A fragment for Identities and Intersections. Originally in English.

“How are you today?” I ask J. as we sit for lunch.

“Stressed.”

“What happened?”

“Boy of the week. I really like him.”

“Ok, what’s wrong then?”

“Recurrent boy. Recurrent crush has asked me out.”

“You’re torn between boy of the week and recurrent boy?”

“Boy of the week is super cute, but he prefers women. And recurrent boy sings super well.”

“I say you go out with both and drop the first one that goes south.”

“Carolina, you should drink with me and H. on Friday. Last time, H. and I got really crazy.”

“Have you and H. ev-”

“No. H. is too feminine for me. I like more masculine guys.”

”…”

“I have so much homework. And I caught a cold so my voice isn’t the same, which means I can’t sing Hey Jude for my final proj-”

“J., don’t you think it’s weird? How even within the gay communities you divide yourselves into binaries?”

”…”

”…”

“I think it’s because it’s ingrained in our brains from the society we live in.”

“Do you think so?”

“I think so.”

”…”

”…”

“I don’t know… something still bothers me about transforming the community into a copy of the community that rejected you in the first place.”

I guess I never thought of H. as “feminine”. With J. pointing it out, I can recognize how some of H.’s traits don’t fit into what’s conventionally considered “masculine”. But I never felt the need to categorize him. It feels unfair to reduce H. to a word. It feels unjust to immediately reject H. just because he’s a bit far from J.’s optimal point in the gender presentation scale. It makes me mad to think that someone could be saying something similar about me. That someone could be reducing me to one out of two words. That someone could try to capture my essence with such a narrow system and take away all the things that individualize me.

I arrive home, and, after painting my nails, I text my friend: “Annabel, would you teach me how to do makeup?”

“Shruti, Annabel gave me makeup.”

“You’re going to start wearing makeup?”

“I want to see what makes me feel comfortable. I want to wear it one day, and then not wear it in the next. I want people to be confused about which version of me they’re going to see each day.”

“Did you know I used to have a full-on sidecut? My father got real mad. He said nobody would be interested in me.”

“And was someone interested in you?”

“People… treat you different.”

“How?”

“Men don’t help you carry your suitcases out of the train.”

“Are you invisible all of a sudden?”

“No, they see me. They simply respect me more. Even at work I feel treated more professionally. It’s fun. To choose how to present yourself every day.”

“Shruti?”

“Yes?”

“Ideally, we’d all be non-binary.”

“Yes.”

“But, given how the world is, I’m a woman.”

“Ok.”

“But I am my own expression of femininity. I’ve always been.”

“Yes, you are Carol.”

“Do you see me that way as well?”

“I think you can always pull off whatever you want. You are Carol.”