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It was with Kotku that I first heard it. Somehow, it made me like her less even if I’m grateful for it now. That night, the three of us got high together in the park—something that infuriated me at the time; it was our special place, or at least I thought so. Looking back, it was the smart option: we wouldn’t go to the R&R where Kotku lived (Roaches and Rats the kids at school called it), and we definitely couldn’t go around bringing a girl back to my house where Xandra and Larry might see. We wouldn’t have done anything, but they were sure to be home tonight and I didn’t want to face them even without mockery that would come from “bringing a girl home” especially not bringing a girl home with Boris.
So there we were, in a park high off our asses when I said something I couldn’t remember and she said something back. That, however, I remember.
She said, “You don’t have to be a man, could be something else. Boris isn’t a girl.”
It shook me, and I felt angry on Boris’s part for some reason, even if she was telling the truth.
“Because I am man,” Boris said confidently.
“I know,” she replied, “That’s why I’m dating you. I don’t fuck girls.”
With a sour face, I turned to her. “You don’t even like other girls.”
“Not true, Kotku likes fighting girls.”
And God, Boris was right. I’d seen her get into huge scrapes with gangster girls of all sorts. It was terrifying. “Why do you like fighting them?” I asked in probably the most interested and non-confrontational conversation I’d ever had with her.
That is, of course, when Boris answered for her, “She likes getting her hair pulled.” And, he ruined it. It was tragic; I really did want to hear. And, even more so, Kotku’s preferences were something I very much so did not want to hear about.
Three days later, we sat alone together, bitterly smoking cigarettes from our own packs and not even sharing a lighter. Boris got detention again, and I needed, wanted him to help me steal. Kotku, on the other hand, wanted him just because she wanted him. She was free to steal with us, too. As long as she split the profits. Well, she could until she talked to me.
“You know, what I said in the park. I meant it.”
I swallowed hard. “I don’t know what you mean?”
“You know,” she clarified, “you can be whatever you want.”
If I was Boris, I would’ve said something like, Maybe I do want to be like you, get my hair pulled by a bunch of girls. But I wasn’t Boris, so I didn’t say that. Instead, I got up and walked away. She didn’t care much, didn’t say anything at least.
Boris came to me later that night mad that I had ditched him on our shopping day. Still, he unloaded his pockets to share: apples, bandaids, “nestle bars” as he called them, steaks somehow, cheetos, and no condoms. He didn’t need them with Kotku. He still had, as always amused me, the one condom that he kept in his wallet for show. Last time I checked, it was 3 years past its expiration date. That night was something final. So was the next day when he told me to ask out KT. So was my anger at him when I went to sleep no longer touching him even with my spine to his like we did when it got too hot to get close, nights when even Popchyk wouldn’t sleep on his neck.
It was months later when our truly final day came.
I became an orphan twice, once when I lost my mother and had no father, and a second time when I lost my father and already had no mother. Drug addled, fueled by grief and fear, I made the decision to leave, and I stand by that choice. But I still miss one part about it.
When he kissed me that night—the night where I wanted to say nothing but, of course, I love you—I didn’t feel like a man in a boy's body, nor the shame of being two men. I felt like me, like Boris saw me and only me. I’m remembering it now, not because of the linear path of this story nor because it’s what indubitably happens next whenever I retell the story, but because I dreamed of it last night. To this day, I sit awake thinking about it. The kiss was far from my first, farther from my last, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt as free to be loved as I did then, even if I didn’t have the courage to say it back.
______
In college, I found a new person to explain the variables of gender to me. Needing to fill my course load enough to be a full time student and keep the financial aid, I added what I thought to be an easy class. That and I thought there may be a few girls who would enjoy a man who took gender studies classes.
I was proven wrong by how far the Gender and Sexuality professor seemed to hate me. He took an instant interest in me far unlike any other teachers before. Usually, they regarded me with a mix of shock and pity starting from the moment my father left at age thirteen. Others regarded me as a joy to have in the class as I got decent grades and was nice to them. Worst case scenario, they were annoyed by my lack of presence. That seemed to happen a lot in college starting in my eighteenth year, no longer having the excuse of being a child.
This teacher, however, wanted my engagement then punished me for it. He asked a question, and when I said bisexuals liked men and women, he made a point to have me stand up to say it. Then, he wouldn't let me sit down as he spelled out the correction that bisexuals are attracted to more than men and women. He then kept me standing at the front of the class while describing what it meant to be non-binary and asking repeatedly if I needed clarification. Probably I did—not a single ounce of what he said passed through into my head—but I said no and searched desperately for a way to leave.
Somehow it worked out for me though because no less than three girls and one twink came up to tell me he was a dick. The person who I ended up being almost friends with, pretty with pink hair and ovular glasses, explained to me in their dorm that they weren't actually a girl. Said if I couldn't respect that then I had to leave.
