I sighed. I only had time to post the first blog post, not the second or third. The second was going to be an “exposé” about anti-white racism in prominent student groups like the Columbia Democrats and theColumbia Daily Spectator. The third was going to be an essay about why Columbia should no longer force students to take Global Core classes to graduate and instead only require that they learn about the history of Western thought, which had been the case for most of the university’s history. It was fine; I would just come back. I would need to start over: find another person to let me use their log-in for one of the public computers. But if that’s what it would take, I was willing to do it.
THIRTEEN
“That bitch.”
I looked around uncomfortably. We were sitting at the table in the shared lounge in Leah’s dorm building. Fortunately, the other students looked like they were too preoccupied with studying to pick up on our conversation.
“Isn’t ‘bitch’ a gendered term? Are you allowed to call Alex that?”
“Oh my god, Elizabeth.” Leah shook her head in exasperation. “Shut up. Who the fuck cares?”
I swallowed. Would it be insensitive for me to say right then that I cared? I decided not to say anything. I knew that Leah was just upset and she didn’t mean it. We all said things we didn’t mean when we were upset.
“Bitch, asshole, cunt, dickhead, I literally couldn’t care less. I can’t believe Alex pinned this whole thing on me. And how dare they claim that I’m some kind of self-hating bisexual? Alex is the one who crossed the boundary that webothagreed upon.It has nothing to do with the gender of the person who they crossed the boundary with.”
I nodded, trying not to say anything bad about Alex while still validating Leah’s feelings. For the past few weeks, I had tried to handle the situation the way that an advice columnist for a progressive online publication would tell me to handle it. After Alex asked to crash with Eunjin and me, I checked first with Leah to make sure that it was okay with her. And I intentionally did not communicate information that one had told me in confidence to the other. But earlier in our conversation, I had inadvertently brought up the wine night at Eunjin’s a few weeks ago. Leah claimed that she knew all about that night, and that Eunjin had already told her everything Alex said, which led me to actually reveal everything that Alex had said.
“The problem wasn’t that the person Alex hooked up with was aman,” Leah said, enunciating every word as though she were a TA explaining a complicated topic to a group of first-years for the billionth time. “The problem was that Alex hooked up with an ex, and we explicitly agreed that we would only pursue ‘entanglements’ that were void of any emotional connection. Now, you tell me, Elizabeth, is having sex with someone you literally dated for over two years an interaction that you would count as void of emotional connection?”
I was trying to agree with everything she was saying and accidentally nodded to her question, before mumbling an apology and shaking my head.
“Exactly. It’s not. And as any couples therapist would say, an open relationship is all about trust. And Alex broke my trust by breaking the rules. With the first person they hooked up with! Can you believe that?”
This time, I managed to shake my head on the first try.
“I can’t believe it. But I probably should, and that’s my fault. I should’ve seen right through their holier-than-thou facade. Did you know they wouldn’t talk to me for three days just because I called someone a cunt? Like yeah, it wasn’t great on my part, but to not talk to me for three days? And now they’re trying to spin the story to make me out to be the villain when they are obviously the villain. I wonder who else they’ve said this to. After they hurt me so much. You saw how upset I was. And for them to go and spread all these lies. How dare they?”
I nodded. “Yeah, it seems like you two aren’t on the same page.”
“No, no, no. It goes beyond being on the same page. I’m clearly in the right here, and they’re in the wrong. I’m on the objectively correct page, and Alex is on some crumpled-up Post-it note with scribbles that they’re pretending is legible but is actually incomprehensible.”
“That’s a really good metaphor,” I said.
Leah rolled her eyes. “And I can’t believe they would try to turn my own friends against me. Like, seriously?”
I shrugged. “Hey, I’m here now, so at least you know it didn’t work.”
“Besides, I don’t understand why they would go through all this trouble of spinning up a fake story to you. Like, Alex doesn’t even like you that much.”
At this, my ears perked up. “Wait, what?”
“They think you’re a sellout. And they think you purposefully have been getting their pronouns wrong.”
“What?!”
“Yeah, like they suspect you’re secretly a Republican because you’re from South Dakota.”
“Do they think the same about Eunjin?”
“Nah. Eunjin’s a violinist. She’s an artist, so that automatically means she’s a liberal.”
“But I swear the pronouns thing is an accident!”
“I told Alex the same thing. I mean, I completely believe you. I guess you could say it’s just another lie that they’ve made up to feel morally superior to everyone else.”
“Oh my god. What else did Alex say about me?”
“I mean, they think it’s fucked up you’re going to law school to defend evil corporations. They think it’s a waste of your brains. I guess that’s some consolation. They think you’re morally not the greatest person, but they definitely don’t doubt that you’re smart.”
