious about that sparkle.

On a whim, I texted her. She didn't recognize the number, but it was still her line. She said she was glad to hear from me, and almost immediately suggested meeting up. She sent me a picture and I barely recognized her. She explained that after the breast reduction, she'd made some different life choices, lost weight, and kept it off. I confess I was a little disappointed; not only was she just about the most attractive person of size I'd ever met, but I had way more experience connecting with fat people than thin people. I couldn't put it into words, especially since I was still pretty thin myself by most accounts, I just knew I had an easier time relating to people who had come to terms with their imperfect bodies than those who never had to.

The intimidation only got worse when we met at Barnes & Noble. I had recently started to develop a working knowledge of zodiac signs, and all I can say is that she was extremely Virgo (my opposite sign, which can evoke dangerous attraction among other things). Just when I thought she'd become coiffed and aristocratic (like the sexy, expensive dress that clung to her thighs), she'd inject the best kind of chaos (like telling me that she'd taken her panties off due to VPL). I had absolutely no idea who this person was, but I couldn't look away. 

I told her about New York, D.C., and polyamory. She told me about learning to reckon with the body she had, and her college days. She now worked in high end catering, and had recently started a relationship. We wandered the aisles and commented all the way. It was hard to look away, but sometimes it was hard to absorb this new version of her. I took strange solace in the thin smile lines on her face, a lingering artifact of the cheeks I remembered.

Over the PA came a powerful album intro that distracted me for a couple of tracks. When I confessed this to her, she grabbed my hand and marched me over the the music counter to ask the cashier. The cashier had picked it herself, and showed us the CD on display. I bought it immediately. This totem gave me strength, all the more as it continued playing overhead.

"I feel like I owe you an apology," I blurted at no point in particular.

"For what?"

"I feel like I didn't really make much sense back in the day. Like, New Year's Eve, when I kissed you. Like maybe I led you on and never showed up for you."

She turned her head but grinned potently. "Don't you remember what you told me? After?"

"After New Year's? No, I don't remember at all."

"When you got back to New York, you messaged me and you said, 'Thank you.' You said that kissing me helped you realize that she was the one for you and that you were going to focus on being present for her."

Years later, I still have no memory of these thoughts, only of her repeating them back to me. "Wow, that was kind of an asshole thing to say."

(More than kind of...)

"Yeah."

She was not locked away, nor conflicted, but I had no idea how she was feeling.

I couldn't have put it into words at the time, but my journey was opening me up into an over-communicator, a processor, and a space-holder, and she neither wanted nor needed any of that. I'd never felt so hyper-aware of the class difference between us as I did walking around the parking lot of the richest mini-mall in town; besides the nicest B&N in town, there was a Williams-Sonoma, a Crate & Barrel, and clothing stores I'd never set foot in. We were much closer to her territory than mine. And however mystifying the dynamic and beguiling her slightly tamer eyes, this was the closest we'd ever get.

We hugged goodbye, a little stiffly. We added each other on Facebook. I think I dropped by her work to say hi once, but she wasn't in. She got married a couple years later to that guy she'd started seeing. When she got pregnant, her face filled out again.