Tucker
“I’ve never met anyone genderqueer who was so…good at it,” Tucker said. She and Summer were sitting on the porch at Cal’s place waiting for more party guests to arrive.
“Well, what did Ella say about her dating life? She said she’d kissed girls and something about it being about the same with boys, but then Nico said they dated, right? Maybe we can figure it out that way,” Summer suggested.
“You haven’t even met Nico yet and you’re already trying to figure per out.”
“Oh and you didn’t, Ms. High and Mighty? Nice use of the gender-neutral pronoun; how long did you have to practice that?”
“Okay, yeah, I wondered about Nico,” Tucker admitted.
“See!” Summer pushed off the ratty outdoor couch and went to get another beer.
Cal lived in the bottom half of a duplex with a broad, broken-down front porch and a worn deck off the back. His roommate was in an ongoing relationship with a girl who lived across town and he was gone more weekends than he was home, so Cal’s place became a frequent gathering spot for the LGBTQIA Alliance parties. They were only a block off campus and this was Cal’s second year renting there. The upstairs unit was also rented to Freytag students so they didn’t complain about the noise as long as they could come down and raid the beer cooler on the back deck.
The weather was still nice enough that on the screened-in porch, Tucker wasn’t cold in a T-shirt and could enjoy the soft wind moving around her. A rich, sweet, jasmine smell carried from the little white flowers climbing a trellis in the neighbor’s yard and mixed with a sharp metal tang from the half-cleaned bike parts in a heap against the porch wall. Tucker inhaled deeply. It reminded her of working in the back of the hardware store with the windows open.
Her phone vibrated and she read the text from Lindy: Where are you?
Cal’s. You coming? Tucker typed.
Is Summer there?
Yeah, why?
Vivien asked, Lindy wrote.
Tucker didn’t recall Lindy having any classes with Vivien this semester. What was going on? Did Vivien want to know about Summer because she was trying to meet up with her? But why not just text her? Or was she trying to avoid her? Summer hadn’t mentioned Vivien recently and Tucker wasn’t sure if those two were still hooking up or not.
She typed to Lindy, Is she looking for Summer or avoiding her?
We’re on our way, Lindy replied.
Hearing familiar laughter, Tucker looked up from her phone to see Ella and Nico coming up the walk together. A few inches taller than Ella, Nico had an arm draped easily around her shoulders. Tucker’s chest clenched. She wanted both to join them and to push them apart.
They opened the door to the porch and she stood up.
“I’ll give you the tour,” she offered.
Ella looked better than she had all week. Tucker had only seen her in passing until Friday, and her face had been shadowed with fatigue and worry. Now her green eyes were bright again.
She was in dark jeans and a gray T-shirt over a white waffle-weave long underwear shirt. The effect of the slightly butch outfit made her look even smaller and more delicate than usual. Nico was in a denim jacket over a shimmering multicolored shirt with slender pants tucked into heavy boots. As before, Nico struck Tucker first as a guy who was cross-dressing, then as a woman who was passing as a pretty man wearing male-style eye makeup. In the time it took them to walk across the porch and into the living room, Tucker changed her mind about Nico’s gender three times.
“There’s beer on the back deck in a cooler, and another cooler of water and pop, plus some other drinks in the fridge.” She didn’t have to point out the food since it was spread over the dining room table and buffet.
Tesh sat on the couch by the front windows, her short brown hair sticking up wildly in many directions as it often did after a long day of running her hands through it while she studied. Cal was in the big armchair next to her, his tall body bent toward her with one elbow propped on a thick armrest. Summer came into the room from the back deck with three beers in her hands.
“Hey guys, this is Ella’s friend Nico from OSU. Nico, that’s Tesh on the couch and Cal next to her and this is Summer.”
Summer put two beers on the coffee table in front of Tesh and Cal and held the third out to Nico.
“Want one?” she asked.
“Sure. Thanks.”
Ella rolled her eyes and Tucker wondered if she often got overlooked next to Nico. They were both striking but in such different ways. Nico clearly dressed to draw attention. It was hard not to want to look at per.
“Since when do you drink?” Ella asked Nico.
“I’m a college student now,” Nico said and took the bottle Summer was offering.
“You want anything?” Ella asked Tucker.
Tucker held up the half full can of Pepsi she was drinking and shook her head. Ella went toward the back of the house. Summer dropped onto the couch in the middle, next to Tesh, and patted the open space on her other side. Nico obligingly took it.
“What’s Nico short for?” Summer asked. “Nicholas?”
“Nope,” Nico said.
“Nicole?”
“Still no.”
“Nikhita?”
Nico shook per head. “If you must know, my birth name is Nehal, but my little sister started calling me Neho and it just morphed.”
“Is Nehal a boy’s name?” Summer prompted.
“It’s unisex.”