When I confessed to actually not getting it at all, they sat me down and put it out so plainly it almost reminded me of Kotku's gentle reminder. Still, it felt nice to hear someone talk about themself for an hour and a half straight. I didn't even have to contribute to the conversation outside of a few nods and simple questions about pronouns. They put in the effort to be kind about the singular they.
In the end, we mostly hung out out of mutual loneliness and boredom. I didn't have the money for good drugs yet, and they didn't have a partner. We hooked up on and off for the rest of the semester before they transferred to a more prestigious film school with a joke about non-binary stereotypes that I wasn't allowed to laugh at. I miss them sometimes.
______
Kitsey came back to her apartment one day while I had been sitting there alone watching an online auction on fiestaware glass. Technically, I had been waiting for her, but I had gotten a bit lost in the auction while sitting there. A banana boat? who in their right mind would spend $429 for something made in the late nineties. However, if they could charge it, so could I.
Polite as ever, she rapped on the door to her own room, alerting me to her presence, and she entered holding a bag of food. "Do you want my leftovers?" She was dressed immaculately wearing diamond earrings that nearly matched my mothers.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Girl food," she replied, mocking me before opening it. A salad.
"Yeah, it's girl food, alright."
She looked at me, "You don't have to agree with everything I say, you know."
"Fine," I said, disagreeing with her, "How was your boy food at dinner?"
She almost laughed at that. "It was amazing. Now, do you want the leftovers of my girl food or not? Turn it into Theo food won’t you?"
"I'll take my Theo food," I said.
The salad was really fucking good, creamy and somehow not wilted. Like a toddler, she referred to everything I ate from then on as Theo food, and it made her laugh every time. I thought it was just the sound of her laugh that I loved, but there was something about her eating girl food and her male friends eating boy food and me eating neither that felt nice.
______
Years passed before I really thought of gender again. It wasn’t until I saw him.
He took me into the bar, and tried to feed me while I drank on an empty stomach. I’m not quite sure if it was in the interest of keeping me from getting black out or if he just wanted me to eat. Either way, there was nothing that could get me to put a pickled egg into my body.
I kept looking at his lips, then his teeth, no longer gray snaggle teeth.
“Dentist in Sweden did them,” he said. ”Cost a fucking fortune. My wife kept after me—”
When the fuck did he get married. I asked him and he pulled up a picture of his beautiful wife and two little blond children. Before I could even say anything, he launched into a tirade about his youngest child who he had yet to meet and his wife’s nazi father and her antidepressants.
Through some measure of self restraint previously unknown to me, I let him go on for a full minute before I called, “Bull fucking shit, Boris.”
“What? Why you say bullshit?” he asked.
I looked at him as if he were stupid because he had to be to assume I was that dumb. “There’s no way that's your family.”
“What? You think I could not have a beautiful wife, Potter. Do you think I am undeserving? Maybe I am if I visit them so little, but you don’t think I could land her at all?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t think you could have those little blond children.”
He looked something close to mad, such a bad liar when he was drunk—not that he was a good liar in the best of times. “You dare insult my wife like that? Insult me?”
I moved in closer. “No, I know those aren’t your kids because you have a vagina. I know this because I’ve been in it.”
“Oh,” he deflated. “I forgot.” He kept looking at me before putting his hands up. “No, no. Not like that. It’s just.. I have dick now.”
As if spurred on by this, he came around to sit on my side of the booth and whisper in my ear. “You are still the only man I have ever been with. No, no, don’t bristle. Must admit though, you always refusing to talk about it after was very flattering. Always made me feel like a man.”
“You are a man,” I confirmed and was glad when he never said that I was one back.
At the time, I thought it was just because I didn’t want to be reminded that we were together as two men , poofters as he said it. But now I can recognize how I was always happier not to be referred to as a man.
“And you are still Potter,” he replied, moving back to the other side of the table.
It was in Antwerp that things changed for me. I could say for us, maybe. Sick and still angry with him for ditching me, I started to forgive him slightly when he bought me the new phone. The idiot forgot to ask for it to be set up in English, so I got to watch him fiddle with its German settings for an hour before going back to the phone store for help. He had to walk through the snow because I wanted it right then, and he got it for me right then! He complained heavily all the way out the door and all the way back in, but he did do that for me.
At the end of the trip, he took my face in his and said, “This will not be like last time. Will see you again, yes?” and kissed me.
“Yes, Boris. You were the one who didn’t want to see me last time.”
“Who said that?” He asked. “I always want to see you.”
“Liar.”
He looked at me, heart broken at the accusation, as if he wasn’t a master exaggerator. “I always want to see you. You are my Potter.”
That was it. I am his Potter. That's all I have to be.