What We Left Behind

“I don’t know. I need to think more. I’ve talked to Derek about it. He’s cool. Easy to talk to.”

I can’t tell if that was an accidental pronoun slip or if it was on purpose. I can’t remember the last time I heard Toni use a gendered pronoun. Well, if they’re already out at a party, they’ve probably been drinking, so...

“Derek sounds great.” I swallow, still trying to sound normal. It’s not like I’m freaking out or anything. I’m just kind of...confused? Lost? “I’ll get to meet him when I come up tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah! Of course. They all can’t wait to meet you. I showed them your picture. Nance called you a hottie.”

I laugh. A little bit of the tension goes out of me. I can’t wait to actually see Toni again. Everything would be so much better if we could just touch each other. Just occupy the same space.

Someone bangs on my door. “Gretchen! Let me in! I need your help with this shirt dilemma!”

I laugh again.

“Did you hear that?” I ask Toni.

“Yeah. Have fun tonight. It’s a gay club, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t do any drugs, okay? You would be so embarrassing high.”

I laugh. “Will do. Have fun hanging out in somebody’s room.”

We laugh some more.

“I love you,” Toni says in a low voice that brings a whole new smile to my face, because I know that voice is meant for only me to hear.

“I love you, too. I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”

“I know. Me, too.”

We get off the phone. Carroll, who’s kept up a steady beat on the door, acts all annoyed when I let him in. He’s topless, holding a stack of T-shirts.

“Finally.” He plops down on my bed and holds the first shirt up to his chest. “Thoughts?”

“Red works for you,” I say. “But isn’t it a bit much?”

“‘A bit much’ isn’t necessarily a bad thing.” He holds up another. “Too boring?”

“No, but won’t every other guy in the club be wearing that exact same shirt?”

“Maybe not. I heard straight people go to this place on Friday nights, too.” He tries the one he bought at American Apparel last week. “This is the safest choice.”

“I agree. It’s hot, though.”

“Yeah, it is.” Carroll pulls on the T-shirt and saunters over to Samantha’s mirror to play with his hair. “I must say, for someone who dresses herself like a slacker hippie, you have decent taste in guys’ clothes. Maybe you’re really a gay man trapped in a lesbian’s body.”

“No way,” I say. “I have a really strong gag reflex.”

He laughs. “So it’s another boring T-shirt and jeans ensemble for you tonight?”

“All I have is T-shirts and jeans. Oh, and that reminds me, I need you to come shopping with me soon. I’m going to a Halloween dance up at Harvard.”

Carroll’s looking through my closet. He nudges aside the backpack I’ve already filled with clothes and books for the bus tomorrow. “You don’t need to go shopping for that. No one at Harvard has any clue how to dress. Here, wear this tonight.”

He hands me a blue silk top I borrowed from someone last year and never gave back. I go in the bathroom to put it on.

I’ve got to stop stressing out. I want to be normal tonight.

Is it normal to have a girlfriend who doesn’t use the word girl, though? Wait, if Toni starts using male pronouns, would that make Toni my boyfriend?

No. Not thinking about this now. Tonight I will be Fun Gretchen. Then tomorrow I’ll go see Toni and everything will work itself out.

“Apparently this dance thing is a big event,” I say through the open door. “Toni told me to get something sexy.”

Carroll laughs. “Okay, whatever the missus commands. For now, though, could you please hurry up and do your makeup so we can get out of here?”

I slide on my Chapstick. “All set.”

* * *

The club is enormous. I’ve been to clubs in DC but nothing anywhere near this massive. Carroll’s never been to a club at all. I try to tell him this place is crazy huge, but as soon as our under-twenty-one hand stamps are in place and the doors have closed behind us, there’s no point talking. All we can hear is the pulsing music.

But it’s fun. It’s so, so amazingly fun.

We did a couple of shots before we came out, in Tracy’s room. (Tracy turned out to be awesome, actually.) Between the alcohol buzzing in my brain, the music pounding in my ears and the sight of hundreds of half-dressed guys grinding up against each other, I feel like I’m in a whole other fabulous universe. I stop thinking about everything that happened before this moment. I close my eyes and let the beat of the music flow up into my chest until it takes over my entire body.

And I dance. I never, ever want to stop dancing.

Carroll, for his part, starts grinning the second we walk through the doors and never stops. He’s entered his own personal heaven.

We dance to Beyoncé. We dance to Britney. We dance to Taylor Swift. Carroll makes the sign of the cross when “Like a Prayer” comes on, and I laugh because Toni’s sort of Catholic, too, and apparently I am destined to spend my life surrounded by sort-of Catholics, and right now that’s hilarious. Right now everything’s hilarious.

Carroll and I dance together for what feels like hours because each song is about twenty minutes long. Carroll’s an okay dancer, but he needs to loosen up. He gets a drink from somewhere, and that seems to help.

Suddenly there’s a sketchy guy dancing next to us. He has a mustache and a gold necklace that says Mama’s Boy. His bare chest is superhairy and soaking with sweat. I turn around so I won’t have to look at him while I dance.

I close my eyes again and sing along at the top of my lungs to the chorus of “Born This Way.” When I open my eyes, Carroll has his tongue down the sketchy guy’s throat.

Oh. Okay.

I dance by myself for a while. Then a guy with brown hair comes over and dances next to me. He shouts something that sounds like, “You’re full of snot!”

“What?” I shout back.

“YOU’RE REALLY HOT!” he shouts.

Oh. This must be one of the straight guys Carroll said might be here. I shout back, “I’m gay!”