“Seriously?”
“Look it up,” Nico said and gave her a wide grin.
Summer paused and smiled back at Nico because it was almost impossible not to smile at Nico up close. Nico’s thick lips framed the sort of bright white teeth you usually saw on TV and with per high, wide cheekbones even a small smile looked like an invitation to mischief. Per had warm brown skin and hazel eyes outlined with kohl and weighted down gently by well-shaped black brows. No matter what gender you read into per, Nico was a beautiful person.
“Okay.” Summer switched tracks. “So was Ella out when you two dated?”
“Out as what?”
“Bi, right? What else?”
“She has a lot to come out about. She didn’t tell you about her embarrassing Bollywood phase? I’ll bet she still has a sari in the back of her closet. You should ask her.”
“I do not,” Ella said. She’d just returned from the kitchen with a bottle of orange soda. There were four folding chairs around the room and she carried the nearest one to the side of the couch where Nico was sitting so she could be on Nico’s right.
Tucker leaned against one of the wooden columns that separated the living room from the dining room and sipped her warm Pepsi. She disliked not being the one Ella gravitated toward in a group.
Lindy came in the back way with Vivien. Tucker heard their voices in the kitchen and then they pushed through the swinging door into the dining room. Lindy paused at the table, but Vivien came to the archway between the rooms and leaned against the column opposite where Tucker was standing.
The muscles in Tucker’s arms and across her shoulders tightened. What business did Vivien have coming to this party after how cold she’d been in class? Lindy must have invited her, since they’d come in together, which meant this was all Lindy trying to kiss up somehow. Why did Vivien care about a party of undergrads anyway? Weren’t there enough queer people at the graduate level in this school?
“Hey,” Summer said to Vivien and Tucker couldn’t tell if that was meant as a warmly casual greeting or not. It sounded pretty distant for Summer and gave Tucker no clue about where they stood romantically. On the bright side, Summer was never one to withhold information so Tucker could just ask her later when they were alone and get the scoop.
“Nice place,” Vivien said.
“It’s Cal’s,” Summer told her. “You’ve met Tesh. And that’s Nico and then Ella; Nico came up from OSU to visit Ella.” To Ella and Nico she said, “Vivien’s a grad student in Women’s & Gender Studies.”
Lindy came into the living room balancing a plate of food in one hand and holding a beer in the other. She gave Tucker a quick kiss on the cheek and took the empty chair between where Tucker was and Cal. She was in worn, gray jeans and engineer boots, along with a brown sleeveless T-shirt that brought out the olive tones in her skin and showed off her ropey arm muscles. A wave of desire rolled through Tucker’s gut. Lindy’s strong arms and hands were one of Tucker’s favorite things about her.
“Glad you could make it,” Cal said to the room at large.
Introductions managed, Summer turned back to Nico. “Okay, now, seriously Nico, it’s driving me crazy, are you a boy or a girl?”
Nico’s smile widened. “Both,” per said.
Cal laughed.
Summer pushed on, “But, how can you be both, is that like a hermaphrodite?”
“Intersex,” Cal said.
“Genderqueer,” Ella suggested.
“Don’t be rude,” Tesh told Summer. “That’s a really personal question.”
Nico said, “I never talk about genitals on the first date.”
Cal choked on his beer, grabbed a napkin, and held it to his nose as he sputtered.
“That’s a good policy,” Tucker said in a light tone. Nico seemed good at handling perself, but Tucker didn’t want per to have to spend the next hour dodging questions about gender.
“Okay fine, no genitals,” Summer said. “But what is genderqueer anyway? Is it mostly a style or like a political thing or what?”
“Some of each,” Nico said. “By screwing with the gender binary you make more space for people to be themselves.”
“Screwing with the gender binary is something you have to be in a very privileged position to do,” Vivien said. She’d crossed her arms across her chest and was leaning with her back against the edge of the square pillar. When she pinched up her eyes like that, she looked like a predatory fox. “Most people can’t afford that luxury.”
“Then those of us who can should do more of it,” Nico replied.
“Why don’t you spend some of that energy helping out the women in third world countries stuck under horrible regimes?” Vivien asked.
Tucker wondered what the hell Vivien’s deal was. She was already harsh and opinionated in class and that kind of worked when she was teaching, but this was a casual party. With a sinking feeling, Tucker wondered if her own presence had something to do with it. Was Vivien aiming some of her anger at her?
“How do you know I’m not?” Nico asked. “You just met me. I could be good at dressing fabulously and fighting for international women’s rights. And don’t you think at some level enforcing and policing gender is the issue? If anyone can be anything, then there can’t be any gender-based oppression. Patriarchy is a system that oppresses men too.”
“You must be one if you think that way,” Vivien said in a cool, disconnected tone.
