of course you

You and I.
You with your maps and schedules. I with my aimless wandering and inability to commit to time frames. You are always one step ahead as I lag behind, stopping to climb every tree that happens to lay within my peripheral vision. Sometimes you grab my arm, exasperated, and drag me to where you know we are both going, introducing me to the self you had known all along. In this way you open me to the idea of myself, connecting the fragments as I never would. Had it not been for you I would have meandered through my early adolescence, never understanding why I often found myself acting like a ten year old boy in the presence of other girls my age, and, upon recognizing this behavior as a manifestation of my attraction, I would have spent my teenage years lonely and ashamed, traveling the path familiar to many queer youth. Instead I found you, or you found me. Instead you kissed me, you kissed me before I could understand that what we did, how we felt, wasn’t accepted in a large part of society. You kissed me before I could head down the road from which many of us have to struggle so hard to return. And so, in that one night and the brief time that followed you taught me about myself, you helped me avoid having to come to terms with my sexuality. There were things I never told you though, but I sense now that you knew anyway. You question me about my sexual identity as if you are waiting for an answer we both know lurks beneath the surface of my words. How you know I can never explain.
Of course you know I’m talking about how when I was little I used to believe that I would never get my period and that instead, one day, a doctor would look into me and see a penis trapped inside. Reading Middlesex, although after that critical day that determined my girlhood, confirmed my beliefs and I spent the following months waiting for my uterus I to dry out.
Of course you know I’m talking about how when I went through this phase during which I was obsessed with cancer and read what felt like hundreds of books about teenagers dying, I was morbidly fascinated with the idea of my having cancer so that I could systematically dispose of my body parts, first hair, then breasts, and finally the reproductive system I was fully convinced would one day simply cease to function.
Of course you know I’m talking about how I have always felt safe in my father’s closet. There I have on hundreds of occasions hidden myself within his clothing: pants, shirt (make sure to button it to the top), coat, shoes, and finally a hat to cover the hair I’ve never felt comfortable enough to cut.
Of course you know I’m talking about how I sometimes wear two bras, how one of my life ambitions is to learn how to pee standing up, how I despise my girly walk and often attempt a swagger that only results in my looking as though I have something large shoved up my vagina, how I feel devastatingly uncomfortable when Heather slips her hands between my legs and, depending on the circumstance, either wish she would give up on bringing me to orgasm or that there was something that filled the space between me and her hand against the fabric of my jeans, how when I look at myself in the mirror I impulsively hold my chest in such a way that I can almost imagine it’s flat, and how I love my name. It means “boy warrior”, no matter how feminine it may sound or look, it is a strong male name.
But of course you also know that as much as I enjoy rugby for the sole reason that it allows me an outlet for my incurable, impulsive, physical aggression, I also (sometimes) like how I look in a dress and am more likely to show up to a wedding in a skirt than a shirt and pants.
But of course you know that, except for in the 8th grade, I never have been able to identify myself as male, and that nobody (except my cousin that one time that I’ll never forget) will ever mistake me for a boy although Mindy often tells me she thinks of me as one and my Dad sometimes jokingly calls me his son.
I call it being a tomboy because I have never really understood what it means to feel like a boy or feel like a girl...I have always wanted to be a boy but I have never once felt disconnected or mismatched with the skin I’m in.. You call it being butch, or you used to, I haven’t heard you describe me recently.
What I’m getting at is that I need you to be there more intensely than you are. I need you to know me for me, I need you to at least grab my hand and take me to where I am headed. That’s why I used to be infatuated with you, why I am currently lusting after very attractive androgynous stranger, because I see myself there, because I always have. And I want to know you again, I want to be present for the life I’ve always seen as nothing less than astounding, I want to sit downtown with you, listening to you talk about Jess and all of the things that bring on that look of absolute elation present so often on you face....and I want to know if it is real. Anything more than a friendship between us would be awkward and messy, which I think is why we never really had one...as silly little kids we leapt from acquaintances to being “in love” and back again. I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately, been thinking that it’s about time we reconciled our parallel lives, brought them back together for one final time.

Of course you know how I have never been able to forget about you.