“DO YOU want to get together after class to hang out tonight?” Abby asked eagerly, rocking back on the balls of her feet as our triad waited outside the lecture hall. “I feel like I haven’t left campus in ages.”
Since the hearing, I’d done little more than sulk and go to class. I was not keen on the idea of testifying in a murder trial, but I knew I had to, and it was taking me some time to come to terms with that fact. Abby, who kept up with the newspapers and knew what was happening with the case, had been quietly supportive. I was going to politely decline and tell her that I just planned on going home, but Sasha spoke before I could.
“Wish I could,” he said, “but I’m going to a Pride meeting tonight to plan for Halloween.”
I almost added my own excuse, but Sasha’s made me pause. “Pride? Like Gay Pride?” I asked excitedly. “I didn’t know we had one. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sasha blinked like the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “I didn’t think you guys would be interested,” he admitted. “I had to hunt it down, to be honest. It’s a pretty small group, practically underground.”
“I ran a Gay-Straight Alliance in high school,” I explained. “I didn’t know our university would have something. When do you meet? How many meetings have there been?”
Abby listened politely as Sasha told me all about it. The trouble of finding a room the group could rent out for meetings, the difficulty they’d had getting sanctioned by the university, the idea to do a food drive on Halloween; it all sounded complicated and messy and right up my alley. He continued to talk about it as we filed into the lecture hall and took our regular seats in the middle of the room.
“I’m so in,” I said as I pulled my books out of my bag. “Where’s the meeting tonight?”
Abby was surprisingly quiet through the class, never leaning over my shoulders to copy my notes or asking for clarification during the breaks the professor took to switch PowerPoint presentations on an ancient PC hooked up to the projector. I feared, for a moment, that I was going to find out that the one girl friend I’d made in university was secretly a homophobe, or religious zealot, or something equally disappointing.
By the time I got out of class, I was fuming, ready to confront her about it. How would I say it? Was “What’s your deal?” too vague a starting point? I was biding my time as we packed up our books.
“Listen,” Abby said as we moved to leave the emptying lecture hall. She looked and sounded rather timid. “Would it be okay if I came with you tonight?”
Sasha and I looked at each other. He laughed. “Why wouldn’t it be okay?” he asked, reaching out to push playfully at Abby’s shoulder. “Of course you can come.”
“I just mean, it won’t be weird?” She looked at me imploringly, knowing Sasha could be a little dense sometimes. “Me going to Pride even though I’m straight? It’s not the same thing as an Alliance, because it’s Pride, and—”
“Allies drop in all the time,” Sasha said, waving his hand dismissively. “It’s not that big a deal. Don’t even worry about it. Besides, Corey’s straight and she’s going.”
Abby said, “No she’s not,” at the same time I said, “No I’m not,” in stunning synchronicity. I looked at her and grinned, any doubt in her loyalty completely forgotten. How could I have thought her capable of hate?
“You’re not coming?” Sasha asked. He sounded confused and disappointed, and I almost felt sorry for laughing at him. Almost, but not quite.
“Of course I’m coming. But I’m not straight,” I laughed. “I’m bisexual.”
I had never said it out loud before, but there it was in all its glory: bisexual. I would never have said those words in high school. I would have been too scared of people judging me for it, singling me out. The rumors had flown when I started my GSA, and there’d been an awful incident at a party when I was almost forced to play “seven minutes in heaven” with a girl determined to out me. It had been a hostile environment. College was different. I could be anybody I wanted to be, here.
“You must be awful at reading people, Sash,” Abby said. “Or else surely you’d have noticed that Corey’s into women.”
“And men,” I pointed out and then paused. “And I guess anything in between the two. Or neither. The gender spectrum is pretty complicated, from what I’ve read. But I’m attracted to people of genders similar and different to my own,” I said, parroting the definition written by actual bisexuals, rather than the annoyingly exclusionary definition on the Wikipedia entry on bisexuality.
“You sound like a commercial for bisexuality.” She adopted a voice like a newscaster. “Coming up next: smash the patriarchy with feminism!” She punched the air joyously, already back to her old self.
“Sounds like a good time,” I laughed.
Sasha wrapped his arms around both of our shoulders and steered us down the crowded hall. He got a few envious looks from guys who thought he was wheeling. “We can smash the patriarchy after we get smoothies. Deal?” he said.
I thought it was a good idea. The on-campus smoothies were tasty, if a little expensive. Abby seemed to think so as well.
“Fine, as long as you’re paying,” she countered Sasha’s proposition. “Since the patriarchy remains decidedly un-smashed at this time.”
“I always got deep pockets for mah ladiez,” he said, reaching up with both hands and messing up my hair and Abby’s. She screeched and went about rearranging it immediately, swearing indelicately. I gave Sasha a sharp jab to the solar plexus with my elbow, just hard enough to make him gasp, not causing any real pain. This was how our friendship operated, and it was good.