“See how you think it’s okay to try to force me into the gender binary?” Nico told her.
“A man would think he should have access to anything he wanted,” Lindy pointed out. “It’s natural to think you grew up male if you think you can just be any way you want to be. You never suffered under the oppression women suffer in this culture.”
“Hey, I think I can be any way I want,” Summer said. She leaned forward and put her beer down on the table with a loud thunk. “It’s not just about men and women, you know. You’re just blowing past all the race and class issues people live with.”
“And do you really want to get essentialist like that?” Nico asked. “All men are a certain way?”
“She’s not saying it’s their biology,” Vivien said. “But in our culture men are raised with privilege. Look at the fact that there are more people transitioning from male-to-female than the reverse and tell me that men don’t have things women don’t have.”
Her gaze cut sideways and brushed over Tucker as she talked and then Tucker knew it was about her as much as it was about Nico. Probably more about Tucker when it came down to it. Had Lindy told her that Tucker wasn’t trans or did Vivien still think she was and wanted her to know that Vivien thought of her as a man with privilege rather than a woman caught in a particularly shitty situation?
Nico shook per head and gestured widely with per hands. Per said, “I’m not disputing that people assigned male or perceived as male on average make more money in most of the world. Everybody knows that and it’s ridiculous. But if nobody knew who was assigned male at birth, how would they even know who to pay unfairly?”
“Not everyone wants to be genderqueer. What about all the women who just want to go on being women but be equal?” Vivien asked. She unfolded one arm and jabbed the air with her index finger as she talked.
“It’s also about femininity,” Ella said. Her voice was quieter than the others in the room, but clear enough that everyone heard.
“That’s what Selima was saying,” Tucker added. “The guest speaker in our class. She said that it’s dangerous for men to be feminine.”
Ella nodded to her and continued speaking, “I think maybe at some level it would be good if feminism was about raising up women but also femininity, no matter where it is. Sometimes it’s the delicate and the weak and the yielding aspects of life that are the most important. Power isn’t all about muscles and weapons—microbes can make or break civilizations.”
“Are you saying all fungus is female?” Nico asked, casting a sideways grin at Ella. Tucker got the impression this was a topic that Nico and Ella had talked about before and felt a pang of envy that she hadn’t been part of those conversations.
“At least the yeasts and molds,” Ella told Nico as she smiled back at per. “I’ve seen some pretty male mushrooms.”
“I think I dated a few of those,” Cal said with a hearty laugh. Tesh slapped him on the arm, but not very hard.
“You say you’re against the gender binary, but by playing with gender like that, you’re just making it more real,” Vivien continued, unfazed by the humorous attempts to move the conversation to lighter topics. “You can’t blend male and female unless they exist as separate and are capable of being blended. You can’t be genderqueer unless there’s a norm that your queerness is defined against, so in a way you keep reinforcing the gender binary.”
“I can be both genderqueer and feminist,” Nico said. “I can be for the eradication of patriarchal power and sexism in our culture and still screw around with gender as a personal choice about how I want people to see me.”
“But you want more gender rather than less.”
“Maybe both of those are the same thing,” Cal offered. “More gender means more self-expression and if you did away with gender you’d also see more people just expressing themselves as people. It’s a win either way. We’re on the same side.”
He got up from his chair and picked up empty beer bottles from the coffee table. “Who needs a fresh drink? And there’s ice cream in the freezer.”
“I’ll serve ice cream,” Ella said as she hopped up. “Who wants?”
Hands went up around the room. Ella followed Cal into the kitchen. Tesh got off the couch and Summer gestured Vivien over to the now empty spot on her left. Vivien hesitated but went to sit next to her. Lindy got up and pulled another folding chair next to her, near where Tucker was standing.
“One sec,” Tucker told her. She went across the room to Nico’s end of the couch and crouched down. “Are you the reason Ella knows so much about trans politics?” she asked Nico quietly.
Nico looked at her for a long time. “No,” per said finally. “Ella’s cooler than that. You want to know why she thinks the way she does, you ask her.”
Tucker went back across the room to sit next to Lindy and talk about things they’d already talked about a hundred times, but she watched Nico out of the corner of her eye. Ella seemed so comfortable around Nico. Maybe there wasn’t a direct connection between Nico being genderqueer and Ella knowing about trans issues, but an indirect one. Did Nico represent some kind of freedom to Ella?
Was it possible that somewhere in her psyche Ella wanted to be less of a girl? Could she wish she were androgynous or bi-gendered or genderqueer like Nico? Or were her long hair and makeup a response against some push inside herself? Maybe she secretly felt like a guy and was reacting against it. Maybe that’s what she’d been about to tell Tucker when Lindy and Nico showed up; maybe that was why she’d already read Emily’s book. But that didn’t make any sense. If she was thinking about transitioning from female to male, wouldn’t she cut her hair and butch up a little?
