Page 75 of I Wish You All the Best

“I’m just kidding.” Then she waits a beat, maybe deciding whether or not the nail on my index finger is now even. “But also sort of serious. What are you into anyway? Are you into anyone?”

“Yeah, I like people.”

“People? Like what kind of people?”

“People people.”

“Like boys, girls, other nonbinary people?”

“That gets a little complicated.”

“Really?” She blows away a bit of the dust, which doesn’t seem very sanitary? I mean, that’s my fingernail essentially being filed into dust. Gross.

“I mean, I’m not like the head of the nonbinary committee or anything.”

Hannah huffs. “Well, I know that.”

“We’re not a committee anyway. More of a cult.” I laugh at my own joke.

“Is that where you go every night?”

“You got me.”

We both laugh, and I feel myself smiling, but then Hannah opens her mouth again. “But, like, for real, it can’t be that complicated. Can it?” She blows again, eyeing her handiwork before she decides to start on my other hand.

“It … Yeah, it kind of is.”

“Why?”

I can’t tell her how many times I’ve had this conversation with myself, trying to work it all out in my head only to never really come to a conclusion.

“Because, okay, so.” I take a deep breath. “For a while I thought I was gay.” I would see other guys, and I was really attracted to most of them. But it still felt like I was missing something. Something about myself.

Like who you’re attracted to and who you are as a person are two totally different things. It’s hard to explain not being confident in your own body. It just feels wrong, but only you seem to really know how and why it feels that way.

“But that still didn’t feel like the answer,” I continue. Because it wasn’t. And it wasn’t until I’d found Mariam’s videos that I really felt like I’d found someone who understood what was happening.

“So what about the sexuality thing?” Hannah asks.

“In all honesty, I’m still working through that.” Because I’m still attracted to the more masculine-presenting people, but nonbinary-ness isn’t something you can tell outright, so the boy at the coffee shop who I think is cute could actually be nonbinary.

But I’m still attracted to him. And besides, I don’t exactly have a gender, and being gay implies being interested in the same gender.

Like I said. It’s complicated.

“So, you’re not gay anymore?”

“That’s the million-dollar question.” I think of myself as bisexual. I’m interested in guys and more masculine-presenting people. But then there are people who argue that bisexuality is only two genders, and that those two genders have to be men and women. I’ve heard that argument too many times now, so I’ve learned to just keep it to myself. “For simplicity, I just say that I’m queer, that I have a type.” And definitely a lot easier than explaining that I identify as bisexual. And less gatekeeping involved too.

“And what type would that be?”

“Hot people?” I offer, knowing what she’s trying to get at.

“Can’t believe you’re so shallow,” she teases.

“Shut up.”

“You ever think that ‘straight’ and ‘gay’ are gonna be obsolete one day?”