* * *
The next week started out slowly. Tucker’s Monday classes weren’t particularly exciting and after that she went over to Lindy’s to watch TV. When the sun went down, the temperature grew crisp but not so cold that Lindy had to close the windows. They sat on the couch together under a blanket with their arms around each other. Those cozy hours felt more like the first months of their relationship. Lindy was in a playful mood and cracked jokes at all the commercials and tickled Tucker when she had nothing clever to say, until her sides ached from laughing.
Tuesday after Women’s & Gender Studies, she was stretched out on her bed in her room with a book propped open in front of her when her phone chimed.
The text from Summer said: Where u?
Tucker replied: Room
Summer said: Omw, you need to see this
Summer showed up so quickly after the last text that Tucker knew she’d been texting while already in the dorm and on her way up to Tucker’s room. Her chest rose and fell quickly and her face was darkened with exertion or anger or both.
“What’s up?” Tucker asked.
Summer tapped her phone screen a few times and then held it out so Tucker could read the document on it:
Last week there was an incident involving a transsexual student in the women’s locker room. The University policy is that transsexual people are asked to use the facilities that correspond to the sex on their birth certificate.
“What the hell?” Tucker said.
“That was in the faculty and staff email news bulletin this morning,” Summer said. “That’s about you, isn’t it? One of those bitches in the locker room must have complained to someone for real.”
“Send that to me, I want to show it to Claire.”
Summer tapped on her phone and kept talking. “We’re going to do something about this, right? I mean, it’s like saying lesbians can’t use the women’s locker room.”
Tucker nodded. She liked the analogy. Claire would have advice about how to fight against it. She watched the email from Summer pop up on her phone and forwarded it on Claire with a short note. As she finished typing, Ella knocked on the door between their rooms.
Tucker opened it. “Hey,” she said.
“Summer texted me to come over,” Ella said, looking from Tucker to Summer.
Summer handed her the phone. “Read this shit.”
Ella’s eyes scanned the screen and her skin went from pale to paper white. “Oh,” she said.
“We think one of the women from the locker room complained,” Tucker explained.
Ella nodded and gave the phone back to Summer.
“Isn’t it just total crap?” Summer asked her.
“Yes, it’s bad,” Ella said. She wrapped her arms around herself. Tucker tried to catch her eye to figure out what she was thinking, but she was looking down at a spot between the foot of Tucker’s bed and the wall.
“Screw them,” Tucker said. “Claire will know what we can do about it.”
“Of course this way we could find out about Nico, if Nico comes up again,” Summer said. “Unless Nico already got his or her birth certificate changed.”
“You can’t change it,” Ella said quietly.
Tucker looked at her. “What?”
“In Ohio, you can’t change the sex on your birth certificate.”
“No shit?” Summer asked.
Tucker wanted to ask how she knew that, but now wasn’t the time. She tried to imagine Ella as a boy. What if she was FTM? Tucker didn’t like the idea as much as she thought she should. She liked Ella the way she was. To have her be that markedly different, to have her be a guy, it felt unnatural. But if it was who Ella needed to be, she’d just have to get over herself.
Ella shook her head at Summer.
“That seems cruel,” Summer said. “I’m willing to be an ass like anyone else and drive Nico crazy with questions, but to never be able to change that…I mean, what if you looked completely female and it still said male on your birth certificate? It wouldn’t even be safe to use the men’s room.”
“That’s what I’m going to do,” Tucker said. “I’m using the men’s bathrooms around campus from now on and just let them ask to see my birth certificate.”
That made Ella smile for the first time since the conversation started. “You are, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
But Tucker worried about the woman at school who really was trans. What happened when she heard about this? Would she feel like she had to go back to her dorm every time she wanted to use the bathroom? And what if she didn’t have a suite like Tucker did and had to share the bathroom with her floor? What was it like to feel afraid every time you went to the toilet?
“Tell me what Claire says,” Ella said. “I’ll be in my room.” She went back through the inner door.
Tucker tapped Summer on the shoulder so she’d look up from her phone where she was quickly messaging more students.
“Hey, what’s up with you and Vivien?” she asked.
Summer shrugged. “She got weird.”
“Clingy weird or distant weird?”
“Distant. Like she’d break up with me if we were going out, but we’re not, so she’s just not really talking much. And I don’t feel like processing it out. You should see this hottie in my finance class. She’s got that buttoned-up thing going on. I can’t decide who’s hotter, her or Ella.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Tucker said.
“You calling dibs? Does Lindy know?”
“I’m not calling dibs, she’s just off limits for you. There is no way I want to hear your freaky sex noises through the wall.”
“We could go back to my place,” Summer pointed out.
“She’s not on your list,” Tucker said. She stared at Summer until Summer looked away.